Child Abuse Survivor

While I was in London last week for work, I was sitting in my hotel room one evening, getting ready to head out to dinner, when the news program did a story about the lack of male role models for children in the UK. The concern is that while the number of single moms is growing, the number of adult males in professional areas like teaching, therapist, or other positions where they would be working with children. The news program seemed to highlight the fact that this was a difficult thing to talk about because there is an assumption that pointing out that having millions of kids grow up without any kind of male role model is somehow an insult to single moms. That is a problem, and being overly sensitive to people who point out the problem isn’t going to help solve it. Children, male and female, need appropriate role models of both sexes to develop the proper relationships and sense of themselves as adults.

One of the things the report didn’t talk about, but which I immediately thought of, is why are there so few men willing to work with children? Unfortunately, my own experience tells me why that is. Males who want to work with children, are automatically suspected of being pedophiles. I’ve seen the looks adult males get when seen in public with children that aren’t theirs, and I’ve seen the strange looks you get when you try to even attempt to volunteer to work with kids when you don’t have any yourself. Don’t have kids of your own but want to volunteer to coach a little league team? Good luck with that. Every parent out there is going to be suspicious of you. Heck, I’ve seen the suspicious looks given to me just walking around with my niece, who has blond hair and blue eyes and is obviously not blood related to me, let alone my nephew, who was adopted from Africa.

Unfortunately, we now live in a world where males seen with children without a female around, are suspects. Is it any wonder men don’t want to go into teaching? Is it any wonder why males without their own kids don’t want to volunteer to work with kids, whether it be Big Brothers or coaching sports? Why would you put yourself through that? The sad reality is, that the media has fed a frenzy leading us to fear strangers, especially adult males, when the vast majority of child abuse occurs within the family circle. How sad that when so many kids are suffering abuse within their family, they are meeting fewer and fewer people outside of the family who they might confide in.

So, even here in the US, as the number of kids growing up without fathers continues to grow, we’ll see more and more of them grow up without any one to model what is correct male behavior, and that is not going to help them lead successful, happy, and healthy lives as adults. We should do better.

Anyone who spends as much time as I do online, and who is an outspoken survivor, inevitably gets bombarded with lots of requests to share information to their readers. Like most of you, I get a lot of those, and if it’s something that I think survivors might benefit from, I’m more than happy to.

What I won’t do, is sign your petition, voice my support, contact the media or a congressperson on behalf of someone I don’t even know. Here’s a good example of why I don’t so that, a Facebook post that went viral, purporting to name a wanted child molester, who in fact is not wanted and has absolutely no legal issues to speak of.

See, here’s the thing. Baseless accusations ruin people’s lives, and they hurt legitimate abuse survivors. If we want a world where abuse victims are to be believed, we need to be extra outspoken against anyone, anywhere, who makes false accusations. We need to be more skeptical when faced with social network posts claiming to raise awareness of a specific case when there is no evidence beyond an anonymous Twitter or Facebook account.

In this case, not only does this individual have a pretty good civil case against the person who started spreading the post, he has one against every single person who thought they were “doing their part” and shared it. Every one of those people has lost credibility. How many false rumors about potential molesters, or false claims of abuse being used as a child custody tool, before we are simply not believed any more? How soon before we reach a point where every claim of abuse is met with skepticism, because there are just so many false ones.

If we expect society to believe victims, then we have to weed out those who would take advantage of that by making false accusations, not continue to spread “support” when we don’t know anything about the case we are publicizing. False accusations are damaging to the people being accused, and to the survivor community in general. Think before you repost.

Why yes, yes it is.

I don’t know if it’s just me, or just a coincidence, but it seems like there have been a rash of tweets, Facebook comments, etc. challenging me on the very idea that survivors could ever really heal. These comments are coming from survivors too, which just saddens me. Most of them seem to follow along the pattern of “these survivors will never live without the damage caused by this, and are doomed to misery for the rest of their sad existences”.

That is just not true. Yes, survivors never forget what has happened, and the past will forever be a part of us. But let’s talk about what that does not mean. It does not mean we are doomed to a miserable existence for all of our adult lives. It does not mean that we can never have happy, dare I say, joyful, lives. It does not mean that we will never be able to develop meaningful relationships. That simply isn’t true. I, and many others survivors, have managed to accomplish those things. Yes, it’s challenging. Yes it takes a lot of work, and a lot of time. Yes, it can be a struggle to overcome the effects of our abuse, but to say that it cannot be done is a outright lie.

Here’s the thing. As I engage this response I have found a few common themes that seem to come along with this attitude about survivors.

1. Many of the comments are shrouded in the theme of justice, basically that healing is impossible because justice will never be served. While I am all for justice being served, healing is not, and can not be, tied to whether or not your abuser ever gets punished. That is not healing, that is vengeance. I’m not saying you shouldn’t pursue justice, but recognize that pursuit will not, by itself, bring you healing.

2. Another common thread I’ve seen is that the comments generally come from male survivors. This shows me two things, one, that far too many male survivors are still taking the path of “leave me alone in my misery” instead of reaching out to the broader survivor community, and that the broader survivor community does not do an effective job of getting the word out and making male survivors feel welcome.

3. Unfortunately, I fear that this attitude of giving up is a response to the fact that healing is hard work! It’s not easy. If it were easy, abuse wouldn’t really be a big deal. would it? It is a big deal because the damage done is real, but it is only a life sentence if you give up trying to heal. Taking the easy way out only allows your abusers to continue to damage you long after they had any control.

So yes, healing is hard, and it takes time. After all you didn’t get the way you are overnight. It takes everyone their entire childhood, and then some, to become the adult they later are. When that childhood development is robbed from you by abuse, you are simply getting a later start. It can be challenging to learn all the skills that make for a happy adult live, and to overcome the fear that plagues us from our previous experiences.

Just because something is a challenge though, doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Nor does it make it not worth doing. If you are a survivor who has convinced themselves that healing isn’t possible or worth the effort, than I truly feel sorry for you, but you won’t find any agreement on that point here.

Recently, I blogged over on my other page about the problem when everyone follows the same exact travel advice, and how what might work for one person, kind of falls apart when everyone does it.

That really doesn’t have much to do with survivors, at least I didn’t think so. That was until I read something over at Seth Godin’s blog about loneliness that got me thinking.

The minute we realize that the person sitting next to us needs us (and our tribe, our forward motion and the value we create), we’re able to extinguish their aloneness as well as ours.

This struck me as something that absolutely is a problem in the survivor community as a whole. Survivors typically do not reach out. It’s the very opposite of what we’ve been groomed to do, and it’s one of the most fearful things to attempt for anyone with that sort of background. So, we tend to take the safe approach and wait for others to reach out to us. This is our own little, highly efficient, defense mechanism in that it serves two purposes. One, it keeps us from ever worrying about rejection, and it forces people who might want to help us to jump through a few hoops first, to prove that they really do care.

This is a fine example of behavior that might make sense to us as individuals, but what happens when everyone engages in this same behavior? How do you find fellow survivors to build a support system, or a sense of community with, when everyone who might be part of that community is waiting for someone else to reach out?

Eventually someone has to take a small chance and open up about being a survivor and be willing to share their story. If you feel like there’s no one around you who understands, maybe you can be the one to break the stalemate of everyone doing the same thing, and simply share your story. Nothing more. Just share the truth about yourself. I think you’ll be surprised how many people around you are dealing with the same things, in one way or another, and just don’t know who to talk to about it.

Just make sure that you’re taking care of yourself, and have the strength to tell your story with no expectations on what kind of response you get. You’re not sharing to manipulate people into supporting you, you’re sharing just to share and find others who might need support. That’s the kind of sharing that leads to truly supportive communities.

Crossposted to Mikemac on Sports.

I was listening to a recent BS Report, a podcast about sports on Grantland, in which Bill Simmons had Mike Tyson and Jalen Rose on, and got Mike talking about some of the issues and demons that he has had to deal with throughout his life.

It was an interesting interview all the way around, but the thing that really caught my attention was when Mike said that early in his career, after he had found some success and starting making money, and people kind of came out of the woodwork wanting to be his friend, and attach themselves to him, and his money, that he knew they were using him, but he wanted to be used.

Now, it is hard to imagine someone as physically strong as Mike Tyson wanting people to use him, but he began to explain, and mentioned Stockholm Syndrome, and how when you grow up with nothing, being bullied and abused, that you start to simply expect this is how people will treat you, and it’s what you deserve. As he was talking I could really see how this made sense. He never had anyone growing up, suddenly people wanted to be his friend. He never really had any friends, but wanted some, so if being used was the price for having friends, and as far as he knew at this point, that was the way it is, then he would accept that and let people use him and his money.

The more I let that sink in, the more it really made so much sense. How many survivors have I talked to who simply accept being used, or abused again, as adults? How many simply assume that is the trade-off to being in a relationship, or having some take care of them financially, or have a partner in raising a child, etc.? Does that not sound like Stockholm Syndrome, where kidnap victims being to identify with their captors, and minimize the very real damage being done to them as a hostage? It’s a false belief that the only way to get love, companionship, friendship, etc. is to trade yourself for it, to let people use you however they see fit.

The struggle, of course, is to embrace the reality that is your past, accept it, and also learn to see it for what it truly is. In other words, to learn that you are more than something to satisfy the needs of other people. It sounds like Tyson is finally getting that, and trying to do different things with his life and make healthy choices. I hope he can continue to do that, just as I always hope the same for all survivors.

Recently, I had occasion to speak to two friends, on the same day. The conversations couldn’t have been any more different. One friend was celebrating some good news, while the other was struggling under the weight of health issues and needing someone to simply listen and sympathize with them. As someone who cares about both of these people, I was glad to have both conversations but it served as an important reminder about friendships.

Survivors, and others, often find themselves complaining about the lack of friends around us, or the drama that the friends we do have bring into our own lives, without understanding both the nature and limits of friendship. The fact of the matter is, as much fun as it was to laugh and celebrate a good moment with a friend, it’s just as important, if not more important, to be there for the bad ones too. Friends don’t get to pick and choose which moments they get to take part in. Well, at least if you expect to remain friends. Too often I see people complain about no one being willing to sit through their bad moments, when they have never done the same for any of their friends. It’s a sad fact that survivors often get so caught up in our own pain and healing that we forget other people have struggles too. When a friend is going through a hard time, and you see that as a chance to remind them how much worse you have it than they do, don’t be surprised if they don’t want you around during their bad, or good, moments any more. Would you want someone incapable of seeing past their own situation to share those moments with you? I wouldn’t. Ultimately, your ability to be there for others, in healthy ways, will increase the likelihood that others will be there for you.

It’s the healthy part that I think survivors struggle with. I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say it over and over, child abuse survivors rarely learn how to be adults, and how to function in relation to other adults, until much later in life. That’s not an excuse, or at least it shouldn’t be. There is also no reason that survivors cannot learn to be adults and have adult relationships with other people. But, as a survivor, do not confuse the way you have related to other people from childhood on as normal and healthy. Most likely, it is not.

If you find other people’s ups and downs to be too much for you, you are not acting like a healthy adult. Healthy adults have boundaries. Not just in how they expect others to behave toward them, but in how much they allow other people’s lives to impact them. When I talked to one friend about her good news, I was honestly happy and excited for her. I was very hopeful that this news would help with some of the things she had been struggling with. Later, when I reached out to a friend who I knew was having a hard time, I was honestly concerned and pained by knowing that someone I care for is hurting. I am still both happy for one friend and sad for another. I am also living my own life and taking care of the things I need to take care of, regardless of how I may be feeling toward these two friends. That is what adults do. They are not derailed from their own life because they have a friend who is struggling. They care, and they do what they can for their friends, and then they go right back to living their own life. Because, ultimately, making yourself miserable in the course of empathizing with a friend is not helpful to anyone. You must have boundaries. You must have the inner strength, and the proper sense of self, to be your own person regardless of whatever drama may be going on in the lives of those around you.

People without a proper sense of self are the ones who find themselves constantly being dragged into other people’s lives in ways that are not healthy for anyone. Without that sense of self, they are left to find self-worth in how other people see them, and are open to being mistreated in a variety of ways. Some of those are on purpose, others are simply a result of being involved with other people without a proper sense of themselves. This results in all kinds of life drama, because no one has the inner strength to simply walk away and go live their own life. Unfortunately, most child abuse survivors do not grow up with a sense of themselves, and are used to seeing themselves only through the eyes of those who’ve abused them. That leaves us open to being overly involved in other people’s messes.

The good news is that it’s not too late to learn how to have a normal, adult, sense of yourself. It just takes some time and the willingness to learn. Surely that beats the alternative, no?

You may have noticed things have been a little quiet around here. I’ve been pretty busy with work, which is taking me away from my normal blogging patterns. Given how much travel I’m going to be doing as part of my job, it’s becoming more and more obvious that I’ll need to find some way to keep writing while I’m traveling.

On the other hand, work is becoming more of an adventure every day, and there’s part of me that is simply enjoying that fact. Last week, I was in Norway, for example. I wish I would have had some more time to explore Oslo while I was there, but I did need to work, and frankly, even the little bit of exploring I was able to do was a chance to see more of Norway than I expected to see in my lifetime.

So, as much as the trip wore me out, and even had me come home with a cold, and as much as it’s been difficult to find my focus on the blog in the midst of all this, I wouldn’t trade it. I spent so much of my early adult years being afraid to try new things, struggling to stay “safe” from the things I had to deal with as a child, that now that I’ve finally started to realize that I am capable of keeping myself safe, and can navigate the world successfully as an adult, I don’t want to turn down opportunities to have an adventure. I feel like it’s almost my way of thumbing my nose at the abuse. That doing something new, interesting, and yes a little scary, is my way of reclaiming my life from abuse.

Whatever your adventure is, I hope that you are able to take it, with the knowledge that as a survivor, you’ve already accomplished so very much, and have the ability to accomplish much, much more.

Today, as we were walking around Savannah, my wife and I came across a lovely Presbyterian Church and noticed that they had a sign out about a Compline service that evening starting at 9:00PM. It sounded pretty interesting, and as we are always on the lookout for new and interesting things when we are traveling, she decided we were going to try and check it out.

Now, as many of you know, I don’t talk much about religion one way or another on this site. I have my own beliefs, and generally keep them to myself here, because I truly believe this site is for survivors, whoever they are, and whether they choose to put their faith in.

Now I don’t want to talk much about the service, or the faith that is on display at the service, but as we were sitting in the candlelit church, listening to the choir, it did occur to me that, no matter your feelings about God and religion, surely this was a good idea. To take time out, and the end of your day’s labor, when the stillness of the night time is coming over you, and before you set off into a new week. Time to be reflective, to meditate on the passing of the previous week, to give thanks for getting through that week, and to gird yourself for the coming week. What better way for survivors to track their progress, and be mindful of the journey of healing we are on, that to have our own version of Compline each week, where we contemplate where we are, where we have come from, and where we are going? Most of all, to simply take some time to look back on the healing we’ve already had, and the struggles we are having, with a larger perspective, that of the whole journey, and the progress being made, as opposed to whatever is happening right at that moment.

I am very mindful of the fact that it is easy, so, so easy, to get caught up in today, and forget that healing is a journey, with no set timeline. Wouldn’t it help to set aside some time to contemplate the progress that you’ve made to this point, and be thankful for the fact that you are still here, which gives you hope for the future? Personally, I think it would do us all a lot of good.

One of the common statements I hear from survivors who are losing hope is that “things are never going to change”. They assume that because they are struggling, and have been struggling, that they always will.

Well if you feel that way, you might be reassured to know that even the general population is pretty terrible at anticipating how much change is going to occur in the next 10 years, let alone for the rest of their lifetime.

Since the human race, in general, can’t see change coming, perhaps those of us who have developed a negative outlook due to childhood events would do well to remember that we are probably even worse than the average person in anticipating how things are going to change for the better. Given that we are very likely the worst prognosticators of change, maybe we should hold off on making decisions because we don’t think things are going to change.

After all, if you think things are never going to change, and you choose to give up, you’ll be correct. Things won’t change, not because change doesn’t happen, but because you chose to stop making any positive changes in your life. Change happens all around us, and inside of us, every single day. We are just not very good at predicting it, or seeing it as it happens. Instead of giving in to that weakness and letting it define you, why not try to have a little faith, and try opening your eyes to the changes you have already seen in your life, or those around you? Let that be your guide as to whether change is possible.

Sometimes, when we are in the midst of dealing with the absolute worst of our issues, and trying to overcome the effects childhood abuse is having on our adult lives, the best thing anyone can do for us is give us one less thing to worry about.

Think about it, if someone you care about is struggling with finding the right anti-depressant, or going through an intense period in therapy, or even struggling with telling their family about the abuse, you can’t necessarily do much more than listen. You might find that frustrating, but it’s reality. Somethings we just need to go through on our own, and you really can’t get involved and protect us from them.

On the other hand, in the midst of those very stressful situations, sometimes we don’t have the energy to go grocery shopping, or get some laundry done, or we have to juggle appointments with picking up the kids at school, etc. Those are exactly the things you can help a survivor with. Look, there’s a reason why when someone dies, people bring food. They know that getting groceries and fixing dinner for the kids is the last thing on your mind, so they take care of that for you. They can’t fix what happened, but they can allow you to grieve without worrying about what’s for dinner. If you are close to a survivor, and see them struggling with their past, aside from being there to listen, and support them as much as you can, maybe simply taking a thing or two off their to-do list would do much more good than you can possibly imagine.

It certainly can’t hurt, and doing something is better than feeling helpless. Give it a try.