Child Abuse Survivor

Today is my 10th wedding anniversary. As many of you know, I’ve been living apart from my wife because of my job, though she will finally be joining me in South Carolina next month! To top it off, my wife is actually even further away than normal, as she is traveling in Greece as part of her job! (The last big commitment she wanted to live up to before leaving.)

If you had asked me 10 years ago how we would be celebrating this anniversary, I don’t think I would have guessed this in a million chances.

This weekend I am also missing my High School’s 25 year reunion. (Yeah, I’m getting old!) If you had asked me then where I would be living, again, I don’t think South Carolina would have even been a consideration. I don’t think I had even heard of Greenville, so I know I couldn’t have guessed that!

My point? Life’s an adventure. You never really know where you’ll end up, and if you’re open to it, life will surprise you. Ten years ago, I was getting married, something I swore I would never do again. Sometimes, you meet someone who you want to break all your rules for, and once you start breaking those rules, the adventure begins. I haven’t regretted any of the adventure, even the challenges of this past year. In fact, all of the challenges along the way in this adventure have only served to make me a better man, and made our relationship stronger than anything I could have imagined on our wedding day.

Then again, it’s fairly obvious that I simple wasn’t thinking big enough back then. I won’t make that mistake again. Now I know that our adventure may take us anywhere, and we’ll get through it, together. And still, 10 years from now, I hope I’m just as amazed by where life has taken us as I am today!

I was slightly bemused when I saw that Tracie had made change the theme of September’s Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse.

Why, you ask? Because I had been thinking quite a bit about the topic of late. It’s been almost 6 months since I packed what I could fit in my car, and drove from Ohio down to South Carolina to start my new job. At that time, I knew I was going to a better job, in a brand new place, where I didn’t know anyone, and that I’d be apart from my wife for slightly more than 6 months. As I now prepare for her moving down here, looking to get out of my temporary apartment and into a more permanent place to live, I can see that this experience has not only been a big change, but it has changed me as well.

Sure, I knew this move, and the circumstances surrounding it would be a challenge. In fact, I would now say it’s been a bigger challenge than I even imagined at that time. On the other hand, I am so glad that this happened.

Oh sure, I’m glad to be in a better job, living in an area of the country that we had dreamed of moving to for years now. But it’s more than that. This experience has changed who I am in profound ways. It has challenged me to be more independent, and has given me a confidence in myself, and in my marriage, that I would not otherwise have. I now know that when big changes get thrown at me in the future, and they will, I can handle it. I know that if something causes my wife and I to be apart for a time, or our marriage gets some other challenge thrown at us, we’ll hang in there and get through it together.

Maybe the most interesting thing about these past 6 months has been learning how change is a good thing. Even negative changes can be a good thing. As survivors, most of us are fearful of any change, anything that upsets the carefully crafted, and controlled, life we’ve made to keep ourselves safe. Yet, no matter how hard we try, some things will change, and getting through those changes will only help you on your journey. So embrace the small changes, and learn from them. Let them change you.

I got an email the other day from a fellow survivor who had tried to start a Meetup group of survivors in his area.

 My name is Timothy and I’m a survivor of child abuse.  I’m contacting you from Dupage county IL.  About four months ago I started a support group and let it grow on its own.  I’ve seen a few people come and go but no one has really stuck around.  I’m not a trained therapist or councilor.  I’m just another survivor.  The group is a peer to peer group.  The group can be found on the web site www.meetup.com.  The problem is that people sign up and never actually attend meetings or they attend one meeting and thats it.  One or two people started out as regulars but it seemed like they were pushed into attending.  When it seemed like they were starting to open up they stopped coming.  I’m at
the point were I believe that if I wish to grew the group and really do some good I have to go outside of meetup.com.  I can’t tell if you do any work in my area or have any suggestion of who I might be able to contact.  I’m hoping that your group and or other similar groups might be able to get the word out.  Please email me back and let me no your thoughts on the matter.  Thank you for your assistance.

His experience is something that I know many survivors who try to create groups, whether in person or online, have had. I wish I had an answer. If I did the online network I’ve tried to build wouldn’t be floundering, and I wouldn’t seriously be considering just shutting it down. There’s something about being committed to a peer-to-peer group without burning out that is difficult for survivors. Even when you have a good group going,  it can be very hit and miss as to whether it continues. We all have lives outside the group, and we can’t always be focused on keeping it going, so it requires having a large enough base to be able to continue on without one or two of the regulars when they can’t be there. But, how do you get that base of members? Good question!

Has anyone out there gotten even a small group of local people together to support one another, or even just be social with other people who understand what it’s like to go through what we have? I’d love to hear your advice, and I’m sure Timothy would as well!

I was attending a legal tech conference last week, as part of my day job, and I was listening to a presentation about professional leadership and something the speaker said really struck me as applicable to survivors.

She talked about how the best leaders are capable of leading themselves first. Meaning, they have the ability to see themselves as the sum of their life experiences, and understand how those experiences color their outlook and can separate the fact from fiction in that outlook, thereby making sound leadership decisions.

As she described the process of being aware of your self, your strengths, your weaknesses, it really sounded a great deal like doing a bit of therapy. It also made me very aware of the fact that because I had gone through therapy, and years of learning about how my childhood effects my view of the world, I was way ahead of the game in this regard. Most people don’t take the time to truly learn about themselves. Survivors who are truly trying to overcome and become more than victims, have no choice but to go through this process.

Does that mean that survivors make better leaders? Not necessarily, but the healing process that we go through brings with it a lot of power and skills that many people don’t bother to excel at in their every day lives. Isn’t it nice to know that all of that struggle and work will have even more benefits than you planned on?

Late last week, and over the weekend, I was having an email discussion with an online acquaintance about child abuse, and dissociative disorders when she said something that sparked further conversation. She mentioned that “everyone dissociates and for good reasons, it’s just a matter of degrees”.

That got me thinking about the coping skills we develop as children and whether anything good ever comes out of them. Certainly, in my own past, that ability to emotionally remove myself from a given situation, to no longer be “present”, helped me deal with what was happening at the time. As an adult, however, that being my only stress-coping mechanism was dangerous, because not being present in your own mental state and having access to a car leads to some bad consequences. (Hmm a week ago I was there, and it was very stressful, now where am I? lol)

It should be noted that I am talking about dissociation in a general sense, developing multiples is a form of dissociation that can be fairly common in abuse victims, but is also beyond my own experience. I never developed another personality, I simply stopped being in my own life and watched it, as if from afar, but it is an extreme form of dissociation. One that I have no experience with and thus don’t tend to write much about.

Clearly, I needed to learn better stress-management as an adult, but still dissociation is part of my normal life. As it turns out, in a technical career, sometimes it can be very beneficial to have to ability to sharply focus on the job in front of you, and ignore all other distractions. Sometimes things just need to get done, no matter what else is going on in the world. Obviously, I am exceptionally good at this.

The ability to dissociate is a powerful tool when used properly. To some degree or other, when you see an athlete able to focus and not feel the pressure of a game-winning situation, they are dissociating. The pressure, the crowd, the noise, etc.  becomes nothing as they focus on simply doing what they need to do. That’s what makes them successful. We all use this tool to get through times where intense focus is needed, or even to get through times that we simply want to get over. How many times have you simply let your mind wander away from your current situation while in a dentist chair, or doctor’s office, simply because you don’t want to be there? Do you daydream and forget where you are during a particularly dull lecture? That’s a mild form of dissociation, and a perfectly safe form. In fact, it’s a learned skill, that we all develop to one extent or another.

I’ve known some people who have an incredible ability to focus intently on their given project, (Insert random story of geeks who forget to eat, shower, sleep, etc. while working on a project. We all know someone like that!), yet it was simply a skill learned as an adult, not the leftovers of a childhood coping mechanism. Clearly, it’s not a bad thing in and of itself.

In fact, I’d say that very few of the things we did to cope as children, or learned later to help get through, are bad things in and of themselves. It’s the inability to keep them in proper perspective that gets us in trouble. Having a beer is not in itself a bad thing, having 12 because you feel sad and that’s how you stop feeling sad, probably is a bad thing.

So, as you go forward and look at your own coping mechanisms, remember that it’s not about getting rid of them completely, it’s about adding more and better tools so that you don’t have to over-rely on the one or two tools you developed as a child. Being an adult means having the proper tools available to you when you need them, it does not mean never needing any tools!

Just wondering if there are any survivors using Google Plus? I was thinking of creating a survivor circle on there and using it to share articles or other interesting things that I either don’t take the time to write up as a blog post. Mostly I want to see if it’s easier to use that as a sharing service than the current way I’m using Twitter and the Facebook fan page.

So if you’re on Google Plus,  look me up and let me know you’re out there so I can add you to the Survivors Circle and share things with you. If you’re not on there, and want to check it out, leave a comment and fill in the email address, and I’ll send you an invite. If you really don’t want to use yet another social network, feel free to connect on Twitter or the Facebook fan page too. I will still be sharing some things there as well.

Also, in case you’re wondering, with all the various social networking tools available now, I’m not seeing much of a need for the Survivors Network. Frankly, hosting it and keeping the software up to date might be more work than the value anyone seems to be getting out of it right now. I haven’t made any firm decisions yet, but someone is really going to have to convince me to keep it around.

Recently, I came across this article about how common happiness boosters might actually make you feel worse, and as I read it I came to realize that really, even though some of these can be mood boosters, or stress relievers, for some people they simply aren’t.

It’s obvious from the article that the author is very aware of what works for her, and what doesn’t, even though some of things might generally be considered helpful for others. As a survivor, it reminds me that the biggest thing you can do to help yourself in your healing, is to know yourself. It’s easy for me to sit here and write about what has worked for me, or what has helped, but it might not be all that helpful for you. We’re different people, with different issues, and different responses to what happened to us as children. It would only make sense that what helps us would be somewhat different as well.

Of course, knowing yourself is a challenge for survivors. Childhood is supposed to be the time in which we develop a sense of ourselves, who we are, what sort of life we want to have, etc. Most of us were too busy simply surviving, which was no small task! Now is a good time to get to know yourself though, and develop a life that is healthy, and happy, for us.

I was pointed to this article about how the internet helps abuse survivors on Twitter a few days ago, and made a note to read it in further detail later. As I did read it, one section jumped out at me.

?The study also revealed some interesting facts and three main overriding reasons why online resources were being used. These were:

the use of online anonymity to discuss issues, often shrouded in shame, that participants find difficult to discuss face-to-face in an offline environment;

the importance of being able to connect with others that have had similar experiences to one’s own that allow one to feel less isolated, whilst still retaining a level of anonymity; and

most interestingly, and contradicting the need for anonymity, the fact that there is little or no face-to-face or offline alternative to online support as a male survivor of childhood sexual abuse

Frankly, that response struck a cord with me, and reminded me of something I had an email discussion with a friend and fellow survivor, but had decided against writing about here at the time. Years ago, when I was still doing the whole therapy and trying various things to find support locally, I had a very difficult time finding any resources that were specific to me. I had to attend a therapy group of sexual abuse survivors where I was the only male in the group. (Yes, much of the other members anger wound up being directed at me, solely because I am male. I don’t blame them, that’s where they were in their healing and they needed to be able to express that somewhere, however I do blame a system that didn’t have any other options for me. )

Over the years, I had hoped things had changed, and I think they probably have to some degree, but I’ve been reminded on a few occasions over the last year or two that resources dedicated to male survivors are still very few and far between. Locally, where I was living at the time, there were some resources dedicated to male victims of abuse, but they were run by, and designed for, the local gay community. Not being gay, those resources would still be unavailable to me. For straight men, there’s really nothing. I fear that is the case in most places, inside and outside of the USA.

Thus, I’m glad that the internet allows us all to have the resources that will assist us in our healing. The technology allows us to have a myriad of choices in our healing, and allows you to find the ones that work for you. Maybe it can even help you find people local to you to communicate with, and develop some face to face support that you might not otherwise have. Even if that doesn’t happen, online support beats no support any time, any day!

I was having an email conversation with a friend the other day. We were talking about whether making small changes, maybe even relatively superficial ones, can lead to bigger changes.

My feeling is that they absolutely can.

It’s easy to look at the big picture of our lives, and decide that doing something small won’t really matter. In the face of trying to heal from an abusive childhood, losing 10 pounds or finishing a book doesn’t seem like much. It’s not much, but it’s something. It’s a goal that is reached, an accomplishment. The more small accomplishments we get under our belts, the more our confidence grows, the more we learn and develop the small skills that will be beneficial for the larger challenges.

Being successful and accomplishing goals is a learned skill set. You don’t suddenly learn how to make a plan, stick to it, adjust as needed, and reach your goal, overnight. You spend a lifetime learning and refining those skills. Why not start with small goals instead of overwhelming yourself at the start and giving up?

If a small goal is going to make you feel good about yourself, and increase the likelihood that you’ll have the confidence and ability to make larger changes down the road, that’s hardly a superficial outcome, is it?

One of the things I, and other survivors, struggle with is change. Change creates stress, and makes us uncomfortable, and if there’s anything survivors crave, it’s the comfort of what we know. New things tend to throw us, creating uncertainty and we have learn since early ages to try and keep things as certain as we possibly can. That’s how we survived our childhoods, and that is how we function through our adult issues.

So, as I approached moving to a new place and starting a new job at the beginning of April, I was definitely challenging myself and my learned defense mechanisms. As we start the month of May though, I’ve come a long way, and have definitely grown in confidence about myself. I’m down here in South Carolina by myself, my wife hasn’t made the move down yet, my friends and family are back in Ohio, and while my in-laws are only a couple of hours away, I am in essence relying only on my own ability to take care of myself. Like many survivors, my track record in regards to taking care of myself is a mixed bag.

Given that, it feels good to know that I’m down here doing it. I know that I can do it and feel more confidence in myself and my abilities than I would had I not gone this route. Sometimes, in order to improve, you have to get outside the comfort zone. Knowing I can makes it easier to know that I can get through anything. After all, we survived our childhood, what can a little change do compared to that?