Just like in sports though, sometimes it’s not about how the world works, or what mistakes we made, it’s about the other team. In our case, it’s the abuser. They did this. Healing is understanding that, and coming to grips with the fact that our lens is wrong. We’re looking at someone else’s actions and choices through a lens that only sees ourselves. We were abused, maybe when we told someone, we weren’t believed, or maybe even as adults, when we share our experiences we make others uncomfortable. But it’s not us. Other people get to make their own choices, have their own reactions, and choose who, and what, to believe.
What we need to do, is start untying other people actions and reactions, from ourselves. The abuser chose to abuse. The people who refused to help, made that choice, and the people who still don’t believe us, have their own reasons for doing that. None of it has anything to do with us, those are other people making their own choices, playing their own game. We can do everything right, live our life to the best of our abilities and still “lose” in these interactions. It happens. It doesn’t lessen us, it shows us who these other people are, and tells us about their agendas.
We learn from that, and move on. We do not blame ourselves for their agendas.
It does take developing a more mature lens to view life through, and that takes time, and work. Are you up for it? Or maybe the better question, are you tired of blaming yourself?
I know, don’t you hate that? Its like their well dries up or something.
I started a column titled “Illusively Lost” and put those disappearing links under that heading…maybe they will come back…if not…well I guess I will take them off permenantly.
Hi, I don’t know if these blogs are “insirational” but I enjoy reading them, Maybe you can check them out.
http://www.moby.com (click on Moby and then journal)
http://www.darrowart.com/blog/index.html
http://www.wilwheaton.net
http://www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com (from Iraq)
All four talk about their lives etc.
I seldom email, but enjoy your blog. You are a great guy….really…..you are!!
I know what you mean when you say a lot of interesting/inspirational bloggers just stop writing after a while…
One I think is quite good is http://mukoduck.blogspot.com
it belongs to a woman I know through an online forum – she has been struggling for the past 30-odd years with Cystic Fibrosis, she has been through three lung transplants and every day she thanks god that she is still alive, against all odds.
Unfortunately, since her last lung transplant she has written very sparingly – it always scares me a bit when she doesn’t write – I always worry something might have happened to her… and read the archives, there is some powerful stuff in there!
My blog where I tell EVERYTHING about how life is truthfully living with progressive MS. But it’s a FUNNY blog, believe it or not, because when you have an incurable disease, you HAVE TO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR or there’s no reason to get out of bed. Laugh or cry. I choose to laugh and often wet my pants doing it. HA!
I’m Dan and I’m an adult survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA).
So a little about me first. I’m forty-eight years of age. I have been married for thirteen years and have two step-daughters and four grandchildren, three girls and a boy
I am visiting different websites directing Male Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse to my blog site where I describe my own dysfunctional upbringing, my abuse and its after effects. It took me a long time to disclose what happened to me during the early seventies. It took nearly thirty five years and me gainning sobriety to tell the whole story to my wife.
I’m sharing my story to show that it is possible to recover from CSA no matter “how bad” you are. I have spent nearly five years in different psychiatric units and treatment centres for my addictions and I had buried my abuse so well that I didn’t even refer to it whilst an inpatient. I admited to having relationships with men and of being a “Rent Boy” for a number of years but I never divulged my age. I was fourteen when I was originally groomed, assaulted and raped, and boy did that screw me up. Especially after one of my abusers suggested that I was “very probably gay or at the least bi-sexual”. That one thing gave me a sexual identity crisis so large that it is only in the last few years that I have really realized that I am and always was hetro-sexual.
My wife has added her own thoughts of being a partner to someone who has suffered Childhood Sexual Abuse.
If you know of any male that needs support please pass on my url or pass on the details of an American site named malesurvivor.org there are a few of us Brit’s there. Its handy to have during those long sleepless nights that all survivors suffer from every now and then, unfortunately some of us suffer from those on quite a regular basis.
TRIGGER WARNING
Both sites contain triggers.
Malesurvivor.org can be found at
http://www.malesurvivor.org
And my blog site can be found at:
http://www.waltonhop.blogspot.com
Please do not read unless you feel well and truly grounded.
Comments and suggestions welcome.
Stay safe
Dan