I talk about boundaries often. I know a few other folks in the survivor community who also talk about them often. It’s not a coincidence. Learning about healthy boundaries and how to keep them is a vital part of healing.
Harvard-trained psychologist: How to check in on your friends
Hold Still: A Story of Suicide– A review of Hold Still by Nina LaCour
We are not getting enough touch.– This is not an easy subject for survivors, I know. The science, however, is the science. For survivors it’s about trust, and there are far too few people in our lives who we can trust.
The article below describes how this can happen, mostly focused on several factors. One, things change. The family’s circumstances change over the years, your parents change over the years, and so an older or younger sibling might have been raised differently than we were. Also, we are different. Some kids’ personalities mesh differently with their parents compared to their siblings. That’s all pretty normal.
I want to talk about childhood abuse, especially why it can seem like our siblings don’t understand when we tell them about our abuse. One of the things that becomes clear as you read the link is that kids might grow up in the same biological family but not necessarily in the same circumstances.
Those who have suffered childhood trauma often have shame that we cannot place. Sometimes because our memories are foggy and we can’t place them, maybe more often because shame became part of us as we grew up. Our very development occurred in the middle of shame, so much so that we aren’t even aware of it.
It just is. It has always been and always will be.
Except that’s not correct at all.
And if you feel strongly that you want to write a book, start a site like this, and hit social media and tell the world, make sure you are prepared for all of it. Because once it’s out, you don’t control it any longer.
Once you’re sure though, tell your story for all the people who aren’t ready yet.
If this gap feeling describes where you are in your healing, turn your gaze around from looking at the goal and how far it may be to how much further along you are on that path than you were 1, 3, or 5 years ago.
You might be surprised by how far you’ve come in that time. You might even take a moment to feel proud of yourself.
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