When we talk about abuse, there are many various ways people see abuse, or feel about abuse.
Some people feel that if the shop owner shouts at them for reading a magazine without paying for it, that is abuse.
Other people feel that if their Spouse comes home and moans about the dinner, that is abuse.
And yet another person who’s partner slaps them around the face when he or she is angry, feels that is abuse.
Can we call the above actions abusive?
Yes of course we can. But as adults, we’re able to process what is being hurled at us, and deal with it appropriately.
A child however, when neglected; or sexually abused; physically abused; mentally abused or emotionally abused; doesn’t see or know that they’re being abused. They normally internalize the horrific abuse they are suffering, and blame themselves for doing something ‘wrong’.
They try hard to find out what they’re doing wrong, because in their innocent minds, they believe that they must be doing something wrong to be so hurt in so many ways all the time, or frequently, mostly by people who are supposed to love them. People they trust and look up to. So something like the following happens;
‘I must be quieter, if I don’t talk or laugh then I’m a good girl/boy , then they’ll love me’….so the child loses his or her voice.
‘If I hide away all day, in the bushes, or in the park, then they won’t see me and I’ll be safe for a while and I won’t make them angry’….so the child becomes invisible. Losing Self at the same time.
‘If I make tea all day and cook dinner, even though the stove is a bit high up for me, they’ll see what a good hard working boy/girl I am, and then they’ll love me’….so the child becomes a slave in his or her home..growing up to believe that to be loved is to work as hard as one can no matter what the work is.
There are a gazillion examples of how small children who are being abused think and feel, but always, always they try their best to ‘fix’ it. Never does the abused child believe that their parents, siblings, Uncles, Aunts or anyone else that they love, does these things to them, because they’re HORRIBLE, EVIL people who should be shot.
Never does the abused child seek help, because he or she believes they’re naughty and deserve the punishment. It doesn’t occur to an innocent child, that they can seek help; and what is being done to them, is evil and deeply despicable in it’s worst form.
One of the WORST outcomes of childhood abuse, (apart from death), is the child consenting to the abuse, believing that is love. The fact that whatever the abuse is, is hurting them and causing massive damage and harm to them physically, emotionally and mentally, does not enter their minds. They learn to accept it, believing that this is what love is…..so the child grows up moving from abusive relationship to abusive relationship, never able to settle down with a healthy relationship, because they’ve grown up with abuse. The abused child – now adult, recognises abuse as love. If they’re not being abused, they may feel unloved, because actual love, the reality of love, is foreign to them. Like a language they don’t understand.
The other HORROR that comes from such abuse in a small child’s life, is mental illness. Not only are they scarred from years of abuse in one form or another or many at the same time, but they’re then stuck with a broken brain, that won’t function normally, suffer deep depressions, and very often end up killing themselves and/or self harming. Not due to the abuse strangely enough, but due to the resultant mental illness the abuse has caused.
This reality brought me to thinking about what is happening to the Children stuck in war zones around the World. Starving Children, who get slapped or punched if they don’t stop crying from hunger, or ignored, or put out to prostitution from as young as 8 years old.
Children lying next to their dead Mother’s or Father’s, with blood gushing out their Parent’s head, desperately trying to wake their Mother or Father up. Not understanding what is going on, and terrified.
Children who are so traumatised at the sight of their entire families being blown up, they too, lose their voices, and if they do ever manage to speak again, they usually stutter or suffer other speech impediments….and definitely suffer a mental illness.
I won’t go on. It’s way too distressing, but to say that if you are a victim of Child abuse in any form or fashion, whether you suffer a mental illness because of it or not. Take your power back! Tell yourself it never was your fault. Forgive yourself. Sounds crazy, but you carry guilt only due to the fact that you could never process what was happening to you in the right way, so forgive yourself.
I always advise people who write to me as I’m a mental health advocate; to write it all down. Be brave. Be courageous. Write everything you endured down and then read it. Read it again. Accept it, because you cannot change it. Then burn the paper you’ve written it on. Every time a memory crops up, immediately drop it. Don’t dwell on it.
The past is over. It no longer exists. You cannot bring one moment of the past into your present. Good or bad. So let it go. Drop it. Everytime a thought about whomever it was that hurt you comes into your head, drop the thought immediately.
No matter how bitter, broken, hurt, angry, disappointed, or wishful we are about a horrendous Childhood; won’t change it, or make it better. Nothing will candy coat the sickening truth. So acceptance (not forgiving or writing to that person, or even thinking of them) is necessary, for healing.
Not accepting what or who they are, but accepting that the past happened. It’s done. No amount of therapy will make it pretty.
Basically, you can’t unfuck a fuck, but you can choose to drop it.
Past and future are in the mind only — I am now.
– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Deb@crazyandsane 