“By now you know that survivors grow up believing the classic myth of child abuse: that they, not their parents or abusers, were somehow responsible for the abuse. The “justifications” for this myth are as varied as your imagination is fertile. “I let him do it to me.” “I should have been able to protect myself.” “I liked certain aspects of the abuse the attention, the gifts, the pleasurable sensations, the sense of being special.”
From Step Five of ASCA’s “Survivor To Thrive (OnLine) Manual“
“The child’s often distorted perceptions of who was responsible are enhanced by the parents’/abusers’ indictments.”
Again, from Step Five
In my case, some of the messages I heard from the abuser were: “Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.” “Trust me…” “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.” “We always hurt the people we love the most.”
The fact that these messages didn’t make sense, or were contradictory didn’t occur to me. I was a highly intelligent youth, but emotionally I was very young, immature, and extremely naive, gullible.
These words are truly toxic because they do more than simply (and unjustly) place the blame for the abuse on your shoulders. They eat away at your positive sense of self, and the lingering messages continue to do so in your adult life.
Step Five
“You can challenge those words of your abuser that continue to echo in your mind by coming to understand your dysfunctional situation and recognizing the real reasons why you were abused. This is an essential step in recovery because, without seeing that your abuser was at fault, you will have difficulty in facing the remaining tasks of recovery: directing your anger away from yourself and towards them, uncovering your shame and understanding how the abuse affects your life today. Most importantly, you need to understand that you were the child/youth and that you had neither the power nor the authority to make your abuser do anything to you. The abuse was their responsibility because, quite simply, they had the greater power and they did it to you. Nothing you could have done would have changed this, because society is set up to give power and authority to adults. Children/youth have little or no power over their abuse, or much of anything else.” (This quoted paragraph refined to describe my particular experience)
Besides recognizing the reality of who was responsible for the abuse, think about the following realities as well. As a child, you were not psychologically equipped to believe that what your parents/abusers were doing was wrong, much less speak out about it. Because you were dependent on them for so much, you couldn’t risk alienating them by speaking the truth even if your child mind was precocious enough to make sense of the complex web of issues that comprises child abuse. Few, if any, children can do this effectively because their intellectual capacities are not sufficiently developed to do so. You desperately wanted to love them and be loved by them. It would have been foolish for you to incur their wrath and dash whatever hope of love, caring and nurturing you harbored inside. Think back to what it would have meant for you, the child, to accept that the people who were supposed to love you were actually hurting you. It’s not surprising that few children can face this horrible reality, because to do so would cause them to become emotional orphans in the process, and little could be worse than that.
In my case, since it was a school teacher (and not a parent) that did the abuse, I have struggled with the question of why couldn’t I tell my mom sooner? In examining that question, and looking closely at how I was or wasn’t parented at that time, I’ve had to acknowledge that my parents neglected me in some ways and at some crucial times. In my opinion, my parents parented me far better than many (maybe even most?) parents parented their children, in that time, and in general. In fact, I consider them to have been extraordinarily good parents for me. Yet they weren’t perfect. It is still true that there were some serious mistakes, gaps, or blind spots in their parenting of me. I have some ideas about the details of my experience of neglect, and I know I need to examine all of that very closely at some point, but for this post I just want to acknowledge that I’m aware of that piece of the puzzle — the piece that shows me how and why I couldn’t reach out to my parents when I needed them most.
I’ve quoted much of “Step Five” because I find all of it so helpful. In many ways, I’ve been through this step already. However, I find that I’m never completely finished with each step. At least, not yet. Will I live long enough, will I dig deep enough, do the work thoroughly enough to ever complete these steps? Does anyone ever “complete” these steps? I find myself keeping “completion” as a goal. Maybe the more helpful site to set is to simply yet faithfully commit to doing whichever step is needed at the moment and to do it to the extent that I am able at the time.
I think my honest response to “Step Five” today is: yes, I certainly recognize and know I was not responsible for the abuse done to me, yet I still feel some amount of shame for having gotten so far to the brink of death by suicide before I asked anyone clearly for help. I still wonder why I was so concerned with protecting all the adults more than myself. I guess it’s because I really was dependent upon them; I was counting on them to fulfill their adult responsibilities.
I’ve always had an extreme need to keep the family or church or school or whatever social circle I associate with “intact.” I’m sure that’s a common human tendency. It’s normal to want to protect who/where you are meant to belong. However, when a child or youth is protecting the people or networks that are supposed to protect her, even when they aren’t protecting her, that creates malformation in her. She learns to sacrifice her own good for the sake of everyone else’s.
I think what I’m describing is an example of how co-dependency begins. I want to explore this line of examination further. I want to find out how my family was dys/functioning before I ever encountered the teacher who abused me. I want to look clearly at how I was made more likely to be a target. What did I observe between my parents or between them and my siblings as a very young child that “taught” me to disvalue myself? Why was everyone else’s happiness more important than mine? Why did I feel the need to be “invisible”? Why did I so often hide and just observe, rather than risk being seen and participating? What were the emotional needs I was observing that elicited my over-empathizing? What were my own deficits? What were my specific needs that weren’t being met? What specific mothering or fathering did I want or need and didn’t get? What was lacking in my development or learning in relation to siblings? Why did I not feel as connected to them as I think now would have been normal or healthy for me? And why does any of this still matter?
The answer to that last question is easy. Because I still have a hard time relating to groups of people, especially peers. I still think of “the world” (meaning humanity) as a primarily dangerous place. Contrasted to that, I think of “nature” (meaning natural or wild environs minus people) as beautiful and for the most part more easily understood or navigated, largely because “nature” is “honest.” Because I was too trusting as a child, I now think of people as not trustworthy until they’ve proved themselves. I still think this is a good plan, but I’d like to have more confidence in my ability to make discernments about other people’s characters. I’d like especially to be able to navigate with greater wisdom and nuance through social-group dynamics.
Hoo Cares 