Child Abuse Survivor

It’s New Year’s Day. I hope all of you had a safe, fun celebration last night and I’m betting more than a few of you have already given up on your resolutions.

Given that this marks the start of a new year, it occurs to me that it’s also a good day to take stock. It’s a good day to look back at where you were at this point last year, and how much you’ve grown, healed, or simply improved yourself since then.I’m betting that many of you, who may be struggling with your own journey toward healing, can still manage to look back and see improvement. That should encourage you to continue, and next year when you again look back on where you started the year, you will see more improvement and personal growth.

For myself, 2008 wasn’t exactly the year I expected. We were presented with some opportunities we hadn’t seen coming, that changed some of our plans, but the overall personal improvement goals, I think, have seen some definite imrpovement. As always, I wanted to do some more networking, develop some new friendships, give more of my time toward meeting and connecting with new people and generally learn to be more social. Compared to Jan 1 of 2008, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at an Ignite event, meet a large number of new folks online through Twitter and other tools, and can point to at least 2 new friendships that have developed in the last year and already mean a lot to me. I’ve leveraged Facebook to reconnect with friends from elementary school and some of my own somewhat distant relatives whom I hadn’t seen in years. I started an online network for survivors of child abuse and their significant others just a few weeks ago and have already seen so much of the vision I had for that start to take hold.

My professional life and home life have continued to be important parts of my life, and even though I’ve managed to put more efforts into other areas, I’ve not taken either for granted during this time, They are the core of everything. I’m not nearly as succesful without the support of my wife, and of course, we all need to work and support ourselves financially. In this economy, that means working hard and improving your skills at all times, in order to prove your worth to your employers!

Overall, I can say it’s been a pretty good year! I see the affects of my efforts, and I’ve enjoyed the opportunities that have been presented to me. I wonder what sorts of opportunities await, and what sort of things I’ll be able to point to as highlights of 2009? I hope you have many of your own!

If you’ve been following the comments on this older post about support for spouses this weekend, you know that “Nikki” asked for some advice in being involved with an abuse survivor, and in response to my suggestion to find a professional to talk to herself, she asked that I keep her in the loop if others come to the site looking to talk to other significant others. Since, obviously, I’m a survivor, and not really dealing with issues from the same viewpoint as she would, I’m of limited use there. However, I know some of you are in similar situations, or know people who are. If you’re also looking for others to talk to about these issues, let me know and I’ll see if I can get you in touch with each other.

If there’s enough interest, I’d also be willing to moderate and host (though obviously not take a large, active, role) an email list for folks to talk about these issues. It’s easy enough to set that up on this domain, and I can “lock” it down to some extent to keep people as safe as possible from spam or just rudeness. If there’s interest, or if you know of another resource that is already has an active community of significant others, please share!

Technorati Tags: SignificantOthers

After all the stress and random other things we’ve been dealing with over the last few weeks, it was really nice to spend a few days exploring Orlando with my wife, meeting up with some internet friends that we’ve known for years now, and just generally not worrying about all the things we tend to worry about during the course of normal days.

Of course, coming back meant catching up on all the things that were waiting for us at work and around the house, but it was worth it. Sometimes you just have to break out of the normal day to day and do something different. Even if you can’t spend a few days, or a week, traveling, there are plenty of ways to do something different and explore the world around us. It tends to help us keep a healthy perspective when we can get outside of our every day lives and see the larger world that exists outside of that. It helps us connect with other people, as we were able to do down in Orlando, and that is also a healthy thing to do.

So, find something different to enjoy soon. It’s for your own mental health.

Technorati Tags: Photography, Vacation

A friend of mine, Kevin Donohue, posted something rather personal over the weekend that I thought was very interesting. Kevin talked about what life has been like since his heart attack, and while it’s been necessary, it’s not a great way to life long term.

Since that day in April, I’ve been spending an awful lot of time listening to my own body and my own emotions. To continue the bad metaphors… I’ve been living alone in a cave, with every anxiety magnified by echoes like drips of water. I’ve been so fixated on myself, that I stopped paying attention to anyone else.

I found it an interesting parallel to what I was recently talking about in terms of reaching a point where you spend less time looking at the past, and more looking toward the future. Anyone who has started the on the path to healing from child abuse knows that, at first, there’s a whole lot of looking inward. That’s necessary, and good for the long term. Eventually, however, you do have to find a certain happy medium. Like Kevin’s physical health, you have to pay some attention to what is going on inside ourselves. We have to pay attention to what our bodies are telling us, what our emotions are telling us, etc. That is a big part of taking care of ourselves, something we all need to do.

On the other hand, it’s really easy to stop there and never get past that. Kevin sees that now, how being completely focused on your self goes a bit beyond taking care of yourself. It can be quite the hindrance to existing relationships, let alone helping grow new ones.

The key is balance. You guys know I would never advise not taking care of ourselves, and paying attention to the things we need to pay attention to. We absolutely should, but not to the detriment of the people around us. Having healthy, good, relationships is an important part of being healthy too, we should be paying plenty of attention there too!

Good luck Kevin, with finding your balance!

Technorati Tags: Balance

All of us have survived bad things, most of us have survived some of the worst things we can imagine. We’ve proven to be capable of surviving all the bad things that life has thrown at us over the years. Yet many people live in fear. Fear of change, fear of people, fear of what the next day may bring. As if insulating ourselves from change was going to prevent bad things from ever happening again.

It won’t.

Bad things are going to happen, no matter how much you try and protect yourself from them. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do what you have to do to be safe. Survivors especially need to feel a level of safety in order to go about their lives and that shouldn’t be ignored. I don’t advocate putting yourself in unhealthy risks. I do, however, strongly advocate not being afraid of trying something new, of doing something outside the routine. Simply put, I’m a strong advocate of living life, as opposed to living to avoid things that you cant do anything to avoid to begin with.

It saddens me to see friends and fellow survivors unable to do more. Unable to do some traveling, unable to go out on a date, unable to find a more fulfilling job, or unable to take a small risk to find some more happiness in their lives. It’s literally heartbreaking to see people who have overcome so much, and shown so much strength, live unfulfilled lives because they’re afraid.

It saddens me most of all because I’ve been there, and learned better. I know how much I missed out on by living in fear. I know how many exciting opportunities I talked myself out of because I was comfortable, and afraid of change. Eventually, though, I also learned that whatever happenes, I will survive. I’ve already survived, and I know how to overcome some horrible things. So have you.

Have the confidence in yourself to know that you can survive whatever may happen. Yes, that date might not go well, the car might breakdown on that road trip, you might struggle to learn that new job, or whatever opportunity your pursue might not work out, leading to disappointment.

You can survive that. You are strong. You’ve already proven that to everyone but yourself. It’s tme you believe it too.

Technorati Tags: Strength, Surviving

I talked recently about how little other people typically think about you, and how that should be a freeing things. Also, just how difficult it can be to accept that because, let’s face it, we all see the world through our own perspective, and that perspective is utterly and completely focused on ourselves. So, it’s easy to begin to question what we’ve done or not done when a friend doesn’t respond the way we think they should.

Case in point, recently I had sent a couple of emails to a good friend of mine, and gotten no response at all. One of them even included a very simple question that didn’t require more than a yes or no answer, yet there was none forthcoming.

I actually did start to wonder what I had done or said to her that caused her to try and avoid me like this. We’ve been friends for years, and I was worried that maybe something had happened to suddenly make her uncomfortable with me.

I shrugged these concerns off and tried to continue on like normal, but it still left me wondering.

Turns out, her workplace email system had flagged my messages as spam, and she didn’t even see them until a few days or a week after I had sent them. There was no conflict, no nothing, just someone who was going about their days not really thinking about checking her spam folders for emails from people she hadn’t heard from lately.

So you see, sometimes, people aren’t trying to avoid you, they really are busy, or really don’t get your message. It happens, lighten up.

Every once in awhile, someone will tell me how brave I must be to talk openly about being a survivor in a public forum like this one. While I certainly don’t disagree with that, (I’m not being immodest, it does take some courage to do this and I’m impressed with all survivors who blog openly about their experiences.) I don’t think that survivors who I’ve talked to in real life give themselves enough credit.

It may seem like an oxymoron, but this is actually comparatively easy. I write, you all read. I’m not there when you read it, I don’t see the reaction to it on your face, and if it bothers you that I talk about this, you click away and just don’t come back. To me, I send this information out, and whoever wants to respond, is welcome to, but there’s no expectation of a response.

Telling someone in person, for me, is much harder. Their reaction is immediate, it’s right in front of you, and you get to see all of it, good or bad.

That’s why the fellow survivors that I’ve met in real life, who take the time to tell me that they’ve stumbled onto the site, and it resonated with them as a survivor, have my utmost respect. They certainly didn’t have to disclose to me, and I’m frankly honored that they were willing to. I realize that, in many cases, I may be one of the very few people who they’ve shared this information with, and just the simple act of telling someone who they think will understand is very important to them. In fact, many of the people who have disclosed to me, never talked to me about it after that, and that’s ok. If telling someone helps, I’m glad to have been the person they felt comfortable telling, but I also understand that brings a responsibility with it that I don’t take lightly at all.

First and foremost, of course, is the responsibility to keep their confidence. In most cases they’ve only told a few people in the whole world, it’s not my job to tell the rest for them. No my job is to react, be supportive and open to talking to them any time they need, and never mentioning it to anyone again. It’s not a very difficult job, but it is incredibly important. I’ve been entrusted with something very personal, and private, to people. It’s not to be trifled with.

One of the lessons I learned a few years ago, was that it’s actually quite rare for someone to really notice you, or think about you.

Now, that may sound like a pretty depressing thought, and to some extent, it is. On the other hand, it’s also very freeing. It frees us from worrying about doing something embarrassing, for example. Aside from the most outrageous examples, most of the things we beat ourselves up about, and feel embarrassed about, go wholly unnoticed by the majority of people. They never give it a second thought.

It also frees us from unrealistic expectations. Knowing that outside of my wife, and a few other people, most people are not going to give my upcoming birthday a second thought, frees me to be able to appreciate the folks who do take the time to wish me a happy birthday, or do something nice for me. It comes as a nice little surprise more than anything else. I go into it expecting that no one needs to do anything, and get to feel grateful when someone does.

Lastly, it also makes it pretty easy to impress someone. Like I said, when I come to realize that it’s highly unlikely that most people gave me a second thought, I’m very impressed by, and appreciative of, the thoughtfulness of someone who actually does. Remember, being thoughtful and being considered a good friend is all about being slightly better than other people. We don’t have to be perfect, we just have to stand out among the crowd. If the crowd is full of people who rarely give others outside their immediate circle a second thought, it doesn’t take much to stand out. A simple willingness to remember a birthday, help out with a problem PC, follow up on an idea you’ve discussed, or an inclusion in social plans can go a long way to showing yourself as a caring, thoughtful person. Of course, that assumes you’re doing it to be thoughtful, and not in an insincere attempt to get something out of it for yourself. That won’t get you far, but a small gestures of kindness, goes a long way in a world of self-centeredness.

This past weekend I had to take my car to the shop. It had suddenly started making a funny noise, and so I took it in to have it looked at, and to just get it tuned up and make sure everything was working properly. The noise turned out to be some loose metal in the exhaust system, nothing major, nor expensive, and everything seems to be running pretty well aside from that.

The experience did, however, remind me that it’s important to have things checked out occasionally, just to make sure there aren’t any small problems, waiting to become big problems. Typically we hear that about ourselves in connection with getting a physical, or having some routine tests done to check for problems in our bodies, but we should also take time to do some self-checks of our mental state as well.

For me, that usually involves finding some quiet time, and reflecting. Not just on how I feel about life in general, but since I am known to have the ability to dissociate at the drop of a hat, to reflect on how I’m acting toward other people, and how they are responding to me.

Unfortunately, while being able to dissociate is a great way to focus exclusively on a specific task until it is done (ask my wife about how zoned in I can become trying to fix a technical problem..), it is a horrible way to go about keeping a check on your own emotional well-being. That’s why it’s important for me to have that time to stop, focus on just myself, my actions, and my emotions, and check up on how things are running. Sometimes a small problem, like noticing that my interactions with others are becoming a little more strained than normal, can be the thing that points me in the direction of a deeper emotional issue that I may not even be aware of yet before it becomes a big problem. 

That being said, it’s high time for me to have some of that down time, and I intend to. After work on Friday, and before I get into what will be a very busy, but fun, Saturday, I’ll take advantage of being home alone for the night, and spend some time reflecting on the last few weeks and looking forward to the next few weeks, just as a way to check up on myself.

Something in Douglas Welch’s latest Career Opportunities column about Ugliness and Beauty struck a chord with me. In it Douglas urges his readers to consider their daily actions and whether they are creating beauty in them or ugliness.

Recently I have had reason to communicate with a few folks at work that I normally don’t get to interact with very often. Back when I worked at the Help Desk, it was quite common to work with them, but in the year I’ve been working Litigation Support, the number of people I work closely with is much smaller. Many of the secretaries or non-litigation staff who I used to talk to regularly and enjoyed chatting with, I simply don’t see very often.

After discussing this fact with a couple of them I came to two realizations. One, I needed to make an effort to get out of my office more. Not that I need to blow off work or go interrupt other people when they are working, but we work in an environment that is cordial and friendly, so it wouldn’t hurt me to spend a few minutes simply walking up the stairs, and through a hallway or two instead of sending things in the interoffice mail. That would give me more possibilities to pass folks in the hallway, or walk past their desks and get the chance to say a quick hello.

The second realization is the one that really fits in with what Douglas was talking about. I don’t have as many interactions with people as I used to, that makes it imperative that I leave behind something when I get the opportunity to. It’s the difference between a friendly “hello, how are you?”, with a friendly smile and just being lost in your own world and hurrying past everyone. I’m lost in my own thoughts too often. Heck, I’m lost in my own thoughts and in my own office too often!

I challenge you to think about the daily interactions you have with people, and how you can make them have more beauty.