OH NO, I’M AGREEING -
with my Bad Voice (again)
Previous: Abuse of Children (Part 1)
REVIEW : Toxic Beliefs, our WIC & the Introject
OLD PAIN vs. NEW PAIN
Old Pain (Abandonment) made up of the daily misery we lived thru as kids, which we had no way to process or get help dealing with. So it accumulated in our body & in our spirit, much of which eventually went underground, into our Shadow (the unconscious).
New Pain (Self-Hate) is the suffering we now do to ourselves & allow✶ others do to us – as an acting-out of our family training. This layers gets added on to the earlier pain & the accumulation wears us into the ground. ✶Re. “allow” : Denial makes it hard for us to recognize abuse as it’s happening, so consciously we don’t choose to let others hurt us, but unconsciously we gravitate to the familiar – & then stay!
• So, as said before, we need to become awake & stay awake to what’s happening to us & around us. Having been exposed to rage, fear, neglect, disrespect, torture …. as kids, ACoAs are both drawn to AND are more deeply affected (badly) by negative people, places & things. Like always having an open wound be bumped – it gets more & more injured, keeps hurting AND never has time to heal. We are hypersensitive to either uplifting OR deflating energies in our surroundings & need to stay away from harsh environments even more than ‘normals’, with less damage.
EMOTIONAL ABUSE (E.A.) to OURSELVES
ACoAs were trained to tolerate abuse in subtle & blatant forms, from earliest childhood. It became our norm, our default position. Keeping PMES in mind, most people think of abuse in physical terms, but the WIC we carry around is first & foremost suffering emotionally. So we need to observe how we Victimize ourselves in ways that continue to wound our feelings, so that we can stop torture ourselves unnecessarily!
Self-Hate
As adults the most violent source of E.A. is our own inner Pig Parent voice, which generates the relentless negative beliefs & demands we put on ourselves. Many of our difficulties in life come from obeying this Introjected part – & the rest of our problems come from the WIC not wanting to let go of old ways which represent loyalty to our family system. (Review the “Self-Hate” posts)
E.A.: Terror, hopelessness, self-pity, FoA, loneliness, desperation
Addictions
Again, most of the focus is on the physical results & damage done but not enough stress is put on the emotional devastation. Addictions are specifically designed & used to repress/ suppress painful emotions, first & foremost – to shut up the PP voice, which is torturing the WIC!
E.A.: Shame, coming both from our values/ conscience/ spiritual beliefs, AND from the immature/ harmful/ crazy things addiction ‘make’ us do. They also generate S-H, guilt, hopelessness… & abandonment fear
Going to the wrong people ….
…. to share personal issues, secrets or deep pain with – their harmful reaction to us make us feel worse, feel betrayed, alone, enraged, hopeless, suicidal. The key point here is that we often go to people we already know from experience are not safe, but refuse to acknowledge it! We’ve been disrespected, blown off, controlled, told what to do – before – by these people, (instead of just listening to us & being sympathetic), YET we keep going back!
Our denial of past & present reality has turned into self-abuse! At best these unsafe people are out-to-lunch, at worst they’re assaultive. ACoAs say: “But they’ve there for me in the part, I owe them gratitude & loyalty”. Maybe they were OR or maybe we just thought they were because of our own level of ignorance & denial. But the clues to their ongoing or potential for abandoning us were always there. Being mentally & emotionally unawares (not our fault) made it easy for us to not recognize other people’s limitations.
To quote Toni Morrison (& Oprah) – “When you know better, you do better”
As adults we are responsible for putting ourselves in the positions to be Emotionally Abused by certain people, so in essence we’re doing it to ourselves by letting our PP or the WIC keep drawing us back to empty or poisonous ‘wells’ for comfort, guidance & support! Not going to happen!
E.A.: Confused, abandoned, angry, longing, demeaned, depleted
Hurting others (See posts: “How ACoAs Abandon Others”)
Here we’re talking about how we victimize ourselves by going into self-hate when we have been mean, selfish, hostile, unkind, nasty, controlling ….to someone. This is not the same as taking responsibility for our actions. While our behavior may have adversely affected another person (or not), the internal backlash we suffer afterward is not worth the short-term satisfaction we got from acting out on them in the moment
CONFUSION
• HARMING: Sometimes we may not even recognize that we did something hurtful & don’t understand why someone blew us off – we lose a friend, a job, a lover, even a child…. without a clue as to how we contributed to the loss. OR
– We’re angry, controlling, manipulative…. with someone close to us because they aren’t who or what we want them to be & we’re desperate to get what we need from them – even tho it’s impossible! If it’s a child – we have to accept the reality of their age & personality. If it’s an adult – we have to accept them too, BUT may also need to distance or leave them.
• NOT HARMING: At the other extreme – many of us agonize about hurting someone when we were NOT abusive – rather just taking care of ourselves, being assertive, protecting our WIC, or appropriately stopping someone from stepping on us. BTW, getting angry is not in itself abusive, as long as what we say is truthful and using ‘I’ statements (“I will not be talked to like that!!”). The other person may be upset or angry at us because we set a boundary – which is theirs to deal with. OR they may not have been effected at all, so we’re just mind-reading, projecting our own WIC on to them. Either way we suffer unnecessarily.
E.A.: Ashamed, worried, agonized, guilty, anxious, S-H, obsessed
NEXT: Victimizing Ourselves (Part 2)
