POSITIVE FEELINGS CAN BE SCARY TOO

Even though this book mainly deals with women survivors of child sexual abuse, individuals who were not sexually abused, but brought up in an environment of neglect, verbal, physical abuse etc. can also relate to what is written here. Below, I am sure is something within these pages you can see in yourself.

There is one line, which is in "bold," that blew me away after reading it that the author’s used, as the exact words perfectly described what went on with me.

“Over time, as you heal, your positive feelings will increase. Happiness, excitement, satisfaction, love, security, and hope will appear more frequently. Although these are “good” feelings, you may not be comfortable with them at first.

For many survivors, positive feelings are scary. As a child, happiness often signaled a disaster about to occur. If you were playing with your friends when your brother called you over and molested you, if you were sleeping peacefully when your mother abused you, if you were having Sunday dinner at your grandparents’ when you were taken by surprise and humiliated, you learned that happiness was not to be trusted. Or if you pretended to be happy when you were suffering inside, happiness may feel like a sham to you still.

Even the idea that you might, someday, feel good can be threatening. One woman said she dared not hope. As a child she hoped day after day that her father might come home cheerful, might be nice to her, might stop abusing her. And day after day, she was disappointed. Finally, out of self-preservation, she gave up hope.

Sometimes peace and contentment are the most disconcerting feelings of all. Calm may be so totally unfamiliar that you don’t know how to relax and enjoy it. Unexpected good feelings can be hard to come to terms with:

I’d been unhappy all my life. When I remembered the incest, I finally knew why, but I was still unhappy. Healing was terrifying and painful experience and my life was as full of struggle and heartache as it had always been. Several years after I started therapy, I began to feel happy. I was stunned. I hadn’t realized that the point of all this work on myself was to feel good. I thought it was just one more struggle in a long line of struggles. It took a while before I got used to the idea that my life had changed, that I felt happy, that I was actually content.” (The Courage to Heal)

I too have often wondered how I would handle positive feelings. I know it will take time, as this is one area that was not always prevalent in my life. I can so relate to what the author shared that healing can be terrifying and painful. That is a given. The times I can truly remember being happy is when I was a kid playing with my friends. My brother was four years older than I and he had his own set of friends so we really did not have interaction between us when it came to “fun.” Unfortunately one interaction we did have between us was the bad kind.

At the same time I also lived a life of fear growing up. As most of you know in my writings that my mother is a fearful woman. I would succumbed so easily to her fears that I am just now realizing what a fearful based woman she really is and I want NO part of this anymore! Still she tries every time I speak with her on the phone or see her filling my head with some kind of fear, dread and doom. Sometimes I wonder if she even thinks she does this. I think it is so ingrained in her now that it is a part of her.