Tag: help

A few months back I met with Detective Tom Rosemurgy, who suggested a meeting with a woman who works at Dial Help. She is the coordinator for Sexual Assault Serves…and the Volunteers.  All three of us met a few times, and our last meeting I met the Director, who suggested Volunteering.  Me, volunteering.  I said yes.

Last night was our first class.  It is a small class, just two other women and me.  

It will be very interesting to see how they approach victims in crisis, what technique is used etc.  The mission of Dial Help, is to help you help yourself.  Which I guess is the goal for all victims, to help themselves.

We did role playing and it was very insightful how each of us approached the task of listening and then helping.  We did much better on the second round…and we have 26 more hours to go, plus a full day of sexual assault training.  

Just so interesting in how we are taught to converse.

What this will give me is the background and to see victims from both sides and to see what is helpful and what is not.  

In fact, in each role playing scenario, we had to comment on what was helpful and then what was not, and then an overall discussion.

 "I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand another person."  Carl Rogers 

This is quote was in our training materials and I love that we need to permit ourselves to understand someone else.  

What a concept.

I am finding it very interesting how they approach folks who call in crisis, who are seeking to be understood, and perhaps to even begin to begin in understanding themselves…and where they are or what circumstances they find themselves standing in.

To me, unless you can see that you are in a mess, there is no mess to understand…or mess to work your way through. And if you keep telling yourself that all is okay, that nothing is wrong, to lay a positive overlay, you will never fully understand yourself.

And without knowing yourself, you will unknowingly find yourself in crisis.  For, It is my humble opinion, after one class, that most crisis are years in the making….one choice after another, made without consulting you.

I lived for years without ever truly listening to myself, my guts, my feelings and what I needed.  I understood my dysfunctional self, my co-dependency, but the real me was a stranger to myself.  

I understood what I needed to do for others to keep relationships going…this me I knew very well.  She lived to support other lives.  

Here is what Mark Nepo wrote today, that echos this.

"I began, like so many of us, in a household where it was somehow my job to be the lightening rod for the family's tensions of unexpressed emotion.  In this way, I learned to be a problem solver, a rescuer, a caretaker. Through two marriages and countless friendships, I loved by taking on the clouded emotions of those I loved."

"The tensions of other people's unexpressed emotions kept me from feeling my own depth and clarity.  My life became one of turbulence, always struggling to keep my head above the cloudy surface."  Mark Nepo

This was me to a T.  I don't even believe my head ever cleared the muddy waters until my father was exposed for sexual assault.

Imagine the unexpressed emotions that lived in my father's house?  And then feel the weight of all it. 

I recall one night in particular, where I felt the full weight of these emotions, the enormous volume of how big this mess had actually grown over the span of my fathers unchecked abuse…and it was that night I let it all go.  Releasing me from 'fixing' or carrying it anymore.   I laid in my bed crying huge wracking sobs…giving up, feeling I was much to little for such a big task.

It was in knowing that I couldn't solve it, that freed me.

There was just way too many girls and their lives and their children's lives….that had been affected by this one man, and I wasn't big enough to be lightning rod to absorb it all. It was all I could do to feel my own emotions. 

It took something this big to collapse my role of emotional absorber for the family.  

While it felt like I had completely broken down, what actually happened, was the dysfunctional part of me broke…leaving in its place the space for me.

A me I had never been with, alone.

It was the second birth of me.

I could see clearly me…and I could see clearly where I had come from.  

And I also knew, immediately, that the me who lived for my first 46 years was not the real me, but an impostor, a survival girl, but she was not me.  She was a role I played to keep the abuse a secret…even from myself.

Once the truth was out, there was no need for survival girl to live.

This was in the days, where I walked each morning, for my emotions at times were too big for our house. On this particular day, I said good bye to my survivor girl. To the girl who tried to make right, that which was so not right. For the one who carried the weight of it all on her shoulders.  I cried for how in vain it all had been.  How insane it all had been…and then I told her to rest in peace.  It was never her job in the first place…It was a mess that she didn't create and it wasn't her job to fix it.

I recall feeling such peace in letting her go. For her life was hard…and it never seemed to bear the fruit she planted.

I also felt such peace at beginning a new life based on me.

It wasn't that the crisis went away, but my responsibility for others died that day…and what was born was a girl who had to walk through all parts of her life and make adjustments based on her feelings and what was true for her.

It wasn't an overnight sensation…it is 7 years and counting.

I woke up in a life that I created to survive abuse, but not to face it.

Once I faced abuse, there really was no need for this pretend self.

My pretending self is truly the only thing that died. The one who wanted things to look better, feel better, be better, than what they actually were.  She lived to lie.

She had to lie so I could survive.

Without her lies, I would have known that I lived in a home with a pedophile and his wife who couldn't see what he was doing.  I would have been aware, but too little to move out.  

The mind protected me by building up a pretend self and life.

I can fully understand so many whose lives seem to be clearly lives of abuse, and how they are unable to see. Their pretender sees life for them.  Their survivor self was literally made to not see the truth.

You don't even know you have a pretender self, until that which it is covering up gets exposed.  

The survivor self  then doesn't know what its tasks are any more.  For it has no duties with the truth. 

It was born to cover it up.