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Overcoming Childhood Abuse

It can be done.

By Sarah JanePublished 7 years ago 11 min read
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Photos by commons.wikipedia.org and flickr.com

Will you listen?

Why I'm Writing This Article

The phrase “overcoming childhood abuse” sounds glamorous, doesn’t it? It sounds like I’ve climbed some kind of really tough mountain and am now sitting pretty on top of it with a beautiful view. Wouldn’t you love it if that were the case? Wouldn’t you love it if I could give you a road map for your own recovery or else give you a ‘rags to riches’ tale of how one woman triumphed over a horrific past to become almost normal and perfectly socially acceptable?

Sorry, I can’t do that. What I can do is tell you what it’s REALLY like to be a survivor. In doing so I want to give hope to other survivors—you are not alone and this mountain is climbable, however tough it may be.

I also want the rest of society to start recognising what it is like for the uncounted thousands of adult survivors who live in this country: unseen, unsupported and unheard. Our stories need to be told. Vulnerable children become vulnerable adults and there are many of us. Right here where you live. Struggling on alone. I am determined that it doesn’t need to be so. But change begins with you, my reader. Will you listen?

What "Overcoming" Actually Means

First of all, let’s be clear what I mean when I talk about “overcoming.” When I left my mother’s house and ventured out into the wide world alone, I foolishly thought that if I fought hard enough I would eventually become like one of those ‘normal’ people who has always known a parent’s love and care—or at the very least have had their material needs looked after by a parent, even if they weren’t particularly well loved. I thought that ‘recovery’ meant learning how to be emotionally secure and eventually settling down to an acceptable and stable job with a partner in a house with 2.5 children.

I also thought that the abuse and neglect of my parents was over because I had now left the prison (ie, family ‘home’) where this had happened. Both of those impressions are false. Emotional security is given to a baby as they grow into a child and then an adolescent by having at least one, preferably two, parents who love and care about them on a daily basis right into adulthood. If that has not happened then nothing on earth can replace it. Not even faith or a relationship with God. (The relationship of faith with God is designed to work in harmony with and alongside healthy human relationships—it was never intended to be a replacement for them, although for many of us it has to be).

Emotional security and belonging are not things which can be learnt or acquired. They come only through human relationships. If those relationships are missing, there is no fall back. People who have functioning parents continue to gain emotional support even as adults. For those of us who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected that is simply missing. We have no parental love, no care, no support, and no refuge either physically or emotionally when bad things happen in life. This is what we have to overcome. And we have to overcome it every single day. It not something that we overcome once and then move on. It is a daily absence, a daily pain, and a daily struggle.

The Abuse Doesn't Stop When You Leave

What happens when an abused child leaves the parental location where the abuse has been taking place for years, sometimes decades? The abuser loses their victim. Does that stop them? No, it doesn’t. They don’t magically lose their teeth just because their victim has walked out. In many cases, they actually become nastier. An abuser is an abuser—there are serious issues in their psyche causing them to behave the way they do. They almost always seek some way to regain control of their scapegoat. If your abuser is your parent, how do you escape that?

There are those who successfully manage to cut the toxic parent out of their lives, but in my experience those people are rare. In most cases, the resulting mess is incredibly complicated. All types of abuse include some measure of psychological control. If your abuser is your parent then you have a desperate need for love from them. You probably also feel responsible for them in some way—most abusers paint themselves as the victim in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of their actual victim.

Cutting parents out of one’s life means cutting off a part of oneself—it can only be done as a last resort if there really, really is no other way forward and it causes plenty of damage in itself. It may also mean unavoidably cutting siblings or other relatives out at the same time and for most of us that just isn’t possible. Survivors therefore end up in a situation where they have left the family home but the abuser still has a hold over them and is not afraid to use it. At the same time, they are now cut loose in a world which neither understands nor cares about what is happening and in which they have to somehow maintain a living when they have never been equipped to do so.

How To Survive

Where do you start, then? Actually, in my experience, overcoming starts simply with the stubborn determination to survive no matter what. An utter and complete refusal ever to be beaten. It starts early on in life and never stops. In my case, that stubbornness was welded together with faith and imagination. The faith to believe that there was something beyond the abject horror I was living with and the imagination to visualise it. Not everyone is so blessed as to have those three assets combined, but all of us have plenty of strategies for coping with extreme situations and retaining our sanity in the midst of them.

Stage 1: Escape

Once free of the actual abusive setting itself, there then begins a process of escape and eventually, recovery. The escape stage involves getting out of the abusive setting—which some never do, because if you’ve been systematically and horrifically abused from being a very young child until you are an adult, then it often requires a miracle to escape by any other method than homelessness. (And that, as far as I’m concerned, is not an escape, it’s a descent).

Having escaped from the abusive setting itself, one then has to fight for survival on an entirely new level, as society at large is completely oblivious to your individual hardship and you have to compete for jobs and housing on exactly the same lines as everyone else around you regardless of the fact that you are utterly broken inside and have neither the normal emotional development, knowledge, or experience of the outside world, nor any kind of confidence, self-esteem, or social skills and are completely bereft of any advice or support from anyone around you to be able to cope.

Leaving home for the first time is often an emotional experience even for those who have been loved and nurtured by their parents. Just try leaving it and having to survive under these circumstances—when everything in your life until that point, even down to the times when you were allowed to use the toilet, have been controlled by an abuser. The one thing I can say about this is that it makes you tough. Really tough. On the outside at least. Whatever pain and vulnerability is happening on the inside stays very well hidden at this point. It has to.

During the escape stage, survival is paramount. All else fades into the background by comparison to the business of simply getting by. This stage can last years as qualifications have to be gained, money has to be made and managed, and jobs have to be held down, friends have to be made, and all of this happens while the trauma of a childhood of abuse remains unresolved and emotional stability and belonging is non-existent. We have to do what everyone else does without anyone teaching us how to do it or be it. Financial hardship is one of the lesser known side-effects of leaving a childhood of abuse behind. Anxiety, nightmares, and depression are a given.

Stage 2: Recovery

The next stage is recovery. Recovery is a pleasant word for what is often a very turbulent and reactive process. This begins to happen only once some kind of external stability has been achieved. Only when there is time and space for the recovery to begin. Recovery means facing the real horrors of the trauma inflicted upon us in the past and often, too, the fresh pain and hurt which has been newly acquired from the act of trying to survive in the outside world. For most of us, this takes years, if it ever reaches any kind of conclusion at all. It is a continual process of sifting through the side effects (anger, anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, etc.) of abuse as well as the actual mental wounds themselves whilst also dealing with the continual lack of love in the present time. For most of us, this requires a therapist. For those of us with a faith, it requires a lot of prayer too.

Engaging with the Outside World

The process of trying to engage with the outside world and to find some kind of a place in it is not a smooth one. For starters, the vast majority of people in the world at large have no interest whatsoever in engaging with us as survivors on the level of brokenness at which we live. It doesn’t encourage us to try and look out beyond the pain and heartbreak when all we find is misunderstanding and criticism or simple indifference. This needs to change. There are vast numbers of young people leaving abusive situations every day of the week, it is approaching a national epidemic. Yet it is undocumented and taboo as an issue. It is considered not socially acceptable to try and talk about these things and survivors as people, because we are very broken and because we have personalities which have evolved to deal with facing the terror of death every single day in secret, have a lot of traits which may be considered slightly off the wall, or shocking to those around us because they have no idea what it’s like to have their soul and body continually ripped to shreds for years by the one who should love them most in the world.

Discovering Personality

Another little-known aspect of recovering from such trauma is the process of discovering and learning to regulate one’s own personality. As children, we were oppressed. As a result, our natural personalities don’t start to really emerge until we are adults and because they have been hidden under such intense pressure for so long, they tend to start emerging in extreme and unexpected ways. Most children learn to regulate their personalities in social situations when they are very young. We don’t. Unfortunately, other people’s reactions to these bursts of excess personality can sometimes be very critical or hostile. This causes even more hurt and damage to the unlucky survivor who, having had the courage to start coming out of their shell, can sometimes be beaten back into it. Or at the very least alienated from the individuals who have reacted this way.

If you know someone who has experienced childhood abuse, please be patient with them during this process. If they do or say something which you don’t like, please explain to them in a gentle way what they have done and why. Don’t expect them to just understand—no one has ever taught them how to function in life and they are not psychic. They need compassion and support from those around them if they are ever to recover.

It can be done!

In conclusion; Overcoming childhood abuse is nothing more than a daily trudge through the muck and mire of immense trauma without giving up. Some days are just too much and the only option is to curl up in a corner and cry. Yet even this is a luxury that most of us were not allowed to indulge in when we were being abused as children.

Overcoming childhood abuse is not glamorous, it is not smooth, it is not easy and it is not fast. But it can be done. As a back-breaking daily mental haul, it can be done. As a fight through an unexplored jungle with no guide and no map, it can be done. One day at a time, one step at a time, one tear at a time, it can be done.

The advantages which those of us with a faith have over those who are non-believers are that we are more likely to find some kind of a supportive network of people; we have a hope for the future and a spiritual companionship with God to turn to in times of loneliness and need as well as a guiding set of principles to help us live by. Even so, does the process of healing ever become complete? Can real, deep, peaceful rest ever be achieved? That, I’m afraid, I don’t yet know.

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About the Creator

Sarah Jane

I started writing when I was 6 and have launched my own business. Besides my considerably varied professional background, I love learning languages, meeting people from all over the world, having adventures and travelling.

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