As we go through life, some of us are fortunate enough to not have too many difficulties to face and others experience way more in half a lifetime than some could even comprehend.
In my own experience and after being signposted to many different counsellors, support workers etc, i soon realised the difference between speaking to a professional who was college or university educated and those who were talking from real life experience and the main difference between these two is the genuine empathy and understanding you feel from those who actually know what you are going through. Having that connection from the start with any support service is vital in the process of healing and I personally found that I could relax and be more open with someone who has lived experience in the harsh real world.
It is for that reason that i would now like to share my own experiences and the lessons i learned……the hard way of course, to encourage and teach others that any situation can be turned around. It all comes down to your own mindset and learning to be accountable and responsible for your own actions and change your thought patterns and behaviours that have been holding you back from greater things possible.
As a lived experience practitioner, i now want to help other survivors of trauma recognise, accept and heal emotionally from their own abusive relationships as this is our aim within A Positive Start. Now i don’t claim to know how it all works but i do know a thousand ways that dont! I understand why we make the decisions and choices we do. I understand why we ignore the red flags that wave frantically in front of us, I understand why we try too hard to please others, I understand how our gut instinct is our greatest navigator and most of all, i understand the importance of letting love into our lives despite the pain we have endured.
They say love hurts but in my experience, that’s just not true. Love doesn’t hurt, it’s the lies, betrayals, torment, abuse and uncertainty that hurts and when you have experienced this kind of ‘love’ from being a small child, this is what leads us into unhealthy and toxic relationships in adult life. If raised by the hand of a narcissist for example, like i was, it’s commonly inevitable that you will also attract narcissistic people and partners into your life until you learn to change the learned behaviours you yourself have developed while growing up in survival mode. It’s so important to acknowledge and change these often destructive behaviours as early as possible because while you are fighting angrily against the world, someone is sitting in the shadows wishing you could see in yourself what they see behind all the bravado and while all that anger, resentment and bitterness is consuming you, it is also pushing you away from the very people who could help you heal. That’s exactly what I did and as a result, spent my entire adult life up to a point, pining for the very people I pushed away through my own ignorance and selfishness.
Love itself is beautiful. That’s what gives us the feeling of belonging and being appreciated – that makes us stronger and pushes us to be better people and fulfill our true potential. However, the most important love we must embrace, is to love ourselves first. Not the arrogant, vain, self absorbed kind of love for yourself but the realisation of our own self worth. Knowing our capabilities and having the confidence within yourself to the point where negative projection from others just doesn’t make you react the way it once did. Where there was once anger towards insult there is now understanding that what they are projecting onto you is a reflection of the pain and insecurities they must be carrying inside themselves. Now this isn’t something that can change overnight, it’s a long and emotional process and it takes a level of honesty with yourself that many just cant or wont face because being honest with yourself requires you to take responsibility and hold yourself accountable to the fact that you too have made mistakes and have at some point, likely been the toxic person in someone else’s life.
Just because you have been, does not at all mean you always will be. If you can acknowledge you have had toxic traits you are already half way to healing. For the most part its circumstantial and very much depends on where you are on an emotional level that defines how your relationships play out. People can and do change when they start looking deep within themselves to really understand who they are and why they do what they do. Once we have figured this out, the process of healing starts and a whole new person can rise when all the hurt, anger and bitterness has been faced and dealt with properly. I highly recommend talking therapies! You just need to get that weight out of your body. I say out your body because that’s exactly where it’s carried. In a quote from Marilyn Van Derbur, an author and motivational speaker inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1996, she says “all emotions, even those that are suppressed, have physical effects. Unexpressed emotions tend to stay in the body like small ticking time bombs – they are illnesses in incubation”.
I’ve often said as I have gone through my own healing process, and still am as it is something we are ever working on….before you diagnose yourself with mental health problems, make sure you’re not just surrounded by the wrong people.
I would like to share my own experiences as examples in my coming blogs and looking at and how my reactions, emotions and responses affected my life, what I learned in the process and offer guidance and advice on how NOT to be a victim but a survivor despite what you have been through.
By Sharon Paxton