This is part four of a series of posts dedicated to breaking down components of resilience. The series is an elaboration on a post I made in 2015, continued now as part of the June 2016 Carnival of Aces on Resiliency. In part one of this series, I covered tenacity. In part [...]
It’s a weird feeling, to suddenly need certain kink things, to have a sudden craving so strong it suggests sometimes dangerous lengths and abandonment of boundaries and safety practices. I never know how long these things’ll last. Sometimes it’s just a day, sometimes it’s months. And it sure doesn’t feel like it will ever stop. (It’s everywhere and everywhen, how could it stop?) And it can be years in-between, and I can forget how to handle them, get out of practice, lose all my contacts and coping strategies. I don’t expect it to happen again.
We all make mistakes, but due to the abuse many of us have suffered, we may tend to be overly harsh with ourselves when we do. We may feel that we are just "a bad person who deserves bad things," or dwell on times when we may have hurt someone even more than the person who we may have hurt does. How do you deal with your mistakes or flaws? - How do you feel when you realize you've made a mistake? - How do you feel when you think about a part of yourself that you'd consider a flaw? - Do you feel like your self-perception is really distorted by your trauma? - Are there any actions you can take that you have found can help you interrupt the cycle of self-blame or self-hatred? - What are some affirmations or validating words that you can use as a mantra to help you get through times when you feel really bad about your mistakes/flaws?
One aspect of CSA that I don't see discussed very often is sexually charged verbal abuse. My experience with this is as a CSA survivor specifically, but I could also see where it could potentially be an issue for adult survivors of sexual violence well. In my own experience, the sexualized verbal abuse I was subjected to has actually been one of the hardest aspects to recover from long term.
