Dear Janine:

I am so glad you are seeing a therapist who did point out to you that you were indeed, abused.

As to your questions:

1. “What is the importance of going through the healing process?” The importance is to have a good quality of life in the present and in the future, improved over time, finding your life meaningful, interesting, satisfying, looking forward to the next day; being able to make good choices for yourself, from who you interact with to what profession to choose, where to live, to how to take care of yourself when you are distressed, how to not automatically react to distress, etc. engage in and enjoy healthy win-win interactions and relationships, love and being loved in return. And if you choose to bring children into the world, bringing up healthy children.

2. “What are the consequences if you do not go through it?” Hundreds of mental disorders such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, psychosis, anorexia, binge eating, many anxiety disorders, mood disorders, personality disorders; obesity, suicide, violence, crime, child abuse, bullying, drug abuse, alcoholism, many syndromes, such as some of the chronic fatigue syndromes cases, and many, many physical illnesses ending in dysfunction, handicap and earlier death, increased accidents due to destructive behavior such as drinking and driving, lack of attention caused accidents, and more. And there is that situation where no matter what you do, how hard you try, and following short periods of time of feeling better, you…always find yourself back in pain. Again and again.

3. You wrote: ” I feel like many of the people who were abused go on living seemingly unaware of it.. What happens then?” The thing is, when we are not aware of the truth, or when we are only a little aware of the truth (like you are- you are aware of your abuse intellectually but you are not aware of it emotionally), what happens is the truth of your injuries is not going away just because we are not aware. Oh, no. The pain of the injuries will keep hurting you until you hear it, see it, become emotionally and intellectually aware of it and then tend to it. You will hear people in denial all the time. I was and you are. Truth will not accommodate denial. You will see people who were abused who seem to have it together but if that is so, it is only for a short time.

I assure you, if you don’t heal, you will have breaks from misery, you will have periods of time of feeling good, but they will not last. The misery you already experienced in your young life- that misery will come back. It is not going anywhere until you heal.

4. You wrote: “I feel sometimes I cannot access my pain. Intellectualizing it and talking about it has become a method for me to avoid feeling it.” I did that too, of course. What happens is when you are a child so dependent and so loving of the people who are actively hurting you, keeping in awareness that you are in danger of being hurt day in and day out, is too much to bear. So you split your emotions, you dissociate. The brain does its best to not be overwhelmed by not being emotionally aware of what is going on. It doesn’t do a perfect job as you are still miserable, just not as badly as if you were completely aware. So you grow up dissociated.

5. “What does the healing process look like?” For one thing, a process of re-integration takes place, integrating the dissociated emotions to the intellect. Now you know what happened in a dry intellectual way. When healing you will know what happened in a … wet (as in crying and sweating) way, you will know what happened as your heart races and you feel like vomiting and you feel dizzy… this is why it should be done in therapy with a competent, caring therapist. She/ he has to be there with you as you get to know emotionally what happened, as you put the emotions together with the intellect.

You will grow empathy toward yourself. You will find out that you were a victim, that you are not guilty. You will discover- emotionally- that you loved your mother completely and that it was her who rejected you, not the other way around. You will find out how hurt you were. You will come back to yourself.

This healing process will take time, I would say a couple of years, a wild guess on my part. I mean a couple of years of therapy. Wild guess, again. But the process will continue for a long time after. There is no happily-ever-after existence “after” healing; there is no second childhood- that is lost forever. You wake up to reality and it is like earthquakes in the brain, every time you find out something new, so different than what you thought before. You apply relaxation and calming techniques so to withstand, endure the distress of changing core beliefs about who you are, who your parents are, and what life is about. You let the changes settle and you continue, day in and day out, persistent.

I started this process at 51. I did only (!) two years of therapy and three years of full time work myself, using the insight and most important the skills I learned in therapy.

I can tell you more, but enough for now. We can communicate further, if you’d like, for as long as you wish. I am willing to share more as long as it may be helpful. The thing is, this kind of work, healing, is highly personal. You have to FEEL it, to integrate your emotional side with the intellectual side… and that cannot be done intellectually. That is why few people are persistent in this kind of work. No one wants to feel pain, so they drop out.

Post anytime.

anita