Children initially learn to about themselves and the world through their bodies. Hunger, fear, love, acceptance, rejection, support, nurturing, terror, pride, mastery, humiliation, anger—all began with sensation on the body level. As a child, your body was the means through which you learned your first lessons about trust, intimacy, protection, and nourishment.
When you were abused, your body and your psyche were invaded. You were taught through direct experience that your body, rather than being your home, was a dangerous place where terrible things could happen. Gizelle, who was violently raped by her father, recalls:
"I felt caught, trapped in my body. That continued into adulthood. I never heard any message from my body. I would be really sick and I'd stagger around and go to work. I made a lifetime dedication of not listening to my body, because if I had, I would have had to hear that I had been raped, and I couldn't do that and survive."
Like Gizelle, you may have cut yourself off from your body—from its knowledge, sensations, and feelings, from its riches and its wisdom. You protected yourself as best you could, but at a terrible price. Most of the problems survivors experience with their bodies—dissociation, numbing, and additions, to name a few—arise from this attempt to find safety by leaving their bodies behind.
Some survivors are so estranged from their bodies that they don’t know how to relate to them at all:
"I had to start with the very basic question, 'What is my body?' Is it a bunch of unrelated parts—arms, legs, head, torso, and feet? Is it my organs, muscles, bones and DNA? It is the part of me that runs marathons, but has two left feet on the dance floor? Or is it how I look? Most of my life I've viewed my body as a necessary evil—a receptacle that needs sleep and demands food, a think that carries around my brain. Now that I was healing, it began to dawn on me, 'Was it actually possible that my body was me and not something separate from me?'"
Like this woman, many survivors live disembodied lives, existing solely in their heads. Rachel Bat Or recalls her relationship to her body before she began to heal:
"If someone said, 'What do you feel in your arm?' I would have had no idea what they were even talking about. If I touched it, I felt my arm with my head. But I couldn't get inside of it. I could only touch the skin from the outside. I couldn't have felt my heart beating. I couldn't experience anything from inside my body, because I wasn't inside my body.
But when we don’t live inside our bodies, we miss the crucial information our bodies constantly offer us. By habitually cutting ourselves off from our feelings—of discomfort, pleasure, anger, or even relaxation—we disconnect from ourselves a little more each day. We deaden ourselves and grow numb, and in doing so we lose access to the innate healing power of the body. Our world becomes smaller and less vibrant, and we often don’t even know what we’re missing. (The Courage to Heal, Bass & Davis, p. 247-8)
In the past, when counselors/psychologists had talked to me about dissociation, it was always described to me as "going to a happy place." In my opinion, this is not an accurate or complete description of dissociation. So, for me, the authors of The Courage to Heal, literally changed my life in explaining that dissociation is separating yourself from or numbing yourself to your body. You flee whilst still in place. My litany for life suddenly became clear.
Shut up.
Be still.
Wait until it is over.
In recent years, I had told several people one of my deepest fears ... that I was an axe murderer or something. I thought that I had an ice cube for a heart. People would laugh. Or dismiss my fears. I have no words ... not a single one ... to communicate the utter, absolute relief I felt, the bindings that loosed from my being, to discover that it seemed like I had an ice cube for a heart because I was dissociating, I was numb.
At first, that numbness was small and contained, but over time it grew, until I was certain I was a horrible person, a ticking-time bomb, someone who should not live.
Children often deal with the unbearable experience of sexual abuse by emotionally and psychically distancing from the abuse while it is happening. Although dissociation is an intelligent, miraculous, and effective coping mechanism for the child, it can be habitual in adult survivors, so that every time you experience uncomfortable feelings and sensations (anger, sexual arousal, fear, etc.), you automatically “check out” and leave your body, even though you may not be in any real danger. The problem is that you may be leaving your body at time when you clearly don’t want to—like when you’re having sex with someone you want to be with or when you need to stand your ground in your life now.
When you habitually dissociate, you also miss a great deal of joy, because life is lived and experienced and enjoyed through the body.
A crucial part of healing from child sexual abuse is learning to say present in your body, to tolerate the full range of sensations and feelings you find there. (p. 253, emphasis mine)
Staying present is difficult.
It is brutal.
It is the agony of a marathon that seemingly never ends.
A part of me is grateful to understand this particular why and wherefore of me. Part of me is overwhelmed, struggling to grasp just how much of my life for which I have not been fully present. Part of me is ashamed. Ashamed that I do this thing. Ashamed that I am afraid of sensations. Ashamed that I do not even know how to identify emotions.
Even so, I am trying to learn.
I am Yours, Lord. Save me!
No comments:
Post a Comment