Christianity

A difficult conversation.

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Part of Recovery is facing your fears, and figuring out a new way to live.

I watched a movie about being in rehab, rehab for addiction and recovery from abuse have some striking similariaties, I guess abuse eats away at your life the same way addiction does, just one is self inflcited and the other is inflicted on you.

One of the reasons I’ve chosen not to drink for this period of my life is that I have alchoholism on one side of my family, maybe both, and drugs on both, and I don’t want to start making that my go-to during a rough period.

The Holy Spirit is the only coping thing I want to be addicted to, event hough it’s hard. It can feel like taking a pill or a drink would make it so much easier because physical symptoms suck, and make emotional symptoms worse.

I’ve had stress symptoms all this week, which seem to have been triggered by a difficult conversation with my aunt.

See, as part of not letting my dad control our lives anymore, my sisters and I have discussed telling our extended family about what happened.

The trouble is my dad cannot keep his mouth shut about any drama in his life, and he has already told half the family his version of the story. Which no doubt paints him as either the victim, or the person struggling to get over his difficulties (still the victim).

My aunt is the main person who informs everyone in the family what’s going on with anyone else, so all our uncles and grandparents are calling her asking about us…calling us directly would never cross their minds.

I don’t really mind it so much, except that a slanted version of our story is getting spread.

I called my aunt over the weekend, she’s my dad’s sister, grew up with the same crap as he did, and has a handle on many of his flaws.

She said she was wondering about it and would like to hear more, so I told her. I gave her the highlights.

The word that seemed to surprise her most was ABUSE.

She couldn’t seem to grasp that her brother could really have abused us.

I gave her the physical, verbal, and emotional examples. She actually witnessed when my dad punched me, and she said she would have probably done the same if her kid had hit her first. I explained why I did it and his history of barging into my room without knocking, etc, bu it didn’t sway her.

Though I told her that he’d threatened my several times before that point, and had threatened me afterward. When I said that it was over me not doing something he asked/told me to do, she said in her house she’d expect her kid to do chores too.

The crowning injury for me was when she said that she thinks there is no good guy, there is no bad guy, that there were things I could have done differently, things that caused incidents.

??????????

I really hope you are horrified right now, and that this doesn’t sound familiar, if it does, you have my sympathy.

Let me define some things:

After a certain age, I don’t think a kid should be physically forced to do things like chores. There’s other consequences.

Which is moot anyway, because I was a grown adult when my dad threatened that, capable of making my own decisions. It had nothing to do with teaching me to be a good kid, it was about power. That’s all it was.

And if you are threatening your child with violence to get them to do something, you are acting like a tyrant.

I believe you can punish children for disobeying, then it’s a consequence, I do not think violence should be a motivation for the action to begin with.

But it doesn’t matter, since I was not a child. My aunt seems to not understand the obvious difference there.

My mom didn’t threaten to slap me out of temper, that I remember, but my dad did. He flung me out of stuff when I had done nothing wrong save for being there first.

I told my aunt this, I told her how he would tell us things he shouldn’t, like he considered suicide a lot. I told her how he verbally abused me with criticism, blame, and just horrible mocking that no one should ever say to or about their kids.

I told her about the manipulation.

She said some of it seemed like him trying to be a better dad than his father, by playing games with us. Though I said that wasn’t for us, it was for him. If we refused he’d whine about no one wanting to play with him, sometimes he got angry and yelled about it. Blaming us for making him unhappy.

Also, when he was trying to get over his gaming addiction, he’d blame us for not giving him a distraction by playing with him. Like that made it okay to play video games all night long and yell obscenities at the computer while we were trying to sleep.

Sure, our fault.

My aunt did admit some stuff, like how he makes everything about him, how he embarrasses people when they most want him not to, how he exaggerates what others do to him.

She puts it down to him having Aspergers (which I doubt after being in a program that talked about it) and not being able to get a sense of what other people feel.

But I know that is not true, I lived with my dad, he could tell what everyone felt as long as he wasn’t the cause. I’ve heard him explain exactly what people were feeling, and sympathize or use it against them.

He knew I had self worth issues, he knew I struggled with anger over what people do to me, but he would blank completely that he was the cause of that.

He could explain why my aunt was bothered by the behavior of everyone else but him, he’d own up to it if my mom pointed it out, and he’d laugh at it. He laughed at my hurt when I didn’t like his mocking and exposing me. He laughed at everyone’s hurt.

My dad liked punishing people. He liked bullying people who were weaker than him, who would let him. He hated me for getting stronger than that, but as long as he could get a reaction from my mom or sisters over what he said, he’d keep doing it.

He treated everyone like his parent, not his responsibility, and he still does.

My aunt told me he’s talked to her a lot about it, and owned up to some of what he did that she herself pointed out, but she focused on what bothered her the most, not what bothered us.

My dad told her apparently that he always thought we’d put up with him no matter what, that he wouldn’t be made to leave.

So, did he get married and have kids to ensure an audience for his bad behavior? A well of unconditional love? That he could withdraw from his whole life?

I guess so, he always did say he’d move in with me once he got too old to work (that’s not happening.)

Dad could never be accepted by his family, so he made one where he though he’d always have to be accepted. I heard him brag to people that my mom loved him despite all the bad things he did that she didn’t know about before they got married, so she was the best woman in the world.

I heard him yell at her for how disrespectful she was too, if she ever dared to question his treatment of me, or anyone else.

My dad wouldn’t always snap right away, but he’d snap eventually and make a whole thing of it, so you wouldn’t try it again.

I grant that our family was different from his, my mom made it so, but it wasn’t necessarily because he was a better parent.

My aunt knows the truth now, but she still encouraged me to think of what I could have done to cause all this, and to try talking to him. That I won’t know if he’s changed or not until I do.

Like I need to talk to him to know that 3 months of self reflection and 8 months of blaming us, are not going to undo 20 years of an abuser’s mentality.

if it could be changed, it would take years. Humility begins with realizing what you did, but you’ll realize a whole lot more once you start that process.

My aunt also told me that she feels we are in the phase of being angry right now, but when we are over it, and have kids of our own, we’ll understand why our dad was that way. We’ll see it was because of his upbringing.

My sister’s response? “I hope not.”

Mine too, I hope I never start justifying myself to my kids because of my past. I hope my husband never gives me leeway to be abusive, even if I sometimes act like a victim because I was one.

I want to adopt, for crying out loud. A lot of orphaned or foster kids were abused, do I want to add my name to that list? Heck no!

What my aunt is doing by saying this was my fault, is saying it’s not abuse. Because you never, ever tell a victim they did something to deserve that. Their abuser might, but you shouldn’t.

Believe me, we deal with that thought enough.

I don’t generally ask myself if I did something to deserve it.

I did about the hitting, but most of the time I knew he was overreacting, and had no right to treat me like garbage.

You know what’s sad?

If I had turned it on for my aunt, if I had cried and told her all my hurt feelings, Maybe I could have gotten more sympathy. My very calm, mature way of discussing it can work against me.

I’ve seen it with other people too, they get put off by me not crumbling, crying, acting like my life sucks.

I get it in a way, if this really happened to you, how can you be calm? It’s horrible, people in movies cry, other girls cry so easily, why don’t you cry? We can do the hug thing and say it’ll all be better.

Two reasons:

  1. When I did cry, people didn’t ease up on me, they doubled down. They told me not to cry, that I wasn’t being attacked, that this was because they loved me… crying was blood in the water to the people in my life.
  2. I did cry, I spent years sobbing alone in my bedroom, at night, trying to get past it. Trying not to be miserable. I was less depressed then than I am now when I can’t cry and let it out because I’ve become so “mature.”

 

I can’t beg for pity anymore, I once did. I got it twisted around and shoved in my face, by the one person who begs for more pity than anyone else I know.

He’s doing it now. He just can’t understand why we won’t talk to him, he’s changed! he realizes he was a jerk now.

Like he realized it scores of times as I grew up, and did nothing.

Any excuse will do for him, I’m sick of listening to them.

But I know why my aunt told me all this and won’t call it abuse.

She’s lived through the same thing with her parents, she’s heard terrible things from them. She broke the most out of the cycle of words and actions, I think she got resented for that the same way I did. No siblings to cheer her on either.

She finally accepted the excuses her parents made, and accepted her place in it. She blames herself for causing some problems because that is easier than seeing it as senseless.

Abuse, cruelty, neglect, they are all senseless. I’ve said this before.

My aunt’s view is too cotton candy for me. It assumes people cannot just deliberately do wrong because they refuse to do right.

That’ just not true. I believe the bible, it says people are wicked. On purpose, and on accident. And all of us will do both. A good person might just be one who does the least on purpose.

But that’s a human standard.

A good person is one who can own up to dong all they did, and doing it knowing it was wrong, even if they didn’t see how wrong it was, they knew it wasn’t right, and then, they try to change. Failing to change, they admit they can’t, and fall back on God. That’s what the Bible calls being righteous.

The sacrificial system in the Bible is an acknowledgment that we will sin, we cannot stop, but God’s grace makes us right with Him, if we confess our sins. We can stop sinning when God gives us that ability.

I have not stopped getting angry, but I have stopped bullying my sisters over it.  I haven’t stopped feeling insecure, but I’ve stopped blaming the wrong people. I’ve stopped demanding my parents fix that for me.

There are days I hate being an abused kid. I hate the stress of it, and how my body breaks down under it after awhile. I hate how people misunderstand, and still think it’s my fault

As if you blame the slave for trying to run away from a cruel master, and say it was their fault when the master whipped them almost to death for it. Sure, they caused it by running, but would they have run if the master was kind?

I loathe many things about this process.

But I don’t hate my aunt. I feel sorry for her. She still thinks it was somehow her fault. She couldn’t tell me that if she didn’t believe it.

I’ll admit to all of you, I find the whole thing depressing and hard to accept.

But I’ll get through it, because I am doing something about it. In the end, the survivor is still the lucky one.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

 

Intersex: An essay about an unusual topic.

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I don’t know if I’ll publish this, but I did some digging about a weird topic today.

A lot of people don’t know what Intersex is, but with rising Transgender movements, it’s bound to be talked about.

Intersex is a general term for a set of genetic mutations that cause either a malformation in male or female reproductive organs, or the producing of both, or sexual problems later in life like too low hormones or other dysfunctions.

Intersex people are actually mostly straight, with a small amount saying they are gay or trans or other.

A lot of them have surgery done to fix their problem, which is now controversial in practice, but many choose to keep the gender their parents chose, or that is predominant.

The LGBT community is of course using this as evidence that being trans is scientifically normal, and proven.

In America, LGBT just got included under the Civil Rights act, I am surprised more that it hadn’t happened already, I thought it was already included since people get sued all the time over not hiring someone.

With corporations, it makes more sense to insist on standards in each branch, but private businesses should have it left up to them…and quite frankly, the government is never going to be able to control them all that effectively anyway, it’s a stupid law that is likely to cause more trouble for the corporation who already hire those people than for the private businesses that don’t. Unless you can prove that was the reason, which you can’t unless they say so.

It just gives people the chance to make allegations that they cannot back up with evidence, and cause trouble for businesses. It doesn’t help the LGBT pride cause either, anyone can claim discrimination, but without evidence, the issue will not be clear, people will have their own opinions about it. That’s all there is to it.

Personally, I don’t really care that much, except to find it ridiculous that they think this solves anything.

Anyway, I found the term intersex online and decided to look into the scientific evidence for it supporting a Transgender lifestyle.

Scientifically, what is being Intersex?

I always take it with a grain of salt when people who have the LGBT agenda say these things, because obviously they want science to back up their lifestyle.

But science is a bad measure for your lifestyle for a couple reasons, unless you know some parameters for the evidence.

The first reason is if you look at science as just facts, you will neglect the cause of those facts.

Fact: Cancer cells are in your body every day, but your immune system fights them too fast to make you sick, usually.

Cause?

The causes of cancer cells are malfunctions in healthy cells, and its heightened by a lack of certain nutrients, I am not a doctor so I don’t know that much about it, but it’s not a Natural phenomenon, in the way we mean natural, that is, the way it is supposed to be for you to function healthily.

Without the cause, you may misunderstand what Cancer is, but the effects of cancer are so obviously negative that most people will not question it’s unnatural.

Another case in point, puberty is a natural thing, but early puberty can be caused by poor nutrition and hormones that should not be in your body in that amount, it can come from food, environment, genetics, etc.

Early puberty is a problem because your mind doesn’t mature as fast as your body, I believe other health problems can follow it, but the emotional problems can certainly be an issue, if you are not around a good community.

So, natural and unnatural are tricky words when we are talking about DNA. If natural means what’s in DNA, then Down Syndrome and other similar syndromes are “natural” because an extra chromosome is produced. But at this time, no one considers it the optimal state to be in, and the downsides are obvious, reduced maturity, and often a heart condition that can cause a lot of problems.

Dwarfism is the same way. Even being over 7 feet tall is bad for you because your body cannot get enough oxygen for your lungs and heart from the air. (Look it up, I can’t go into the whole process here.)

Once I read that Intersex can be caused by extra X chromosomes; I wondered if it was like Down Syndrome.

Down Syndrome is more likely to occur in older women who get pregnant; my mom was actually warned about it with my sister. But she’s fine, she did develop reading abilities much slower than me and my other sibling, but she’s perfectly able to function, it just took longer. Some kids are like that. Talking was never a problem for her.

Intersex people can be what we would consider regular, in physical terms, but have a hormone problem that causes their reproductive parts to either not develop, or not work. The reason this is not a good argument for gender fluidity is that this hormone insensitivity problem can also cause cancer or make it more likely.

That’s in the case of men usually but also women can have it. Women have testosterone, just less of it.

In other cases, the reproductive organs either don’t form or don’t finish forming or form in a weird shape that can effect fertility.

When that happens the causes can range from the mother having a tumor that produced too much of a hormone that changed the baby’s development, taking male hormones during pregnancy, a deficiency in an enzyme, or a condition that causes the limiting of reproductive hormones and can be life threatening.

Not a lot of people know this (at least from memory), but testosterone is a part of keeping more than just your reproductive organs functioning: it helps your body keep other organs going, and I believe the heart is one of them. A deficiency in it is serious.

It makes sense men have more as they do more hard labor, at least historically, but women have it too, and some have more of it–it can make them have a higher sex drive, but other than that I think it’s harmless, though there’s probably a condition of having too much. I didn’t look that up, obviously it would cause the opposite problem.

The rare case of having both male and female organs has unknown causes, but some evidence has linked it exposure to pesticides. In the past when it occurred, it’s likely people were exposed to toxic metals or plants, since all throughout history humans have used things that were toxic, like lead, in unhealthy ways, and not known it.

And yes, Inter-sexuality has been around for thousands of years. People have looked at it in many different ways, linking it to higher spirituality in some cultures, witchcraft in others (African, notably), and the Catholic church took rather a common sense approach, considering how Christians tend to treat differences, and just said to identify the person with what was predominant and called them “congenital eunuchs” probably because often they cannot reproduce.

Based on all this, I think it’s common sense to draw the conclusion that this condition is not normal, in the same sense that cancer, down syndrome, and other mutations are not normal.

That does not make anyone who has it not human, nor does it make them some kind of monster. That would be foolish.

In most of these cases, it would be simple to figure out which sex the baby was by tracing what causes the mutation, since it is different in males and females. Which is why the parents choosing the gender isn’t so far fetched; it’s sounds entirely plausible to me. Just look at what genes it started from and assume the divergence is a mutation. Saying it changes their gender is more of a philosophical question than a scientific one.

A lot of people with this condition can still live as fully functioning, sexually active people and may not even know they have it. In that case, making an issue of it seems silly.

Intersex people themselves can resent the suggestion that this makes them trans. Though it’s easy to see where the mistake comes from.

My point is, based on how this occurs, it’s a mutation. A mutation cannot prove a lifestyle is morally acceptable.

This mutation is said to be about as common as red hair. Scientifically, that makes using it to justify a moral stance about akin to the “gingers have no soul” internet meme.

It does not happen naturally, but because of outside factors that lead to a deficiency, or an excess of hormones, that cause other problems that are decidedly “not good.”

Like all mutations, it’s not beneficial in the long run. Even if it can be good in one way, it means a loss or confusion of genetic information which will lower your resistance to other problems.

There will be people who say I am saying this just to justify looking at this through the lens of my religion, and they’d be right in that I might not care if I was not a Christian, but as a Christian,  have an interest in knowing if Science truly does contradict the Bible.

And according to the research, it doesn’t.

Let me explain:

What would the Bible say about being Intersex?

The Bible teaches the in the Beginning, He made them male and female.

The Bible teaches also that the reason God did this was so that the humans would fill the earth with their offspring; in most of nature you need a male and female to reproduce, even in species with male and female sex organs, you need two of them, they can’t reproduce with themselves (ew).

The Bible says man and woman together comprise the image of God, meaning that each of us has characteristics that are more like God than the other, and fitting them together is the complete picture.

The Bible also records genetic mutations, as in the case of Giants, and having 6 toes and such, so it is not ignorant of those thing occurring.

It make no mention of Intersex that I know of, but it doesn’t really need to because the question is already answered.

In the beginning, male and female.

And intersex person at conception is male or female; the mutation occurs at some point in the development. The Bible does not teach that human genetics cannot be altered by unnatural conditions, it actually teaches the opposite. The giants were caused by that.

Just as genetics can be altered by chemicals, radiation, toxins, and any number of bad life decisions on our part.

The scary thing about human DNA is that it is human: we have the ability to effect our children with our choices, and other people can effect them also. It’s part of living around each other and having the free will to use things we shouldn’t.

Drugs alter your cells too, doesn’t make it good, and it can be handed down genetically. The good news is, until you activate it, the genes for addiction are dormant.

Another Reason to Talk About this:

I think that some people, if they find out they are Intersex, may wonder if that conflicts with their Christian beliefs, and if God has not really made them male or female.

It looks to me like the evidence is against that. I don’t believe Gender is really a choice, either biologically or spiritually, but lifestyle is. Doesn’t make it right.

People confuse choice with Good. Choice is a fact: you can choose. It doesn’t make what you choose good just because you chose it. Which is obvious when applied to any crime everyone agrees is bad, like rape, but when it’s something people want very much to justify, they pretend it doesn’t matter.

No one would be crazy enough (I hope) to say rape is okay because it was the rapist’s choice to abuse someone else’s body for their own convenience, but they will say it’s okay to abort a baby for the same reason.

There is no difference between these two things, except that one is popular to think is wrong, and the other popular to think is okay…well, that and a baby can neither defend itself nor cry for help…audibly.

I am just hitting all those nerves aren’t I?

Well, as always, I am not hating on anyone who lives a way I don’t agree with, anymore than I will hate on anyone who’s had an abortion. We are all sinners. But I do not have to pretend I think it’s okay, and I do not have to support it.

The point of this was that science still does not disprove the Bible.

Incidentally, The Bible makes clear what God’s design was, but never says it has not been altered by men, and that nature is not corruptible. It actually says that nature is affected by man and the sins we commit against it.

I am not teaching that being Intersex is caused by sinning, either by parents or children. Jesus warned us not to assume that. I think it can be caused by too many different things to conclude that.

The truth is that sin caused the production of chemicals, toxins, and abnormal amounts of hormones due to diseases related to those things, that then causes mutations. It may be no fault of the parent, just their environment that they could not control.

Unless they did that on purpose, and then, yeah, that’s wrong… sorry, just is. You shouldn’t risk messing with your kid’s DNA while you are pregnant.

Well, this was an unusual topic for me. Obviously all this is a layman’s opinion, not  pastor’s, but I am well read and in college, so my knowledge of science and theology is fairly good for being a layman.

Take it for what it’s worth, and I hope you walk away at least with the confidence that there are counterpoints to be made to the propaganda we hear and to always watch what someone with an agenda is saying about scientific evidence.

I do have an agenda, but I acknowledge their points. People would say someone like me would never admit to those extra chromosomes (in fact, some were saying that when I found this thread of info) and have an answer for it.

But I can and do, and if my God was so pathetic as to be destroyed by a few mutations, my theology couldn’t have been very good to begin with. Christian Theology leaves plenty of room for science, contrary to popular opinion, and many of the Great Scientists were and still are Christians.

If this blog ever gets taken down for expressing these views, then I won’t really be surprised. I figure it’s a matter of time before the internet limits free speech to that extent, but deleting my site doesn’t delete Me.

And even if it did, it wouldn’t make me wrong. This isn’t about me. It’s about the Truth.

Which people who don’t want to will never accept, and I don’t expect them to do so. But I don’t apologize for my beliefs.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

When you miss your abuser.

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You know what one of the freakiest parts of abuse is?

When you miss it.

No one likes admitting it, but victims of abuse generally experience feelings of fondness and longing for their abuser.

If you’re like me, the scapegoat, then you can also “miss” the feeling of being blamed and dumped on.

Now, miss means two different things in this context.

There’s the actual feeling of “I wish they were here, I’d like to talk to them.”

Then there’s the weirder “I just feel off without some one being a jerk to me at least once a day, or every few days.”

When my dad moved out, it had gotten to the point where I could predict him making a biting remark or losing his temper at me about once a week, maybe more often. There were periods of time it was a daily occurrence.

I was remembering today one startling example of how far this had gone.

I have frequent allergy attacks, sometimes bad enough to resemble a bad cold, and I take medication that makes me sleepy, the symptoms themselves can make me tired also.

Well, it was a miserable day,  and I had taken the medicine, my sister was taking an art class at the time, just a few streets away. My dad got home in time to take her, but sat down in front of the TV and told me I should do it instead. I told him I wasn’t feeling well and shouldn’t be driving (I’m sure I sounded stressed at the time, this happened a lot.) My dad went ballistic, saying he wasn’t feeling well either (he seemed fine,) and I had better obey him and do it. I refused, he grounded me in a rage–for refusing to drive on medication to go two miles away when he had a car. His main reason was he wasn’t wearing pants, and he was livid that he had to go put pants on, because that was so hard.

My dad can act like a five year old sometimes.

I wish I could say this ended well, but in the end I felt guilty (for no real reason) and went and picked her up, which did not get me off the hook. I got grounded. I was 19 or 20 when this happened, if you’re thinking there’s a red flag to some kind of power imbalance in that, then you’re right.

That might have been when I told my parents to stop punishing me for stuff, a conversation I never should have had to have at 20, but…

The crazy thing is when I asked my mom about it, she was mad at me for acting that way, calling it unacceptable…when I was clearly not in a good position to be driving.

That kind of thing happened all the time. My dad used everything he could to have power over me, and over anyone else he could feasibly control. He got frustrated with people he couldn’t control.

You might wonder how one could possible miss that?

Well, it’s like my therapist says, it was my normal. I don’t miss it because I liked it, I miss it because it was the centre of my life, even if I didn’t choose it.

The Israelites missed Egypt after they left it, they complained that they could get food and water there, and they wished to return to it, thought hey were brutally treated slaves, who had their own sons taken from them and killed just as a power move to keep them second class citizens so they couldn’t overthrow the Pharaoh.

How do you miss that?

How do I miss someone who actively tried to ruin my life and make it as hard as possible. Who resented it if I or my sisters were ever happy, especially doing anything that he had no part in.

I believe the missing that feels like a regular type of longing is what comes in cases like mine where the abuser could seem like an okay person. When they were happy, they could please and be thoughtful. But so can most of us, it’s a very broken person who can never be nice. They exist, but it’s rare.

My dad took fits of “kindness”, saying nice things, trying to be caring, supportive, etc.  They were not wholly feigned, as C. S. Lewis put it, nor much dearer than dishwater, a single prick of any little word or event would burst his bubble. The rage would be back.

Often my dad would contrive a fight after any positive day or conversation we had, like he was not comfortable without the resentment being present. This was how I cam to see he hated me.

My mom can be the same way, only she is not comfortable till she’s made it so she feels you’re disappointed in her and unhappy with her. Even if it would have been simple to not say or do something to cause that situation. They are quite a pair aren’t they?

My parents are not really happy the way they are, they are just content to be miserable. If that makes sense.

I, who am not, have always been an anomaly to them, someone they cannot really understand.

My dad’s resentment really became demonic after awhile, he seemed to be incapable of wishing anyone else to be happy, even for a moment.

My dad was also always a bully, even from his childhood. He got picked on, but he also picked on other people as much as he could get away with.

He picked on a young man who had the misfortune of working for him, he went so far as to write and produce a soundtrack mocking the poor guy, and got his friends to help him, I’m not sure why they did, other than my dad’s friends have a lot of issues.

The man finally stopped taking his calls after quitting working for him, and my dad bemoans the fact to this day that he doesn’t get to torment him anymore, he never truly realized why it was horrid. I’m glad the guy had the sense to get out.

And of course, me. I got picked on for years. My dad eventually stopped doing it much once I stopped reacting to it or giving any sign I even heard, he found other ways to get a reaction out of me. But really, as I stopped reacting even to direct insults, he just ignored me as much as possible, blowing up whenever he got the chance to take some control back,

It puzzled my dad why I became immune to him. I think the song Titanium describes it best

“You shout it out, but I can’t hear a word you say. I’m talking loud, not saying much.

Criticized, but all your bullets ricochet, you shoot me down but I get up.

I’m bullet proof, nothing to lose, fire away, fire away. Ricochet, you take your aim, fire away, fire away. Shoot me down, but I won’t fall, I am titanium.

Cut me down, but it’s you who have further to fall, ghost town, and haunted love.

Raise your voice, sticks and stones may break my bones, talking loud, not saying much.

Stone hard! Machine Gun! Fired at the ones who run. Stone hard as bulletproof glass!”

This song perfectly describes how verbal abusers treat people. the “fired at the ones who run” signifies how the people who are intimidated get shot at more. 

And, like the song says, if you want to survive, you can end up like titanium. Hard.

I’m not sure there is any way, even with God, to avoid some hardening of yourself when you live with abuse.

The Bible says if you remove the cause of strife, it will cease. People critisize the Bible for it’s insistence on cutting sinful, wicked people out of contact with others, even to the point of death, but the Bible is wiser than we are, God knew long ago how sin works.

Abuse is one of the ugliest forms of domestic sin. Maybe the ugliest. the only things that might be worse are the perversions people do to each other in the name of science, or religion, or some other strange system.

Abuse could be the prototype for every other sin cycle, as it traps not only the abuser but the abused in their private and public sins. Hypocrisy and deception naturally follow abuse, like rain follows clouds.

My dad brought out the worst in all of us, he made us crueler, more spiteful people, because he played off all the worse parts in us to keep in power. Abusers rely on the fact that you have human weaknesses to keep control over you.

Actually, the anime remake Fruits Basket released an episode yesterday that portrayed this perfectly (that anime is genius by the way, using a curse + Beauty and the Beast type story to represent abuse, it works almost too well.) The main abuser manipulated the best boi Kyo by reminding him he was a monster. Till he broke.

Abuse makes you feel you are the monster, my dad set me up to feel that way from birth. All your faults are blown out of proportion, all your virtues are ignored unless they want something from you. You are told no one will love you but them. Or they are doing this because they love you.

God himself must want to gag when an abuser claims to love their victim (hey, it’s in Revelation if you don’t believe God has those emotions).

But because they lied to you, you think you are stuck with them. You really won’t be loved by anyone else.

My dad and his friends used to go off on me for not having people skills, no one ever bothered to teach them to me. That’s the point, abusers don’t want you to get better.

When I obviously had, when I made friends, my dad criticized them for being twits. He criticized my church fro not being like his. He criticized anyone I liked. I should associate with anyone he didn’t approve of, you see.

My dad is no one to miss, but because he could play the part, my mind can easily rick itself into thinking otherwise.

I want to give some advice to anyone reading this who might be recognizing this tenancy in yourself, maybe you even have an ex like this.

The Bible says to forgive, and we must forgive, if we ever want to be free, but it does not say to always forget. In fact, sometimes we need to remember when people sinned.

If you are a victim of abuse of any form, you have a difficult journey, but it is doable.

You must let go of your resentment, but you must remind yourself regularly that you were right to get out of that situation, that you deserved better, and you should get to be happy.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. The player is at fault, but they probably have no more power to leave the game than you did, until you were rescued form it (even if you left yourself, something happened to open your eyes, we don’t just suddenly become wiser).

Sad as it is, my dad cannot control himself, not because he cannot make different choices, but because he cannot change his own heart. He refuses to be helped, and so he cannot help it.

I wonder sometimes if someone who is abuse might read my posts and wonder about themselves. But they would never change unless a work had already begun in their heart, proof will never change an abuser.

I may someday get told I was stupid to call it abuse, if I ever talk to my Uncle or my dad’s friends gain, no doubt they will protest. But I no longer care if they think I’m over reacting.

Another thing about the Monster complex.

My dad used to feel like a monster growing up, and the truth it, he was one. He still is, but that does not mean he is also not God’s child.

Sadly, sometimes a person is just barely saved. But they do trust God, they just should not be around anyone else they can control.

The Victim feels like a monster too. When you suffer a lot, you can feel like you must deserve it, it’s one of the way we struggle to make sense of the insensible, but Cruelty is always senseless.

Cruelty is madness, that is why it is so horrifying. We can live with anything we feel happened for a reason, but when reason is gone, so is our courage.

That is why one of the paths to healing is through letting God redeem your suffering, bringing about a good out of it. Giving it a reason. But people confuse God giving it a purpose with God having a reason for it to happen in the first place.

God, being outside of time, can have a purpose in something He knows was going to happen, but didn’t want to happen.

It is more like how a mom can see her child get shoved off a junglegym and rush to catch them. They didn’t want it to happen, but they have a response ready.

Why do we have medics on standby at sports events? We know accidents happen. Why do we have laws for punishing crime, we know crime happens, but anyone who says the law causes crime is out of their mind and should be ignored.

God has a plan in place for what will happen.

The Bible says “my life and times are in Your hands.”

We should feel relieved that when suffering happens, God already had a plan to make it work for us for good, even if He didn’t want it to happen.

God is our Insurance Policy. He fixes the damage when other stuff happens to us. When you rely on God, you admit that you cannot protect yourself.

When my dad hit me I could not understand why God allowed it, but a year later, I thought I had an idea, that God allowed it to push my mom and sisters to agree enough was enough. I didn’t really get hurt (outside) and it took the blinders off.

Was it good? No. But it helped keep more stuff like that from happening. Much like a vaccine can only exist because a disease does, but if you survive the disease, you can help more people with the vaccine from getting it at all. It would be better not to need it, but humans don’t get a life free of trouble.

Anyway, this ended up running long.

Missing my dad is kind of an illusion, but if I don’t buy it, it’s not a delusion. A delusion would be to let yourself be fooled.

And the road out is to remember the truth, and then know that God does have a plan for helping you, if you embrace it.

Until next time–Natasha.

 

 

To Good Men.

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I was watching a Reddit video the other day, it was asking men if they had ever experienced sexism. There was a lot of surprising stories.

I know men experience sexism, you just have to hang out with any average group of under-30-year-old women for long enough, you’ll hear it.

To be fair, I’ve heard male sexism from my own father, so I am not unaware it is in fact real.

Some of the comments were a little hard on women, and some described something I wouldn’t really call sexism, like expecting the man to pay for food, that’s chivalry, just like a woman should be respectful and not say certain things.

I am not saying that because I’m afraid of men and have some weird idea about submission (more on that later), but because I don’t think women get a free pass to say whatever they want about men just because men are supposedly sexist pigs (as always, the irony is that is a sexism statement.)

By and large, however, I agreed with the men. Some were not hired because company managers preferred to hire women, or were told to hire women for “diversity.” Often if the manager was a woman, she didn’t like men, but there was even a man who didn’t like hiring men… yeah, only hired young women… you can guess from there.

Well, not really sexist so much as gross in that last case.

Men don’t get preferred for child custody, even when they are clearly the more responsible parent. I even have a personal example of that, one of my cousins married a real psycho woman, who ended up in prison, that was how he finally got custody, if I’m not mistaken, and she had two kids. When I knew her she wasn’t as insane, but she was not a good mom. I could see that (and I was a teenager).

So, needless to say, I believe these stories. The most horrifying ones is where fathers get the police called on them for being with their own kids at a playground, just being responsible. And get comments that they are just “giving mommy a break.” Even when they are the one who spends more time taking care of the kids.

Men just do not get enough credit, yeah, I said it.

I don’t care if women want to work the same jobs as men, I want to be able to do things like that, but it’s not like it’s some kind of special achievement to be woman and work a job that men usually do, not now that it’s common. Even before, isn’t it just a necessity to work?

Look at it this way, do you think men deserve kudos for being actors, dancers, painters, chefs, and teachers? Things now seen as more natural for women (most of my drama group participants were girls, no matter what group it was.) Their work might deserve credit, but do they get credit just for being men in a field dominated by women, or at least gay men, according to the stereotype.

Some people might, but most won’t think men deserve credit because of their gender.

I don’t see how it’s any different for a woman. I want to be proud of what I do because it’s worth doing, not because it’s something not a lot of women do, and that’s rare now.

I felt like dedicating this post to all the men out there who are doing a good job with their families, who are trying to work hard, and value quality over a meaningless diversity.

I’d like to give a shout out to the fathers I know at my church who are involved in their kid’s lives and take care of them. Who adopted kids when they couldn’t have any, and chose one girl no one else wanted who didn’t even speak English.

To the pastors who go out of their way to take care of people in the congregation and outside it. Who aren’t too good to work in food distribution alongside us laymen.

To the men who volunteer in children’s ministry and play music and teach classes and assist us ladies in our class.

To the male preschool teacher I know.

To the guy who mows our lawn sometimes without us asking for it (I’ve actually seen this in more than one neighborhood.)

To my grandpa who paid for my braces.

I do not take you all for granted.

Funny, because as a woman with a bad dad, I am supposed to hate men. I grew up being picked on by my dad, but I never hated boys, I thought they were fun, I still do.

Guys can be more forgiving of my loud, opinionated personality type than girls can. Just the way it is. Which defies the stereotype of men not liking women to have a mind of their own.

I’ve had issues with a lot of men in my life, but they were all of a certain type, generally kind of sexist, or at leas prideful. There’s always been men I got along with fine, from childhood up, and I don’t see any reason to put all of them in the same box any more than I’d put all women in that box.

Geez, it’s like you can’t even like men anymore, in public. Women who support male politicians get torn to shreds by other women. Women who think feminism is completely out of control.

Hey, I got flack for supporting the bible at church, and what it said about men and women.

A note on that for anyone who might wonder if I really believe women should submit to men.

  1. I think it’s talking about wives and husbands, in the greek those words are the same as man and woman.
  2. I think, like modesty, submission is going to look different depending on your culture. In the USA, women can be very independent, and men ought to understand the kind of person they are marrying, as well as the demands of our society; a woman can’t usually rely on a man in Western Culture because it’s set up so that everyone has to work and make decisions on a daily basis without consulting their spouse on every occasion. I think in a culture where women were mostly solely dependent on men, the men had more of a right to make decisions about stuff they knew more about, but the Bible doesn’t teach that women have to agree with men, or do anything they think is wrong, or that they cannot correct men on something if they are wrong, just that they need to do it with grace, as with anyone else, and with patience.

Furthermore, I think the submission question misses two things, one, if any man is demanding submission, he already had an attitude problem, unless the woman is acting totally childish about something and anyone would have to stop her.

The other thing is that we are also told to submit to one another, meaning we need to put other people’s preferences first most of the time. A good marriage will mean both people want to do that, and we get the classic give and take that we all go gaga for in fiction.

But in the event that doesn’t happen, at least one person needs to be doing it, the one who claims to know God. A lot of times, that’s the woman.

If I was to add a third, I think that submission does not mean a wife cannot disagree, and argue with her husband. I’ve heard the submission card thrown around as a way to silence opposition period. It really means that when no one can agree, someone has to decide. And a husband can certainly just yield to his wife if he wants to, and many do, a lot. It’s kind of unfair now how often men are expected to cave in to whatever their girlfriends want, and many women feel no such need for their boyfriends.

I’ve seen it work both ways, can we just agree that selfishness in just bad in general, and that in both genders.

Well, time to wrap this up.

So, I like men. I don’t like all of them, all the time, but I like the kind of people they can be, and sometimes they are better at certain qualities I admire than the girls I know.  I am actually glad to know better men than my father, because it gives me something else to use as a standard.

It could be easy to start suspecting all men are secretly jerks at home, but you really just need to listen to their wives and kids closely enough, and you’ll know.

Anyway, big thank you to all the good guys out there, and the women who appreciate them, and until next time–Natasha.

 

 

 

Can abusers be “good” people?

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

Weird title I know. Before anyone gets triggered, it’s supposed to be ironic.

But this is about something I notice especially in the church, but I think it’s outside it too, we in the Church just have it more.

Why is abuse so prevalent yet unnoticed?

I’ve heard several stories of it going on with Christian parents, sometimes physical, but more often verbal or emotional, and it slips by, or worse, the church encourages it.

And as a young teen, it began to puzzle me how with my own father, the people around him thought he was a good guy.

His pastor thought his heart was very for the Lord, mistaking guilt addiction for a strong conscience and self deprecation for a penitent attitude.

People would see him kneel in worship and say he looked so devoted. Not knowing that a lot of the time, he was either thinking very depressing thoughts about what kind of a sinner he was (and that is not worship, by the way, though it can be part of it, but it should be leading you back to appreciating how good God is) or he was judging the church of less committed/less humble people.

I knew all this, but I doubted my own thoughts.

Also, I had the conundrum of knowing my dad was a good businessman, tried to be very fair to his customers. He taught his employees a good work ethic.

He was a good man in other ways (still is, I guess) loyal to his country, committed to honesty and fairness in the legal system.

He didn’t drink a lot, or smoke, or do drugs, he provided for us. He spent money he didn’t need to, and didn’t like to share his snacks, but not to the point of poverty.

All this to say, from the outside, my dad looks like an exceptional citizen. Better than most. And a good Christian.

It’s not unique to my family. As I said, I hear similar stuff, my therapist’s abusive father was a pastor… you’d be surprised (I hope) at how common that is.

It’s the personality type, I think. The kind of men who are drawn to positions of leadership can easily become addicted to control and authority and their own way. They don’t start off intending to be abusive, but they have a weak character and the pressure gets to them, they lack the maturity to recognize the bad behavior, so they use their position and biblical knowledge to justify it.

I’m sure there’s articles out there about this oddity, but I’m just going to give my perspective on it (if it lines up with research, it says more for my perception, right?)

There’s two reasons for it, though I think at the core, they are the same reason.

  1. Mental/psychological

The problem with abusers is they’ve usually been abused. Or they have some weakness that makes them unable to recognize destructive behavior, or they don’t care. Most is the first one.

When you’ve been abused, it feels normal to you. It’s hardwired into your mind. Even if it made you furious, the biblical sounding quote holds true

“Good begets good; evil begets evil;” (Paul Auster).

Evil leads to more evil. You do it because it was done to you. But no one wants to feel they were as bad as their parents. So, they come up with reasons it was okay.

My grandfather once told my dad, not that long ago, that he treated him badly partly because he didn’t know what to do, and partly because “you were kind of an a—h—”

Which still hurt my dad after 50+ years,

My dad told me the same thing. He told me he didn’t know what else to do because I just wouldn’t listen otherwise.

I’ve heard the same words come out of my mouth, I am now trying to break that habit.

It’s so, so easy to convince yourself it’s not as bad as all that. They’re not a bad person. Or you aren’t.

Abusers don’t know any other way to handle people, and even if they’ve seen it demonstrated by friends or movies or books, they often are blind to how they can apply it to themselves.

Yet, they have some awareness that what they do is wrong. My dad used to periodically apologize for it, promise to do better, to never do it again. To be more loving and considerate of my needs.

One time, the last time, was right before he left. He’d come back after his pastor so unwisely counseled him to do so, and brought us flowers and candy and cupcakes. IT was mockery, my sisters and I agreed, because I used to express how my love language (it’s a style of relating described in a book series by Gary Chapman, popular in the Christian culture in America, if you don’t know) was Receiving Gifts. I had hoped my dad would try to love me better by doing it, but he never did, except once in a very long while he’d get us a movie, not me specifically though. He got me presents to make fun of me a couple of times. Fried worms, pimple/acne soap, that kind of thing. (IF you think that sound cruel, it was.)

My dad actively showed his contempt for everything about me, so these gestures meant nothing, only rubbed it in. We didn’t touch the stuff, I tore up a note he left and threw it away.

So, when the apology came, along with a fake smile and penitent look, I didn’t even look him in the eye and said I wold not talk to him, he still told me anyway, to my chagrin. My sister was there, and refused to talk to him, with more success. It was a reminder how little my comfort mattered, or my acceptance.

My dad basically gave up on me ever accepting his behavior, made it the same as rejecting him, and excused all his abuse on those grounds. It was my fault for not being a better daughter, was his line of thinking. And sometimes almost exactly what he would tell me.

This is how abusers think. Otherwise, most of them, at least the Christians or otherwise moral ones, would be too horrified at themselves to live with themselves.

My dad also suffers from bipolar depression. Or did, he does not really anymore. He went off his medication, and actually got better. But the things that cause depression, he never learned to deal with properly. My dad does not have manic, uncontrollable mood swings like you hear about, instead he has a tenancy to dwell on the negative, to lose his temper quickly, and to feel guilty and low about it afterward, instead of seeking help and to change by changing his attitude, he simply tries to stop himself, that never works.

But he’s trying so hard, he has to have an excuse for why it doesn’t work, rather than it just being a hopeless case, no one wants to fee hopeless. No one is hopeless, really, but people who will not allow for God’s grace will end up stuck in a rut they cannot leave.

So, the excuse is, it’s our fault, and abuse is justified.

Abuse is not about hating you family, at first. C. S. Lewis observed that once you mistreat someone, you begin to hate them. The author of “The Enchanted April” also observed that you can dislike someone after you’ve deceived them. The feeling of guilt gets tied to your idea of the person, and you dislike them to avoid disliking yourself, or along with disliking yourself. This was even in the Peabody and Sherman movie.

An abuser hates the person they abuse after awhile because they know, deep down, that they are wrong.

A revelation for me was realizing how right I was fro years that I was really not th eone to blame for the situation. I had never dreamed my father would lie to himself so effectively.

This brings me to the second reason:

2. Spiritual/human nature.

We can make all the theories of mental psychosis we wish, but they all are just fancy ways to disguise to ourselves that human beings are deeply flawed, born sinners, and cannot be good. Even our good has so much selfishness, pride, and fear mixed into it that it would not be called pure good by any honest critic.

Pure good, some say, does not exist. Those people do not believe in God. They deny that the evidence that we feel there should be a pure good proves it must exist, for if all we had was mixed, it would be all we would know to expect.

Every child who is shocked at its parents for doing something wrong for the first time is completely justified, we all know we ought to have been perfect. That is why parents get so ashamed and often angry at their kids for calling them out (and yes, you can guess I was that kind of child.)

Really, people mock naivete and it is foolish to expect people to always be good, but it is not unreasonable to think they should be.

Abusers fall into an ugly place on that scale. They must not be found out, for their whole world would crumble. They are not naturally good. They cannot seem to help but be abusive. Even if they could, their fallen nature makes it too tempting not to try, and they can play off others weaknesses to get away with it.

My dad and I both have perceptive skills that go above average. We see things about people they don’t see about themselves. In my case, it makes me an empath. I have chosen to try to use this gift to help others.

In my dad’s case, it made him a nightmare of emotional abuse. Able to read people’s weaknesses and their emotions easily, say just the right thing to throw them off, and yet, enough of it was true to make you wonder if the problem was with you.

I found out there’s a word for one of his tactics: Gaslighting.

He’d deny saying and doing cruel things, say I was just overly sensitive, or I was trying to make him out to be worse than he was, I had this image of him.

I think he really believed it while he was saying it, yet he’d confess at other times to mistreatment.

Still, he was right when he’d say I have self worth issues (I wonder why) and anger and mistrust of him. He was not wholly unaware of what we felt.

Which makes it worse, really.

But human nature is to be easily corruptible.

One last way my dad would appear to be a better person, that I think is commonly why this does not get exposed.

There were times I would stand up to him, boldly, angrily, and tell him off, and he’d listen. Be too surprised to stop me; or, I think, recognizing I was for the moment, out of reach. Perhaps, a part of it is he knew he was wrong, deep down.

The last time this happened was several months before the blow up that led to moving out. I told him he could not threaten me with violence anymore, that he had hit me once, and that was unacceptable, and threatening me again was wrong.

he didn’t disagree. He redirected the conversation, eventually I told him to stop trying to “help” (read: control) me, and then, in a final offer of peace, I asked him to pray about it all and consider what God told him.

I knew soon what happened, we were watching a movie and I commented on one of the characters, and my dad said in a defeated, woebegone voice “maybe his daughter doesn’t want him to help her anymore.” I knew immediately he had not done what I asked, and would not do it. he was determined to take what I said in the worst possible way.

I knew also that more anger would follow that, now that he had dismissed all I said. So I was not surprised when it melted down after the family got back from vacation.

Sadly, my sister had made what seemed like headway on the vacation. Having some really honest conversations, telling my dad to stop doing what he was doing, and how they really felt. It looked like he might change, but he acted the same toward me after getting home, and then within the next week, things got crazy.

It had gotten, I suppose, too close to home for him. he felt his glass house was cracking.

And, here I am.

But trying to understand how an otherwise good man coudl be so cruel, even evil, to his own family has been a hard task for me. One my therapist is assisting with.

Yet, as MHA has noted, being a hero in your profession does not make you a hero with your family, or anyone outside your comfort zone of control.

BNHA Endeavor Wallpapers - Top Free BNHA Endeavor Backgrounds ...

And Miraculous Ladybug has shown how a man can convince himself his end means justified every abuse and exploitation of what should not be exploited.

Hawkmoth ヽ（´ー｀）┌ | Chat noir

Anyway, I hope this post has been interesting for you, since it ran a little long, and until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Why did I choose Therapy?

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I was looking at some posts and videos about therapy today, just to see if other people are sharing my experiences.

I found some surprisingly negative stuff, people saying therapy is for people who can’t face reality, yada yada.

Well, a lot of people have written articles debunking therapy myths, so I can’t add anything new, but I’d like to share why I chose Therapy.

  1. it was not because my depression and anxiety are so debilitating I cannot function.

I can sleep, eat, and work, I don’t feel bad all the time. The feelings are not usually very strong when I do, more of a nagging “something isn’t right” kind of feeling.

The reason I decided to seek therapy despite that is A. I didn’t want it to turn into that because I ignored the problem, and B. I don’t want to act in ways that will hurt the people around me.

With abuse and trauma and neglect, the problem is all you’ve seen demonstrated is the wrong way to handle stuff, therapy cannot replace good parents, but your therapists ideally is showing you a healthier way to listen and talk about feelings and problems, and helping you find what will work for you. In place of being shown it as a child, you can choose to learn it as an adult.

2. I didn’t want a pity party.

What drew me to therapy versus just some kind of support group sort of thing was I wanted to be able to learn and apply for myself so I don’t end up dependent on other people for everything in my life. My therapist acknowledges my life was hard, but doesn’t linger on how that makes me a victim, I’d hate that.

3. I ran out of options

The thing is, therapy is not always necessary. A strong friend group, family, and community can help you the same way.

The problem is, if you need therapy, that’s a  good sign you don’t have any of those things.

That was the case for me, I have loving family members, but not ones who are very emotionally healthy and strong in the areas I need to grow in.

I have friends, but few I can really talk to, I end up encouraging them, more than they contribute to me. Also, people don’t want to talk about abuse, it scares them.

My community was somewhat supportive, but not on an intimate level where I could talk things out and figure out how to move on.

I’ve sought these things for years, and not had as much success as I could wish, so rather than wait until I do, Therapy seemed the wiser choice. Give me some breathing room to build better relationships.

Of course, it can be frustrating not to have those things, but to not have them should not be the end of emotional healing and growth.

4. Therapy is a way to acknowledge my need for help.

It’s dangerous to try to handle everything yourself, but I am tempted to do it. Therapy is a commitment that will keep me from being able to do that, even if I wanted to. It also keeps me talking to my family about my struggles because they are aware of what I’m doing.

5. Therapy is not an escape from the hard stuff.

I did not want to ignore what happened by putting a band-aid on it. Therapy does not do that. The idea is to face it with the attitude that it does not define you, and you can keep it that way by developing healthier habits.

A little look at what this is for me:

A lot of the process of healing is something I’ve been working on for years. So, my therapist knows she is not talking to a novice. So far she focuses on what I need to be encouraged to keep doing it. And to not give up on thinking it can get better, which was what I was tempted to do, and still am sometimes.

I lived in the ad situation for years, it affected me in ways I’ll still be discovering for years, and that’s okay. Because good emotional health does not depend on knowing every thing that bothered you ever before you can be good again. It depends on knowing how to treat it when something comes up.

Also, having issues does not mean you live out of them, as I’ve said before.

One of my defining issues for years has been “It’s my fault”, my dad used to blame me for literally everything that upset him about our family.

My therapist says he was all the more angry at me because I refused to accept his blame. My dad upbraided me for “fighting him” which meant all I resisted and argued and called him out on over the years. he didn’t break me. But he tried, and just knowing he tried was traumatic.

Perhaps some of you know what I’m talking about. Maybe the person didn’t go all the way with a threat, or an attack, or a bad decision, but just that they did part of the way was scary, and you didn’t know if they’d go further.

The more my dad tried to scare me, the more I fought it.

There’s a quote I found about depression that goes like this:

Quotes about Clinical Depression (42 quotes)

That’s what it is like for me. I was holding my family together by sheer enduracne, it felt like, until I just couldn’t do it any more. I ignored my suffering. Or I faced it alone with God because I had no one to talk to.

I came a lot further because of God, but turning to God can become a way of avoiding it, not because God does not help, but because you can stop actually seeking his help in your attempt to use that to justify not needing anyone else. God’s help may be in other people.

6. I thought God told me to.

Avoiding therapy was stressing me out more than my other problems were, now at least that is off my plate.

I did not want to need help, but the thing is, I also do not want to live my life by that desire. The one to be stronger than other people just to make it easier for myself. Being smart has always made college classes easy for me, yet in classes I do struggle in, the worst of it the people who have an easy time and have no pity for those who don’t.

I’m the classmate people ask questions of and what the homework is, because I don’t mind telling them. Would you ask the person who acts like they are better than you for knowing?

Even if I stumbled through without therapy, I don’t want to be the type to judge people for needing it. I have had a weakness for being afraid of people who are broken, partly because I lived with it for so long, but I want to have compassion for them and be able to help them.

(Note: I know someone who thinks that handling things on their own has always gotten them through life just fine, but this same person rarely if ever confronts people about what they don’t like, shares their feelings, admits to needing help, or is able to sympathize with other people. They are not a bad person, they are a kind person in many ways, but you just can’t talk to them about anything really deep and expect understanding. So it can be deceptive to assume you are fine just because you feel fine, maybe you aren’t miserable, but your life could be lacking so much meaning in it because you settled for barely getting by on your own.)

7. Therapy will, I hope, make me a better person.

My hope is to be a better sister, daughter, wife, friend, and christian for gong through the hard steps of therapy now and not later.

In all honesty, it can feel like it’s only making it worse. After a session I feel like my insides got poked with a stick on all the raw spots. I can feel off for days afterward.

But even with physical sickness, treatment can make you feel worse.

I used this analogy with my sisters (two of us have or have had braces)

Therapy is like getting braces.

Your teeth may be really messed up, many teeth problems can cause serous issues later in life if left unchecked, like breathing problems, infection, or bone damage from incorrect chewing. Teeth can grow in on themselves and be very painful.

But you’ve had them that way your whole life, since they grew in, you’ve grown up biting and sleeping the way you do, you’re used to how it looks. It’s just your teeth.

So, when your parents make you get braces, it feels awful. It’s painful for the first few weeks, and then with each new tightening, the pain is fresh all over again.

If you’re like me, you have a bunch of appliances, it gets stressful changing the new methods time after time, just when you got used to it.

And then, finally, you have that perfect smile you always wanted, the work is over right, only took 2 and half years…

Metal Braces Images, Stock Photos & Vectors | Shutterstock

but, then you have a retainer, or your teeth will go back into their old habits.

49024 Orthodontist | What Happens If I Don't Wear My Retainer?

You see how it’s the perfect metaphor?

Teeth are as stubborn as thought and behavioral patterns, if you aren’t careful, they get out of hand fast. They are hard to correct, and without diligent care, braces can get pretty gross and give you cavities.

Therapy is like braces, it hurts, every session can feel like a new tightening, until you get used to it. even then, what if a new element is introduced later that starts the pain up all over. Even if in reality it’s only a couple years, at the beginning, that seems like forever.

And afterward, you know it won’t stay fixed without help. You have to “retain” what you learned in therapy in order to maintain a healthy  life.

Maybe not getting braces won’t be fatal (it can be with extreme dental problems) but it will leave you in a lot worse shape than if you just bite the bullet for a couple years.

My dad, ever the example of what not to do, did not wear his retainer or keep gong ot the dentist, and his teeth got crooked again and he ended up with a painful infection, had to get most of them replaced.

And you may not be so lucky with emotional and behavioral problems.

My dad almost preferred not having the real thing, it can be easier that way, dentures and fake teeth don’t rot, right?

Just so superficial relationships with people who won’t challenge you may last 20 years, but never be anything really valuable.

I like to keep my real teeth just like I’d like to feel my own feelings with really deep relationships. So, I’ll take the harder but healthier method.

Therapy does not get me out of hard work, it just keeps me form blowing it out of proportion. It keeps things in their proper place, much like braces do.

That’s what I have for you today, I hope if some of  you were wondering about what therapy is like, this answered your questions. This is just my experience of 4 sessions, so I’m barely getting started and not all therapy is the same, but it’s what I have available.

Until next time–Natasha.