Guest Post #6: Getting By One Day at a Time (Survivor Road)

Posted on March 13, 2016 by luckyotter

Survivor Road is a blog written by a man who is a survival of childhood sexual abuse. I am not sure if he wants me to use his first name so I’ll err on the side of caution and not use it.

From his Welcome Page:

Researchers have found that 1 in 6 men have experienced abusive sexual experiences before age 18. And this is probably a low estimate, since it doesn’t include non-contact experiences, which can also have lasting negative effects.

If you’ve had such an experience, or think you might have, you are not alone.

If you wonder whether such an experience may be connected to some difficulties or challenges in your life now, you are not alone.

If you are a male–or female–survivor of sexual (or any other kind of) abuse, please stop by Survivor Road and say hello. You may find exactly what you’ve been looking for there and people who have been through similar trauma.

This brave man was kind enough to respond to my invitation for guest bloggers, but his post isn’t about abuse or mental illness per se. Instead, he wrote this inspirational post about how to survive as an abuse victim, the 12-step way: one day at a time. This sage advice can apply to almost any problem or situation which is tripping us up in life, not just surviving abuse.

GETTING BY ONE DAY AT A TIME
By Survivor Road

I’ve never liked public speaking. When Lauren asked me to write a guest post for this blog I thought I might feel different. I was wrong. This is so much akin to walking into a room filled with people that are all used to hearing from one person and now here am I, this new guy, a stranger, and what can he possibly say that is going to be of any importance? And I will agree what is important to me may not matter to you. (That doesn’t help the self-doubt either)…

If I could bottle up everything I’d like to say into one line, it would probably be:

You can survive each day if you live each day as just one day. No reliving the past or hiding in fear of the future. Today is more than enough for today.

I know, rather trite. But being trite doesn’t keep it from being true. I’ve found it works for myself, but so many I have talked to have expressed the same idea. You can only live in this moment, so don’t expend all your energy on any other time but the present. Don’t judge your past actions based on your present understanding. Accept your actions were acceptable for the time and place they happened.

This used to be much easier for me. For over thirty years I didn’t remember much before turning fifteen. Some good some not-so-great, but mostly my life as a kid was more mystery than memory. In my “gut” I knew there was more – there was something, but I couldn’t tell you what. I went through dozens of therapists by the age of forty, all with different ideas and philosophies. Religious, secular, it didn’t matter. I just wanted an answer to what happened so I could know who I was. The major hitch in all this – I believed who I was depended on what had happened to me.

Then, when the memories started returning, I wove a new ‘understanding’ – I believed I was what had happened to me. I was the abuse. Then I was the cause of the abuse. It was all my fault. And if I was so flawed I could cause those kinds of things to happen to me at nine, or five, or two… just imagine how screwed up I could make life yet to happen. So in one bucket I had my life, guilt over my past, and fear of my future all stewing together. And that sucker got real heavy in a hurry.

I’d love to say I have it all sorted out now. That I’m doing so great that I agreed to be a guest blogger. But that’s not the case. There are times I still wonder if my intense draw to other men is wrapped up in my abuse. And there are the nights I cry myself to sleep or sit up screaming in the middle of the night, reliving the pain, or worse – humiliation, of something from my past. I still deal with triggers which can be as innocuous as a word, sound, or smell.

I used to think that, if other people can manage, I can. I’ve heard/read stories so much worse than what I suffered of people who are survivors and living each day strong. But, for me anyhoo, trying to live my life because someone else manages to — that doesn’t work. I have to be because I want to be.

And, bottom line, there it is. I want to live. I want to accept all of me. That does not mean accepting what happened to me, but it does mean accepting that it did happen. Maybe a fine line, but a major difference in viewpoint. What happened was horrible. But it did happen. And that’s the other point – it did happen; but it is not happening anymore. And even when my dreams are interrupted by the terrible truth of the past, it is still of the past. Does it impact today? Sure. But does it rule today? No.

At least it doesn’t rule this day. Tomorrow is another day, but I will live that day when it gets here. My hands are still way too busy juggling to add anything future.

Life is not always sweet and wonderful. But it is life. Regardless of what I believe lies on the other side of death, there are things here and now that I am not willing to let go of. Even with the pain. Even with the memories. Even with the bouts of unfathomable depression.

You have the choice over how you live. I know it doesn’t always feel that way. And sometimes we can’t see anything but the destruction of our souls. But even when all is dark and we’re trapped within the cellar of depression, our actions are still our choice. Make the choice you are best able to make and there is no reason to regret it later.

Whether or not you can be at peace with the world around you, my hope for you is peace with the world within you.

Chronic rage is a trap, not a trophy.

Posted on June 8, 2015 by luckyotter

If we are survivors of narcissistic abuse, we are all at different stages of our recovery. If we are just coming out of a relationship with a narcissist or in the process of going No Contact (which is the best gift we can give ourselves), it’s natural to feel anger and even hatred toward our abusers. Our anger overrides the fear they instilled in us and makes it possible for us to take the actions necessary to disconnect from them.

When I started this blog, I too was extremely angry at my narcissists, particularly my psychopathic ex. As an ACON, I railed on about my parents too, particularly my MN mother. Early posts of mine on this blog have a much more bitter and angry tone than my more recent posts, some of which attempt to understand why my narcissists did what they did to me and about what makes narcissists tick in general. I don’t regret making those early, angry posts, because that’s where I was at emotionally on this recovery journey. I NEEDED to feel that anger and hate. It served a survival purpose. But anger is a survival emotion and is meant to be temporary, not become a psychological and spiritual forever-home.

I am no longer in a situation where I am in close contact with malignant narcissists, and I was finding that holding onto all that rage was turning me bitter. When a person is filled with rage, the body’s cortisone levels rise and blood pressure rises. These are physiological changes that make “fight or flight” possible. But over prolonged periods of time, being in such a physiological state is bad for you and can lead to physical illness.

Besides being unhealthy for the body, holding onto rage way past its expiration date makes it impossible to move forward to a place of real healing. If you feel rage all the time, you simply cannot move forward. It blocks you from opening your heart to all the good things that life can offer. Frankly, I was just becoming bored with it. There had to be something better beyond it–and there is!

I see this unwillingness or inability to let go of chronic rage and hatred in many survivors of narcissistic abuse, especially ACONs who were raised by narcissistic parents. Of course it’s perfectly understandable to feel an almost overwhelming sense of injustice and betrayal when you realize your own parents didn’t love you and in fact probably hated you and set you up to fail in life. It’s understandable to hate the people who were supposed to nurture you and give you the tools you needed to have a happy life but instead attempted to murder your soul. I get it, I really do. I felt that way about my mother for many years.

Some of these chronically angry abuse survivors have embraced a mentality of perpetual victimhood, using their rage as a sort of trophy “proving” how abused they were. They can’t or won’t let go of their rage because it makes them feel vindicated. I remember reading a comment from one angry ACON who said if he/she were to let go of their bitterness and hatred, they would have let their abusers “win.” But this person is wrong. Because paradoxically, remaining stuck in misery, rage and hatred is making it impossible for this person to heal and live a happy life, and isn’t being miserable exactly what their narcs want? Holding onto rage and wallowing in all the ways they victimized us vindicates the narcissist, not the victim. If our rage destroys or kills us (because eventually it can), the narcissists will be throwing a party to celebrate.

I think the best revenge is to live well. If a victim of abuse moves into a place of peace where healing is possible and can learn to become happy and even successful in life and stop using their victimhood as a kind of trophy, their narcissists will HATE that! Nothing enrages an abuser more than seeing their victims become happy and successful (and not bitter or angry). So how does healing ourselves and letting go of our “trophies” of rage and hate let the narcs win? It doesn’t. In fact, WE win and THEY lose.

But if I were to say this to them (and I have), I would be accused of “victim blaming” and even “narc hugging.” They would say my blog is “dangerous” to abuse survivors (and they have!) They would accuse me of having no empathy for their plight and am in fact taking the side of those who abused them! None of that is true. They just don’t get it. They think that because I’m suggesting they move away from their hatred, this means I’m blaming them for their misery and making excuses for the narcissists who abused them. This is a dangerous and tragic misunderstanding because they can’t even see the way they have been turned against themselves by their own narcissists! They can’t allow themselves to ever feel happy or let go of the bitterness that continues to hold them hostage to their narcissists even after they’ve gone No Contact.

Narcissism is the “gift” that keeps on giving if you let it. You can’t be happy if your default setting is rage. All that rage will eventually destroy your body AND your soul. In fact, living in a state of perpetual rage can turn a person narcissistic themselves. It’s a fact–I have seen it happen and it’s a horrible and scary thing to witness.

I read a post on Constant Supply: The Narcissist’s Wife about the very same thing I’m talking about here, and their post is what inspired me to write this article. I’d been wanting to write about this, but due to the nasty pile-on I experienced from several ACON bloggers a few weeks back due to an article I posted suggesting we stop hating on all narcissists (the message of which was taken WAY out of context–in no way did I EVER suggest we condone what narcs do or engage with them in any way), I’ve been reluctant to post any more articles even touching on this touchy matter.

Reading this blogger’s article gave me the courage to express my feelings about this apparently controversial issue. I’m prepared to be attacked again, but at least I know what to expect now and can arm myself accordingly. While the blogger I mentioned in the previous paragraph does talk about “forgiving” her narcissist, I wouldn’t go that far myself. I don’t ‘forgive’ my narcissists for the way they held me back all my life and nearly destroyed me, but I no longer choose to hate them either. My attitude about them is that they simply do. not. exist. They are no longer an important part of my life and I refuse to give them any more space in my brain than they deserve. Don’t forget that narcissists crave attention–ANY attention–and that includes negative as well as positive attention. To act as if the narcs don’t even exist is what they hate and fear more than anything in the universe.

Living well and healing yourself without reacting to our narcissists either negatively or positively is the sweetest revenge possible. The narcs will hate you for it.

We are all at different points of our recovery journey, and those who seem stuck in the “rage” setting (which is normal and necessary early in recovery) and have thereby not been able to move forward to real healing should not pass judgment on those who may be farther along the road and have reached a place where holding onto all that hatred was becoming burdensome and harmful.

I chose to jettison all that negative baggage to make my progress along the rocky road of recovery easier, and I have seen many others do it too, and actually become happy people. I hope and pray eventually ALL abuse survivors can reach a point when they realize holding onto their baggage is self-destructive and is holding them back from true healing–and is keeping them trapped in their own identity as “victims.”

I’m prepared to be disagreed with for posting this, but frankly I don’t care. If you are one of those who choose to hang onto your chronic rage, that’s your choice, and I respect that choice. I have no right to judge you or condemn you for doing so. But I don’t think it’s helpful or healthy. Hopefully, some people who have this problem might be able to take away something positive from this article and be able to extricate themselves from the quicksand of rage and continue to move along the road to recovery.

Please also see my article, Why Unrelenting, Chronic Rage is So Toxic.