How Abuse Skews Our Identity
Abuse skews our identity and makes it difficult to see ourselves clearly. When we are abused as children, our life turns into a focus on survival instead of a journey of discovering and deciding the person we want to be.
Brokenness and Shame
Severe abuse as a child left me with more damage than could be seen on the outside. My third-grade teacher reported suspicious bruises on my arm, but the physical abuse was only a portion of the trauma at home. The abuse at the hands of both my parents caused a severe brokenness. I really couldn’t see the beauty in any part of me. It felt like my brokenness was something to be ashamed of and should be kept hidden.
In my adult years, the broken pieces of me that were buried by pain, demanded to be seen. The things I thought I knew about me were challenged. The me I had built shattered into a million pieces. Abuse skews our identity, but cannot destroy. The trauma of my childhood would not be silenced any more. I needed help to put me back together and found a therapist I trusted. I learned how abuse skews our identity, and more importantly, how to regain clear vision.
From Miracles in the Dark
Dr. Abbott explained that the traumatic events of my childhood were frozen in storage in the recesses of my brain. It is a built-in safety mechanism that keeps us functioning on some level during the most harrowing of times. It is like what happens to war veterans—most notably, those who served in Vietnam. Many of the most horrific experiences are kept hidden until the victim is in a somewhat emotionally safe place. It is called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. When the victim is ready, those events come to the surface to be dealt with or processed. For me, the dark experiences were largely kept boxed away so the light could gain my focus. Basically, for the first 32 years of my life, I was mentally incapable of dealing with the extent of the trauma inflicted by my parents.
Finding the Pieces of Me
For me, it was not only the memories, pain, and fear that were hidden away, it was like there were actual parts of me that were boxed away as well. I was not whole. Even with the beautiful beams of light scattered throughout my experiences, I was broken into a puzzle of a thousand pieces with only a handful visible. Now, it seemed the Lord was placing boxes on my path that contained the long-lost pieces of me. Could the brokenness really be healed? The idea that there were parts of me that needed healing instead of feeling like I was hopelessly “crazy” re-lighted my motivation. And so, I continued to write, pray, and struggle to move forward.
The reality that I was severely abused by my parents, turned my life upside down. It threw me into a world I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in. But even in the bouts of denial, there was a relief in having the truth come out.
Know and Feel
“Extensive international research on psychological trauma and evidence-based treatments of PTSD provides a solid ground for knowledge and a method to help survivors recover. Healing means expressing memories of traumatic experiences and constructing a personal narrative of past, present, and future. It also means defining the biopsychosocial effects— effects which live in a survivor’s present experience. A research pioneer in the field, Bessel Van der Kolk states, ‘that in order to heal, you need to know and feel what you feel.’ Recovery can lead to finding a meaning and to post-traumatic growth. This is true for all of us. After all, underneath, we are all the same.” (The PTSD Workbook Third Edition, Mary Beth Williams, PhD, LCSW, CTS; Soili Poijula, PhD, New Harbinger Publications, 2016) https://www.newharbinger.com/9781626253704/the-ptsd-workbook/
When I was ready to address it, I found that there is a freedom in allowing ourselves to feel and express the intense emotions linked to our trauma. As we discover ways to express and let go of those emotions with professional guidance and counseling, peace can accompany the process.
Working Through the Fears
Being abused affected my identity. Really what it did was hide my identity or cover it up with the traits I needed to survive. There was part of me that felt guilt for being the kind of person that would be abused. Part of me felt weak. Part of me was willing to be whoever Mom wanted me to be. So much of my energy was spent in trying to mitigate the pain by keeping it hidden away. Healing meant working through the fears and believing that each broken part of me had something worthwhile to add to the whole.
A Choice
Abuse skews our identity, but we can find a way to a clearer vision of who we are. We cannot choose the past, but we can build a future by mining the strengths and goodness inside us. Ultimately, we can choose to stay in the muck of the pain and anguish or we can choose to own our lives and discover and nurture our true identities as individual, cherished, and gifted children of a loving, kind Eternal Being.
A decision—will I allow my abusers to determine who I am or the caliber of life I live? Or will I own my life and be the me I was meant to be?
I have never seen anyone with such perseverance, dedication, strength and grit to tell a story that needs to be told. Tammy has stepped across the barriers of secrets, threats, intimidation and terror to let the world know no matter how frightening her life was, there is hope and light. She made it and so can others.
Telling the secrets that an abuser demands be kept has been one of the most freeing parts of my recovery. Truly there is hope and light for all.
–Tammy