The Power to Heal
Finding the power to heal from effects of abuse is a multi-faceted journey. The resulting trauma can affect our ability to move forward. It zaps our strength and makes it difficult to see the path ahead of us clearly. One of the most difficult aspects of my trauma experiences was to accept the reality of my own powerlessness during horrific events.
Accepting Powerlessness
Powerlessness as a victim skews our vision of the world and our role in our own life. Often, we claim responsibility for our abusers’ actions because it eases the sense of absolute powerlessness. Believing we are “bad,” means we can believe we have power to change and stop the abuse. Abusers accuse the victim of being the problem. Somehow it is easier for the victim to accept that lie than the enormity of the truth.
For me, it felt that accepting the reality that I couldn’t stop my parents from hurting me would make the hurt too real. How could I survive its intensity? I was sure it would destroy me. An insatiable desire to control was born in an effort to defy the powerlessness. It was not a healthy kind of control. It was the forced belief that if I could control everything and everyone around me, there would be no more pain.
The Drive to Control
We have a natural drive to control and direct our lives. When that is taken from us, we fulfill that need by trying to control everything else. It is part of a desperate search for the power to heal from the pain.
But misplaced efforts to control actually strengthen the bonds of the abuse we are so desperately trying to escape. It traps us in the trauma. The anger and isolation that result are manifestations of the innate sense of weakness the abuse perpetrates.
The Power to Heal
So how do we find the power to heal? There are no shortcuts. The only way is to actually process the array of emotions, sensations, and skewed thinking caused by the abuse. Every person’s healing journey is different, but the emotions have to be felt and accepted. And in the case of severe trauma, professional guidance is needed. Sometimes the emotion comes a little at a time. Sometimes it comes like a mountain climber getting knocked off a cliff. But either way, as we are determined to regain our footing and our lives, strength will come. Truly, the only power we have is to accept that our brokenness comes from the abuse, not an innate badness that we must overcome.
https://buildonthelight.com/2023/08/08/healing-truths/
Accepting Truth
For me, accepting that in those moments of abuse, my abusers were in control, was critical to my healing. Accepting that I truly was powerless in those moments helped me gain the power to make the changes needed in my life. Accepting that I was (and am) powerless in some situations that life throws at me paradoxically gives me more power in the other areas of my life. That acceptance means I can more effectively protect myself. And it means that I do have the power to heal.
“When you accept that you were powerless over the past — that you did not do anything wrong, that trauma happened to you — you can become present in your current life. You can free yourself from living in the body memory of the past. You need not live with the constant stress of uncertainty about the future. Accepting powerlessness will help you move from a state of hypervigilance or hyperarousal to a state of presence, where you can be in your current life, existing within your window of tolerance of emotions, thinking and feeling at the same time.” https://brickelandassociates.com/control-as-a-trauma-response-knowing-you-were-powerless-helps-you-heal/
The Power is in Us
We do not have to remain victims. We have the power to choose which path our lives will follow.
Recognizing that we have the power to choose what we will do with what we have been given changes everything. That is where we find the power to heal.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl shares his experience as a Holocaust survivor and makes this observation: “In the final analysis, it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of [external] influences alone.”
Embracing the truth—complete truth—will help us uncover the empowerment and freedom we crave.
So powerful!
Oh, Tammy,
This is all so incredibly unfair. You and other victims of abuse never “deserved” one moment of the abuse you suffered. Your abusers’ constant ridicule and blaming you for their cruelty was a lie; evil lies designed to damage you mentally and emotionally as much as they abused you physically. This is total devastation of the victim- inside and out! Even if you can escape the physical abuse, victims still have to live with the psychological damage
Thank You for outlining a way out; a way to leave it behind you in your past, and and not allow it to cripple your bright future !
Cindy, Yes the unfairness of the effects of the abuse others inflict is real, but the opportunity to heal is just as real. Hope in that part of the reality is crucial. My hope is that sharing my journey will infuse others with the hope they need while navigating their own.
–Tammy
Oh, Tammy,
This is all so incredibly unfair. You and other victims of abuse never “deserved” one moment of the abuse you suffered. Your abusers’ constant ridicule and blaming you for their cruelty was a lie; evil lies designed to damage you mentally and emotionally as much as they abused you physically. This is total devastation of the victim- inside and out! Even if you can escape the physical abuse, victims still have to live with the psychological damage
Thank You for outlining a way out; a way to leave it behind you in your past, and and not allow it to cripple your bright future !
[…] It seems that relying on an outside, Universal force would increase our sense of powerlessness. But the opposite happens. It is freeing to know that there is a Higher Power that can give us the power we need to move through the anguish that haunts us and forward to a more beautiful life. The Power to Heal […]
[…] There is power in the word, yet. Adding it to the end of each I don’t know, I can’t, or even I don’t want to, keeps our minds and hearts open to the future. It helps maintain hope. Believing that the destination is still indeed beyond the storm is critical. We just haven’t arrived, yet. The Power to Heal […]
[…] Recognizing that we have the power to choose what we will do with what we have been given changes everything. That is where we find the power to heal. Viktor Frankl learned this truth as a Holocaust survivor, “In the final analysis, it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of [external] influences alone.” Man’s Search for Meaning. We can choose to heal. We can choose to believe. We can choose to live. We have the power to choose to move forward. The Power to Heal […]