No More Excuses: Reclaiming Power

Moving forward from surviving abuse to thriving requires setting excuses aside, putting blame where it belongs, and reclaiming our power to build a life we love.

Conditioned to Accept Blame

Abuse victims are raised to accept blame for the horrible things their abusers did to them. My own mother’s fallback was that she was just teaching me lessons I needed to learn. The main lesson learned was that I could never have a life other than the one she designated for me. If I showed any autonomy at all, there was Hell to pay in physical, emotional, and mental abuse.

I’ve shared before that the abuse victim readily accepts the blame because it is easier than accepting powerlessness. If I accepted responsibility for Mom’s abusing me, it meant that I have power to stop her abuse. I just needed to learn how to respond, or act perfectly in every situation. Of course, that expectation is unrealistic. Still, it is easier to accept the label of “bad” than accept that the person you love hurts you and there is nothing you can do about it.

The problem is that blaming ourselves only keeps us in the shackles our abusers would have us wear. It keeps us from healing. The emotions attached to the abuse are scary. But by accepting the truth of their origin, the hurt can be healed.

The Crippling Power of Excuses

There were times in my own healing that fear stopped me in my tracks. I desperately wanted a short cut or a way out. It seemed easier to stand by the side of the trail and point fingers at my abusers. Blame became excuses for not moving forward. “I can’t move forward because the pain you caused is too great.” “I can’t be the person I want to be because you didn’t give me what I need.”  “I’ve made stupid life choices and it is all your fault.” The limiting effects of trauma on our abilities are real and they can limit our energies. But they do not need to stop our progression.

Excuses for staying where we are simply create stronger bonds between us and our abusers. Not healing, not growing, not learning are the things our abusers would wish for us. We don’t have to stay stuck there. We have the keys to open the prison doors and be free from the effects of abuse.

Keys to Freedom

Accepting responsibility for our own actions is the first key to the freedom we crave. Working through the reality of the abuses I suffered helped me gain understanding about my tendencies for self-destructive behavior. It was a relief to find what was at the root of my anger and tendencies to shut people out. So processing the pain diffused the intensity of my negative reactions. Accepting responsibility for those actions freed me to find solutions and ways to move forward.

The truth is we have power to improve our behaviors. We can make restitution for hurts of the past that we are responsible for. Taking responsibility for our actions means we reclaim the power over our own lives.

Being okay with imperfection is an important part of reclaiming our power. Accepting responsibility for our own actions means accepting that even our best efforts can fall short of our intentions. A residual belief from being abused and neglected as a child is that if only we are perfect (or the people around us are perfect) the pain would stop. That is simply not true. Freedom to be happy is about learning to process the pain so it does not trap or poison us.

Owning the Light

Accepting the light in our lives is key to reclaiming the power over our lives. When we use our negative experiences for excuses to be stuck, our focus stays on the negative. We are crippled by the past. Shifting our focus forward and letting go of excuses opens our vision to see the light scattered throughout our lives.

No life is exclusively evil nor exclusively good. Whatever the severity of our trauma, or the toll it takes on our minds and bodies, life has a way of sprinkling light throughout our experiences—pieces of hope and strength—to hold onto as we navigate the darkness of the trauma. As we are willing to face the reality of the damage that the heartache caused (even if it’s one small piece at a time), we find life-saving light that kept the trauma from completely destroying us.

Accepting both the trauma and the light enhances our freedom to build a life we can thrive in.

Reclaiming Power Over Our Lives

While we don’t have the ability to control every circumstance in our lives, we have the power to choose what we will do with what we have been given. We don’t have to stay victims or in the muddled world of our abusers.

Freedom comes as we set excuses aside, put blame where it belongs, and reclaim the light scattered throughout our lives. We CAN build a life we love.