Empowering Choice Without Fear

So many times when we are processing, we wander aimlessly it seems through the depths of our mind. Many times we need to recall later, and as our crazy, fractured existence demands, we forget. Rarely do we have toe foresight to take notes of our adventures inward, looking outward. Making, or trying too, sense of an existence that many endure, and fewer survive. Today is an exception to this, and we feel pretty good about it. We are developing this as we go, so any digressions are apologized in advance.

The idea of being a survivor means different things to everyone. The term survivor itself, is vague at best, and yet so universally heroic. To survive, means to do more than just live. To experience something, that would destroy the majority of these humans exposed to it. So what so we mean in this context today? A survivor for us, is an individual, or system that has endured a traumatic event, a series of, or the combination of the aforementioned. To define trauma for us, simply an event that not only instills the fear of pain, same and an unending misery, but never knowing if anything short fo death could bring an end to it. We speak of the complex trauma of long term, multi faceted child abuse. Could there be anything worse.

As an adult survivor ourself, we developed our own set of coping skills, behaviors that allowed us to block out the present, to take the body another day forward. All survivors have them. Four us, the early onset caused a fracturing of our identity at the core level. We became, whatever we needed to be, as perceived by a child. Hence, the fractured lives we have lead, allowing us to thrive at times, and suffer others. One of the worst things for us, as survivors of the hell that was our family, feeling as if everything is our fault, and never being good enough for anything.

Okay…we know, that is too things, remember we are crazy! Sometimes someone will chime in with something we all agree on, and it makes it to the screen! Before we digress further….. We are sure that many of us int eh family of abused children can identify with the trauma triangle. Fear, guilt and shame. These we re the cornerstones, of our family’s parenting skills. The physical abuse was only a symptom of their need to have power, and their frustration with us. The other stuff, well that was purely power validation, as it always is. However fear, guilt and shame always remain. These we re the desired end results for the abusers. The idea of respect through mutual admiration, or affection without agenda, or happiness without punishment, is abolished in the abused childs heart and mind. They are taught to be grateful for the homes they have, the loving parents who adore them! They are made to admit, they are etc cease for all the issues int eh dynamic. Subjected to humiliation to dehumanize and crush them. The child os broken down, not once, twice, but continuously seemingly for an eternity.

Eternity, is a long time. How long is eternity? This again is relative to a persons perception. To a child, their idea of time immature, but based on the exact same thing as the adult fo many generations, their age. If a child has been bused, and programmed for the entire existence, that is their benchmark. They do not personally know anteing else exists. They are made to believe they have good families, and the guilt for wanting more is compounded for the guilt of causing all the family problems. Remember, these re your loving parents telling you these things! They would never lie! So the exterior fairy tale goes on, with the world in oblivion to the horror movie behind closed doors. The child knows only pain, fear, and shame. How can we expect antyihgn remotely normal from that? What happens to the dog is is abused? They turn on the one who abuses them. How can we expect anything else from our own youngsters?

By the time we reach early adulthood, many of us have traversed our lives in to homelessness, substances, self destruction, and worst of all, terrible relationships. Seeking love, identity and validation of not our suffering, but our true selves, we will almost always stand in front of an oncoming emotional bus! Even with our advanced defensive skills, we need the sense of belonging, and ignore the warnings of our system counterparts. This again goes to the issue of making decisions, as we always have. As a fractured mind, containing thirteen fragments of a once beautiful mind. None having the total depth, memory or understanding of an adult whole. In true form, we had been mostly unorganized for decades, leap frogging through time, believing to always live in crisis, never understanding why.

See, lol, we nearly went there… Decision making as it applies to emotions, or more importantly how one effects the other. When the normal, or neurotypical mind, processes information, they use their sensory responses, as guided by perception, to generate responses. These responses become choices, which are in turn forced into actions. This is a basic explanation of conscious thought. Try to think of perception, in this case, as a lens. The lens will manipulate the perceptions. The more you bend the lens, the image changes. The abused child has had their lens shattered, looking through a kaleidoscope of fragments, all slightly different.

When your caregivers, push the responsibility for their actions and issues upon their child, the child accepts. A need to belong, the naivety of being a child, and a sense of duty, will compel the child to self loathe. Accepting the facts, they re always wrong, and their actions are destructive. They become exactly what their family taught them to be, scapegoats. How can you even expect anyone to make a rationale choice, coming from an irrational home? Their choices are based on reducing the pain and shame, not anything past the moment of the present. They live their lives as they always do, trying to move forward, tripping ov etc programming of the past.

Finally, as we are in full awareness, and acceptance now for some time, we are coming to se the facts we were never allowed to believe. No matter how many people expressed it, we are not bad, broken, sick, or the cause of anything out of our control. Our control, when was the concert of control ever taught, much less demonstrated to us. The idea we are in control of our decisions, and morality. Even our very belief system, was not our choice, but a list of threats and punishments. The very culture that breeds dysfunction. When we realized the fats, we found that we awe able to make choices, and more importantly, enforce them. We could set boundaries, based on our true, authentic choices. But what is this self control and how do we find it?

Self control can mean different things to everyone, so we will define our meaning here. The ability to discern, int eh course of daily functioning, how we are effected by events. Are we reacting appropriately, based on researched perceptions, or old programming? To determine what is in our control, we hav etc first determine what is out of our sphere of control. If the actions and events we are encountering, are something that we cannot change, then we cannot control. Then we must assess our responses; Are they based in fear, or stored and processed sensory data. An answer here to the fear response, should automatically notate an action process to determine of our dears our justified and rationale. We can then process to remove the fear, and use the events as causal value only, thus removing any motive and emotional responses. Using this process has greatly improved our outlook. We find that the

When we determine what is out f our control, we then realize the power we possess over the choice, and actions we can control. Thus we can choose which emotions to utilize, based on conscious choice rather than reactive emotional response. Instead this evolves into cognitive emotional programming, empowering choice without fear.