"Negative Programming"

There have been many times in my life when a voice, a tone of voice, a color, the appearance of a person, a smell or some other element picked up by my senses reminded me vividly of the events of my child sexual abuse; It could happen anywhere and with out warning. Before I truly dealt with the issues of my abuse, these events triggered an almost instant regression to the little boy being violated and victimized by so many and in so many ways. The feelings were real and, in some ways, scarier than the actual events themselves. I was older and trying to understand what was happening.

It was not until I went to a support group for adult survivors of child sexual abuse and listened to the stories of others.One member wrote the words "negative programming " on the white board and it was an A-HA moment for many of us.It was then we realized that our reaction to many of these elements impacting our senses was as much habit as it was "real" regression. The abuse and the predators had in some way conditioned our minds to react a certain way. That was when I decided that I needed to reprogram my mind a bit.

My first step was to recognize when one of these events was starting.I then tried to look at it in the context of the moment, not the context of 30, 40, 50 years ago. I simply asked myself "why" was I reacting this way. I didn't want to. I was in no real danger.

The abuse drove me to both physical and emotional isolation, as much to get away from myself as from others.

As a child I thought I carried a sign that told all that I was vulnerable to sexual abuse. Once the actual abuse stopped,The nightmares and flashbacks kept it front and center in my mind, both conscious and subconscious.

Pondering Shame

I am in a Linked In group called Parenting 2.0 and one of the discussions is around "creating" yourself, rather than "finding" yourself. I think this is particularly apropos for survivors of child sexual abuse. In many, if not most cases, our memories are gone, our morals are corrupted and our emotional development is stunted. It seems to me that I kept silent and suffered inside because I was horrified by what was happening to me, and felt I had no power for self-protection and no adults who would stand for me. Once I reached a certain age, the perpetrators no longer perpetrated, but the memories lingered on in living color. Then began the second phase of child sexual abuse. Most of the coping mechanisms I had as a child were serious character flaws in the adult. At some point, the abuse itself, except for the nightmares, needed less and less power. That evil force was replaced by my own self-judgement of my own behaviors. I had moved from being shamed by what others had done to how I was living.

To heal, I needed to "recreate" myself, and that is what I did, although, I am not sure I realized it at the time. One step was to intimately understand and accept that I had not responsibility for the abuse, regardless of what i was told at the time. The next important step started with a simple statement made in one of our support groups--"We need to be constantly aware of "negative programming"." It was then I realized that I would have adult experiences, they would trigger a certain fear or anxiety, and I would replay old tapes in my head. i was responding to these adult situations with the tools of a child. This in turn gave me a fresh batch of memories and images that caused me great shame. I am certainly not "fixed" today, but, with God's grace, I have disabled some programs, modified others and replaced some. We cannot change our past, be it the abuse or the behavior, but we can change today and the future to be the person that we choose to be and that God destines us to be.