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Most people who had an abusive childhood grow up feeling helpless, powerless and controlled,
no matter what the abuse is, physical, religious, emotional or sexual. They could not pack up, leave their home, and move in with someone else.
They were, in fact, helpless and powerless over their environment
or the situation they were in. Many people who come from an abused childhood
that I have been working with are addicted to something. It may be drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, work, or eating disorders of some
sort. Many of these people are burdened by multiple addictions.
Do you suppose that we got so comfortable being controlled by our environment that we
would actually feel lost in a world free from abuse? The truth is that we simply do not know how to handle
the freedom which is given to us, which makes us feel out of control. We
start to miss what was comfortable to us, as painful as it was. Typical "I
don't want to get out of hell because I can name all the streets there".
In trying to escape the environment that had us so controlled, we would marry someone who beats
us, is verbally or emotionally mean to us, forces unpleasant sexual behaviors on us.
We get ourselves married thinking we have found true harmony and peace in our
life only to find ourselves married into another abusive situation. And
once again we find ourselves in a controlled environment. Next we get into
drinking, drugs, gambling, sex, working, eating disorders and whatever makes us
feel good for a moment. Something again was controlling us. We
grew up as abused children and allow ourselves to get into addictive patterns as adults.
Addictive behavior renders us to lose control over our own personal lives.
Whatever we are addicted to have the total control over us. We steal, lie, cheat,
and do whatever it takes to get the thing we are addicted to. Our lives are completely being controlled. Wait a minute, doesn’t that sound familiar? Yes, so many of us are addicted to control! We think we can escape the feelings of helplessness and powerlessness by getting involved in drugs or
relationships, but nothing and no one can set us free from that abandoned and abused childhood but we ourselves.
As children we could trust the fact that we were being abused. We could trust that after so many times, it was going to happen again and again. Well, what is an addiction? Basically it is something
that is bad for us and yet we grow to rely on it again and again to escape
dealing with the pain. Many of us go from one controlled environment of abuse to another controlled environment of abuse. The bottom line is we are completely out of control of our lives.
What do we do to stop this destructive behavior? We must go back to
identify, own, grieve, and let go of our past. There is no excuse for what
we do, but there are reasons we do things; if we can go back and understand
where we came from, what happened to us, then there is no reason for us to stay
on the destructive course we are on. Going back is a terribly painful and
emotional process and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of hard
work and searching for the original incident that happened to us that we had no
control over. Too simple? I don't think so. Is it worth it?
Absolutely. If we keep jumping from one controlled environment to another
we will never get out of the bondage of being addicted to control.
Sometimes we are able to completely block all memories of ever being abused. This is called “Shutting down”, or “Numbing out”. Often the victim of such heinous and deviant behavior
feels so much shame that he is simply unable to confide in anyone and therefore
he tries to suppress the memory and deny that anything ever happened. This
could be an indication that they may have been abused by someone they trusted, or supposed to be able to trust.
Once that trust factor is gone along with the shame and pain they may never be able to tell anyone.
They will continue being controlled by the abuse, the shame and pain, loss of trust, self esteem. This
sends the victim on the road to a life of being addicted to controls.
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