I was sitting here listening to a Podcast and all of a sudden had an intense craving for chocolate. It’s not like that’s anything new, yet it turned into one of those “Ah-Ha” moments when it dawned on me the reasoning behind it.
I knew it had something to do with the want to avoid feeling but could now pinpoint it as one of the ways in which I would attempt to escape sitting with the likes of sexual shame.
Not surprisingly, food and binge eating was one of the coping mechanisms I’d procured from a lifetime of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.
Yet at 48 (and three-plus years into my own healing journey), it still amazes me the lack of self-awareness I’ve skated through life with all of these years.
That’s because I was living in what is termed “survival mode”. Doing whatever was needed to get me through each moment had fear coursing through my veins like wildfire.
At the time, I didn’t understand the coping mechanisms was not dousing the fire at all, but instead were only adding fuel to the flames.
Sexual Abuse and Shame
It doesn’t matter whether you were abused once, repeatedly, or over the span of a lifetime. A common fact which holds true is one of the deepest emotional wounds formed from any type of sexual abuse is shame.
I still have several physical scars from some of what transpired, but they don’t hold a candle to the emotional scars so many of us continue to hide within.
Healing from any type of abuse takes time. It also means facing those facets of ourselves we buried long ago through such methods as cutting, drinking, drugs, sex, masturbating, eating, gambling, rage, and the like.
Most of us find it incredibly difficult to look in the mirror because the person we see looking back is someone we don’t recognize anymore. It’s a woman/man who survived what no human being should have to endure. Yet it’s also a person who coped in ways no human being should feel the need to turn to. And when the realization hits that healing involves forgiving not only others but also ourselves, we turn around from that tear-stained face and walk away from the mirror and our own self once more.
It’s a cycle set upon repeat because shame manifested from sexual abuse is one of the most common and under-talked-about issues in regards to what a person needs to heal within their own heart.
Shame can show up in such manifestations as denial, guilt, grief, sadness, anger, depression, and loneliness.
It can seep its way into every nook and cranny of one’s life in ways you never thought possible. Not only by others but often by actions and reactions from our own self.
Shame dampens our beliefs, causes fear to remain a staple in daily life, worsens self-esteem, steals confidence, and can all but leave one suicidal from its pain.
Yet shame has a flip side – and that flip side is where we no longer cope with the pain but learn instead how to heal from it.
The Flip Side of Shame
First of all, whatever was done to you, IT WAS NOT, NOR WILL IT EVER BE YOUR FAULT!!
Secondly, no matter how many times you may hear that someone else had or has it worse than you, YOUR FEELINGS ARE VALID!! Don’t allow anyone else to diminish that fact because you have every right in the world to feel whatever it is you may feel.
And with that being said, there is absolutely NO SHAME in feeling and dealing with shame!
It’s more common than we realize only because we live in a society that tends to hide from reality. And the reality is shame is an epidemic that has had a blind eye turned towards it for far too long.
But shame is also a part of one’s self that CAN be worked through and overcome through the healing process.
I tend to describe healing to the likes of peeling an onion. What many of us think needs to be healed is actually only the outer layer. Once that has been peeled away, we soon find another layer and then another which each needs to be acknowledged, discovered, worked through, and accepted. That’s why healing is a process. There is an ING on the end for a reason. It’s not a “one and done” thing as many would like to think, but a daily uncovering and rediscovering of our authentic self.
And with each layer, you add to it what was learned from the one before. So by the time you hit the core issues that had you running for dear life all those months, years, and/or decades before, you’ll have all the tools you need to face it head-on, including the darkness of shame.
You Can’t Heal What You Refuse to Reveal
The first lesson in healing, no matter the cause, is what my Emotional Coach @beatanxiety.me continuously states: “You can’t heal what you refuse to reveal.”
I had no clue at the beginning of this journey that abandonment, neglect, toxic shame, or loneliness would be a part of this process.
I also refused at the getgo to realize it wasn’t just the physical and sexual acts haunting me, but the unexpressed emotions that had a life of their own inside my body. Those are what would end up being the focal point of not only my pain but my healing.
I’ve learned what we don’t reveal doesn’t just “disappear”, but lives and breathes inside of us day in and day out. It’s not until we have the courage to unearth the roots will we begin to implement the healthy vs. unhealthy coping alternatives into our lives.
What you may feel is a gnawing in your gut, tightness in the middle of your chest, pain in your side, headaches, and even such diagnoses as Fibromyalgia, Migraines, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Chronic Pain keep us trapped within our trauma until we are willing to reveal it’s source.
If you continue to live in denial or avoidance and keep searching for a “magic pill” to ease the pain, you’ll also continue to live life through a broken lens and inside of a world that will leave you feeling completely hollow and empty.
Because nothing and I mean nothing, will ever make you feel whole again until you allow those emotions (shame, humiliation, embarrassment, guilt. remorse, grief, loneliness) and pain out into the open. It’s only then the shame you’ve hidden and lived with for much too long will, at last, have a voice and safe space in which to finally heal.
Writer, poet, designer, crafter, and mental health advocate. I have encountered struggles throughout life with addiction, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. I no longer identify with the above struggles, however, as I refuse to be defined by a disorder, disease or diagnosis. It is through the guidance of an anxiety coach in which I continue the healing of both my mental and physical health, while in the process supporting others along their own path towards recovery.