healing childhood trauma pt11
Reforming the Past
Finding A Healthy Connection to the Past
How do you find a healthy connection to the past? One reason childhood trauma is so difficult is the unique relationship we have with what has gone before. It is extremely complicated. Due to the nature of abuse, events become frozen in time, as if they are still happening in the present. Trying to make sense of what has happened is like picking through a knotted ball of yarn the size of a house. Our emotions are disconnected from reality because of the way abuse operates. The techniques abusers use for control, things like gaslighting, denigrating, questioning, discounting and dominating are crazy making and cause a person to doubt their own perceptions.
The goal is to stop ruminating, and start understanding. This is part of the healing process and leads to a complete transformation of our relationship with the past. It will no longer control us. Healing reforms the past. I thought about the word reform. To reform something means that you make planned changes in the way a system functions. Abusive systems are always based on lies. Those lies must be reformed to reflect the truth. But beyond that, a deeper reformation is possible—changing something that was meant to harm into something that works for good.
Reforming the Past
There is an ancient story about a group of abusive brothers who sell their younger sibling, a boy named Joseph, into slavery. Jealous, they want to get rid of him because being the father’s favorite, he runs his mouth too much. They end up selling him to a passing slave caravan and tell the father their brother has been killed by wild animals. The young man lands in Egypt and eventually works his way up to a position of power, second only to Pharaoh, himself. A famine decimates the land and who should come knocking on Joseph’s door but the brothers who have betrayed him so horrendously. The tables were turned.
I can assure you, no matter how long it takes, eventually, the tables will turn for you as well. Your abusers will age. Death is the great equalizer, and no one can escape it. Not even a narcissist. I never met an abuser yet who died happy. Oh, they may have money or the appearance of success, but they die alone and filled with regret. As survivors, we do not want to end our days like that, at least I don’t. I want to reform the past into something new. To make it work for good both in my life and in my little corner of the world.
Surviving such a difficult past made me discover who I truly was. I love the good things in life in a way other people cannot understand. I don’t major on minor things and I don’t give a fig about pretension. Suffering has a way of burning that nonsense away. It made me more careful with relationships. To be intentional about how I behave as a parent. To cherish friendship. To empathize with other people and to be free from trying to change them. To respect their journey as their own. Would I choose to walk through abuse in order to attain these things? No. But this is what life has brought. I did not choose it, but I can choose what I do with it.
In the 16th century there was a sweeping movement for change within the religious establishment. This movement became known as The Reformation. When we, as survivors of chronic childhood abuse bring about the reformation of our past, we bring about change in the wider world. We all know that the problem of childhood abuse is so large, it feels insurmountable. Where do we start? We start with ourselves. One person at a time.The tables have been turned. We are now the ones in the position of power. And we can use that power first for our own good, and then for the good of those we love, our community, the nation and the world. It is no small thing to defy trauma and embrace joy.