(A hard choice to make, a long and arduous road…but a rewarding necessity)
Wrong things happen. Wrong things can happen when you’re young, older or in between. They affect you continually and they may become part of you through their influence. Something, someone in you wants to make them responsible for your mental health problems and maybe they triggered or exacerbated those same problems.But, after a while,their poison becomes toxic and that toxicity brings you deeper and deeper into illness.
Consciously, or not you become a victim of that poison; it stops you from going any further. It becomes part of your psychological makeup, and often, because it’s been there forever ,it becomes a habit, the only way you know how to live. You cannot imagine being without it or letting go of it, you’re afraid to find you’re nobody without it, it knows you as well as you know it. You become afraid of letting it go, afraid of the horrors you feel inside and think that bringing them out may even be more horrific, may leave you an empty crazy shell.
But if you have the right help, the right support ,a trusting relationship with someone that knows how to deal with this, and if, somehow, with all of that you trust yourself enough to try to get rid of it,to take a look at what you are now and realize you have lived and are living in spite of it, then you can can prepare yourself for the difficult and lenghty task of confronting it and letting it go…you’re on the way to be able to change from victim to survivor.What has happened to you will not disappear,it will not cease to be part of who you are, but, by surviving and letting go of the harm it has done you, you can finally look at yourself .You may realize that you are a person that has lived through hell and high water and that person has somewhat been made stronger than what she thought she was.
You will still be vulnerable, but that same vulnerability may become an asset. It may help you to have more empathy towards yourself and , as a result, be a more empathetic listener to your own fears .It may show you the best personal way of dealing with those fears and be able to let them become ghosts of the past.
It should start with tolerance towards yourself, towards your good and bad sides and your weaknesses in order to lean to use them in a different way. It should start by stopping from berating yourself when you’re feeling weak, tired, depressed or out of sorts. What’s the use of hitting yourself with a hammer because you’re not feeling well .try to take it in stride(difficult),to find things within yourself that soothe you, that will permit you to say:”Its going to pass.What I have to do is take care of myself no matter how hard it may be”.
Learn to slow down .Look at what you’re feeling . See if there are things or events that may have triggered it. Throw them away and try to let it pass.
The most difficult thing to deal with is the anger. The anger at yourself for not being able to control it .The anger at the things you may hold responsible for causing it.the anger that says that, you, something or somebody else should be able to stop you from feeling that way.The anger that fuels you and that you fuel,bringing out intolerance:primarly towards yourself and ultimately against the world and the people surrounding you.That anger is the most destructive poison of them all,and learning how to canalize it is one of the hardest thing to do.
There is no miracle cure for it, no easy way to deal with it. Maybe one of the ways to reverse it, is to find it’s real and deep inner source, its real target, and either force yourself to deal with it or divorce it once and for all.
A divorce is one of the hardest things to live through.Letting go of something that has fed, fueled and carried you through many years is just as hard. But imagine the freedom!The freedom felt afterwards is in itself such a liberating and elating feeling, that it may renew you completly, permit you to be whole again and to finally have the freedom to be you!
All of these means, ways and exercises have to be redone over and over again.but I think that as time goes by, you’ll become more and more awareof: your strenghts, your limitless capabilities and most of all:that you have and will continue to survive,despite the pain,the sadness,the sometimes hopelessness and the ilness.
And that awareness will help you to deal more and more with the hardballs life may send your way, but, to also appreciate and take pleasure in the good moments, the small golden gifts life also sends you.
MAY WE ALL BE AMAZING SURVIVORS!!!!