Just Breathe

Pain is hard to handle, whether it be physical or emotional. I hurt my back recently and have been in excruciating pain.The kind of pain that catches my breath every time I move. The kind of pain that sent nausea racing through my stomach when I tried to stand up. The kind of pain that eclipsed everything else I encountered.

A friend gave me some advice, to just BREATHE. She has suffered with chronic pain and said that sometimes that is the only thing that works. Long, slow, deep breaths. Breathing out the bad air and taking in the good. Out with the bad, in with the good, out with the bad, etc., etc.

This is something I also learned in therapy. Deep breathing, connecting with my emotions and inner self. I would sprawl out on a chair or lie down on a couch with the rest of my group and we would listen to meditation CDs and be directed to breathe in through our noses, out through our mouths. Over and over until we felt at peace, I usually fell asleep and it was very restorative.

I have come back to that healthy coping mechanism and feel myself healing, I can feel the restorative benifits relieving the tension in my back. It hasn't completely gone away, but I can feel it working.

When you encounter a painful situation or memory, remember, JUST BREATHE.

Child Abuse, the Impact: Fear of Intimacy

Being abused in a sexual nature as a child has impacted me on many levels as previous posts have demonstrated.

• Anger
• Fear
• Self Worth

Fear of intimacy is tied into all of these others. Getting close to someone makes one vulnerable. It opens up areas of one's soul that are sometimes scary to reveal.

I am not just speaking about physical intimacy, but emotional as well. To be intimate with a friend, lover, spouse, entails letting them see the ugliness beneath the nice girl image. By letting them hear about the pain, you are opening a door that can be really scary to someone that has not gone through it.

They may not understand why it happened, or the choices you had to make during and after the abuse. They may not totally get why you are or are not okay now. It may be something that they cannot get their thoughts around and it just may be too much for them to handle.

And that in itself is why it is hard to let someone completely into your heart:

• "What if they leave?"
• "What if they take advantage of my vulnerability?"
• "What if...?"

I have told my story to a lot of people, through speaking engagements, this blog and talking with friends.

Sometimes my story is too much for them to handle and they leave. Sometimes they don't.

I have really only totally opened up about my abuse to a few select people. Most of those people have been professionals in the Mental Health industry or people in the group therapy sessions. There have been a few others along the way that have heard the whole ugly truth, those are the people that I have become truly intimate with on an emotional level.

I am blessed to have those special people in my life and I am so glad that I let them in to see the real me, scars and all.

Child Abuse, the Impact: Fear

I have lived in fear for most of my life. Whether there is a real threat or not, the fear remained.

I was afraid of being left alone. I was afraid of large crowds. I was afraid of being hurt. I was afraid of loving. I was afraid of being loved, and it ending. I was afraid no one would ever love me. I was afraid of dying. I was afraid of living.

The list goes on and on.

When you are a child whose innocence and wonder of the world is stripped away, it is hard to ever feel safe again.

I have suffered in many ways beyond the actual abuse. I have also suffered many other hardships in my life. There has been a near constant need to flee or fight. Those moments that happened nearly 30 years ago left in me with that constant fear that it could happen again and that I had to find a way to keep myself safe.

I have constructed walls around myself to ensure that no one could really get to know the real me. It took almost 10 years of marriage for me to really start to let my husband behind those walls and nearly seven years later to let him truly see the real me down to my core.

I have told my story to countless people, I believe that by being open about it I am not becoming a statistic and becoming an offender myself. (There have been studies on people that were molested and the likelihood of them becoming abusive themselves. I know for a fact that my abuser was abused as a child and suppressed the memory. I think that had he been able to tell someone and talk about it, he may not have committed the crimes he did. That is not an excuse for what he did, but an explanation.)

After having said that, friends and loved ones may have known my story, but very few really knew me. I was afraid if they did know me they would not like me at all.

Fear has made me hide myself away at times. I have had times in my life where I didn't leave my bed unless I absolutely had to. I would get up to go to the bathroom, and to make dinner for the family and then go back to bed to eat. I would sometimes even let my kids make the food themselves once they were old enough and would spend the entire day in bed.

Other times I was afraid of being alone and I would constantly be out and about. I would go shopping, to restaurants, to fairs, wherever people were. If you notice where I chose to go, I was not going to be with friends, I just wanted people around me.

I have released a lot of the fear, and thanks to people that have become real friends, I am continuing to let go. My husband has helped me a lot. He has helped me to let go of people that are not in my life to help me, but to keep me down. He has helped give me wings to try new things and to try things I have been afraid to do before. He has done a lot for me, but the biggest change has been what I have done for myself.

I have so much more strength and bravery in me that I didn't know was there. I have talents and gifts to share with others, and I know they want to know about them. I have become open to love, letting it in and giving it out.

I have no reason to fear, I am Rachel and I can do anything I set my mind to!

Child Abuse, the Impact: Self Worth

I have stated before that I struggle with self worth and shame.

I was very young when I was first molested, 10 years old. I didn't understand what was happening, but I knew that it was wrong and that I felt like a "bad girl" for allowing it to happen. As the years passed I felt worse and worse about myself. The shame was overwhelming.

On the outside I put on a happy/brave face. I didn't let anyone know how incredibly ugly, dirty, bad, hurt and ashamed I was. I was able to hide it from everyone until I couldn't do it anymore.

I had to tell someone and I decided to tell my best friend Rachael at that time. She knew what I was going through, because she had told her mother the same thing before me. She would not keep my secret and forced me to tell my mom.

This was the best thing I ever did. To let someone know I was being hurt and that I couldn't take it anymore. That was all I let them know.

The pain, shame, and ugliness I felt lay hidden deep. It influenced every choice I made after that. I tried to bury it and be the happy girl everyone thought I should be. I was perky to the point of annoyance, I know, but I felt that if I didn't put that mask on people would see the ugly me beneath it.

I picked a college that I knew I would get into. I chose a career that I knew people thought I should. I dropped out of college because I was so eager for people to like me that I neglected my studies.

I did things to attract boys and keep them around that I didn't want to do. I smoked because my friends did. I hid my hatred of myself from them, and let things happen sexually that I was not prepared for.

I did these things and many more, all to keep friends in my life, and boys interested. I did these things because I didn't believe I deserved better.

I have since learned that by stating my needs and letting people know the real me, I can keep friends easier. Friends that love me for me. Friends that want to be there for me, in good and bad times.

I have also learned that I was too young to make a decision about what was happening to me, and that it was not my fault. I knew this intellectually all along, but I have finally taken that knowledge into my heart.

I am a great person, friend, I'm kinda cute and I deserve to be loved for who I am.

Child Abuse, the Impact: Anger

These next few blog posts will be a bit difficult to write. It hurts to re-visit some of these memories and I don't want to hurt anyone else in doing so. I made a promise to myself when I started this blog, to be open and honest and while doing that, I knew others would be helped.

I was a sweet, precocious little girl. I believed that the world was good and that people really liked me. My mom said that I never met a stranger. I would go up to people in the mall and start telling them about my doll or my little brother. I loved life and thought that it was great to be me.

At the age of 10 my childhood was changed forever. It was at this time that I was molested. This lasted for 3 years and I was never the same.

Through my years of therapy as I learned about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I found out a lot about the general disorder and about the way that I coped with it.

When someone is victimized over and over, it changes their brain chemistry. This is to say that the person I once was is not the person I am today. Don't get me wrong, I know that everyone grows up and changes, but I often wonder what kind of person I would be today if this hadn't happened to me. I might have known how to handle my life and others in it with assertiveness rather than letting them walk all over me.

I have been in several hospitals dealing with my eating disorder, but the most helpful was a Sexual Trauma Unit that I went to in Kansas City.

It was there that I learned to really let the anger I was feeling out. I was always afraid of the anger and thought that if I was a good person I wouldn't get angry. My poor husband was the only one to ever see me really angry and it was seemingly over something very minor. Little did I know at the time that it was decades worth of anger boiling over at really inappropriate times. In the hospital I was taken to a room that had carpeted walls and was sound proof. I was given a foam bat and was told to use it to let out the anger on some pillows on the floor. It took me awhile, I was very tentative and safe at first. I didn't want the therapists to see me lose control, and then suddenly it all came out. I screamed, I pounded, I sobbed uncontrollably. At the end of the exercise, my therapist held me close as I cried and cried. She told me that it was okay to let it out, and that all I needed to do was to find a safe place to do it.

This was a great exercise for me, and there were other ones that helped me too, but I believe that one really let me release a lot of the pent up feelings that I had.

Although this was good for me, I also learned not to let it get to that point when I am angry. I need to let my feelings be known and talk it out with someone if I have that opportunity. Sometimes though, it does feel good to go pound a pillow or to let out a primal scream into it.

I believe that I was put on this earth and allowed to experience this pain for a couple of purposes:

To make me more empathetic to others that are hurting, and to help others see the goodness in life even after a tragedy.

I do hope that you will continue with me on this journey as I let you into my world and open up to you about not only surviving it, but thriving in it.

Asking for Help

I am not good at asking for help. It is something that has plagued me most of my life. I hide my feelings pretty well.

My mother has said that I am a good "actress." Although I wanted to be an actress when I was younger (and still hope to do some more acting someday soon), this probably isn't a good thing. People don't know that inside I am aching, hurting for a child that was abused, crying for the loss of innocence, aching over a pain that runs so deep it is indescribable. I have tried to overcome these feelings, but it is a long and arduous process.

I am anxious that by talking about my past, and my pain, I will burden those around me. I am scared that I will end up alone. I am tired of dealing with it all alone, but do not want to ask for help.

It is good that I have an amazing Psychiatrist, but I am thinking it is time to get back into a group setting. Sharing the pain with others that have been there helps immensely. I find this blog helpful, a way to get out the feelings I have trapped inside, but I believe that talk therapy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy is a great way to go.

I will ask for help, I will share my story and overcome the pain of my past.