Power and Guilt

I hate feeling powerless. It is the main thing that slows me down in my healing. Sexual abuse is the most helpless and powerless thing anyone can go through, and my way of coping was to put myself into situations where I had as much power as possible and to avoid situations where I would be powerless.

Today's session started off discussing last weeks, how could it not? I confessed to having an awful day Thursday and completely numbing out the rest of the week. I avoided anything that would cause me to feel. We discussed what exactly triggered my attack, as well as the physical reactions and the emotional reactions that went with it. I am finding that I am very "dumb" when it comes to describing how I feel. Trying to explain what I felt during all of that was hard, but I finally settled on a word: Guilt.

That brought us to a discussion on the guilt I feel as it pertains to the abuse. Not only to the abuse I suffered, but that of my sister as well. I feel as if both are my fault, even though logically I know that neither of them are. That brings us to "True Guilt" and "False Guilt". True guilt is the emotion in conjunction with a guilty action. False guilt is the emotion of guilt in the absence of the guilty action. My guilt right now is all false, although regardless of its label, it feels just the same. True guilt has a purpose in life, to teach us how to change our ways and to look to God to forgive our sins. False guilt is a black hole. It consumes time, energy and faith.

When presented the question why I find it so easy to blame myself for both my and my sister's abuse, I was perplexed for a short time. Then it occured to me, when I blame myself, I give myself a (false) sense of power. If it was my fault, then there is something for me to fix. If I admit it was someone else's fault, there isn't anything I can do. I am powerless.

Continuing to provide a safe environment to heal, I was given the power to choose my homework assignment from two options. I can choose to veer away from the path I am currently on (the guilt of my sister's abuse) for fear of triggering more panic attacks, and determine what I would like to tackle instead of this, or I can stay the course and start by acknowledging these feelings in a letter to my sister. I can tell you even though I am going to feel so much pain initially, I am going to stay the course. I will not let myself fall into the habit of avoiding what is hard. It's all hard, and will all have to be acknowledged sooner or later.

In my effort to speak the truth, I am bringing this song to the forefront of my mind. This song is my connection to God. Every time I hear it, I feel as if He is saying this to only me, and no one else.