adult addressing abuse received as a child

[lilas16]

after 42 years and moving away from my family, I'm now ready to address having been abused as a child. how can I use NLP and other means to get through this? I'd like to incorporate this with seeing a therapist.

thanks.

[Tomwalked]

Lisa thanks for posting.
I personally am not deeply involved in NLP , but have done a few of the processes  Michael introduced on the radio show, I like the process.

somewhere in these archives... and I know I have seen them... there are a number of great lists and resources for finding qualified NLP practitioners.

Congratulations on finding the courage to do the thing you find necessary - for being brave with yourself.

much love
Tom

[JamesTheFox]

Okay, I won't say that NLP won't help per se... just DON'T use it as your primary means of getting better here.

I'll admit, I did hit the 'No' option in the poll before reading the part about you seeing a therapist.  I got jumpy and immediately thought you meant NLP as the primary cure.

NLP is good for shifting perceptions about things, but it is NOT designed for serious issues such as this.

This is one of the occasions where I'd say consider seeing a qualified therapist (I would not recommend it for minor stuff because of the repercussions).

And my personal advice, completely up to you whether or not you want to take it, is this: take care of yourself.  It would definitely make all the difference in the world.

[Tomwalked]

James....

I have to say... I completely disagree with you.
We are all different however.

I have a similar story to Lisa.
I went through therapy for years and found it nothing but useless, and painful (and expensive).

and even though that was the case with me... I realize that therapy is something that may help others.


I found NLP techniques FANTASTIC for me to "readjust" the importance of these past traumatic  occurrences in my life.

they are in the past and the only reason they are in my life now is habit and reiteration.

I can break habits... and I can adjust my reiterations.

So for me.... Therapy WAS useless and NLP worked.


the sad fact of life in America is some ungodly number like 60 to 70% of us have had some type of sexual "inappropriateness" and/or some type of "abuse" levied against us.
(the number for American women is more like 70 - 80%)


I think Lisa's question and solution... her intent to use therapy AND NLP techniques... is amazingly insightful and self-aware of her own inner workings and needs. She obviously is listening to her own inner voice in a very healthy way!
She IS taking care of herself.

I think it is a tremendous disservice to advice her against it...





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[Michelle Young]

Hi Lisa..

I too found 'therapy & counselling' totally worthless in my situation and NLP moved me forwards.
I now look back and know what happened in my childhood was not my fault, i was never to blame and i was not responsible for what happened. Also i feel that my emotional attachment to what happened has more or less gone. I kinda feel more like 'hey it happened' 'thats part of me' 'and thats is whats made me the person i am today' 'a kind, caring, loving, gentle, big hearted female'.... and to be honest i am proud of whom i am today 

Nlp moved me to this place, and i would totally recommend you visiting a Nlp'er whom is well trained.

I have used Nlp with several clients for the same issues. As i am also a qualified counsellor, i recal the first time i saw a client under these circumstances and i thought, 'wow i am such a different person now coming from a nlp point of view, rather then a counselling point of view'.

Good luck and hugs

Michelle

[Elese]

Lisa,

I have seen many people get insight, understanding and forgiveness through Debbie Ford's work.  I am not going to suggest this as a substitute for coaching, counseling or therapy, but her books The Secret of the Shadow and the Dark Side of the Light Chasers (as well as her Shadow Process) are helpful in looking for some of the 'gold in the dark' that can be hard to find in this case. 

I have seen the beauty and healing of people working this way and moving through traumas when I trained with Debbie as a coach, before I became Michael's apprentice.

Also, a very heart healing book of hers is "Spiritual Divorce" which is full of forgiveness processes.

I'm not 100% whether this will be on target, but you might also wish to check out Mandy Evans www.mandyevans.com whose work in recovering from the past by changing your beliefs could be a great avenue for you and others who might read your post.  Her books are Travelling Free and Emotional Options and are available on her site.

thank you for posting, many will benefit from this thread

love,

Elese

[Terri Carey]

I think you are very courageous to post this.

I'm sorry that this happened to you and I am impressed that you have overcome it.

I see value in therapy if it is not centered all in your past, but more focused on improving your future. 

Be courageous as you do what you need to do for closure, forgive cause it hurts you more than them, and realize you have choices as an adult that you didn't have as a child.

Thoughts and Prayers,

Terri

[Michelle Young]

I believe at times, too much attention is focused around victims forgiving their abusers.

I firmly believe that because of this attention to forgiveness, it can place the victim under a huge amount of pressure that they basically dont need.

A abuser at the end of the day, made a choice, it was the wrong choice, and it served heavy consequences to the victim. It changed their lives, and left a scar.

For people to suggest a victim to give forgiveness, is asking for every person in prison to be pardoned. They are there for a reason, and that reason is because they made a choice to be dangerous to society.

Please air with caution when you suggest forgiveness. Its one thing to forgive ourselves when we are victims, its a very different thing to suggest to forgive someone whom chose to commit a crime by abusing a child, most of the time these people do not deserve forgiveness.

This sounds really harsh, but please take a moment to consider your own children / grandchildren, neices, nephews etc, if something happened to them which was illegal or immoral, would you forgive?

Please consider the pressures that are placed on victims when mentioning for them to forgive.

Personally when helping a client, i help their feelings etc, i never place my feelings on them. How one person feels about forgiveness is not how another does. Soem people would like to be able to forgive to move on, some would pefer to continue to hate the person, or to feel numb etc.

<-- waffled on too much

Warmest wishes
Michelle

[Terri Carey]

I firmly believe that because of this attention to forgiveness, it can place the victim under a huge amount of pressure that they basically dont need.

For people to suggest a victim to give forgiveness, is asking for every person in prison to be pardoned. Please air with caution when you suggest forgiveness. Its one thing to forgive ourselves when we are victims, its a very different thing to suggest to forgive someone whom chose to commit a crime by abusing a child, most of the time these people do not deserve forgiveness. Soem people would like to be able to forgive to move on, some would pefer to continue to hate the person, or to feel numb etc.

Michelle,
You make a good point and I certainly didn't mean to imply that anyone should be pardoned- what they did was reprehensible.  I have never found it helpful to hold onto hatred whether the person I hated deserved it or not - it took a toll on me. Perhaps forgiveness was the wrong word to use here. I do think people handle this differently and just wish all those who have had to handle such a thing peace.
Terri

[Elese]

Michelle,

I read your passionate post and so reached into my life to see if I could remember a time when I was feeling pressured to forgive. I found that. So yes, i see what you mean. Pressure is certainly not productive, with forgiveness or anything else.

I have taken your request very seriously "please take a moment to consider your own children / grandchildren, neices, nephews etc, if something happened to them which was illegal or immoral, would you forgive?"

I can only speak from my limited experience of 'forgiving' two individuals.  One tried to kill me.  The other tried to rape me.  I survived both and other challenges... and my answer is Yes.  If it took me my entire life and every last breath I would make it my aim, to free myself from the yoke of hating another human being - even if that person ripped my daughter from life itself - I would take that on.  Perhaps with more commitment than I have ever taken on anything.

That is all that I can share.  That is not intended to create pressure for anyone.

I can only speak the truth of what I have seen and what I have done.  I have seen people become free, drop a burden, move on, live for the first time  (I watched someone transform who had her entire adult life avoided any public places with men in them because of what happened to her).

We do not forgive by saying that what was done is OK. 

There are a million miles between forgiveness, understanding and acceptance and condoning.  Otherwise, Nelson Mandela might have died in prison a bitter old man.  Gandhi might have taken up a rifle.  And this might still be a segregated country. 

What I have learned is that forgiveness takes many forms: from understanding you are not alone to finally grasping that the past is gone.  Whatever words you use, whatever form it takes, Forgiveness is release, and ultimately, the transformation of our pain.

Bill Cumming, writing on the death of Coretta Scott King said: "The path to a world where loving-kindness is a way of being begins with what we will do today that we believed impossible yesterday.  Who is it we cannot love?  Who is it we believe does not deserve our love because of what they did yesterday?

Great souls, heroic people, the leaders will come and go.  Christ, the Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Coretta and Martin King.  How many will it take?  When will we hear what they say?"

thank you for your post, for it made me consider these things...

love,

Elese

[Tomwalked]

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Elese

really well stated thank you.

and I think you are right... it is a process of defining for ourselves what forgiveness means.

and ultimately... I forgive, not for the benefit of another... but for ME!


I release something that I am holding...
a pain I am reiterating...
as Terry called it... a poison.
and that needs to happen in my time, without outer pressure...


However, Michelle, don't you think as a couch, if I came to you... with this issue...
It would be helpful to me, for you to point this out?
I'm not saying pressure...
but wouldn't it be helpful to have it pointed out that I am ingesting poison?
That I am obviously vibrating at a very low level.

I am putting the challenge back to you.


You must see that letting go of this *IS* going to make me healthier...
whether we call it forgiveness or something else.




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[Michelle Young]

Wow it seems to have opened a debate and i would like to firstly to take this oppotunity to apologise to Lilas, I do not believe that your thread is the right place for the debate here and i am sorry that my beliefs have caused this on your thread.

I will open a new thread so this debate can continue.

Hugs
Michelle

[Tomwalked]

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after 42 years and moving away from my family, I'm now ready to address having been abused as a child. how can I use NLP and other means to get through this? I'd like to incorporate this with seeing a therapist.

thanks.

you don't think that "forgiveness" is an intrinsic part of this conversation?

for me, the dialog is doing what it is "born" to do... flow and slow and rush where it will.
Am I breaking some forum etiquette rule I am honestly unaware of?

if so... I appologize.
(sorry again with the amazingly inappropriate sense of humor... but honestly just trying my best to keep it light)



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[Elese]

I think it's all good.  Michelle, it's great you started a thread because that allows more people into a general topic which can be found easily.   And Tom, I find your input, valuable, honest and heartfelt.

There is always room for everyone and their opinions, thoughts and feelings.  i always take the view that never know what might be of use even if you can't see it in the moment.

Lilas, everyone's firm intent is to be of service to you, and I see that clearly in all the posts.  May more minds and hearts continue to contribute on this thread to serve and assist.

Love,

Elese

[Life Architect]

Lisa and all,

Stumbled upon this as I am checking out Genius Catalyst as I complete the 30 day Impossible Game program.  This issue gently pulls at my heartstrings.  OK, it rips at them and I am also very open to share my opinion.  This is a response to your original post, not really the threads, although I did read most (Elese...I have so much respect for you!)

I was sexually abused at age 12 by a man my parents left me with while they travelled.  Initially, I buried it until my 20's.  Still not quite sure how I dealt with it, but I had an internal mechanism (or actually Spiritual influence) and have dealt with it (until the next time I do a deeper level of dealing with it!).  By my early thirties when I got married, I had dealt with it through books and self healing to where the demons were mostly quiet.

I also had to look at the attitudes I create moving forward.  I now understand MY issues.  In the past these issues came up silently and my behavior was influenced by these.  Now I am aware of the issues and impacts.

My deepest healings occurred while working with Shaman in Peru during ayahuasca ceremonies.  I actually pulled my abuser up from the other side and forgave him.  It was one of the most intense experiences, yet I was left with a sense of peace and how for me, this was one of the most perfect things which happened to me, and in a very unique way, it was a blessing. 

In looking for solutions, explore practitioners and find one who has been abused (most healers learn to heal the issue themselves..) and who has dealt with it.  I have dealt and visited different practitioners, yet the ones who did the most are the ones who walked my path (ok, no one will walk the same path....but the similarities have a bond develop).   Find a practitioner you resonate with, and solution(s) which resonate with your energetic being.  If you actually read this, I also know a book I would recommend about how to mentally re-write your past.  I cannot think of it, but it is out of print and one of the most impressive methods about understanding and implementing a process of shift inside.

It is amazing at times the number of abused people who become clients.  Intuitively, I know and together they can create a solution and peace!   As a Theta Practitioner and with the shamanic and Medicine Man work of late, I understand.

And my training has been intense to heal myself post 40!!  Two years a go I took an intense one week course on Gender Based Conversations where I got up and spoke of what happened and the impact and a number of core questions were answered.  THAT was peace!  It was a space where the unanswered threads were cleared of issues.

You can find your solution, I'm sure of that!

Hope this provides insight, just my thoughts!

Namaste' and Peace!

Jim

[lilas16]

Hi Everyone, and thank you for commenting on my post. I'm only now getting back to reading the responses after my initial post.

Let me say first, again, thank you for your thoughts and comments. And second, please don't apologize for exploring any and all avenues of approach to this topic, because that's what I've been doing the past several months!

When I initiated this post, I was having nightmares on a 2-3 per night basis for several months already (when previously they'd only haunt me a few times a week, or might give me a break for a month every once in a while), and at work, we'd just gone through a child safety program for this very issue.

I thought I could rationally remove myself from the experience...I'm now 42, not 4 or 14, I'm not responsible for protecting anyone, all my siblings are grown with their own kids, abuse hasn't followed into the next generation of my particular family's lineage, I now live 1200 miles away from anyone who hurt me, and most of them have now past on anyway, etc.

But when we watched the videos of abusers telling their stories of how they groom children and take advantage of them...wow, I couldn't ignore anything. And you can't deal with things that are so close and so painful that they prevent you from even being able to see them or anything else.

I thought that NLP might help me to be able to at least lessen the pain and move it away from me enough to be able to look at clearly. You know, you can't see your hands if they're right in front of your face, covering your eyes. But if you can move them a few inches, or even a foot or so away, suddenly you can see them clearly.

I ended up going to see a counselor at work. He told me that I didn't need to relive the experience, but needed to acknowledge the emotions so that the experience would let go of me.

I didn't want to do it, but I did. I journaled, I cried. I had more dreams, and I remembered anyway all the things I'd tried so hard to forget and push away.

I "talked" to myself as a child of various ages. The elementary aged girl who tried to tell someone, but was ignored. (I finally listened to her.) The teen who was left in charge of protecting her six siblings when we were left with our mom's family for almost a month while our dad was in the hospital. (I got to tell her that it wasn't her fault that the sister who didn't stay with them was hurt by her best friend's grandfather.) And the youngest little girl who was abused in one room while her parents were in the next. (They didn't know it was happening.) All she could do each time is call out in her head for her mommy to call for her and then she'd get to leave and would be safe. (All I could do is love her and tell her that it wasn't her fault, that she was a good, sweet little girl.) And then all parts of me, could be fully a part of me. (And good memories of being a child have started coming back.)

And I went through the exercises where you make yourself big and strong as a child becoming some sort of superhero and destroying your attacker. (oddly, gory fun!) And then the ones where you become an adult in the situation and then see your attacker as an injured child, and explain to them that they don't want to hurt anyone. (painfully sad for them, especially when you realize that they were hurt as a child, too). And then onto helping them attack their attacker, then turn it into forgiving the injured child within and going with that child onto their attacker and repeating the process.

And then realizing that if I was at a point where I forgave my attacker and he undid his attack as a child, then maybe my mom and my aunts weren't hurt as children, and then maybe my grandmother wasn't either, and great grandmother, etc.

And if no one was hurt, then what could things have been like moving forward to my life today?

And then after all that, the nightmares finally went away. It's been almost five months now.

I got to see what things would have been like in my immediate family if there wasn't abuse, by seeing how things are now with my siblings and all of their kids. I went back to see them at Easter. There are now 13 grandkids, ranging in ages from 14 down to one. At several points, I just sat there and took in seeing kids of all ages just get to be kids. It was great!

And just a month ago, I was able to talk to my youngest sister about all this. She was too young to remember much about that time, so isn't bothered by a lot of those things I experienced from childhood. She told me that our mom had talked to her recently and said that leaving us with her family was one of her greatest regrets in life. (Wow, a one person removed apology, but it's still good!)

And two weeks ago, I watched Debbie Ford's "The Shadow Effect."

And I realized through one of the exercises that the aspects of myself that I like most are a direct result of my childhood and how I learned to cope with things and try to prevent the situations from repeating with my siblings.

And I did learn that it wasn't my fault. I was just a little girl. It wasn't right to leave me to protect six other children. I did the best I could. And someone was supposed to be protecting me.

So now, I'm 42, 1200 miles away from those who hurt me, have forgiveness and love from/for those I love (and even some sort of care for those I don't love). And I'm not just logically safe, I'm actually feeling emotionally safe and secure for the first time in my life.

And no, childhood wasn't much fun to say the least, but adulthood is becoming more fun every day, especially since I did make huge strides with this issue, and my impossible goals.

It's funny that I didn't read any of your posts on this topic, but somehow I got all the information, and applied every bit of it, even that which caused some of you disagreement.

And I thank you all for taking the time to read, and comment, and even disagree. =)

Eileen

[Tomwalked]

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Thank You Eileen.
beautiful.





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[Terri Carey]

So now, I'm 42, 1200 miles away from those who hurt me, have forgiveness and love from/for those I love (and even some sort of care for those I don't love). And I'm not just logically safe, I'm actually feeling emotionally safe and secure for the first time in my life.

Eileen

Eileen
Thrilled that you are doing so well and have found your answers.  Thoughts and Love were coming from the group along your way. Love and Peace,
Terri

[Michelle Young]

Eileen and Jim, thank you so much for sharing your journeys.

Hugs
Michelle

[Elese]

Eileen, thank you for what you have opened up for all of us

I am honored to know you

love,

Elese

[David]

That's awesome Jim! You and Eileen are genuine, authentic role models!

Love and Peace!