Editor’s note: This article was submitted by Steve Becker, LCSW, CH.T, who has a private psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and clinical consulting practice in New Jersey, USA. For more information, visit his website, powercommunicating.com.
You really need to admire yourself for surviving an exploitative relationship. I say this very seriously, not flippantly. We all, of course, hope to minimize our involvement with exploitative individuals. But in the course of life, as we know, that’s not always possible. It is vital, therefore, if you’ve been victimized by and/or are recovering from involvement with an exploiter, to fully, genuinely appreciate (and remind yourself constantly) that you are indeed strong, impressively strong, because only the strong survive exploitation.
Many clients with whom I work (really, most people, I think) tend to see personal strength and insecurity; personal strength and low self-esteem, as incompatible. They balk at the idea that you can be a very strong person and insecure at the same time; that you can be a very strong person even with low self-esteem. For instance, when someone violates you (especially chronically) and you don’t defend yourself properly, the tendency is to attribute your failure at self-protection to “personal weakness.” The thought is something like, “If I was a strong person, I wouldn’t have let that abuse occur. I’d have asserted myself, defended myself, drawn the line.”
But it’s not personal weakness that explains the failure to protect your boundaries; it’s more often a lack of clarity, in knowing precisely what your boundaries are, and precisely what constitutes an unacceptable violation of them. Victims of sustained exploitation/abuse aren’t personally weak, quite the contrary. My experience has affirmed again and again how remarkably strong and resourceful most of them are. What they lack, however, often is a clear, secure sense of their boundaries; this insecurity of boundaries leaves them vulnerable to compromising themselves. After all, you can’t assert and/or protect your boundaries unless and until you’ve established them very clearly and securely (in your mind).
This explains what for many can seem so confusing and dichotomous: how a victim of sustained exploitation/abuse can, on the one hand, lobby so effectively for others’ interests, while, with respect to her/his own, appear stuck in circumstances he or she would counsel anyone else to reject and escape.
But I restate: You can’t protect your interests if they aren’t, in the first place, clearly defined. And you can’t defend your boundaries if, on any level, you’re uncertain, or ambivalent about, what they are. This disadvantaged position helps explain how an otherwise strong, resourceful adult can find her/himself tolerating and enduring the meanness and nonsense of a defective partner.
When my clients who have been in exploitative relationships discover confidently their boundaries, they often feel sad, on one hand, not to have done so sooner; but thrilled on the other to find themselves, as if miraculously, just as skilled at protecting their own interests as they’ve always been at protecting others’.
It’s a kind of bittersweet discovery. The bitter part, if grieved properly, is usually short-lived; the sweet aspect is long-lasting.
Henry, I love you and Oxy and JaneSmith. You have all been so good to me. Care homes here in the UK was for problem children, I was regarded as a problem. I always helped people like the underdog. because I felt for them, but then I got bitten and have learnt my lesson. Thank you for your support. If things get sticky for you, tell us, wont you? Henry
Beverly You can lean on me- I am here- listening- I dont know what to say- tell me if you want- i will listen- am here sweetie—-
Henry, I feel really sad, I was put in a care home with other children when I was 6 until 11, in a lovely place a stately house with a ballroom with chinese flock wallpaper and chandeliers and beautiful grounds to run around in – but we had no love. It was like being in a beautiful prison and we had no contact with anyone.
Henry, The one memory I have, is that on Sundays, once a month after dinner in the dining room, visitors would appear at the door and the staff would call your name. But I never got called, because I never had visitors. it was really lonely.
The thing’s that happen to us as children affect our whole life. This is probably why you were with your bad X. I don’t feel like I was loved when I was a child. And I have spent most of my life searching for love, in alot of bad places and alot bad people. My childhood pain has resurfaced, I dealt with it, can’t change it, but I see how it affected me in negative ways. I have low selfesteem and struggle on a daily basis to build my confidence. Beverly you describe the care home as a very beautiful prison. So- we are used to not loving ourselves. We got to stop letting the past define who we are today. We have struggled long enuff to find love from other MEN, let’s love the people that we know love us back and love ourselves for who we are today SURVIVORS. Hang in there, and if you need to have crying day, then cry your heart out, deal with those years you were in that prison, like you said you have kept these emotions buried, dig em up talk to em scream at them and you have nothing to bury you just need to deal with it..
Henry, Yes, I wanted to comfort his poor inner child, in a way I need to comfort my own inner child. I still feel that loneliness and I feel that I was abandoned as a child, it is a deep well of loneliness and of not feeling cared for, that is why I grew up being feisty, abit independent, a cover for my hurt. I know we have to stop the past defining us, the book Wini suggested ‘A New Earth’ says that too, but I cant stop those cleansing tears.
Henry, I ‘know’ whats happening, Im being invited to revisit my past, to get in contact with and cleanse what I felt and still feel and I am going with it.
Bev Dont stop the tears tears are good. I think we will look for answer’s to our past and present and future till the day we stop breathing. I don’t think Iwill ever get it all figured out. Yes, I wanted to comfort Mike, give him the love he said he never got from his parent’s. He was abandoned my them at age 2, his grandparents raised him and he has fond memories of his childhood. But they never accepted him because he was difficult and gay. His grandmother was a strict church of christ bible thumper and I am sure Mike had a bad childhood. But I cant love him enuff to fix the damage, the damage is permanant and to him their is nothing wrong. We need to love that little child that we were and fix that childs heart…..cry all day little girl Bev just love that child you were….
Henry, I used to spend hours curled up and crying on the cat we had, that soft living being, accepted me. I still love cats and animals to this day. It was an early disappointment for me, being in this life, and I have struggled with it ever since. But I will see my time out and grow as much as I can through the pain. I know that I will feel more cleansed when I have let go abit more. That letting go will allow me to get nearer to the person that I truly am and then I will feel more free.
Bev on the other thread you were saying this experience has taught you to not put your hand in the fire ever again. This is a theraputic website. But the pain that we all feel is so deep. Even the most educated people have been traumatized by bad people. I guess they come into our live’s to wake us up. I will be ever so alert to new people in my life, and avoid the bad ones that I have encountered in the past. It’s lonely sometime’s. But in the process of dealing with the past, I know why I let bad people affect me. I have had some major snot slobbering crying days, they were theraputic.