personal reflections on step 1
"For many of us incest became an issue of control.
I have been told by my sister that I am very controlling, which surprises me as I think she is very controlling! Much more than me. I never associated that with the incest. I wonder how that is.
We were responsible, at least in our own minds, for the keeping the terrible secret of sexual abuse in the family.
I know I felt it was something not to talk about. When my sister and I mentioned my grandfather's behavior to our mother, seeking some kind of help, we were told to ask him not to do it. That, of course, was ridiculous to me, even as a child. That is when I took on the belief that no one was going to look out for me, that I had to look out for myself.
To break the secret, we believed would be the equivalent of bringing destruction to our families. . . .
I don't know if I felt that or not. I told friends about my grandfather, not in detail I'm sure. I remember telling a young friend on the playground in elementary school about something my grandfather did, and the strange way that she looked at me. I think I felt more like people would look at me like something was wrong with me if I told them again what was happening. I don't remember if I felt like it would destroy my family.
Keeping the secret felt like some manageability in our lives. In our need to control and protect we removed the incest offenders from the consequences of their behavior and took on much of their guilt in the process.
I definitely did not feel my grandfather was to blame. Poor granddad, I thought, there must have been something wrong with him, I think I thought. Or, that I was just so terribly attractive that men couldn't resist me (even as a young child). It felt like it was something about me, not so much something about him.
'If only we had not been so stupid or timid,' we told ourselves, or 'If only we had behaved differently, the incest would never have happened.' We denied we were powerless over our histories.
I don't remember thinking that exactly, though my self talk tended to be that I was stupid and ugly.
Taking our First Step helped us realize that we cannot undo what has been done to us. . . . Almost all of us tried in some way to change our families from what they were into what we wanted them to be.
I always believed that my family was a good family.
In SIA we learned that we are not responsible for our families and that we are powerless to change them, but that we can change, to some extent, the way that we relate to them.
I guess so. I told my parents about my grandfather's behavior through a letter when I was in my early twenties, living away from home. I was in a store and saw a Reader's Digest that had an article about an abusive neighbor. I sent the article and said this was what granddad did to us (referring to me and my sister). My sister was behaving in a much more outwardly angry way. My letter was to say, I think this is why my sister is so angry. So, I was still caretaking, not taking care of myself, but of her. I was always to "good girl".
Many of us became people pleasers, hiding the tremendous anger that arose of the incest situation, and presenting to the world a picture of control and passivity.
People pleaser? Big time. My whole world revolved around making other people happy. People are forever telling me how calm I am. Little do they know the volcano of feelings that lies underneath. When pushed to my limits of pressure, I explode.
We cheated ourselves out of our own feelings, hoping that our eagerness to please would earn the love and nurturing we so desperately needed. . . .
For sure.
We could no longer ignore the sexual abuse; we could no longer deny that it had happened to us. Nor could we deny that it continued to affect us to varying degrees, even today. . . .
I never denied it happened to me. I always knew. I'm not sure I remembered everything. I buried the feelings, though.
We admitted that we could never control the people around us or most of the events on our daily lives.
I am still learning that today. A current therapist made the comment that there are so many things in life that we have no control over. I am still learning that.
Though the incest may have happened a long time ago, the memories, the guilt and the self-demeaning thoughts lingered with us. To acknowledge them and begin to deal with them was to admit that our lives were unmanageable."
I guess so. The greatest sadness I have currently is my current inability to have a truly intimate relationship with another human being. I truly don't like sexual intimacy. One thing I learned to control was my sexual response, which leads me to think that I must have responded physically to the abuse. I learned to control it so thoroughly, that at this point I pretty much experience nothing. There are people who are attracted to me, and I guess maybe I to them. But I like it from a distance. I'm realizing that I like the attention and flirtation, but don't get too close. I shut down completely and distance emotionally and physically.