Quote:
Originally Posted by tinyrabbit
This post is about CSA. Please be careful.
Last year, I disclosed CSA to my T by email. We talked about it in the session in a very careful, very general way. My T said: "You're talking about one of the most destructive things someone can do to a human being." I said I felt like I'd been going around for years with a knife sticking out of my head. We didn't discuss specifics or use real words. Later that day, I developed a sore throat and couldn't speak for several hours.
Some time after that, I disclosed to my husband because he found me crying hysterically. I kept saying I couldn't tell him what was wrong and he said I could. So eventually I managed to say something that helped him work it out without me saying it. And again, I developed a sore throat and had trouble speaking.
Those were quite dramatic bodily reactions and I hadn't even said anything really. Ever since then I've been very aware of my inability to actually speak about it, or to tolerate anyone else saying anything too direct. Once my T mentioned my father and I put my hands over my ears and started screaming at him to shut up. Once I rang a helpline and explained it in quite a roundabout way, and the woman repeated it back to me very bluntly: "You mean your father __________"? and I freaked out and hung up the phone.
So I'm afraid of the words. Now I've started to say them inside my head. I can't say them out loud, but I feel like I want to. For a couple of days now, I've been thinking about ringing a helpline, saying that sentence out loud, and then hanging up so I don't even have to hear their reaction. And I can't. It feels important, yet impossible. I feel like I simply cannot say it, even anonymously to a helpline.
But I feel like I need to say it, for some reason. Maybe because it's been unsaid for so long, and typing in an email isn't the same as actually saying the words. Maybe so I can see that the sky won't fall in if I say the words out loud. All I have to do is say it and hang up, but I can't. Does anyone know if it will even help? Have you managed to actually say this out loud, in a complete sentence, using real words?
I feel so overcome with shame even though I know, rationally, that I don't need to be. Maybe that's why I need to say it, and why I can't...
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Verbalisation can be a double-edged sword. Once you hear it come out of you, after being silenced for so long, in that moment you get your voice back, but you also admit you have work to do. We are not to blame for what happened, but we are responsible for transforming it. No one can do that for us. It sounds harsh, but when you think about it, it puts the power right back where it should always have been - in our hands.
I verbalised in stages. I was afraid of hearing many things out loud, but what I found was that those things I was most afraid of saying, once spoken, lost their power over me. the secrecy of abuse, the lurking in the shadows, is what gives it so much power - that isolates us and disempowers us. Verbalisation shines a light in the shadows of our experience, and helps to melt the witch.