Guilt my own self tormenting emotion that is all consuming. Left alone with my own thoughts makes my skin tingle with anxiety. Pain rips through those parts that hold the guilt and shame. I believe I am being rational and so it must be true right? When I have my adult eyes open, I know the guilt is unjustified and that leads to me to be self-loathing and internally agonising. If I let it, it then becomes a tool to self-sabotage. So, then that becomes so unnecessary and such feelings then don’t serve me or anyone.
My history is written in stone, it cannot be undone. Those actions I took that hold the pain ingrained under my skin will always be knocking at my door with the voices of guilt coming out in my physical self. In my eyes it is a life sentence, If I let it.
My mind continually plays tricks on me, but I now know it also holds the key to discovery and growth to explore the guilt that runs through me. My definition of guilt means I did something wrong and therefore should be punished. In actual fact, I was a child who took direction from my caregivers and believed all that they said, and told me to do, after all what difference did I know, and yet I write that, I know that but the guilt remains. In the eyes of the law you are either guilty or not guilty. However, as a survivor of abuse the layers of guilt permeate and seep through different shades of my mind.
I came across this: written by Pines M Consultant Psychotherapist 1995
Shame and guilt teach us through painful but inevitable trial and error how to adapt ourselves to social roles and how to influence others to adapt to us. We learn when and how and how much to be open to others: how to manage appropriate closeness and distance: how not to hurt or to be hurt: modesty, tact, social sensitivity and sympathy are learnt this way. We learn to be human by knowing that what we feel others also feel. (Pines 1995)
I am my own judge and jury and every time the gavel is thrown down it is always the same verdict. Guilty go to the fires of hell….!!! That was driven into me.
I am responsible for me; I am my own caregiver and so my actions surely belong to me.
The process of casting off guilt is complex and requires me to look into the eyes of a child and ask myself is a child responsible for her actions. Absolutely not. I can absorb that and tell my adult brain that, however yet again the fact is solid, but the feeling is swimming about like it has no end point. It is like I am in a permanent status of paralysis unable to move from what is a feeling that is not warranted.
Time has come to stop ignoring my feelings of guilt and start putting myself into a solution, focused frame of mind and move from this stuck position to look beyond the horizon. This can be empowering and in doing so giving myself the compassion and nurturing I should have always received as a child.
I will need to reframe and eliminate all the toxic thoughts I am having. I cannot change what happened, but I can change how I look at it, how I perceive it and how when I look through my adult mind I can see that the guilt was never mine to have in the first place. Recovery from CSA is a process that has so many facets. To heal is to feel to feel is to discover and in discovering you grow. Trust in yourself as it is yourself that matters………….