i just had a light bulb moment: i am a survivor, somehow thriving within the parenthetical framework of a victim mentality. how do you like them apples!
i was pondering the victim/survivor mentality, and thinking about how i consider myself to be in survivor mode. several years back, i had made the realization that i was definitely seeing myself as the victim of my past, and i made a determination from that point on that i would start to walk and talk like a survivor. no more victimization mentality for me, so siree bobtail stinkeroo!
now here comes the hard part: i actually did do that. i began to act 'as if', and there's the rub. "ACT" 'as if'.
while i realize that acting 'as if' has had a valuable place in my actual recovery path, and has really advanced me out of the bondage [as i interpreted bondage] of the past, now i am seeing, with a wider periscope, that my acting 'as if' arose in the framework of a victim mentality! it's almost as if my abuse experiences caused this parenthetical framing of my life, and leaving me blind to the fact, unable to see it objectively, since i myself was the subject.
the clincher for me is in the realization that by saying i'm a survivor merely REINFORCES the label of 'victim' that i had come to place on myself in my mind, by verifying in my own head that there was something to survive in the first place. declaring "IM NOW FREE" only reinforces the notion of victimhood!
this post is an attempt to put the sequence of coming to label myself 'victim' into context.
what happened: major life chapters/influences in this period:
+ grade school: having strong palpable experiences of god's
presence in my life; stress of being 'different' than other males;
liking to be with, and preferring girls as playmates.
+ high school: abuse taking place; parents stressed out and
emotionally, psychologically and physically unavailable and
abusive; sexual abuse by my older brother occuring
+ stress of realizing my 'difference' as being homosexual, and
fearing being discovered by other males in the peer culture.
+ blossoming as a musician, developing musical tastes and identity as a musician.
in my early life i 'felt' myself to a victim of my economic
social status, my parents physical
and emotional violence. later my brother's sexual abuse,
and later the rapes i endured in the service. i was starved
emotionally, and desperate to find 'love' and acceptance.
this became the foundation for all my choices and actions:
the desperate need to have my emotional and psychological
needs met. to be loved, and to get it in the only way i
had known up to that point in my life: by using my body, and
projecting an image of worthiness. i began to cultivate a life
that would serve these purposes, and my entire life's trajectory
would be propelled toward resolution in this ultimate purpose:
to apologize for not being good enough!
feeling bad...need to escape it: major life chapters/influences in this period:
+ joining the navy, and began to label myself 'gay/bi', and
embraced my essential self, tho not accepted by my family.
+ being raped on at least 4 occasions, once by a civilian
at knife point.
+ out of the navy
+ i turn 21 and start hanging out in bars
+ perp rejects sexual relationship and dies
+ i disclose to family his abuse of 4 of us
+ realizing their fury at me for outing him, i
desperately try to get back into their good
graces, by rejecting my gay nature, hoping to win
their approval:
+ i marry my ex-wife, the lead singer in our band
[incidentally, the 'attraction' was the bond we
shared thru her mom's relationship to my mom as her
hairdresser; also she was the former one time girlfriend
of my secret heart throb buddy growing up]
+ i spend several years developing my career in church
music, while drowning in drugs, alcohol, shame and
making babies.
+ life is miserable, and my 'marriage' goes south.
+ i discovery AA, leave my marriage of 7 years, and begin
my recovery journey at age 31.
prior to recovery and having developed recovery language,
i did not 'know' myself and in my own head to be 'a victim'
and so had not labeled myself as such at the time
at least consciously. it seemed to be
what i needed to do in order to cope with the
unnamed pain i was feeling at the time, which led
me to seek 'recovery' solutions: such as would lead
to freedom from entrenched and imprisoning behaviors.
in recovery, i came to see myself as victim of my past experiences, and ultimately the choices that i exercised as a
result of those, which ultimately became regulating
patterns in my life. addictions abounded and
became the pain management tactic, eventually
culminating in the form of negative bonding with
substances and processes such as oral fixations
with smoking, eating, drinking and other processes
that sought to sate my need for closeness, ie,
relationships, obsession with weight and body
issues to become more worthy, engaging in religious
practices bartering with god, trying to fix myself
so as to be more acceptable to others.
ok now! let's fix all this stuff!: major life chapters/influences in this period:
did all the things i thought i needed to DO in order to BE ok.
i had come to see my life as a big bunch of knots that needed to be untied, unlinking sequelae one by one until i got to the genesis of the thought seeds that germinated entire pathologies, which could then be surplanted with new trains of thought rooted in reality.
i conquered many addictions, achieved success in my career, increased my education beyond that of any of my family members ..... see how OK i am now?????? all arising out of the framework of the victim mentality. i am broken and i need to be fixed in order to be more acceptable to myself and everyone else. what a trap! all that as if to pass judgment on anyone as being 'less than' who did not share in what i perceived to be 'worthwhile' endeavors. as if personal value could be quantified and qualified by some standard of weights and measures.
living life now outside the parenthesis of 'victim' modality
realizing i was victimized [and that there were surely consequences of that] is NOT the same thing as perceiving myself as a victim! victimzation happened. there is no denying that. but the labeling myself as such became a self-fulfilling prison, because every time i pointed to one of my bonds, investing in the narrative of myself i reinforced the notion that i was imbounded, increasing that belief about myself. i came to see myself as eternally trapped.
BUT
now i realize that seeing myself as trapped, and labeling myself as such, WAS NEVER THE CASE. i was only a victim of my own perceptions. if i was a victim of anything, it was my own inability to
relieve the stresses brought on by the dissonant states that had become part of my previously fractured self.
when i began to author this self-referential narrative of me as victim, then all other possibilities in my life came to be ruled out as the aperature of my mind's eye slowly narrowed by the labeling of
myself as victim.
how could i truly be a survivor, when the underpining belief upon which i would build the foundation survivor/label was the sand of victim/label?
the only way i could really get back on track to being the 'potential ron' was to disinvest in the idea that i was ever trapped to begin with, that i was ever REALLY a victim. i had to burn this book
and begin to author a new one. i had to debunk the ideas that i had come to believe about my own systemic grooming stop blaming the past as if to apologize for something [investment in victim mentality] and just move on to other options, and stop looking back at past, lest i turn into the proverbial pillar of salt.
too bad i wasted 20 years trying to figure all this out, thinking i was trapped all along, not realizing that the bars were of my own mind and that i could have walked thru the bars at any given moment.
oh well, better late than never....... maybe someone can skip a couple chapters in their own life by reading this.
i was pondering the victim/survivor mentality, and thinking about how i consider myself to be in survivor mode. several years back, i had made the realization that i was definitely seeing myself as the victim of my past, and i made a determination from that point on that i would start to walk and talk like a survivor. no more victimization mentality for me, so siree bobtail stinkeroo!
now here comes the hard part: i actually did do that. i began to act 'as if', and there's the rub. "ACT" 'as if'.
while i realize that acting 'as if' has had a valuable place in my actual recovery path, and has really advanced me out of the bondage [as i interpreted bondage] of the past, now i am seeing, with a wider periscope, that my acting 'as if' arose in the framework of a victim mentality! it's almost as if my abuse experiences caused this parenthetical framing of my life, and leaving me blind to the fact, unable to see it objectively, since i myself was the subject.
the clincher for me is in the realization that by saying i'm a survivor merely REINFORCES the label of 'victim' that i had come to place on myself in my mind, by verifying in my own head that there was something to survive in the first place. declaring "IM NOW FREE" only reinforces the notion of victimhood!
this post is an attempt to put the sequence of coming to label myself 'victim' into context.
>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM Early Life ]<<<<
what happened: major life chapters/influences in this period:
+ grade school: having strong palpable experiences of god's
presence in my life; stress of being 'different' than other males;
liking to be with, and preferring girls as playmates.
+ high school: abuse taking place; parents stressed out and
emotionally, psychologically and physically unavailable and
abusive; sexual abuse by my older brother occuring
+ stress of realizing my 'difference' as being homosexual, and
fearing being discovered by other males in the peer culture.
+ blossoming as a musician, developing musical tastes and identity as a musician.
in my early life i 'felt' myself to a victim of my economic
social status, my parents physical
and emotional violence. later my brother's sexual abuse,
and later the rapes i endured in the service. i was starved
emotionally, and desperate to find 'love' and acceptance.
this became the foundation for all my choices and actions:
the desperate need to have my emotional and psychological
needs met. to be loved, and to get it in the only way i
had known up to that point in my life: by using my body, and
projecting an image of worthiness. i began to cultivate a life
that would serve these purposes, and my entire life's trajectory
would be propelled toward resolution in this ultimate purpose:
to apologize for not being good enough!
>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM/SURVIVOR Pre-Recovery Life ] <<<<
feeling bad...need to escape it: major life chapters/influences in this period:
+ joining the navy, and began to label myself 'gay/bi', and
embraced my essential self, tho not accepted by my family.
+ being raped on at least 4 occasions, once by a civilian
at knife point.
+ out of the navy
+ i turn 21 and start hanging out in bars
+ perp rejects sexual relationship and dies
+ i disclose to family his abuse of 4 of us
+ realizing their fury at me for outing him, i
desperately try to get back into their good
graces, by rejecting my gay nature, hoping to win
their approval:
+ i marry my ex-wife, the lead singer in our band
[incidentally, the 'attraction' was the bond we
shared thru her mom's relationship to my mom as her
hairdresser; also she was the former one time girlfriend
of my secret heart throb buddy growing up]
+ i spend several years developing my career in church
music, while drowning in drugs, alcohol, shame and
making babies.
+ life is miserable, and my 'marriage' goes south.
+ i discovery AA, leave my marriage of 7 years, and begin
my recovery journey at age 31.
prior to recovery and having developed recovery language,
i did not 'know' myself and in my own head to be 'a victim'
and so had not labeled myself as such at the time
at least consciously. it seemed to be
what i needed to do in order to cope with the
unnamed pain i was feeling at the time, which led
me to seek 'recovery' solutions: such as would lead
to freedom from entrenched and imprisoning behaviors.
in recovery, i came to see myself as victim of my past experiences, and ultimately the choices that i exercised as a
result of those, which ultimately became regulating
patterns in my life. addictions abounded and
became the pain management tactic, eventually
culminating in the form of negative bonding with
substances and processes such as oral fixations
with smoking, eating, drinking and other processes
that sought to sate my need for closeness, ie,
relationships, obsession with weight and body
issues to become more worthy, engaging in religious
practices bartering with god, trying to fix myself
so as to be more acceptable to others.
>>>> [ I'M A VICTIM/THRIVER Phase II Recovery ] <<<<
ok now! let's fix all this stuff!: major life chapters/influences in this period:
did all the things i thought i needed to DO in order to BE ok.
i had come to see my life as a big bunch of knots that needed to be untied, unlinking sequelae one by one until i got to the genesis of the thought seeds that germinated entire pathologies, which could then be surplanted with new trains of thought rooted in reality.
i conquered many addictions, achieved success in my career, increased my education beyond that of any of my family members ..... see how OK i am now?????? all arising out of the framework of the victim mentality. i am broken and i need to be fixed in order to be more acceptable to myself and everyone else. what a trap! all that as if to pass judgment on anyone as being 'less than' who did not share in what i perceived to be 'worthwhile' endeavors. as if personal value could be quantified and qualified by some standard of weights and measures.
living life now outside the parenthesis of 'victim' modality
>>>> [ I'M A SUVIVOR/THRIVER Phase III Recovery ] <<<<
realizing i was victimized [and that there were surely consequences of that] is NOT the same thing as perceiving myself as a victim! victimzation happened. there is no denying that. but the labeling myself as such became a self-fulfilling prison, because every time i pointed to one of my bonds, investing in the narrative of myself i reinforced the notion that i was imbounded, increasing that belief about myself. i came to see myself as eternally trapped.
BUT
now i realize that seeing myself as trapped, and labeling myself as such, WAS NEVER THE CASE. i was only a victim of my own perceptions. if i was a victim of anything, it was my own inability to
relieve the stresses brought on by the dissonant states that had become part of my previously fractured self.
when i began to author this self-referential narrative of me as victim, then all other possibilities in my life came to be ruled out as the aperature of my mind's eye slowly narrowed by the labeling of
myself as victim.
how could i truly be a survivor, when the underpining belief upon which i would build the foundation survivor/label was the sand of victim/label?
the only way i could really get back on track to being the 'potential ron' was to disinvest in the idea that i was ever trapped to begin with, that i was ever REALLY a victim. i had to burn this book
and begin to author a new one. i had to debunk the ideas that i had come to believe about my own systemic grooming stop blaming the past as if to apologize for something [investment in victim mentality] and just move on to other options, and stop looking back at past, lest i turn into the proverbial pillar of salt.
too bad i wasted 20 years trying to figure all this out, thinking i was trapped all along, not realizing that the bars were of my own mind and that i could have walked thru the bars at any given moment.
oh well, better late than never....... maybe someone can skip a couple chapters in their own life by reading this.
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