You have been running from this most of your life.

You have tried to convince yourself it ‘was no big deal,’ that it just happened, and it was over.

That was then – this is now.

Now you know that denial, repression, and compartmentalizing will no longer work; that to go on and be healthy, you have to confront what happened.

Being ‘perfect’ didn’t help.

Drugs, drink, promiscuity, sex for hire and porn addiction didn’t help either.

Sexual abstinence, overeating and obesity, self-harm, shame, guilt, rage – all these are branches of the tree your abuser(s) planted.

They’ve grown as surely and as steadfastly as any literal tree planted in the literal earth.

Your guilt and shame are buried deep in your soul.

Of course, you don’t want to tell this to anyone else, this story of how you were exploited and harmed.

It makes no sense at all that you feel guilty you were harmed, that somehow you enticed the abuser. But, if you accuse yourself, at least you’ll have some sense of control over the incomprehensible. You must have done something to cause the beatings.

To tell this story to another human being is almost beyond what you can fathom, but you know you must.

Better out than in.

Telling the story to someone with the skill and experience to hear it is exactly what begins the path to recovery. Breaking down the barriers with a patient listener is the technology by which the self-condemnation, guilt, shame, and ultimately the rage are put in their rightful places.

We will begin to pull apart the stories you were told, or told yourself, as ‘explanations’ for why these things happened to you.

I have heard these stories repeatedly, almost since the beginning of my practice, which was four decades ago. With telling the story, perhaps over and over again, each telling goes a little further toward neutralizing the toxic feelings.

Untangling the knot

Sometimes I use a method called EMDR to help with this process. I’m happy to explain more about that process during your free consultation.

What is most important is that we form a relationship in which you can trust yourself to be free to tell the stories, allowing me to shine a light of new understanding on your interpretations of them.

It’s time for you to see yourself in a different light.

Allow someone to help you out of your hiding place.

I am ready when you are.

We’ll put things in their rightful place.