Abuse and trauma. In some ways these words have been normalized, minimized, or dismissed by many.  Some perceive them as not real or even noteworthy.  Instead, they are considered someone’s opinion of what happened, and not reality.  This idea that abuse or trauma is in our minds only and that they are our perception of events, diminishes what occurred, the actual events or the trauma. Abuse and trauma must be dealt with in another way and not dismissed because they are very real and they happen to so many of us. They have lasting consequences.

When I look back, I can remember quite a few very difficult memories from my childhood as I was raised in a home of a father who was a rageaholic. Experiences of being shamed, aggressively physically handled, and in all honesty emotionally traumatized verbally. Not just what happened to me affected me, but what I saw that happened to my mother and my sisters also hurt me. We lived in fear of my father.  Fear of his anger and what he would do when controlled by it daily.

As I grew, I began to minimize in my mind those things that happened to me. I could acknowledge that they weren’t good things, but I didn’t want to call them abuse per say. I knew that they had affected me and how I viewed the world and people. Yet I didn’t want to be a labeled a victim.  Refusing to be a victim of the things in my past, I chose to forgive and move forward. That is what a good Christian does right? Yet I can see that I bore the lingering scars emotionally from those difficult times in my formative years. Those things shaped my life and affect me even now.

Not long ago I had a conversation with my mother in which my sister and I addressed some of the pain and difficulty of our childhood. My mother’s first reaction was to pull out the one positive thing that I had stated in our conversation, which was that I know my childhood wasn’t all bad.  You see, there was some good things that happened when we were kids. I don’t think her comment was unlike how we handle situations and how we had learned to cope growing up. You see we compartmentalize, and we would tell ourselves that there’s more good things done to us than bad being done to us.  So it’s ok, right?

Another coping strategy is that we look at any small piece of kindness and goodness shown to us by our abusers and we choose to stay or gloss over bad situations because there is some good in them or in our situation. Oftentimes we remain in these situations that are damaging to us, and it’s long lasting damage. What I stated to my mother in response to her comment, which was the first time I had admitted this to her, was that no amount of good could take away the hurt and the damage that was done in our childhood. You see with abuse and trauma it isn’t like equal parts. If I have this much good, then you can handle this much trauma and it’s fine. Like I should be able to stay in this relationship as long as it’s 50% good. I can deal with the 50% bad no matter what it is. That’s just not true, because abuse is not just bad, it is soul altering.  

We shouldn’t have to deal with any percentage of abuse and trauma in a relationship. No matter the relationship. So, this idea that as long as there’s something good, that you should just endure abuse is the falsehood that I think leaves many people enduring in situations that they should have left long before. Maybe it’s because we’re hopeful people. Maybe it’s because the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, so you think that there won’t be anything better out there. Maybe in some weird way we somehow think that we deserve the treatment that we’re receiving. All of these become the mentality of somebody who’s been abused. 

I’ve seen this mentality before.  I can remember my former mother-in-law, a very sweet and kind woman. Yet she was a woman who had been conditioned to abuse. Even when I was engaged to my ex-husband, her husband at the time tried to strangle her and she stayed with him. Even though he had abused both of his sons and even grandson, physically and sexually, and she knew of it but still stayed with him. She never left him, and he eventually left her ironically. It was the classic case of an abused woman. It’s funny because I could identify that in her, but it’s a little hard to see it when you start to feel the same feelings yourself. I’m sure that she had the same thoughts as so many other abused individuals – “well there’s some good”, “if I’m just more pleasing”, “I made my bed, so I just have to lie in it”, or a million other minimizing lies, victim blaming statements that lead inevitably to same outcome. They stay in the situation to be further abused.

It’s not only this illusion that if there’s some good there, then it’s worth preserving even though it’s damaging and abusive that I think causes these situations to continue for many people. There’s another issue. We also minimize the things that happen to us. We tell ourselves what is being done is not that bad, so it’s ok.

In my last relationship I wanted out so badly because of the things that were happening that I would lay there at night as far as I could over on my side of the bed, being very careful to be still and separate. I would turn on my side and face the wall away from him. I would close my eyes and I would picture being in my own house, having it set up exactly the way I wanted it.  In a place where my children would be completely loved, happy, and safe. I would picture being completely at peace and secure in my own space and that’s how I could finally fall asleep. I was talking to my daughter about how I coped, and she said to me that maybe I had been through a little trauma. I kind of laughed it off but the truth is I did downplay some situations that happened. No, he did not beat me physically.  No, he did not in any way physically abuse my children. However, he did his level best to emotionally manipulate me and control me, to make me feel bad about myself, to constantly criticize and speak cruelly about my children to me and to my children, and worst of all he would binge drink and that’s when things really got ugly.

He was a mean drunk, he didn’t recall anything he said or anything he did, but everybody around him remembered. Although it did not seem to matter. When he would drink I would sit beside him and just try to disappear into the walls. Maybe he wouldn’t notice me or see me, and maybe he would just shut up if I was real still or if I just agreed with him. Why did I know how to handle that abusive situation so well? It was because I learned how to cope as a child of a rageaholic. Coping with an alcoholic/bing drinker was similar. I told myself they’re still good here. I told myself you’re just exaggerating these events or being a baby about them. They’re no big deal. Other people are experiencing worse.  You know what’s even crazier, that I know people out there have much worse things happen to them and I’m sure they try to cope the exact same way I was coping. Like my ex-mother-in-law, I’m sure she minimized the blatant physical abuse she lived through also..

I’m sure if you spoke with him, he would tell you that it was all my fault or that I was exaggerating my experiences. Honestly, that’s what I tried to tell myself. Yet I know the truth, even though I denied to myself at the time.  It wasn’t until I sat and had to think about the things that I had lived through that I really began to understand what I had experienced was abuse and trauma. Even though I had been through other difficult times in relationships, I had never felt so desperate to be away and out of a situation than I felt when I dreamed about getting out of that relationship. I had never felt so hurt or so worried about my children’s safety and emotional well-being as I did when I was with him.

He can say that what he did wasn’t abusive, but my emotional damage says otherwise. I realized this when even after I was away from him, for some time, if anybody brought him up and I thought about him at some point in my day I would have the same nightmare. In the nightmare I was back at his house, having returned to get some item, and I kept trying to escape him, but he wouldn’t let me go. I spent the whole dream trying to scheme my way out of what felt like hell. Each time I’d have that dream I woke up with a pounding headache and I realized that I was going to have to speak truth. I could not continue to lie to myself or anyone else about it. Even if I didn’t want to believe it, all I had to do to confirm the truth was to look at the relief on my children’s faces when we left. 

People cope by minimizing and normalizing abuse. ,We look for the good because we’re trying to survive. It’s the only way that we can keep moving forward and deal with living. I decided when I was in that relationship, that I would leave it and not continue the cycle of emotional trauma and abuse. I realized I would lose my children or irreparably damage them if I stayed. Ultimately, I knew I would lose myself as well. So, I chose the scarier route of the unknown and being on my own. Interestingly enough, it did seem scarier at the time than the known even though the known was miserable.

My reasons for sharing are not because I’m proud.  On the contrary, I feel great shame although I realize I shouldn’t. It’s embarrassing though to admit that I would choose to be with somebody who treated me and worse than that, that treated my children so badly. I ask myself why I stayed for any amount of time, but then I realized that I needed to stop asking that, I just needed to be thankful that I chose to leave, because many people don’t.

That’s why I’m sitting here writing tonight. I’m writing for the many people who don’t leave because they’ve been conditioned to do the things that I did to cope.  They have become conditioned to the abuse and trauma.  They tell themselves there’s still some good there. Or they minimize whatever happened to them. There is the whole tomorrow is another day attitude, and nothing that happened before is ever addressed just wiped clean as if it never occurred, but it did, even if we tell ourselves otherwise.  

There are some people out there who do recognize the abusive situation that they’re in but are unable to get out of that situation. For them, I pray that God would provide a way of escape and courage for them to go when it comes. That he would somehow protect them until they can find freedom.

For those who do have a choice whether to stay or go, I will tell you that it’s not scriptural to stay in an abusive relationship. God doesn’t want us to be beat down or traumatized.  He does not want our children to be beat down and traumatized either.  (And I can say with 100% certainty that if they are seeing you be abused and hurt, it is hurting them just as much as if they were the recipient) God would want us instead to be whole, healed, and held by him. God doesn’t expect us to stay and continue to submit ourselves to daily trauma and abuse from people who say they love us, when all they’re doing is hating and destroying us.

Remember, no amount of good in a relationship makes it OK for somebody to be abusive towards you in any manner. This goes for both men and women, because I know that men can be abused in relationships as well. Yes, you shouldn’t exaggerate situations as being greater than what they are, but you certainly shouldn’t minimize them either. 

My friends, it takes courage to face the trauma and abuse that you have lived through and recognize it for what it is. It takes courage and frankly faith, to forgive not for the benefit of those who’ve hurt you, but for your own freedom from their control over your life. Finally, it takes courage to leave when you know that you’re in a situation that is damaging for you or your children. 

Remind yourself that you are more courageous than you realize and your not alone when you have the Lord. I know so many who have been abused more severely than I could ever imagine, and I don’t feel like I have a right to speak as an expert to these things that have happened to them or to you. I only speak as a person whose experienced my own pain and trauma.  As a person who recognizes that there’s a great many of us who want to find freedom from them. 

Sometimes the freedom is leaving a negative controlling abusive relationship. Sometimes freedom is acknowledging that what you’re going through is an abusive, negative, and a controlling. Don’t waste your whole life hoping it gets better because it won’t. People who abuse will continue to abuse.

Find freedom today. If you can’t do it on your own, reach out for help and when you have freedom realize that it’s going to take time to heal. Unfortunately, where things have been broken, they have to mend, in our bones and in our hearts and minds. There will always be scars as a reminder, but we don’t have to be victims. We don’t have to be doormats, and we can stand tall as people who overcame. That’s my prayer for all of you today.