Everybody's pile of shit is unique, even if the circumstances surrounding the endowment seem similar. To have your house broken into and a bunch of your stuff stolen is traumatic, but it's going to have different meanings for people, and different impacts.
No one can tell you what your pile of shit looks like but you. On the one hand this can make trauma very lonely: no one can completely comprehend your experience, although most of us are fortunate enough to have people in our lives who will try. Feeling alone with your pile of shit is the nature of the beast.
In cognitive-behavioral psychology, a big piece of recovering from an awful experience involves desensitization. This is a fancy way of saying your experience will bother you less. It doesn't mean pretending your pile of shit doesn't exist, it means your pile of shit doesn't own your life any more.
Let's say your pile of shit was bestowed upon you by a lousy parent. This is terrible because you were just a kid, dependent upon that parent for a sense of safety in this world and a belief in yourself as a worthwhile person. But for whatever reasons, they blew it.
Unfair as it may be, without a certain amount of effort on your part, your pile of shit has a good chance of ruining a whole lot of your happiness for the rest of your life. You may have learned not to trust anybody for any reason. You may find yourself walking off cliffs for anyone who treats you nicely for ten seconds. You may believe you are not worthy of being loved at all.
Your pile of shit is costing you too much.
The time has come to take a good long look at your own personal pile of shit. If you have a shit collection, you'll have to look at the turd piles one at a time. The better you know them, the more completely you'll be able to get free of them.
This is one of the parts of the process where many people find therapy helpful. Some people will benefit from prescribed medication; you may not need any at all. One-on-one, or in a group - maybe with people who own similar shit-piles - in an online chat group or with your favorite clergy person; there are many resources available. Do what everyone else does and run a Google. Don't be a hero. You don't need to do this alone.
Shit carries a certain amount of shame with it, but you're going to have to proceed anyway. Everybody's got some shit. Haters gonna hate, judges gonna judge. People victim-blame out of their own fear. You have no time for that noise. Keep your eyes on your own pile(s) of shit and the life you're headed for.
Remember that the blame goes to the person who gave you the shit, period. As a matter of fact, since it's your shit, you get to keep it exactly as it is if you want to. But if you want to change it, get busy.
I'm a great believer in putting things on paper. Write it, draw it, paint it, cut stuff out of magazines and glue it into a collage. Be specific about your pile of shit. Name names, date dates. Don't be afraid: it's all been rattling around in your head anyway.
This is an exercise in desensitization. You're starting to own your shit and own all its sources. You can keep these paper versions, you can shred them, you can make a careful bonfire if that's allowed where you live (not in my part of the world).
There are no real time limits on an exercise like this, but you don't want to spend the rest of your life bitching about bad things that have happened to you. Let's face it, that gets really boring and people start zipping around corners when they see you coming. We're aiming to move on from here, not drown in it.
At the same time, this kind of exercise can be helpful whenever your pile(s) of shit seem to be stinking up the house. Get it on paper, get it on cardboard, make it out of clay, build it in sand on the water's edge and stomp the shit out of it - whatever feels right to you.
Doing this work, you may want to take a break every few minutes or every hour or so; you may prefer to work at it like a machine on fire for hours at a time. Don't tax your poor body too much, I say. A nap, a period of meditation, a good hard burst of exercise; a piece of fruit, half an hour mindless internet activity, a hot bath, a favorite movie.
Coming to grips with your shit can be exhausting, exhilarating, terrifying. No need to be afraid of that. Just notice how you feel and thank your body for letting you have those feelings because they mean you aren't dead. Feelings are just feelings. (If you don't let your feelings be what they are, they tend to knock you down and stomp on your chest. Much better to just let them in, have them sit right next to you, make friends with them. It tends to calm them down.)
Once you are very clear on what your shit is, it will be much easier for you to decide what to do with it.
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