My language here may be coarse, as it is in real life, and my attitude may be sharp at the edges. But the fact is, I have all due respect for everyone who is confronting a terrible experience. No one, and I mean no one, gets to judge how people manage the traumas and tragedies that happen to anyone else.
If I have any strengths as a psychologist, one is empathy. I am notoriously good at feeling what other people are feeling, and most of the time I deeply believe that everyone is doing the very best they can to deal with their shit. When I feel impatient with other peoples' process, that impatience is mine, and it is not caused by them.
It's not the worst thing in the world to wish someone could hurry up and move past their trauma, because it stems from a desire for that person to feel better and be happy once again. However, it can be very disrespectful to someone who is suffering.
When life has handed you a pile of shit, the harsh fact is that you will never again be the same person you were before the shit happened. Ever. This is a very, very difficult reality to accept: we would all just love to go back to "before." But there is no going back.
When you move on, if you are able to move on, you move on as a different person; and everyone who is not you is just going to have to accept that.
So when you are moving from victim to survivor, you'll have to endure the fact that not everyone in your life will be able to deal. This will mean further losses for some survivors.
I hope that if you love a person who has been handed a pile of shit, you'll read this stuff along with them. Sometimes an intellectual understanding of the recovery process can help de-mystify it and make it easier to bear.
For example, lots of people believe that recovery, once it gets under way, will be a steady process. Gains made today will hold. Each day will be better and better (I read this in the get-well section of the greeting card aisle).
Actually, recovery is notorious for its roller-coaster tendencies. These can be discouraging to the shit-holder and to the people around them. Try to remember that lots of times it feels like two-steps-forward-five-steps-back. This doesn't mean recovery isn't taking place.
Sometimes you measure recovery by the hour; sometimes by the day, month, or year. If you're on a diet and you weigh yourself every day, sometimes you're going to have a bad day based on those numbers. This goes for the shit-holders and for all those around them. You just have to relax about this happening and trust the process.
The great cognitive theorist Jean Piaget believed that in order for us to take in new information, we first have to dis-assemble every piece of information on the subject that we already have, in order to make room for the new stuff. I always picture this as a swing set you buy in a great big box, assemble (with all the toil that requires), and put in place in the yard.
Next day, the see-saw part that goes smack in the middle of the swing set arrives in its own special box. Guess what.
Sometimes your entire swing set is going to be in a thousand pieces in the back yard, strewn everywhere, nuts and bolts disappearing in the grass, the dog running off with your screwdriver, the kids clamoring for you to hurry up and finish.
When I say that going from victim to survivor isn't easy, I am not kidding.
All respect for everyone going through this process, and please remember to have all care and respect for yourself, okay?
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