{"id":5757,"date":"2017-05-07T23:59:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T23:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelamplighters.org\/llblog01\/?p=5757"},"modified":"2017-05-07T23:59:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T23:59:39","slug":"boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelamplighters.org\/llblog01\/boundaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following on weak boundaries, a common behavior pattern in child sexual abuse victims, is an excerpt from my book Repair Your Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you say yes when you mean no?\u00a0 Do you cringe after reacting without thinking?\u00a0 Do you find yourself spending time with people you don’t care for and in situations with which you are uncomfortable?\u00a0 Do you make excuses to avoid certain people and certain choices you have made?\u00a0 Do you think things through before responding?\u00a0 Do you avoid overbearing, controlling people?\u00a0 How comfortable are you with saying NO?\u00a0 Do you have the courage of your own convictions or are you weak-kneed at the thought of defending them?<\/p>\n

We all have the right to set and hold our own boundaries, those lines we draw that indicate our limits.\u00a0 When a child is sexually molested, their boundary has been violated.\u00a0 Since future abuse was more than likely set up at birth by the type of family systems they was born into, the kind of parents and grandparents they had, and environmental factors, the likelihood of their ability to create and hold boundaries is small.\u00a0 Even if a child had the ability to begin with, once sexually abused, setting their own boundaries becomes a frightening privilege.\u00a0 It requires assertiveness, a quality with which a victim of child sexual abuse has little familiarity; it requires confidence, another quality not common in victims; and especially it requires a high level of self-esteem that stems from not only knowing what rights they have, but believing they are inherently theirs.\u00a0 Low self esteem is the core issue in all those who have been sexually abused as children.\u201d<\/p>\n

To someone who comes from a childhood of abuse saying no is a difficult thing to do. When I was in recovery, in a desire to give myself strength while I was married to my third abuser, a man who\u2019s sadistic behavior would take me to the brink of suicide, I bought a T-shirt with the lettering \u201cWhat part of no don\u2019t you understand.\u201d A curious thing happened. Every time I wore that shirt he looked confused and almost frightened. His abuse either lessened or disappeared when I wore it. This was during the last part of my recovery. My strength grew by leaps and bounds.<\/p>\n

When we come from a childhood where we were punished for setting a boundary we don\u2019t realize that right is intrinsic to our nature. During recovery I used to practice saying NO in front of my mirror every day. When I wore that shirt while saying this, it was a double message. Why is it so hard for us to set strong boundaries? After all, we\u2019re grown up now and should be able to say what we want in response to someone who is trying to dominate us. It may be that we are fearful if we say no. It\u2019s not an easy thing to say when you\u2019re in a situation where the direct result might be physical or sexual harm. My husband used to rape me repeatedly. My sobs and entreaties were ignored and any attempt to fight back only brought more abuse usually verbal and emotional.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re my wife and I have the right to rape you if I want,\u201d was his response. It wasn\u2019t until I completed recovery that I found out that it is INDEED a crime to rape your wife.<\/p>\n

Learning how to set my own boundaries came slow at first. But the more I did it the stronger I felt. Eventually I wondered at the imbecility of thinking I had no right to do that. What keeps us from being strong is our own lack of self esteem. Perpetrators know that they must make us feel as if we are responsible for our abuse. This may come in direct wording, in sly innuendos, in threats or in other covert manipulations. In my father\u2019s case the first thing he did (with my mother\u2019s consent) was to get me out of bed late at night and come into the living room where my mother waited. She began to interrogate me about what was happening in the middle of the night in my bedroom. I kept saying I didn\u2019t know, which I didn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t know anything about sex and the only thing I knew about where babies came from was that you bought them at the hospital.\u00a0 I was thirteen and weighed less than 80 pounds. My mom had my father begin beating me with a belt.\u00a0 As I tried to cover my face and shrieked with terror the blows and the questions increased. Finally, I screamed that I was to blame, not Daddy. I had this horrible feeling that if I didn\u2019t take the blame for something I didn\u2019t know anything about it would break up our \u201chappy Catholic family\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the other things he did a couple of years later (in case I didn\u2019t get it the first time) was to force me (and my mother) to listen to him read passages out of a best seller at the time titled Lolita. It was a novel about an older man who seduces a twelve year old girl and convinces her that it is her fault. Both my mother and I sobbed the entire time until my mother begged for him to stop. He did. Then he had both of us witness him tearing the book to shreds and then flushing it down the toilet as he said, \u201cit\u2019s a sick book.\u201d Pontius Pilate<\/em> is what came to mind years later. Somewhere in my subconscious between the two episodes I realized that I was not allowed to set any boundaries.<\/p>\n

Can you write down ways in which your perpetrator made sure you carried the guilt and the shame? Putting thoughts like these on paper will help you lance your wound.<\/p>\n

Remember, this is your body and only one person gets to decide what to do with it\u2026..YOU!<\/p>\n

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