The Real Work That Is Yours To Do
For many of you, it’s awfully hard work to push through the season. And sometimes it’s impossible to feel at home in your life after your abuser steals so much from you through overt or covert means. There’s no “soft place to fall” as Dr. Phil likes to describe a loving, healthy primary relationship.
But time is marching on. The years pass. We begin to see that what might have been the most catastrophic experience of abuse in our lives is of little or no interest to the people we thought cared about us. To most people it’s just a marriage break-up, and to others it’s their opportunity to say unkind and untrue things about you and get away with it. The rush to defend and befriend the man who abused his children and his life partner can be breath-taking. The world of “alternative facts” and those who choose to believe them comes home to our most intimate experience of life.
I’m keenly aware that my years are slipping away and I can’t waste any more time on things like changing how or what people think about me. That ship has sailed and caught the wind of his lies. How can I expect anything else? I was in full sail with his lies for three decades! Family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances will land where they land. The one thing about being adrift in the ugly waters of abuse victims is that we learn to survive all over again, for different reasons.
But I wanted to do more than survive. I wanted to participate in life, add value, enjoy its many gifts, and make new friends. And for an introvert, that’s been an interesting journey. Along the way, one of the most important questions I’ve learned to ask myself is “Is this my work to do?”
“Is this my work to do?”
Notice the question is not about whether I can do it, I should do it, of I want to please the person who asks me to do it. No, it’s a more important question of self-worth, self-awareness, and self-love. “Is it my work to do?” puts the responsibility on me to discern the reasons I have for doing it, and not doing it. So, for example, needing the money is sometimes a legitimate reason for me to do the work because it means I can continue to do this work. Doing the work to appease people with more influence than me, however, is not a reason to do it. You will need to work through those things for yourself.
This question also helps me to see that if my priority is to offer my specific, unique, and much-needed skills, doing jobs that many others can do who cannot do these specific and unique things just muddies the water for everyone.
So, as we turn into a new decade of measured time, where do we put our energy? What is your work to do?
I’m not one for new year resolutions. But I would like to make some commitments to myself that could help me add value to the span of my life. This is a big piece of the work that is mine to do. I can’t expect others make any commitment to me when I won’t make one to myself. Here’s a few thoughts about how making a commitment to yourself might work.
Trusting Myself
I cry a lot no matter where I am. When I am at my little stone house back in Ontario I cry almost every day. It’s not always sorrow. Sometimes it’s just being overwhelmed by a moment of piercing happiness, or a memory newly recovered from the laughter file, or gratitude gushing up from way down deep for someone’s kindness at a critical time, or the trees that are so astonishingly wonderful to me. Not always sorrow. But sometimes sorrow. People I miss. Opportunities I missed. Decisions I would take back in a heartbeat but cannot. The squandering of my life in search of someone else valuing it. You know the drill. Those kinds of crying.
I’m trying to shape some kind of commitment about this whole crying thing, because it seems that no matter why something matters to me, I cry about it now. I wonder if I’m too crazy or unstable to offer myself as a professional participant in life. I am anxious about feeling so much…about so much.
So, I want to trust myself more with this crying thing, and accept it. I want to stop thinking that when I’m really “better” I won’t be like this. Something from years ago, when I was in my early teens is coming to mind. My mother took me to the doctor because when I cried I didn’t have tears. I’ve read about this and there are various theories about it. I don’t know when I started to have tears again, but I certainly have them now! I don’t think it was good for me to be cut off from my tears and I don’t think it’s good to not cry about things that move me deeply. So, my commitment is to cry with trust in myself. I can cry because I can trust myself in sorrow, joy, gratitude and regret. I can trust myself. That will be a specific commitment.
Trusting Yourself
From my experience working with women like you over the past ten years, you are probably one of the most trustworthy people wherever you happen to be. As we all look to a New Year, I invite you work with that truth for a bit, using the following questions:
What do you think makes someone trustworthy?
Make a list of why others trust you.
On a scale of 1-5 where 1 means “untrustworthy” and 5 means “completely trustworthy,” how would you rate yourself?
Using the same scale, how do you think your husband or boyfriend would rate you?
How would you rate him?
Look at the list you made about what makes someone trustworthy, how many of those things does he demonstrate?
How many of those things do you demonstrate?
What are the three most important indicators of trustworthiness to you?
When these men and their treatment groups traumatize us, we often don’t trust our instincts about that being true. Also, our abusers deny, gaslight us, and minimize what they do to us. So, being able to trust ourselves is directly related to how we manage people in our lives who are not trustworthy.
When I did this exercise, here’s how I answered that last question:
Choosing to constrain own actions because of harm done to others
Choosing honesty and authenticity instead of patterns of deception or manipulation in relationships
Accepting responsibility for wrongdoing or harming others
It may be that on another day I will choose three different things or express similar ones a different way. But for today, this is what I have.
As I think about the questions of where I’m going to put my energy, and what is my work to do, I’m going to remember how I answered those questions. I can trust myself to know what is good from me to participate in. I can trust myself to know who is good for me to work with. I can trust myself to know how and why the wheels fall off the bus.
Participating is not about the wheels never falling off the bus. It’s about listening to yourself when you think they are. It’s about assessing the best course for you in addressing it, if that is necessary. That is also “your work to do,” especially now as a person recovering from trauma. Just because you recognize something negative has happened, however, does not mean you have to jump up and get it dealt with immediately. I am learning wisdom these days in my crone years, and that means I draw on trusting myself to create space around an incident so that it is “quarantined” until I can complete other responsibilities first. That allows me to do them with an open-heartedness and joy. If possible, I may debrief with someone else whose point of view is valuable to me. Trusting yourself does not mean you can’t trust time, anyone else, or the other work you decided was yours to do. Trusting yourself is about releasing the tears if necessary, expressing the fears you have to yourself or your spiritual source, embracing the work that remains yours, and listening to wisdom. At least that’s what is has been about for me as I try to participate in life again.
Another year is ahead. Let’s be fully present in it—to ourselves—to our closest family—to friends old and new—and to the work that is ours to do. Start by a new or renewed commitment to trust yourself.
And if you still aren’t sure, remember that the one who abused you was able to do that by knowing he could trust all the great things about you—your loyalty, integrity, honesty, work ethic, capacity to love, forgiveness, accepting of others, generosity, humour, faith, and yes, trustworthiness. The least you can do here is trust those things as much as he did.
With you in a new year,
Diane