When you’re recovering from trauma, with years and years of secrecy, you have no idea the extent of untruths or false negative beliefs, you hold within yourself. I’m calling them that instead of lies because lies denote a choice. I never chose to believe so many negative things about myself. I didn’t choose to live my life according to these negative beliefs. But that is what happened. When your body does not feel there is enough support, enough safety, to experience and know the truth of your trauma, then your mind creates a gift to keep you surviving. It gives you a whole set of twisted and false negative beliefs to live by.
untruths
United Pursuit has a song called Simple Gospel that says, “You say no amount of untruths can separate us”. The song is talking about God seeking relationship with each of us and loving us unconditionally. While that may be true, my experience is that untruths do in fact separate me from God. And not only God, but every relationship that might be healthy or intimate…romantic…family…friendship. Untruths…irrational beliefs…negative cognitions, as they are called in psychology, not only keep you from close, intimate relationship with God, they ensure distance happens in all of your relationships.
Sometimes this looks like extreme clinginess. Sometimes it looks like “F You! I don’t need you, and I don’t care what you think about me!”.
I do both.
Untruths, false negative beliefs, are a wedge in all potentially healthy relationships.
truths
The truth is that I was raped. It has taken me a really long time to be able to use that word and it still doesn’t come easy. It was not a “bad choice” like my mind had me believe all these years. It wasn’t any sort of choice. It was dehumanizing, demoralizing, and yet I tolerated it. How?
The untruths that I held within me and believed for decades (what I THOUGHT was true) was that I gave in. I allowed it to happen. He must not have heard me saying no repeatedly, begging for him to stop. He must not have realized how weak I am when I silently tried to get him off me. I was too quiet when I could have yelled for help. I seemed interested up until that point…so it wasn’t fair to expect him to stop. My physical collapse while being raped or my “freeze” response, must have looked like consent…so it wasn’t his fault.
In that moment of collapse, my mind gained some sort of feeling of control. Because I stopped resisting, my mind could say this was consent and not rape. That is how a freeze response becomes the mind’s strategy. A gift.
These were the negative cognitions my mind formed. They let me power through life and all that was expected of me. They distorted my reality so well that I married him once I learned I was carrying his child.
The truth is the rapes continued for years. If I resisted he held my arms down. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get him off me. Often he did it while I was in a deep sleep so that I would wake to him already on top of me. Already inside me without ever giving me a chance to respond.
The untruth, what I held within me as truth, was that because I gave up saying “no” within a year of marriage, it could not be called rape…regardless of my physical struggles to still get him off me. I learned to stop verbalizing my “no”. My mind said, “Do not say the word ‘NO’ out loud, because at that point when he ignores you it will be rape…and that will break you”. It was that simple. If I stopped verbalizing, it’s not rape anymore. I could live with that. My untruth was that sex is deserved in a marriage and I’m wrong to not want it. I reminded myself that he was new to the U.S. – coming from a 99% Muslim country where a powerful gender differential was normal; he doesn’t understand my culture. My untruth was that this is just the way sex is – very very aggressive. I had no idea it could be any other way.
How twisted is it it that my mind was able to adapt a belief that this didn’t actually happen to me? How does the mind even do that? It was about 7 or 8 years into my marriage before the pieces began fitting together and I started to get the tiniest glimpses of what had actually happened…and was still happening. How did my mind weave a different story that allowed me to function with something as explicit as rape? I hated that my mind did this. I hated me even more. How can I even trust my own mind anymore?
The truth is I was sexually abused as a child.
The untruth that I have believed all of my life, was that I was involved in something very dirty and sinful that I couldn’t dare let my mind rest upon or I would absolutely die! I could not even consider what actually happened. Being sinful and dirty, even as a child, is a better choice to my mind. I could not go there. I still have not fully gone there with all of the emotion that it likely holds, but at least I know now it happened.
emotion is not safe
The truth is that my parents, especially my mom, could not handle emotion. She still cannot. They could not support my emotions, my neediness, so I had to turn it off. I had no doubt they loved me, but I learned very early to not turn to them with my problems or they would grow distant. I had to find ways to ensure they wanted to be close to me and that meant being unemotional. Instead I was fun. I was the comedian. I was smart and independent. I was anything BUT emotional. They did their best, I know that, but my body learned that emotions were not safe.
The untruth for almost all of my life was that I am not an emotional person. I had shut that capacity off so perfectly, I believed this wholeheartedly. I felt almost nothing. Even raising a child, I felt very little love, joy, happiness. I NEVER felt anger. Or any other emotion! I felt nothing other than despair. I floated through every experience, anxious for each day to end. I felt little and formed very few memories.
When I began counseling, I discovered I DO have emotions. I was flooded with the emotions I repressed for years. But this brought out another whole set of untruths that I still struggle with… that I am too clingy…I am too needy….I am dramatic…I am overly emotional… and I am childish. This is what emotion feels like to me. I find extreme shame in all of these pieces, never understanding that I was only desperate for connection…desperate to be seen and understood…desperate for safety. To me, all emotion makes me feel like a child because that is when I learned emotions were unacceptable. All emotions are unsafe. That is where I still get stuck.
shame not guilt
My mom said she never knew anyone with a conscience so guilty as mine. She laughed at me when every day after high school I sat on the counter while she cooked, confessing to her every tiny flaw I had, everything I could have done better that day. I now understand it wasn’t guilt, it was shame. I was ashamed of my emotions that I could not control or express. I was ashamed of my sexual abuse that I could not tell her about. I was ashamed of my anxiety and the ulcer I developed from my perfectionism. My mom thought it was ridiculous that I could not control my stress better. I was ashamed that nothing I did could make her smile, look at me with pride, speak any approval or admiration, or express love. I was ashamed of who I am at the core and that I could not correct who I am.
Believing you are flawed at the core is not guilt, it is shame.
lies?
None of these untruths were intentional lies, but they ARE lies. None were rationally, cognitively chosen, yet my body adapted them. Psychology would call them maladaptive beliefs, negative cognitions, but the reality is that they were just adaptive. They let me survive when nothing felt safe.
We can look at them as lies or we can recognize they were strategies to live within a chaotic and painful world.
untruths prevent healing
Even today, after putting the pieces together and becoming aware of what I endured, if I visualize sharing this story in the presence of my ex-husband…or any of the other individuals who hurt me…I immediately return to feeling like a liar. I am ashamed again and feel like a helpless child. All of the untruths return because there is still dissonance in my body and mind that I am trying to work through.
I try to visualize myself back into the marriage…saying some of this…and he would be shocked at my words and disgusted with me. He would not even be able to look at me, so disgusted with my lies. He’d look confused and then be angry, and then dismiss me for being foolish. I cannot visualize telling the truth without reverting back to this. If I ever was brave enough to verbalize my story in his presence, he will not attempt to reconcile with me, because he cannot see what he has done. He believes his own lies. He always has, which has been the most confusing way to live.
I would feel horrible for hurting him with my lies. I would be ashamed and believe I had hurt him. I would feel like a disrespectful child again…small and unworthy.
This is how twisted the mind becomes when trauma is held in secrecy. What once protected me and kept me surviving, now still exists inside me and keeps me from healing. Trauma does not disappear with time. It becomes more twisted, complicated, and damaging.
My body has a wisdom that I never understood and that I always hated. But my body let me survive. It kept me functioning for all that had to be done in life, including the incredibly difficult job of being a mom. Maybe I didn’t function well…I was a poor mother to this little girl…but I functioned. I did not know joy or have the ability to receive love. But I functioned. I did the best I could.
counseling
With the support of a small circle of precious loving people and 2 ½ years of trauma counseling (that I wanted to quit many times), my untruths have been brought to light.
Many days I feel embarrassed for taking so long to work through all of this. I feel guilty for spending so much of our family’s money on counseling.
I feel guilty for how much support I have needed from my husband.
I feel guilty for needing my friend more than she needs me.
But I am reminded of the wisdom my body holds and that it can only work through this at a pace it knows is safe…slow as that may feel.
I am done with untruths. My healing journey will never be over. I will always work to be aware of the feelings and beliefs my body holds so that I can bring truth within…letting my mind and body know the same truths…even when they are ugly. This is where the healing happens. My mind and body were meant to work as one with my soul, as God designed.