Hi @Former-Member. I understand the concept of unconditional love. Ideal. Mothers usually have it for their children (but not always). And everybody, everybody imagines they are giving it. And, in my experience, almost everybody puts conditions of all sorts on their love. If you have experienced the ‘stigma’ that @Sahara mentions around MI, then you can see what I mean? “We will love you when and only when your behaviour falls within certain socially acceptable parameters….until then, we will scrub your name from our address books and check back in a year to see if you are ‘over it’.”
Good on you for working it out and for being unconditional love in motion. I used to think I gave it too until I found the people to whom I had been very kind were not able to be kind back when I needed it, and then I realised that it was an expectation of mine. My love was conditional. **Tries hard. Room for improvement......
The ‘Truth is the Truth’ is a simple statement on the face of it. With due respect, the veracity of this statement has been debated throughout the course of history. Like, “Is there a God?”, the answer differs according to opinion. Ultimately what we believe is just opinion. Personal philosophy. Our own ‘home truths’. The fact that others share our opinions doesn’t make them facts. Your journey, though difficult, has taught you lessons that only come about from your personal journey (likewise anyone). It is fantastic that you feel you have certainty on these big issues, and very generous of you to share your insight and wisdom born of experience.
So if I sound like I am disagreeing, it is mostly on the very baseline level that we can easily mistake opinion or personal beliefs for Universal Truth.
I think it is both admirable and liberating that you are able not to let hate into your heart in the first place. But with respect, that is just YOU. To find that hate for one’s abuser arises in one’s heart is very distressing and not something over which most people have conscious control. If it were, then how easy would things be? No hate just because we choose not to have it hang around to harm us?
Of course, I don’t want to hate. I have always been able to forgive and let go of resentment in the past. So what do I do when I find that I just can’t this time? Not yet anyway. With the obsessive thinking that is a part of PTSD, I can feel the hatred harming me, just as you say. Eating me up. Burning my insides. At first, it was rage, but thankfully that has passed (with a lot of ‘hard work’ and acceptance of the way things are rather than how I’d like to believe they are). But so far, I have not yet found a way in to forgiveness or whatever such that the hatred doesn’t arise when I think of my abuser. Any suggestions? “Just let go” doesn’t cut it, I’m afraid. And even when I practice loving kindness meditation towards my abuser, I cannot sit with it, as it morphs and changes back into hatred. Just this one person. Just this one time in my life (even though he is my second abuser). Nothing to do with my will. If it were just will, then I would have been able to not hate him in the first place. Goodness knows I tried!
And yes, like your daughter, I had low self esteem and was hugely naive. This event lost me my innocence.
If I assess my MI health progress, I can see that I have moved beyond my own victim mentality; I have discovered self compassion; my courage has grown; my other symptoms are considerably reduced with inner calm; but right now, I am still saddled with this hatred, which I neither want nor feel that I have any control over. And yes, it does fester, but I won’t be helping myself if I just judge myself to be a bad person for having the hatred in the first place! And hoping that the Truth will win out and the abuser will be exposed and suffer some kind of retribution for his sins in this lifetime doesn’t change a thing (even if I did believe it as firmly as you do). His conscience will not make him suffer, as you probably rightly suggest happens to some perpetrators. (Heaven knows I’m still suffering shame for ONCE getting drunk, angry and foul-mouthed after days of his goading, belittling, provocative behaviour). Psychopaths do not HAVE a conscience. They do not experience remorse or guilt or shame. And profound betrayal, psychological and emotional manipulation and non-violent abuse are not punishable by law. Calling him out will only result in more of the same, plus victim blaming, not being believed and public shaming. The snare of the high-functioning psychopath. He has left a string of ‘victims’ with lingering MI.
I absolutely agree that “Inner peace is obtained through living a life of love where no hurt is sought or practised”. In fact, I think is the answer to almost everything! Thus the principle vow of many professions and spiritual traditions, “Do no harm”. I also agree that the best of life’s lessons are learnt by experience and not from a book, and in a weird way I am grateful to my abuser for sending me to this Hell in the first place, even though I can’t yet forgive him.
Grey hair, by the way is very fashionable!
I am having a good day. Not the least of which is this fabulous deeply philosophical discussion which is extremely unusual, edifying and gratifying!
Gone off topic again @Sahara, but I hope you can really take in the validation your best friend gave you about your other friendships. Seems like you are having a bit of a growth spurt right before our eyes! Whoopee!
