Life After Prison, Part 2: Pain
If you haven’t yet, please read the beginning of our series, Life After Prison, Part 1: Confusion.
Pain
Coming out of the cloud of confusion allows survivors of abuse to reorient themselves to the outside world, but it’s hard not to look back on what was once thought to be a loving relationship and wonder how a parent or professed lover could inflict so much pain.
Pain is the Alarm Emotion that lets us know that something is woefully out of balance with our Fire element – the element of love.
Survivors of abuse have typically been hurt by their abuser in many different ways, leaving a swirl of painful emotions even after the end of the relationship. To add insult to injury, survivors are often left to grapple with any residual feelings of love they may still have for their abuser – an emotionally heavy load to bear.
Here, we examine the different types of pain survivors often confront after they have separated themselves from their abuser.
That person didn’t love me.
The most devastating conclusion a person who is hurt by someone they love can come to is, “That person didn’t love me.” This is a deep-seated pain that hits you at your very core. Victims may start to believe, “I was not able to love that person enough to be loved back. I didn’t do the right things to earn the affection of the one person I wanted to be loved by. I am not lovable.”
All that self-criticism is the voice of the internalized abuser. Flip the script: instead, say, “It’s a pity that person wasn’t able to receive the love I gave them, nothing anyone did would have made them happy. They don’t know how to love.” The problem was never with the victim, it was always only with the abuser.
If a victim of abuse concludes, “That person doesn’t actually love me,” while painful, they have the chance to resolve the dissonance behind the idea that somebody they love(d) hurt them. Now the message they need to internalize is that they were never at fault; the fault was entirely their abuser’s.
Someone I love has a low opinion of me, they don’t see the good in me.
People feel loved when they feel seen. Whenever we listen to our friends talk about the new love in their life, we always hear, “They really see me, they saw deep into my soul and accepted me. I finally feel understood.” When we look into the eyes of our beloved and see their admiration and adoration for us, it feels as if our souls meld into one.
(Thanks, James Cameron.)
This is also why it’s so painful when our loved one reflects to us an image that is incongruent with how we see ourselves. When a loved one is critical, disparaging, or dismissive, it’s soul-crushing because we trust that they see us as we truly are. When that image isn’t good, it’s like the fire of love gets snuffed out. Even worse, when they stop seeing us – whether they’re being inattentive or stonewalling (one of the worst forms of abuse) – we feel like we might as well not exist.
People who stop seeing eye-to-eye fall out of love all the time, but this doesn’t mean theirs was an abusive relationship. The difference between falling out of love and being abused by a loved one is that victims of abuse are manipulated and taken advantage of by their abuser when they are told that they are not good enough, they’re inadequate, or that they need to be something that they are not. Reality hardly matters when an abuser wants to attack their target.
Trying to meet abusers’ expectations so they reflect back an image of ourselves that we actually want to see is an exercise in futility; they will never acknowledge who their victim truly is as a person. And unlike in normal relationships, when people can decide to part ways when the love fades, abusers will not let you walk away (the hoovering phase of the cycle of love bombing). In normal situations, people get a choice for who their beholder is; in abuse, you have no choice.
When a survivor of abuse escapes their situation, their self-image has likely been destroyed after prolonged periods of general erosion as well as targeted attacks. Victims need to stop looking for the approval they seek from their abuser, since it will never be forthcoming. After victims have escaped their abusive relationship, they can discover how uncomplicated it is to see and be seen when there is no abuser trying to manipulate them.
When the survivor returns to a normal community and sees their reflection in the way non-abusers treat them, the results can be transformative. “You don’t need to build up a woman who comes out of abuse; you just have to reflect herself back to her realistically,” says Erna. “Love is about seeing, love is about mirroring yourself back to you.”
I will never love again, and I will never be loved again.
Survivors of abuse have suffered so much at the hands of their “loved one” that it’s hard to imagine ever wanting to put themselves in a vulnerable position ever again. They may want to hide from others or feel self-conscious – even worthless – after escaping from their abusive relationship. Afterall, the last person who loved them made sure they felt inadequate and unworthy of being loved.
Still, when that initial period of wound-licking winds down and they’re ready to open back up, they can be left with the pain of feeling that they will never love or be loved ever again.
The solution to this particular brand of pain is to expand the definition of love. We tend to think about love in a romantic way, but at its core, to be loved is to be seen and to be appreciated for who we are. This can happen with people from many different parts of your life: friends, family, even coworkers! To create a loving connection, two people need to share attention and appreciation – that’s all. Just see each other and appreciate each other.
The most important thing for survivors of abuse to do is to let people approach them, undoing the isolation and social exile their abuser placed them in. If you feel like you’re never gonna love again, find a place where you can be yourself, let yourself relax into your natural state and you will see yourself in the eyes of the people around you. If you’re in a normal society, then you can just look around and love will come to you again.
In Part 3 of our Life After Prison series, learn about the fear of living life in the absence of your abuser.
