Episode 4 - Victim Mentality - Only You Can Change Your Life

'Trigger Warning' if you or someone you know has been affected by sexual abuse please remember the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre 24-Hour Helpline 1800 77 8888

Only You Can Change Your Life

In today’s podcast we will discuss another of the psychological impacts of childhood sexual abuse and Trauma.

We will talk about how we grew up with a mindset that ensured our continued isolation and the belief that no one was ever going to save us. It was only through the writing of our book that we realised its importance and negative influence it held in our lives.   

This way of thinking developed as a result of our abuse and helped to create drama in the most mundane of situations. On some occasions it turned minor issues into catastrophes.

This mentality was born out of feelings of powerlessness, and the belief that those around us didn’t care and could not protect us.  It was understandable to have these feelings in our childhood, but as adults it made it very difficult to trust anyone or make decisions that weren’t coming from a negative place.

This belief system influenced who and how we allowed people into our lives. That old saying the ‘like attracts like’ is true as we tended to attract people who were at the same level of struggle in their lives as we were but neither of us were in a position to identify our behaviours or help each other.  This impacted every relationship in our life and in some cases ensured that we choose people that would not challenge us. On reflection we can see that many times we used our thinking and beliefs to manipulate others to feel pity or sympathy for us, leaving us in a comfortable space where we didn’t have to take responsibility for ourselves.

Our lack of personal responsibility was probably the biggest hurdle we had to face, even making the most basic of decisions was a nightmare for each of us at different stages of our life.  We realise now that without intervention we would never have had any sense of ourselves or our ability, nor would we have ever taken any credit to our achievements and our ability to survive the life we had lived.

We hope that today’s talk helps you to explore how you are with others in your life? Do you have someone that challenges your behaviours and encourages you to examine the emotions that drive the decisions you make on a daily basis? 

We believe when you are armed with the information you can begin to heal and be kinder to yourself for things that were out of your control. 

 

Take Care 

Joyce, June & Paula xxx