My system is at war right now.  Is this more of a war than normal?  It’s hard to know.  Most of the time, we believe we are feeling the worst we’ve ever felt because we just can’t remember how bad we felt before.  That’s also a defender trick to convince us that we aren’t getting better.  That’s my long way of saying this war might be the worst, but it might not.  Either way, my defenders are terrified.  They believe I am going to die if I take any more steps toward visibility.  I don’t invalidate their fears.  I’ve had enough invalidation to last a lifetime.  Even if something doesn’t feel so scary to my adult self, it was terrifying to my child self.  Honestly, some of it feels pretty scary to both.  Instead, I just write what they have to say, and I let them tell me the terrifying memories which taught them to carry so much fear.

Each time I get a memory back of my abusers in action, I am dumbfounded by the amount of energy that went into their intimidation tactics.  It is utterly mind blowing to think about what would happen if the world’s abusers shifted their attention, time and energy to positive things.  We would live on a completely different planet.  Unfortunately, this is everywhere.  People work hard to keep other people stuck.  They are jealous.  They are under contracts.  They are completely unconscious about what they are doing.  They are operating from their own young, traumatized inner parts.  These are all reasons, but it doesn’t make any of it okay.  They are doing horrible things.  They are ruining lives.

For many years, they ruined mine, but I woke up.  I am their worst nightmare.  Nobody is supposed to wake up.  Nobody is supposed to remember.  People who abuse are reliant upon dissociation.  This is why dissociation was not recognized as a real survival skill for such a long time.  If people aren’t aware of dissociation, it makes it much harder to see it, and this makes it much harder to stop it.  Many will spend their entire lives in a state of dissociation repeating their trauma patterns without realizing how to stop them.  It is the most painful life, but it is also the most common life.  Of course, the more intense our trauma, the more painful that life becomes.  It lives on a continuum in that way.

My life was intensely painful before I discovered inner parts work, but my defenders were convinced it was better that way.  Some of my defenders are still convinced it is better their way.  No matter how many memories I recover, they still believe the next memories will be the end of me.  So the battle continues.  Each memory is a struggle.  It’s exhausting, but I have learned the truth.  The fear is not the truth.  The people who did these things to me were hoping I would never figure that out.  Could they still hurt me?  Sure, but they can no longer rely on my dissociation.  If they want to hurt me, they have to go up against my adult self.  Let’s face it, most of my abusers are operating from their child selves.  So it’s their child against my adult.  I have far more power than before I started healing and far more power than them.  Most importantly, I know who they are and so do others.

This changes the inner and outer landscape, but it doesn’t make my defenders feel better.  I will continue fighting to express and reveal my truth to the world.  I will continue putting these messages out there.  Each time I sit down at the computer to write another truth, I will connect with the defenders and let them write.  I will let them tell me why they think I cannot move forward.  I will express from the fear-based beliefs they were given by others.  I will respect and validate their views even if I am not in full agreement with the actions they want me to take.  I know these beliefs come from a long history with very abusive people.  I know my defenders were taught these things on purpose.  It helps to know this when I work with them, but the big changes come with the expression of their fear.

You are going to be ruined for this.  This is a core belief in my system.  As a child, any time I attempted to do what I loved or connect with my authentic self, I was inundated with sabotage from the very people who were meant to love me unconditionally.  It is not surprising that my defenders believe this pattern will continue.  Honestly, until I went no-contact with my immediate family, there was plenty of sabotage in my adult life too.

You will be punished.  In my childhood, there was punishment for almost everything I did.  I had forgotten most of these punishments because they were horrendous.  Sometimes, I was not directly punished, but the threats were so severe, I was terrified.  My abusers made it clear they were willing to do anything, so even the worst threats were believable.

You aren’t allowed to do this.  It didn’t really matter what I did.  There was a concerted effort to make sure I never felt confident or accomplished in any way.  My abusers particularly attacked me when I was exploring my gifts.  It was unacceptable for me to be who I was meant to be.  My abusers knew this had the power to reverse the impacts of my trauma through connection with self.

Stay small and stay alive.  When I was a child, I was powerless. I didn’t have many options. I could freeze which didn’t stop the trauma from happening. I could please others which had about a 25% success rate. I could also hide.  I discovered that staying small, even invisible, had the potential to protect me. If they were specifically targeting me, it didn’t work well, but staying out of the path of destruction was occasionally useful in trauma avoidance.

If you hear these messages, let them write.  Give your defenders the chance to express their fears.  As you do, it will feel like a battle.  It will feel like there is no hope.  It will feel like this is too difficult to continue.  Rest when you need to but keep going when you can.  Every step you take to reconnect with yourself is going to move your life forward, even if you can’t see the progress in the moment.  This is how life comes back to us.  This is how the abusers lose.  We will win this war, one battle at a time.