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When you're telling your story, do you only give it in bits and pieces, as if you're only giving bits of your story at a time so people can somehow digest it? Some women in recovery feel that they are not being heard when people around the recovery tables don't react with horror and shock at their tales of abuse.
But then when one bit is digested and gone down the tubes, the whole effect of this person's behavior toward us could be lost...especially to people in this program who are USED to experiences of violence, threats, witnessing terrible, bizarre things that we come to think of as normal. No wonder we put up with behavior that others would already have found unacceptable and gone...ran swiftly...in the opposite direction...and it doesn't get "unacceptable" to us until way down the line. Thus, the second reason why I think women experience a feeling of "not being heard." Some of them have admitted to putting so much of the focus on themselves that they berated themselves publicly for not doing something about the abuse, for not seeing it. All this in the name of "recovery"??!! I recall hearing a story from an Adult Child who told of a typical weekend party at her parents' house when she was a young girl. She was at home, but staying out of the way, of course. She went into the bathroom and saw someone lying in the bathtub, not seeming to be breathing, certainly not moving. She finished and went out, thinking nothing of seeing someone lying in the bathtub of her house...it wasn't until it was discovered that this person...I think he was actually dead...that she realized what she had witnessed...and years later until she realized how it affected her to live with bizarre behavior. I also recall that while hearing this story, none of us in the group were visibly shaken...we all took it as we've taken so much else...very quietly, barely moving...certainly no shocked looks or expressions of surprise or abhorence. Before recovery, I was always amazed at people who reacted so much to things that happened...I looked at them as overly sensitive, weak...and perhaps overly dramatic!! So when you say to me, or to another person...your sponsor...that you've experienced physical abuse and threats, many of us have, too, and somehow we become immune to the effects. I might recall things from my past and unconsciously Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Living With Physical and Verbal Abuse in Recovery in Substance Abuse/Recovery is owned by Geraldine Wagner. Permission to republish Living With Physical and Verbal Abuse in Recovery in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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