Dysfunctional Familiarity

Many years ago, I traveled to Honduras. I was the guest of some Americans who invited me there to teach several seminars. I love to travel and one the best parts of travel - in my opinion - is trying local foods and experiencing local customs. Well, imagine my disappointment when our first meal in Honduras was at an American restaurant chain. It was the same menu as the chain's restaurant in the United States, except it was written in Spanish. Before the week was over, I ate several meals at American franchise restaurant chains. They were all very familiar to me and there was absolutely no challenge to try new foods, experience new customs, or even the struggle to communicate with the wait staff.

I finally asked if we could please go to a local, mom-and-pop owned restaurant or cantina, which we did. As soon as we walked in, I was in a completely unfamiliar setting. I did not know what anything was on the menu, I struggled to communicate, and the setting was extremely different from what I was used to. I felt as if I didn't belong because I was in a very different setting that I was unaccustomed to. But I found that as I made an effort to understand and be understood, that both the workers and the customers were happy to help me find my way around. I stretched to try out my very rusty Spanish, but somehow managed to convey what I wanted to eat. I've never had such wonderful beans, rice, and tortillas in my life, but it required an effort on my part. I was a fish out of water in this small, grungy cantina - a place that was completely unfamiliar to me.

This sense of unfamiliarity is one reason that abuse survivors hesitate to try new approaches to life and relationships. For most of us, we are most familiar with dysfunction. The way we eat, relate, work, parent, partner, and live has been dysfunctional for a long time. So long, in fact, that we may not know any other way. As unhealthy as it is, your "normal" may be extremely self-defeating and ineffective. At the same time – that’s what you know. You know the menu, the language, the setting, and the customs. That's what feels natural and effortless.

When you start that transition to healthy choices, appropriate boundaries, and adequate self-care, you're suddenly in uncharted territory. You're not familiar with the language, customs, or settings. Abuse survivors often struggle when they feel powerless and believe me - when you're trying out "healthy" for the first time - your unfamiliarity with it can cause you to feel very out-of-control, even powerless.

You may actually panic and revert back to what you know best, rather than ride out that unfamiliarity until you become more comfortable. It takes a while to grow accustomed to functional living. It also takes time for the people in your life to adjust to your new way of living, behaving, and thinking. Of course, if you're getting healthier, it may actually feel threatening to the dysfunctional people in your life who might not want you to grow. That's when the panic can really set in if you're not careful.

Trying anything new brings with it a certain level of anxiety and uncertainty. That's normal. If you recognize that this sense of unfamiliarity is a normal part of the healthy growth process, then you've already conquered it. It is what it is. When you know that, you can also develop strategies to stabilize yourself if you panic or feel like a foreigner.

You know, the best meal I had in Honduras on that trip was as that grungy cantina. It was worth the effort and the uncomfortable feeling of not understanding anything. As I pushed through those obstacles, I found there were people willing to help me, unknown tastes and experiences that turned out to be wonderful, and a deep sense of personal pride that I went beyond the familiar - in my case the American restaurant chain - to really have an encounter with the very culture I wanted to be a part of. You'll have those same moments in your journey from familiar dysfunction to healthy choices. While it may not be your "normal" at first, that too will change over time - and you'll feel a deep sense of personal accomplishment and pride when it happens.

Complexities of Damage

People often wonder why their experiences with childhood abuse impact them so deeply. Why does the damage live on and on in so many of us? Why isn't it like a scraped knee that heals up so that you can just move on? Why do you struggle with anger or depression or fear or chaos or addiction or dysfunction decades after the abuse ends?

That's a complex question and the response is equally complex. The complexity rests in the fact that nothing in your life occurs in a vacuum. The perpetrator. The people who wouldn't or couldn't protect you. The time and place. The circumstances that facilitated the abuse. Your own physical, mental, spiritual, and social needs and conditions at the time. These - as well as many others - are all part of the context in which your abuse occurred.

Abuse - the full context of abuse - changes the way you think about yourself and the world. The way you think about trust and security is altered. The way you approach relationships is overshadowed by pain or terror or fear of abandonment. The value you see in yourself and others is skewed. That context of abuse is imprinted in your mind and heart and becomes the navigator. If you're not careful, you will live on auto-pilot with this navigator steering you to sabotage relationships, devalue yourself, withdraw, attack, or disappear.

The context of abuse teaches you that safety and goodness are not necessarily guaranteed. That lesson is often learned very well and the complexity of that lesson is that it's based on reality. You weren't safe. Bad things did happen. But the other part of that reality is that there are, in fact, good and decent people who are not out to abandon or harm or exploit you.

The complexities of abuse's damage can determine how you cope with stressful situations now. You may work very hard to be self-sufficient - avoiding the need to need anyone. You may cling or obsess or be hyper-vigilant. You may pretend that your past doesn't include the disturbing experience of abuse. You may drive yourself and everyone around you crazy with your anxiety, your fear, and your rage. It's complicated.

The path to becoming healthier requires a recognition that your dysfunctional beliefs about yourself and the world - maybe even God - are not determined solely by the actual abuse. It is larger than that. It is the context. Life - your life - is still lived out in a context. The challenge is to separate the context that you function in today from the context in which your abuse occurred. They are not the same. Even if the same people are in your life - even if you're in the same town and the same house and the same room - it's different. If nothing else, the difference is that you're seeking personal empowerment and a healthier path. That alone, is a huge step to re-arranging the context of your life today.



September 11, 2001
The anniversary is upon us. To commemorate this brutal atrocity, let's work for peace, and strive to be people of grace and mercy. There is no better way to honor those who lost their lives than to be the reflect the love of Christ in this dark, sad world.

We will never forget. Never.

Vertigo

I've struggled with vertigo a good portion of my adult life. Yep, you might say I'm a dizzy blond (bad pun, I know). Vertigo is a very disorienting condition. The room spins, regardless of whether you're standing, sitting, or lying down. You lose your balance. You get nauseated. In some cases vertigo can completely incapacitate you! Once, I had a episode so debilitating I couldn't even give a telephone interview for a radio program!

For abuse survivors - abuse of any kind creates that same sense of vertigo. In this case, however, it's spiritual and emotional vertigo - sometimes physical, sexual, and relational too. Abuse is very disorienting when it's happening, but the damage doesn't end there. It completely spins your world around and can continue to create internal and external chaos and confusion for years.

Vertigo is usually caused by tiny calcified bits in the inner ear. Medications are not particularly effective in controlling the symptoms. My doctor told me the best thing I can do to control vertigo is to take care of the source in my inner ear. She explained that it's like dissolving sugar in tea. You have to stir the tea to dissolve it. So my "treatment" as well as prevention from further episodes is to lay on the edge of my bed with my head hanging off, and roll from side to side for a few minutes. And you know what . . . it worked! Dealing with the problem, versus treating the symptoms, helped substantially in controlling and even reducing the vertigo episodes.

There's an obvious correlation here when dealing with your abuse “vertigo.” Covering it up, numbing it, or pretending it doesn't exist - none of these are really effective strategies to be able to function for any sustained period of time. While it would be nice to just take a pill, drink a drink, or click your heels three times and "poof!" everything's fine - that's not the way it works.

Abuse recovery is a pro-active way of living. That's not a statement of despair; it's a statement of empowerment. Some people think that the task of making on-going healthy choices means they're doomed to struggle for the rest of their lives - that they'll never be "healed." I think it's just the opposite. I think the moment you make a healthy choice - a proactive choice, you're already there. Every step you walk on this path of being a healthier, balanced person is miraculous and powerful and amazing!

To lie down and be dizzy is one thing. To lie down, even though you ARE dizzy, and roll around until you dissolve that bit of debris - that is proactive! That effort - metaphorically and spiritually - means you have empowered yourself to get up, find your bearings, and catch a more accurate view of life. Each tiny step you take, each proactive choice you make - big or small - brings you into a place of more accurate perspective. It gives you a glimpse of what it is you're working so hard for.