In my healing journey I have recently come to realize that no one can rescue me from my past, no one can help me feel worthy of being protected, and no one can help me to heal unless I am willing to let go of my desire for affermation and validation from others. I realized I have skills that I can use to aid in my own healing. What I have been working on for the past week is learning to process my flashbacks both cognitively and emotionally in a more healthy and adaptive way. I have decided the following:

1.) I want to go ahead and feel the pain, grief, and loss of my childhood innocense and young adulthood memories. I want to do this without regressing in my age emotionally to the time of the abuse. I want to feel these emotions absent of helplessness, hopelessness, and unhealthy dependency on others.

2.) I want to learn to protect my own inner child, love her, and build her worth rather than beating her down and abusing her further. I want to connect with my inner child and have her again be a integral part of my existence in a mentally healthy way.

3.) I want to recognize toxic shame and misplaced guilt by mentally processing my emotions through examining the thoughts that precipitate my negative emotions.

I still have alot of healing to do. I am still very venerable to crashing if I am not careful. But I do have hope that I can heal and I am confident that it is my own hard work that will result in my healing.

Great job Marilyn!

Thank you for your words.

-Zam

Good to hear your positive and self-helping thoughts Marilyn!

I think I can learn from you, I'm new to this and don't really understand how it works. Sounds like we are some things in common

Marilyn ... thank u for sharing your courage. Like Hollyberry, I'm so new I barely know how to sign in and to hear your thoughts is very helpful.