Minimizing Pain

This episode addresses a sneaky little habit many abuse survivors do that hinders their ability to re-build their self-esteem. 

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Transcript

0:22

Hello, my friends. There is something that abuse survivors do, myself included, where we will make excuses for the people who have treated us badly. I catch myself doing this to this day still, after all this time. I'll catch myself doing it and have to be like, Oh, no, no, no, no. I do it about my childhood. I do it with the Mormon church. I do it with my ex husband although, not so much with him anymore. I've gotten in a real good place with that, but I mostly catch myself doing it with my childhood. I'll notice something painful, usually when I'm trying to process something from the past so that it can, you know, move through me and I can be free of it. So I'll notice something painful. Like like last week, I noticed that there was an old wound of wishing that my parents could see the harm that the Mormon church inflicted on me and not make excuses for it. Like every time it comes between me and that church, they choose the church every single time. And that's painful for me. But I find myself making excuses for shit like that all the time. I'll follow up the acknowledging of that pain with something like, well, they just can't handle the cognitive dissonance so they have to cling to the church no matter what. And that might be true. But so fucking what? That being true doesn't negate my pain. Like both of those things can exist at the same time. But when I am making excuses for it, the underlying current of that is that I shouldn't feel pain because there's a reason for it. It puts their cognitive dissonance as more important than my pain. It's like an internal shaming of my own feelings. And it's very subtle and sneaky because it sounds like understanding. It sounds like understanding them or giving them the benefit of the doubt. Which our culture tells us are good things. You can understand without diminishing your own experience or invalidating your own feelings. You can get it and get the why they are the way they are or why they did what they did, and still know that it doesn't excuse it. Like especially in the case of abuse. There's no good reason for abuse. None. Ever. Lots of abusers abused because they themselves have been abused. And that still doesn't make it okay. At the end of the day, we are all responsible for our own actions and no one else's. So even if there is a reason, the reason is irrelevant. And it's not about holding grudges, or being angry. It's about not shaming your own experience or invalidating your own feelings. It's saying yeah, I understand why they can't let go of that church no matter what. But every time they want to make excuses and disregard how much harm that institution has done me, it hurts me. And that pain is valid. I can't tell you how many times I've heard abuse survivors describe horrendous things that their exes have done to them. And then they'll follow up with something like, 'but to be fair, I've also been like really nasty to him.' Or they'll say 'but it wasn't all the time; it was just some of the time.' There's immediately that caveat that they tack on. What is being said underneath it is I might have deserved it. It's excusing their abusers behavior on some level. Every time you make an excuse for someone treating you like shit, you are telling yourself that your feelings don't matter or your feelings are less important. The more you believe that the way you feel doesn't matter or is less important than how other people feel, the more shit you will allow in your life. I hope you will really hear that because therein lies the key to having less shit in your life. When you can say that wasn't cool; that really hurt me. There is a power in that. It is having your own back. There is an element of sticking up for yourself when you own the validity of your own feelings and experiences. When you can validate your own emotions and experiences, when you can stop making excuses for other people, that is when you will have better relationships. As long as you are willing to make excuses for people, there is no shortage of awful relationships you can be in. Stop making excuses for other people and at some point you stop being around people who don't take responsibility for their actions. You stop tolerating shit that hurts you. You naturally gravitate towards people who can take responsibility for their own actions and can on their own apologize and make amends when necessary. Because they don't rely on you to make excuses for them. It's such an important part of healing to not shame our emotions or experiences. It's how we recover our sense of self. It's really hard to build back your self esteem when you are making excuses for people who treat you badly. Those things don't really coexist. And you can't recover from something that you are denying. You literally cannot heal while you are not acknowledging the extent of the damage. It's like when they say that the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging that you have one. Well the first step to healing from something is to acknowledge everything that does need healing. And you aren't acknowledging it as long as you are tacking caveats and excuses on for why it happened. You can't fully own pain that you are minimizing and that pain has to be owned in order to start healing from it. So if you do this, if you tend to make excuses for other people's behavior, you can start to catch it. You can start to notice when you're doing it and stop yourself. That's what I do. Like I said, I still to this day catch myself wanting to make excuses sometimes, and I have to catch it and be like, no, no, no, no, no. I get it. Like I can completely understand where they're coming from. And also that doesn't give you a pass to hurt me. How I feel matters and I am going to address my feelings. I'm not going to shame myself or try to talk myself out of it. I deserve at least the same understanding that I try to give other people-- at least. The person responsible for protecting me and taking care of me is me. The only person I am responsible for is me. And I gotta take that responsibility seriously. You got to do the same for you. Alright my friends, so if you're making excuses for people's shitty behavior, cut it out. Alright, love you, talk to you next week. Be well, my friends.