Sysiphus

Through the spring of 1998, I had a series of very important healing experiences. I faced my own feelings of wanting to recreate the abuse. I let my therapist see and touch the violent insanity. I brought those feelings to the sacrament of reconcilliation as practiced by my church.

Each time, I would feel that I had finally healed the self-hatred, and a few hours or a few days later it would come crashing back again. Each time it came back I was so disappointed, because I really thought I had cured it. Finally, the only way I could get out of feeling, over-and over again, that I had failed was to decide that it was always going to come back. However, I was going to keep trying to heal it.

I actually found it quite calming to identify with Sysiphus, who was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll back to the bottom every time he almost reached the top. I felt noble, in a way, for committing myself to a hopeless task. That is why I like the graphic below--because Sysiphus smiles as he goes back down the hill.

On bad days I still find the image of Sysiphus to be my best hope, but on good days I believe there is a way out eventually. I wrote the following description of the path I am on for my spiritual director on 5/13/98:

I think we shared the same concern about the way I have continued to fall back into self-hatred and self-punishment, despite all the different good work I have done to heal the underlying issues (and I count the sacrament of reconciliation that we did as an important example of that good work). But I need you to understand better how I am approaching the problem.

I probably don’t need to say this, but just to make sure let me state that I believe very strongly that none of the voices inside me are d*m*ns (it is a convention of the on-line support world to spoiler certain words, and in some cases I feel more comfortable doing so in my own writing). If you want more information on this issue see “Cast Out What?” by Fr. J. Mahoney.

Your question, I think, is whether some of the voices inside me are introjects or internalized versions of my abusers. Certainly some of the voices sound like my abusers and repeat destructive things that my abusers told me. But I believe that those are scared or defensive parts of me who think that the only way to be safe is to copy my abusers. I believe that those parts can be healed and can learn better ways to protect the system.

In fact, that tends to happen very quickly, so the negative messages are not associated with one voice but rather with whatever voice is newest and rawest. When the male voice first came out a few weeks ago, he believed that I should be punished for telling. But he has quickly learned better ways to protect and has turned his energy to trying to find a way for us (all the voices) to blame our abusers instead of blaming ourselves. The other voices who spoke yesterday backed him up (which was a very good experience for him and for them) because they believe that we need his strength and assertiveness to move forwards.

Now, if I don’t see my selfhatred and resistance to healing as essential characteristics of certain voices, then why do they keep returning so strongly and what can I do about them? First, I think I have to go through some set of essential memories before I can move out of the selfhatred. Clearly, when I tried to move forward a month or two ago, I failed because there were more memories I had to deal with first. Is there more to it than that? Is there some force that pulls me back into the darkness again-and-again? I don’t think so. I think what seems like a force is just a web of painful memories and negative messages that I can gradually weaken by holding them up to the light one-by-one.

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It feels to me more like it is just very hard and very slow for me to learn to trust (particularly my therapist, because it is with him I am working at the deepest level). I think that the center of healing the selfhatred is simply love, but that is a long process of gradually building up a web of care, both inside and with other people, that will be strong enough to hold me. Over-and-over, I panic that love is going to turn into abuse again and I thrash around and break the web, but it is more easily repaired each time.

What I conclude from that is that the most important thing is to learn to love the parts of myself who have played negative roles, and for them to feel that they can play a positive role in the system. Therefore, I am quick to forgive and to want to include the male voice. He was asking you to help him find forgiveness, and he felt your response to that was negative, that you didn’t think he deserved forgiveness. I think it was okay for you to push him, but I wish you had more explicitly honored his good intentions and his efforts to find more positive ways. He was really very scared.

Be patient with the way the self-hatred jumps from voice-to-voice. It is a defensive pattern, not a single entity, and it pops up wherever the web is weakest.

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