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Tools For Your Toolbox
Every healing journey needs a toolbox to carry along. What is a toolbox you may ask? Well, a toolbox is a figure of speech for the resources and skills you gather together during your healing journey; things that speak to you and help you sort through all the pain and confusion left in the wake of your traumatic experiences. It may be some coping skills you learn from a friend, it may be some tips on how to choose a therapist for support, or it may be some positive affirmations you find in a book. I am in hopes of providing some resources here that you may find invaluable. The things I post are items I have placed in my toolbox during my journey, and they have helped me tremendously. Keep in mind that we are all unique and we all have different things that help us to heal. There is no 'ready made' or 'right' toolbox out there, there is only the one you create yourself for yourself with the items you find beneficial to your journey.
If there is something you are not finding here, why not post a thread and ask for it. You never know, there are many toolboxes out there and someone may just have what you are seeking.
Happy gathering!
I would like to add a 'Personal Bill of Rights' (compiled by Charles L.Whitfield, M.D.) to the front of this section, for I believe we all need to remind ourselves of what was taken, but what we can take back. This compilation was gathered from several support groups of which Mr. Whitfield facilitated, but is in no way a complete list of our rights. If you can add to it, all the more richer it will become (for instance, I can think of a right that is not listed below-"I have the right to be listened to and to be believed")
Personal Bill of Rights
- I have numerous choices in my life beyond mere survival
- I have a right to discover and know my Child Within
- I have a right to grieve over what I didn't get that I needed or what I got that I didn't need or want
- I have a right to follow my own values and standards
- I have a right to recognize and accept my own value system as appropriate
- I have a right to say "no" to anything when I feel I am not ready, it is unsafe or it violates my values
- I have a right to dignity and respect
- I have a right to make decisions
- I have a right to determine and honor my own priorities
- I have the right to have my needs and wants respected by others
- I have the right to terminate conversations with people who make me feel put down and humiliated
- I have the right not to be responsible for others' behaviors, actions, feelings, or problems
- I have a right to make mistakes and not have to be perfect
- I have a right to expect honesty from others
- I have a right to all of my feelings
- I have a right to be angry at someone I love
- I have a right to be uniquely me, without feeling I'm not good enough
- I have a right to feel scared and to say "I'm afraid."
- I have the right to experience and then let go of fear, guilt, and shame
- I have a right to make decisions based on my feelings, my judgement, or any reason I choose
- I have a right to change my mind at any time
- I have the right to be happy
- I have the right to stability, i.e., "roots" and stable healthy relationships of my choice
- I have the right to my own personal space and time needs
- There is no need to smile when I cry
- It is OK to be relaxed, playful, and frivolous
- I have the right to be flexible and be comfortable doing so
- I have the right to change and grow
- I have the right to be open and to improve communication skills so that I may be understood
- I have a right to make friends and be comfortable around people
- I have a right to be in a non-abusive environment
- I can be healthier than those around me
- I can take care of myself, no matter what
- I have the right to grieve over actual or threatened losses
- I have the right to trust others who earn my trust
- I have the right to forgive others and to forgive myself
- I have the right to give and receive unconditional love
KathyRME |
Latest page update: made by KathyRME
, Sep 4 2008, 11:55 AM EDT
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About This Update
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Keyword tags:
adult survivor
affirmations
aids
child sexual abuse survivor
coping
grounding
growing
healing
incest survivor
inner child
resources
skills
survivor
therapist
More Info: links to this page
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| KathyRME | Loving Behavior Reference | 0 | Mar 29 2009, 6:22 PM EDT by KathyRME | ||
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Thread started: Mar 29 2009, 6:22 PM EDT
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This is a wonderfully helpful list created by Iyanla Vanzant in the book 'Living Through the Meantime: Learning to Break the Patterns of the Past and Begin the Healing Process'
A list of the most loving ways you can behave through any experience: * Ask for exactly what you want * Tell the absolute truth about what you want * Clearly let others involved know your expectations of them * Ask for clarity about what is expected of you * Tell the absolute truth about your ability to live up to the expectations of others * Renegotiate any agreements you have made if you find that you're unable to keep the agreement * Honor what you feel, first to yourself, then to others around you * Remain open to hearing what others want and expect without feeling you have to do anything about it * Never dishonor or deny yourself or what you feel simply to please someone else * Be willing to surrender (give up) what you want or expect when surrendering it serves a greater purpose, such as healing or generating more love * Be willing to forgive people for the things they do or fail to do in fear or anger * Be willing to forgive yourself for the things you do in fear or in anger * Bless every experience and ask that Divine will and understanding be granted to you and others |
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| KathyRME | The Incest Survivors' Aftereffects Checklist | 0 | Sep 5 2008, 2:00 PM EDT by KathyRME | ||
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Thread started: Sep 5 2008, 2:00 PM EDT
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You may be aware that you are a survivor of incest, or you may not. The following list I gathered from E. Sue Blume's "Secret Survivors: Uncovering Incest and Its Aftereffects in Women" may help you to discover how this victimization may have impacted you. Sue's book is a great start for healing journey reading. It is "about the aftereffects of incest. It is not about what incest is, but what incest does."
Look at the lists in this and the next two threads and see how this tragedy has impacted your life so that you can recognize and gain the help and support you deserve. *Sexual issues: sex feels 'dirty'; aversion to being touched, especially in gynecological exam; strong aversion to (or need for) particular sex acts; feeling betrayed by one's body; trouble integrating sexuality and emotionality; confusion or overlapping of affection, sex dominance, aggression, and violence; having to pursue power in sexual arena which is actually sexual acting out; compulsively "seductive" or compulsively asexual; must be sexual aggressor or cannot be; impersonal, "promiscuous" sex with strangers concurrent with inability to have sex in intimate relationship (conflict between sex and caring); sexaholism; avoidance, shutdown; crying after orgasm; prostitute, stripper, "sex symbol", porn actress; sexual acting out to meet anger or revenge needs; all pursuit feels like violation; sexualizing meaningful relationships; erotic response to abuse or anger *Pattern of ambivalent or intensely conflictive relationships (intamacy is a problem) *Avoidance of mirrors *Desire to change one's name *Limited tolerance for happiness; active withdrawal from happiness; reluctance to trust happiness *Aversion to making noise; verbal hypervigilance; quiet-voiced, especially when needing to be heard *Stealing; starting fires *Multiple personality |
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| KathyRME | The Incest Survivors' Aftereffects Checklist - continued | 0 | Sep 5 2008, 1:41 PM EDT by KathyRME | ||
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Thread started: Sep 5 2008, 1:41 PM EDT
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Do any of these characteristics sound familiar to you? If so, you deserve support to help you through these traumatic effects.
*Trust issues; inability to trust (trust is not safe); total trust; trusting indiscriminately *High rishk taking (daring the fates); inability to take risks *Boundary issues; control, power, territoriality issues; fear of loosing control; obsessive/compulsive behaviors (attempts to control things that don't matter, just to control something) *Guilt, shame; low self-esteem, feeling worthless; high appreciation of small favors by others *Pattern of being a victim (victimizing oneself after being victimized by others), especially sexually; no sense of own power or right to set limits or say no; pattern of relationships with much older persons (onset in adolescence) *Feeling demand to "produce to be loved"; instinctively knowing and doing what the other person needs or wants; relationships mean big tradeoffs (love was taken, not given) *Abandonment issues *Blocking out some period of early years (especially 1-12), or specific person or place *Feeling of carring an awful secret; urge to tell, fear of its being revealed; certainly that no one will listen; being generally secretive; feeling 'marked' (the 'scarlet letter;) *Feeling crazy; feeling different; feeling oneself to be unreal and everyone else to be real, or vice versa; creating fantasy worlds, relationships, or identities (especially for wome; imagining or wishing self to be male, i.e. not a victim) *Denial: no awareness at all; repression of memories; pretending; minimizing; having dreams or memories (maybe its my imagination); strong, deep, "inappropriate" negative reactions to a person, place, or event; "sensory flashes" without a sense of thier meaning; remembering the surroundings but not the event |
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