WORKING TOGETHER TO CREATE AN ABUSE-FREE FUTURE
12/26/06
Publisher: Beverly Engel
www.beverlyengel.com

Hello everyone,

I haven’t written an ezine for a couple of months and I’m happy to hear that so many of you missed it. Last December I wrote an article entitled “Out With the Old and In With the New” in which I provided tips on how to evaluate the previous year and set your intentions for the coming year. I recommend re-reading this article if you want to focus on these things. Even though you are busy with holiday events I urge you to find a little time for this kind of self-evaluation. I promise it will not only help you be better prepared for the coming year but also add a deeper sense of meaning to your holidays.

This month’s article is going to focus on another aspect of evaluating the past year—but from a different perspective. I’m going to focus on helping you to look at how you have worked toward breaking the cycle of abuse this year and what you can do to focus on this goal next year.

In the News from Beverly segment I will include announcements of upcoming events, workshops or conferences relevant to the treatment or prevention of abuse. Feel free to send me announcements you feel readers will find of interest. I cannot guarantee I can include them all but I will do my best to include what I feel is relevant. I will also announce my own upcoming workshops and books. I ask that you order books directly from Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com as I do not sell individual books directly to readers. If you would like to attend a workshop, feel free to email me directly at beverly@beverlyengel.com.

Please forward this ezine to anyone you know who is interested in preventing or healing childhood emotional, physical or sexual abuse or emotional, physical or sexual abuse in adult relationships. If you are receiving this issue as a forward, and would like your own no-cost subscription please follow the instructions at the end of this newsletter.


PRIVACY POLICY: I will never rent, sell or trade your name to anyone for any reason. Thank you for trusting me with your personal information.

BREAKING THE CYCLE OF ABUSE—ONE PERSON AT A TIME

by Beverly Engel

“Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road,
but drawing life from them, as from a root.”

G. K. Chesterton

As I wrote last December, my strongest intention for every coming year is to make sure that I treat others with respect and that I am not abusive in any way. My hope is that you make this one of your intentions as well. The same goes for expecting others to treat you with respect and not allowing others to abuse you in any way.

As I look back on this year I feel proud of myself in some very significant ways. Not because of what I have accomplished, but for how I have treated others. Those of you who have read my books know that I was not only abused as a child but that I have been abusive to others as an adult. I repeated my mother’s emotionally abusive behavior, especially when I drank alcohol. I also “inherited” many of my mother’s narcissistic traits—being self-absorbed, not taking the time to consider how something I do might affect others, etc. I have done tremendous work on myself in the past several years and am proud to say that I have very few of those narcissistic or abusive traits left in me. Nevertheless, I still must be vigilant to make sure that those traits don’t sneak back into my life.

There have been many times when I have been tested this year. I’ve been in situations where it would have been easy to bask in the glow of admiring fans and allow the conversation to become focused on me. Instead, I took a deep breath, let in the compliments, but then focused the energy back on the other person. I am finding more and more that while it can feel good to talk about myself (who doesn’t like this?), it actually feels better to get to know the other person better. Quite some time ago I learned that when someone puts you on a pedestal you are bound to disappoint and to subsequently fall off that pedestal. If I don’t allow someone to put me up too high, I won’t have to fall quite so far when the inevitable happens and I topple off my pedestal.

There have been situations this year when I was the object of other people’s envy. This has been an ongoing struggle for me, since on the surface it looks like I have accomplished a great deal (considering the number of books I’ve written). Envy is a very destructive emotion. Not only does the person who envies you want what you have, but on a subconscious level, they actually feel that you have what rightfully belongs to them. This causes the envier to resent you, or even to build up a hated toward you. This happened to me this year with a new friend. As anyone who has been the recipient of envy knows, the feeling of being envied can be very uncomfortable and downright painful. You know that you are being resented for what you have or what you have accomplished and there is nothing you can do about it, especially since the other person is probably oblivious to their attitude and behavior toward you. It is simply not one of those things that can be talked about easily, if at all. The progress I made this year was that I didn’t buy into the envy, I saw it for what it was and didn’t engage in the struggle. Yes, I felt disappointed when I realized that I wasn’t safe with this person, someone I thought could be a friend, but I didn’t engage in her drama or allow her to blame me for her own problems.

This year I also made real progress in my ongoing struggle to overcome the shame that has plagued me all my life. I am simply not willing to associate with anyone who does not treat me with respect. I don’t have to get into a conflict about it, or even discuss it for that matter. I simply walk away. This is what I did with an old friendship this year. This wasn’t someone I was very close to but I did have quite a history with her. This person is very narcissistic and in many ways, resembles my mother in her attitudes and behaviors. I had distanced myself from her once before when her rudeness and insensitivity has become unbearable to me. But after some time apart I felt that I was willing to re-enter the relationship on different terms. She seemed to have softened somewhat, primarily, I believe, because several friends had stopped talking to her and she was somewhat desperate for friendships. I talked to her about my own narcissistic tendencies and how hard I had struggled to overcome them. I also shared with her that I felt I had also alienated people in my past due to my insensitivity. While she didn’t acknowledge her own narcissistic tendencies she did express a concern for why people had ended their friendship with her. I thought we had reached a deeper understanding.

But something happened this year that let me see her true colors. We had a conflict over something that wasn’t all that important but it seemed to bring up old resentments on both of our parts. And I saw a side of her that actually shocked me. While I knew she could be insensitive to others feelings, she said some things to me that were downright heartless. She wasn’t talking in anger, she was just being brutally honest with me. This honesty revealed just how little of an investment she had in me as a friend. She essentially said that she was no longer as desperate for friends because she now had some new friends and because of this she really didn’t care about me all that much and certainly wasn’t interested in my feelings. It was painful to realize that I had allowed myself to care about this person but it was abundantly clear that I needed to sever all ties with her.

Conversely, this year I had many occasions to remember how important it is not to take things as personally as I am prone to do. We are all living busy, stressful lives, we all have our problems. We can all be insensitive at times. Just because someone is insensitive toward me one time doesn’t mean he or she is unsafe to be around. It is good to be cautious and have a wait and see attitude, but I don’t have to assume the person meant to be insensitive or that it had anything to do with how that person views me.

And there is still another important lesson that came up over and over this year. I can make a mistake, or momentarily regress back into old behavior and not have to make myself “all bad” or shame myself mercilessly. I’ve learned over and over that I tend to treat myself as poorly as my mother once treated me. Instead of being overly critical of myself, I need to talk to myself in a more nurturing voice, and be more forgiving of my faults and shortcomings.

I encourage you to take some time to look at what lessons you’ve learned this year and to assess your own progress toward your commitment to break the cycle of abuse.

May the coming year bring you much joy, love, good health and many, many lessons.

“Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.”

Aldous Huxley

BEVERLY’S NEWS

Look for HEALING YOUR EMOTIONAL SELF coming out in paperback. Also, look for two upcoming articles in which I was interviewed. Self Magazine, “What’s Your Anger Trying to Tell You?” and Health Magazine (April 2007 issue): “When Is It Time to Throw in the Towel?”

Movie recommendations: I strongly recommend the following two movies released this year. They are both very powerful and enlightening depictions of child abuse. If you are easily triggered, I recommend you watch the movies with someone who can be there for you afterward.

1. Water by Deepa Menta (Subtitled). This Indian movie is the final film in Mehta’s

Trilogy on the Elements, following Fire, and Earth. There is a love story in the movie but survivors of child abuse will resonate with the story of the little girl and with the injustices that women suffer all over the world. I was so moved by this movie that I saw it twice in the theater. Although it was painful, it was also exceptionally healing for my little girl. The girl in the movie goes through a tremendous amount of pain but she is supported by a loving wise woman who does not coddle her yet takes the time to get to know her on a very deep level.

2. Mysterious Skin by Greg Araki. Caution: This movie has powerful images of child sexual abuse that may trigger flashbacks and it includes the issue of male homosexuality. But if you are well along in your healing this movie is a powerful reminder of how people react to child sexual abuse in vastly different ways. I especially recommend it to male survivors but female survivors who identified with their aggressor or who have blocked out their abuse will also benefit from seeing the film.
—Ann Peterson

What is Being Done to Help Break the Cycle: A Year in Review

This year, as it is with every year, there were many, many people working to create an abuse-free world. I’d like to highlight just a few of these wonderful projects.

• National attention was focused this year on the issue of children being placed with abusers. On Sept. 25th, Newsweek Magazine published a positive article about protective parents. Oprah Magazine had an excellent article about incest exceptions and family court placing children with sex offenders.
•  Women’s World Summit Foundation (WWSF), headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, launched the World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse in the year 2000. World Day is now an annual call to action which has brought together more than 700 governmental and non-governmental organizations in more than 110 countries that commit to mark Nov. 19th with local and national activities and events. Each year WWSF awards four organizations for innovative prevention activities. This year, two first prizes ($3000 US dollars each) were awarded: one to the Indian organization Tulir Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse and the other to the Queen Rania Family and Child Center at Jordan River Association. Two additional awards ($500 each) were given to the Association Najdeh in Lebanon, and to the Cercle de Reflexion et d’Action pour Christ, in Togo.

Here are some of the events that the Tulir Centre in India (located in Chennai, State of Tamil Nadu, in Southern India) organized from November 18-20th to mark World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse.

1. Poster exhibition. Various advertising agencies were asked to create awareness posters on child sexual abuse.
2. Handouts. 3000 handouts for children, entitled “Smart Ways to Keep Yourself Safe” were developed in Tamil and English. 2000 handouts for adults and professionals with child abuse and related laws were also developed.
3. Street play. Students from the Women’s Christian College performed a mime street-play on personal safety information to help children keep themselves safe from child abuse. The media (English and Tamil newspapers as well as TV channels) covered the event.
4. Movie. The Tulir Centre arranged for the screening of the movie, “Everybody Says I’m Fine” (Sathyam Cinemas), which is one of the few feature films made in India dealing with child sexual abuse in an informative and sensitive manner. This was followed by a discussion focusing on breaking the silence around child sexual abuse and the role communities can play in preventing violence against children.