Monday, January 27th
Whenever my partner got drunk, he would mock me, my career, and even my family.
Some of us were repeatedly told that we were unforgivable and incomplete, with little or no value as human beings. For many, the source of our pain included family shaming, sexual abuse, secrecy, emotional exploitation, isolation, or rejection by the very people we expected to support us. The message we received from these experiences was that we were somehow defective and not worthy of love.
“I’m not sure why I always felt so undesirable to others, but it reinforced my already low self-esteem.”
Our feelings of worthlessness could make the search for sex even more desperate. We longed for validation to soothe our raw feelings through sexual encounters with others. Many of us thought so little of ourselves that we would do almost anything, with anyone, to get the validation we craved.
Yet if we look objectively at our compulsion, we find that what we desperately sought was not degradation but an experience of wholeness, fulfillment, and joy — in fact, a spiritual experience.
When recovery begins, we are amazed to uncover new levels of emotion. Slowly, we learn to recognize, trust, and express genuine feelings.
Little by little, we stop trying to “fix” the frightened child inside us and learn to love them instead.