The Healing and Guilt Circle: They Come Back

Guilt and shame grabbed hold of me and squeezed tight for a long, long time.

Guilt and shame had me questioning everything about myself and these were hard feelings to break free from when I started my healing journey.

It was very difficult for me to learn how to set boundaries, be honest with people (despite their feelings), and confronting people.

The guilt and shame from my abuse had my confidence shattered in a million pieces, and I had spent so long being a chameleon; learning how to blend in with others so that I wouldn’t be noticed.

When you start your healing journey, it’s about picking up those pieces of confidence and putting them back together again, and this is what I had to do.

Here’s the thing, when you’re trying to heal or far into your healing journey like I am, your trauma mindset is still going to show up and it’s going to bring back those feelings that kept you down for so long.

Those emotions don’t just disappear because you’ve finally decided to address your past and heal from it.

It’s about being aware of these emotions when they do show up and knowing how to deal with them.

It’s about knowing the truth now and pushing back on them.

An Incident That Brought Back Old Feelings

This week, I had a phone call between co-workers and another company.

We had to discuss an issue we were having with one of our contracts.

This particular individual at my company (we’ll call him Doug) had a reputation.

Many people have mentioned how he comes off as arrogant, condescending, and lazy.

I personally never had any issues with Doug, but I’ve seen some flashes of these characteristics that people had mentioned in the few interactions I’ve had with him.

However, as much as people talked about Doug’s negative qualities, I don’t know if anyone has ever brought them to his attention.

It was me, Doug, and another one of my teammates on the call who was working on this contract.

My teammate was fairly new, and I’ve been training her so that’s why I was on this call.

As the call progressed, I already didn’t like what I was seeing from Doug.

He came off as condescending to the other company and he was putting my teammate out there.

What really got me irritated is when he put a draft contract on the screen and proceeded to tell my teammate what she needed to fix on it in front of the other company.

Side note: You don’t put your own company’s dirty laundry out there for another company to see. It’s just not cool.

I’m professional, I would never put Doug out in front of another company, so I kept my composure until the call ended.

After the call ended, he sent an email to my teammate and copied me on it.

Doug was telling us what we needed to do, made it clear that he could review the document before we sent it to the other company, and that this needed to happen as soon as possible.

Before I go into what happened next, let me rewind a little bit.

When I was struggling with my trauma, I hated sticking up for myself or setting boundaries.

I always questioned whether I was in the right for sticking up for myself or setting those boundaries.

I didn’t have the self-confidence to stand firm, I felt broken and weak on the inside.

This is what trauma can do to you.

It keeps you believing the lies that you’re not good enough, that you don’t deserve better, that you're a victim, and on and on and on.

It’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit lies that will keep you in a victim state for the rest of your life if you don’t fight back.

Situations like the one I described above with Doug may seem like an easy day for most, or not a big deal, but for someone that’s healing or struggling through trauma, it’s a huge deal.

I wasn’t going to let this incident slide and just be another co-worker that says, “It’s just Doug being Doug.”

Fuck that, I was going to professionally let Doug no that what he did on that call in front of another company was not cool.

I did just that. I responded to the email that Doug had sent and professionally let him know that we are aware of what needs to happen next, I will not need his help to review the document, and to never put our dirty laundry out in front of another company again.

Note: I actually got on a call the next day with Doug, and he didn’t bring this up, but he was very nice to me.

Here’s why I’m writing this newsletter and what happened after I sent the email to Doug; the guilt and questioning myself set in and it set in hard.

I hadn’t experienced this in a while, and it came out of nowhere.

I felt guilty for sending that email, I questioned whether or not I did the right thing, I thought about the follow-on conversation with him and how I may cave in during that to make things all happy and fucking fake, etc.

STOP!!!!!!!!!

Pause, Reset, and Get You Mind Right

When you’re healing from trauma, or even when you’re far into your healing journey like I am, that doesn’t mean the attacks are not going to come.

It’s like I say about fear and self-doubt; they don’t go away, they never do. We get better at taking action in the face of fear and self-doubt, that’s the only way to make sure they don’t run your life.

I was being attacked by those familiar feelings. The feelings that ran my life for so long.

The ones that had me believe for so long that I was responsible for the sexual abuse that I experienced.

I felt guilt, self-doubt, shame, and embarrassment for being sexually abused. I felt like it was my fault that it happened.

So, when these feelings came back after this incident, I had to stop, recognize what was happening, and remind myself of who I was and who I wasn’t now.

I was doing the right thing, I was setting boundaries and making it clear that what was done was not acceptable. I did this professionally.

I told myself that I’m not going to run from a difficult conversation when it happens.

I’m not going to apologize to Doug when I talk to him and try to make everyone feel better.

That’s the initial response I would have in the past, to have a conversation about what happened, here the other person out, and then back track on what I said.

Not this time and not in recent years. I started facing those difficult conversations, embracing them, and sticking to what I thought was the right thing to do.

You see, this takes practice and repetition. This is about sticking up for yourself when you’re healing. It’s about knowing that you’re worth sticking up for and that you’re not a victim anymore.

It’s much more than that for us that have been through a traumatic experience.

It’s a matter of life and death. It’s a matter of continuing to be the victim or being who we were meant to be here.

Final Words

When you’re healing from major trauma in your life or just trying to become the person you want to become, it’s not going to be comfortable and you’re going to face a lot of old, unwanted feelings when you least expect them.

You must stick up for yourself and do what needs to be done no matter what.

It’s not going to be easy, but you must know that you’re worth the fight.

You take those thoughts, take a minute to understand what’s happening, laugh at them, and then tell them to fuck off.

You’re no longer a victim, I’m no longer a victim, and we’re much, much stronger than we know.

I know you can do it; you have the strength inside of you, face those uncomfortable feelings and keep pushing forward.

Stay positive and take action!

Thank you for your support!

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