Disabled By My Abilities

I have endured too much abuse at the hands of others because of my dissociative behaviors. Let me explain.

“Dissociation means simultaneously knowing and not knowing.”

Body Keeps the Score, van der kolk, M.D.

You read that right.

“When you don’t feel real nothing matters, which makes it impossible to protect yourself from danger.”

Body Keeps the Score, van der kolk, M.D.

When I met my first husband at 17, I was on full autopilot. I had become disabled by my ability to smile and live in full blown death. My soul had been invaded and overtaken by factors that I could not cope with. So the beautiful gift of dissociation became my best friend.

The problem with that friendship was that it enabled me to stay in such abusive situations that other people would have ran screaming away from. The dissociation led me to see the abuse, while — at the very same time, I did not see it at all.

This is such an elusive dichotomy.

I could feel my abuser’s misuse infringing on everything good in me and on my children’s life, but I denied the power and effect of that abuse in the same breathe. This torture lives in a realm all its own.

It is a terrible flight pattern.

When my fog was lifted and I could see, the heaviness left in me was tremendously painful. I know it’s because of the destructive forces I grew up around, but that brought little comfort to the isolated land of destruction I once again found myself in. The suffering it injected into my children’s life was a very hard pill to swallow. I forgive myself but I sometimes want to hold myself in contempt for the damage I caused by not putting this miserable puzzle together fast enough.

I had become disabled by the great ability to deny. Isn’t that what dissociative patterns are all about? A coat with a thick lining of impenetrable denial.

God has peeled layer upon layer away from me leaving me with many raw, tender spots. Disabling me, if you will. To bring me into an understanding of what He wanted for me in the first place.

II Peter 1 gives a beautiful promise:

3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Originally published at http://prisonerbynocrimeofmyown.com on September 14, 2020.