Gifts

long term effects of emotional abuse:

• a distrust in your perceptions
• a tendency to be fearful or on guard
• self-consciousness or fear of how you are coming across
• an inability to be spontaneous
• a distrust of people and in future relationships
• anger that bursts out unexpectedly
• sensitivity to anyone trying to control you

This list appeared in my Tumblr feed. The link to its poster went no-where….

So thanks to the gods of the web.

A Bullet-point list. As hard and tough as they get. A definition in seven acts. A prescription….

I’ve titled this post Gift.

I don’t see these as ends. They are starting points.

There’s a school in our traumas.

If we can find the gift in our pain.

Wherever we start from it is possible to go on. – So long as it IS possible. That is, so long as there is room to move. So long as we are alive.

The Well-adjusted have farther to go. Facing the depths of our predicament without a clue.

However we find the place where we begin to see that all is not as it appears….

Then, find a way to not be trapped by reactions to our reactions. Paranoia, Nihilism, Death-worship; like auto-immune reactions….

A list.

• a distrust in your perceptions

As we all should. Perception – that is what we uncritically accept as perception is far from it. It takes work to discover what is perception and not projection and distortion. Then, there are the holes and errors in actual perception itself to be navigated.

• a tendency to be fearful or on guard

Fear is endemic. It colors everything that happens.

• self-consciousness or fear of how you are coming across

We are misunderstood. We are also misunderstanding most everything, including our selves.

• an inability to be spontaneous

Who knows what it would be like to be spontaneous without effort? We are mired in stereo-typical reactions to the mess that we take for perception – see first bullet….

• a distrust of people and in future relationships

The made-world has been built on distrust. People are damaged. People are corrupt. The future is a fantasy. Relationship…. There’s something to work for.

• anger that bursts out unexpectedly

What does anger mean? How do we get to this question if we always see our anger as justified? Without experiencing the violence in our own anger we have no insight into anger at all.

• sensitivity to anyone trying to control you

Sensitivity to control. Can we take this far enough? Far enough to distrust control in any guise?

These are among my gifts. Accepting them brings me to the edge of Joy.