In your darkest hours,
you may wonder if you will ever heal from something as awful as what you have been through, having been the victim of a psychopath. The experience might have left you questioning the meaning and purpose of your life, and of life in general. It may have shaken your belief in all you thought you knew about human nature, and left you feeling uncertain about everything, including yourself.
Where do you go from here?
There are some first steps that can get you started on the road that leads you up and out of the dark place you find yourself in now.
Gaining a clear understanding of what happened is necessary. It’s important to have this understanding because when you do, you can begin to stop blaming yourself for what happened. This will start the process of regaining faith and trust in yourself.
Another vital part of the foundation of healing is faith. This doesn’t mean religious faith (although if you have it, that may be another source of strength); it refers to the belief that you will heal. Having faith that you will eventually heal means that even after all you’ve been through, you want to heal and you believe that you will, even if at this point you have no idea how that will happen.
Faith that you will heal is a powerful first step. It’s empowering to know that you need only your own faith in order for the healing process to begin. It’s really faith in yourself, and it is still within you even if you fear that you’ve lost it. Making a decision to have this faith, no matter how you’re feeling now, will give you the positive energy and determination that will guide you through.
Even if you have no idea how healing could be possible after what you’ve endured, it will work. You don’t need to know how it will happen in order to start the process. You only need to have faith that it will.
Since you can’t change the reality of what happened, regaining your faith and trust in yourself, in your strength and resilience, should be your primary goal. Psychopaths damage our self confidence, self respect and self worth, among other things. You can regain them, and in doing so develop even more than you had before.
From great adversity comes great strength. Just as the strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire, we too are forged and strengthened by our worst struggles, which one day will turn into triumphs.
In this moment, take a deep breath and feel the faith that you will heal, the faith that is the foundation of healing.
♥
Comments are closed.
“Invaluable. Having been in a relationship with a psychopath for many years, I desperately needed some insight into what had happened and why. I have gained a tremendous amount of strength and knowledge toward healing from years of abuse by reading this book. One of the best.”
Related Posts
Adelyn, thank you. I wanted to begin to respond to you here where you began to reach out to others. I had always believed I would heal. Thirty years ago, while under the worst trauma in “the hospital from hell”, I heard a gentle voice say to me that I would heal, but that it would take a long time. I understand now that I was psychotic at the time, but being a Christian, I believed it was the voice of the Holy Spirit and I held onto those “words” as a promise. It was a life line…I believed that God would bring me to a place of healing and I placed my trust in Him.
When Dr. B. explained to me that I had been psychotic during this period ( from my description of the experience), it shook my faith somewhat because hearing voices was a symptom of psychosis. But I continued to hold on to that. Recently over a period of three months, I feel I have been abandoned by my priest, I have seen the Church and its doctrines in a state of heresy in high places, and it has discouraged me deeply.
It just seems that what solid ground I had has disintegrated beneath my feet. I had always placed my faith in God, but even that has been called into question after all that has happened over the last thirty years. I began to question if I would be healed in this life.
I see your emphasis here in your first blog entry, is focused on believing in oneself…placing my faith in my ability to heal. Since I had always placed my faith in God…dependent on His will for me, it is such a huge paradigm shift to place my faith in myself. I have always been told that I could do nothing without God. I am having difficulty resolving in my mind what seems to be a paradox…perhaps some cognitive dissonance?
Religious beliefs are a very personal matter, but I wonder if you had to cross this bridge yourself…shifting faith in God’s ability to heal to somehow finding faith in my own ability to heal? I don’t see this discussed here, but I wonder how you view my dilemma or if it really is a dilemma at all?
It is my Church and priest that has failed me, but I am not comfortable with losing my faith in God because of human failure.
I did look into your link to writing your own story…a new story. I followed it to the website on post traumatic growth and this interests me. Dr. B. had mentioned that idea to me…but we did not pursue it before I had to part from him. I plan to look into this website further.
Thank you for your kind response and referring me to places to support me in this healing journey. Struggling with major depression is part of my condition, and when I wrote to you I was feeling the weight of that. I do tend to rebound from that dark place. I’m grateful that I had you to reach out to for advise and support!
Christine
I don’t think it’s a dilemma at all. Why not both you and god working together? I didn’t have that option, since I’m not a believer. It was all up to me, as far as I knew, but it worked.
The best thing to do is to build your own solid ground underneath your feet ~
“A bird sitting on a branch is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not in the branch, but in her own wings.”
Post-traumatic growth is entirely possible, and I’m glad to hear you’re going to learn more about it. Writing a new story is a must, because if you look closely you might find out that the one you have now is keeping you stuck. Best of luck to you xx
PS Thank you for leaving the first comment on my first post :-)