One of the things I love about being a therapist and a writer is that both require that I do a lot of reading. This past weekend, while preparing for a workshop on
marriage, I pulled out a book I'd bought several months ago and hadn't had time to read yet:
Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Dr. Sue Johnson, developer of Emotionally Focused Couples
Therapy. Her work is popular in my field these days because it's quality work, and within her book I found quite a few gems, among them: lessons about the importance of emotional connection; a seven-step process for de-escalating disconnection; and six clearly-explained steps for processing
forgiveness.
Dr. Johnson also writes about the struggles that those of us who were abused as children (and as a result, our partners, too) wrestle with. Echoes of trauma can be too loud, she says (p.242), and goes on to list some of the forms those echoes may take: flashbacks, sensitivity, reactivity, irritability, anger, hopelessness, severe withdrawal.
Though emotional connection is crucial to the healing process, childhood abuse may have left you or someone you love unable to seek, to trust, or to take any comfort at all from genuine caring. I remember dark episodes of my own recovery process when, buried in shame or the fear of not being understood, I chose withdrawal rather than reaching out to my husband, my therapist, even my friends. Fortunately, more often than not, I was able to release my affinity for isolation. It was often through reading that my mind could again begin constructing bridges of connection. The words of those who had gone before, or who had accompanied others on their healing journeys and had written about it, helped me to trust the process, whether it was my therapy process or my therapist herself; whether my husband's affection or his commitment to me, reading about the value of trusting helped me to trust. And so it is in that vein that I share Dr. Johnson's words about how a secure bond helps us deal with and heal trauma by:
- soothing our pain and giving us comfort
- helping us hold on to hope
- reassuring us that the "new" person we have become is still valued and loved
- helping us to make sense of what happened.
My husband and I have a little magnet on our refrigerator with a quote on it that's attributed to Elizabeth David: "There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back." To those of you who love a survivor of child abuse I say be patient, be kind, support and encourage your loved one. And to those of you for whom the voices of those who traumatized you still echo too loudly, I say, push aside the people who took the heart out of you. The people who put it back are the ones you need to hang out with.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Johnson's book was published by Little, Brown & Company, 2008
