If you are a parent dealing with your child’s sexual abuse, you may find that holidays take on a new dimension. They may not be as much fun or you may dread them all together. If this describes your holiday season, you may be wondering how you got here. Welcome to survival mode. You probably entered it sometime after the abuse. The brain assesses basic needs and much like a computer goes into safe mode. It might get you back working again, but you may not to be able to do everything.
Safe Mode
If this was your computer, you would have powered down, and rebooted. Things would have come back up normally and you would have gone back to doing what you were doing. But you never rebooted, and so you are still running in safe mode. Holidays, birthdays and other special occasions fall into that category of higher level function that your brain has difficulty accessing without the reboot. Getting to the reboot is the hard part.
I don’t have an easy answer to get to where you want to be. It takes time, and a little bit of practice. Here’s a simple exercise that may help you get part of the way there. Take out a piece of paper and write the alphabet down the left side. Now for each letter write “I am grateful for (something that starts with that letter)” when you are done, fold it up and put it in your wallet or purse for later use. You may need a reminder from time to time. You may not notice any difference right away but you will be flexing your mental muscles and rebuilding pathways that might have been dormant for a while.
This may not be the year for happy holidays, but with a little bit of practice, the ghost of Christmas past may bring out some changes yet. There’s always next year.
God Bless Us Everyone!
Let us know if we can help you dealing with your family’s sexual abuse situation. For ideas to get started please check out our book on what to do during the early days after disclosure.
