REIMAGINE YOU AS YOU!

I don’t often reshare, but this has so much truth that I am. Praying it blesses you as much as it did me.

Reimagine You as YOU!

To be subjected to sexual trauma and abuse distorts how you think about yourself. If you had these experiences when you were growing up, you came to conclusions about your value. If a predator or a passive bystander didn’t value you, your boundaries, or your humanity, it’s pretty easy for you to believe that you have no value or personal rights. If you had these experiences after you became an adult, where you once might have felt empowered and able to take care of yourself, you now know that you weren’t as strong or empowered as you needed to be.

These experiences shape – or re-shape – how we think about ourselves. We hear it from survivors all the time: “I feel as if part of me died.” The actions of predators and the inactions of passive bystanders twist in your mind and heart until you begin to see yourself as they saw you. You begin to value yourself as they valued you. Their warped disregard for you and your well-being often translates into a kind of personal derailment of the life you should have been able to live.

The tricky part of recovery is to be able to pull apart the tentacles of lies that have attached themselves to your soul. It is to untangle the deception and free yourself from its grip.

Think about how the actions of the predators and passive bystanders communicated their view of your worth. Now, ask yourself if you believe THEIR value system. If you can see it for what it is – that you have accepted THEIR twisted reality – then you can insist on redefining yourself in ways that are true to your value and personal rights.

Here’s a fact: they were wrong. Not only in what they did – their actions – but in how they devalued you. They were wrong. They were wrong, wrong, wrong! Got it?

So, take their definitions of you and dump them in the garbage where they belong. Take the time to think about yourself, untethered from their warped ideas. Reclaim you. Reimagine YOU, not as they saw you, but as you see – or want to see YOU.  And remember: “Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life”

(Golda Meir).

Written by Sallie Culbreth and Anne Quinn

©2015 Committed to Freedom / STAARR – Sexual Trauma and Abuse Recovery Resources