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“If you bring out what is inside you,
what is inside you will save you.
If you fail to bring out what is inside you,
what is inside you will destroy you.”
The Gnostic Gospels
I have experienced this truth over and again as a therapist treating sex offender behavior. The question has always been why would anyone sexually abuse another, whether adult or child? The answer is always found in a desperate need for control, and re-enactment of being wounded, dominated, and helpless at a vulnerable time in life toward someone else.
A common scenario is that one guy marries a woman who has a young female child. The intimacy-disabledness in his previous relationship was never addressed and worked out. So he brings that forward into this new relationship where he has become a step-parent. He repeats the same intimacy disability in that he feels one down to his partner, cannot connect at a deeper level, can’t please his partner sexually or be pleased himself, avoids conflict and only knows to dominate or be dominated by his partner.
Things don’t work out. But, he does feel a special kinship to the stepdaughter. With her, he feels empowered, helps her with homework, becomes her confidante, and engages her in physical horseplay. To his spouse, this is everything that her previous partner would not do.
So she is devastated when she finds out that her new partner has been molesting her daughter, watching her undress, etc. In shock, she wonders where did this come from?
He is also fearful, wishing he had never gone down this path. Now forced to do therapy he uncovers unresolved neglect/abandonment and no one to meet his needs as a child. He traces the lack of control he experienced as a child to his inability to be empowered in an adult relationship. He acts out his insecurity through attempts to meet his needs with a child through domination and control.
Does everybody compensate for childhood needs in their adult life in this destructive way? Of course not! However, none of us got through our childhood unscathed. If we do not face and address our own childhood pain of being broken we will relive the break in some form of re-enactment later in life!
The various ways of re-enacting are numerous. Whether pain and suffering have a proper place in our lives or whether we become cornered and trapped in the pain and suffering depends on an individual’s efforts to integrate the painful experience into life experience which later becomes a source of wisdom. It has been my experience in treating trauma that what is not integrated is repeated. It is repeated through compulsions (addictions of all types) and all kinds of controlling behaviors that create intimacy disability. Not every person who has been sexually or physically abused sexually offends another. Yet for sure, everyone who has been abused in childhood will re-enact that abuse in some way as they go through the stages of life, if not addressed. There are many ways to act out the hurt and pain in hidden ways that are subconscious to the individual and acceptable to the culture. Behaviors such as workaholism, male machismo, being a social “player” and perfectionism are all examples of facades that hide many types of abuse manifested in early childhood.
Consider the following:
1. Face, feel, and accept: Stopping the cycle of re-enacting painful experiences requires that you access the courage to face what is. Most of us won’t do this until the pain of not facing reality is greater than the pain of embracing truth. You will need to declare a personal jihad face to your own demons. To do so means that you must experience the feelings that have been creating discomfort. Leaning into the feelings is the only way to get through them and accept the reality of what is. Short of that you will tend to seek revenge to avoid facing your own shortcomings. Rather than distract yourself with schemes to get back at others who have hurt you, face your demons and find the acceptance that will create a sense of connection with others.
2. Integrate or disintegrate: When you are not willing to look at your part of a problem in relationship, you re-enact ways that you have been controlled as a child into a use of power to control others in your adult life. You may bully with intimidation, act like a victim, or shut down and sulk. All of these and many other strategies represent ways that you disintegrate trust and connection in adult relationships.
Integration incorporates past experience with present encounters and helps to create a different future. Integration involves recognizing how past abuse impacts present response. It includes redirecting shame carried to the caregiver who gave it to you in the first place and to the hurtful behavior you engaged in the here and now. Once you have stalked the shame to its source and redirected it to behavior, instead of self, you will be better able to integrate the wounding experience with a grounding of self-empowerment. Every time you face your own pain and brokenness you interrupt the need to re-enact old destructive behaviors in the here and now. When you don’t, you repeat the suffering and pass it on to others.
Facing and cleaning the wounds from the past will integrate your life experience with others and strengthen the bonds between you and the world around you. Ultimately, what you refuse to face inwardly will get acted outwardly into the world around you. It will require courage for you to address your historic pain.