07 August 2005
	Help for Adult Victims Of Child Abuse. A non-profit making organisation based in the UK dedicated to provide help, support and information to any adult who is suffering from past childhood abuse.

"Unless we can hear each other singing and crying, unless we can comfort
each other's failures and cheer each other's victories, we are missing out
on the best that life has to offer. The only real action takes place on the
bridge between people." Author Unknown

Your Thinking Grows Up

*Many of the features of your mental set originated in your childhood,
before you developed the ability to think as you do now - abstractly.
Abstract thinking begins to develop in adolescence and really comes into its
own in adulthood. The way you thought as a child is very different from how
you think now. If you want to learn more about this, read a book on
cognitive development. I prefer to make the point by illustration. Suppose
that I made the following rude remark to you: "You are nothing but a stupid
jerk!" At your current age, you might get angry or annoyed with me, but you
would be able to figure out that if I call you a jerk, it doesn't make you
one. You are able understand that you are not a jerk because I say so, that
I am a rude person, and that is my problem, not yours. Being able to think
through that kind of situation requires an ability to reason abstractly. You
did not have that ability when you were a small child. Imagine that you are
only five years old. Imagine that I said the same rude comment to you: "You
are nothing but a stupid jerk!" Being a small child and lacking the ability
to reason through this kind of message, you would be apt to believe it and
take it completely to heart.

*Childhood is a time of mental vulnerability because children lack the
abstract reasoning ability of adolescents and adults. Adolescence is the
transition period. Some nuisance faulty beliefs about ourselves, others and
the world will become established during our childhood years, before the
onset of the ability to reason as an adult. Once established, these thinking
patterns will not necessarily fall away as our ability to think grows up.
Such is the staying power of habits.

*As we pass through our teen years, developing abstract reasoning skills, no
one takes us aside for a time-out to check out the degree of mental
pollution acquired during our mentally vulnerable childhood years. Some of
the troublesome thinking patterns and faulty beliefs of childhood will
persist in even extremely intelligent people. The good news is that it is
never too late to begin the task of mental house-keeping, and helping your
thinking to grow up.

Your Mental Set and Your Behaviour
*The beliefs of your mental set shape and color your emotional energies, and
they do a whole lot more than that. They also have a lot to do with your
behaviour. All of the ways that you act, all of the time, tend to be
congruent with your mental set. In other words, you tend to stay in
character.

*If you believe you are a worthless piece of garbage, then your behaviour
will demonstrate that belief. If you believe that you are capable, then you
will express that in your behaviour. The diagram below shows the relationship
between your mental set and all of the ways that you will typically behave.
This system is standard equipment for human beings. We defend the beliefs of
our mental sets, even if they are illogical. We behave in ways which confirm
these beliefs - that provide the evidence for them. It can be a prison,
because it is so darn convincing when we actually go out and set up the
situations to prove that our beliefs are based in reality. We try to create
the evidence to fit the belief.

*For example, to prove how unlovable we are, we will act obnoxiously to
attract the feedback that proves it. We hang onto our
thinking-feeling-behaving prison as if it were prized real estate. "I knew
you didn't really care about me!"

*When you try to change your behaviour, do you find that you slip back into
your old habits all too often? Do you find it hard to change, even though
you start out with great resolve? Here's what is going on. Your actions
(behaviour) and your mental set seek balance and congruence. They are two
aspects of the same thing, with your mental set being the inside view and
your repertoire of behaviours being the outside view. Simply changing
behaviour causes a great deal of stress by throwing this system out of
balance. Stress is generated when changing a habituated behaviour. There is
an automatic urge to restore the system into balance and congruence, by
returning to the behaviour which fits the self-image in your mental set. The
key to change is including the mental set as well as behaviour in the change
process, so that the whole system evolves, not just the behavioural part.
Doing that is what this manual is about.

*Your mental set, your emotions and your behaviour are interrelated. It is a
very complex system. Being advocates of creative laziness, we aren't going
to try to tackle the whole complicated shmeer. What we will look for are the
key threads which hold the unhappiness together. Consider it to be a
guerrilla venture into mental pollution. We are going to isolate a few key
thinking errors and faulty beliefs - the ones that cause most of the
problems. By keeping your efforts simple and bite-sized, and by choosing the
right bits of mental pollution to go after, you will progress most rapidly.
As the cliché says: You can eat a mountain of zucchini - one bite at a time.

The Truth About Your Healing Potential
*In some circles, there is an idea that if you are sexually victimized, then
you must suffer for the rest of your life. This is not true. You will suffer
only as long as habituated, self-injuring thoughts remain free to do their
mischief. When you decide to no longer just sit there and take it, then you
will have begun to heal.

*Can you recall a time that you were physically injured - say a scraped knee
while biking as a child? Okay. Can you recall the excruciating pain of that
moment? Is it difficult for you to hold those memories in your mind?
Probably not. You can recall the incident and even the terrible physical
pain of the moment, but you are not re-traumatized by the memory. Let's
pretend that your community severely disapproves of scraped knees, that it
is considered to be an extremely shameful thing -indicating that the injured
person is some kind of lowlife. You would have hidden your injury, avoided
medical care and kept the knowledge of the injury a secret for years. You
would have covered your injury when going out into the community and you
would have experienced shame. In short, there would be traumatic thinking
associated with the memory of the injury. This traumatic thinking would be
activated just by the memory of the injury. Many young children are
traumatized by injuries as slight as a scraped knee. Their childlike
thinking tells them that something horrible has happened. Their emotional
energies then take on this shape - fear and panic. Since scraped knees are
not shameful in our world, your thinking about this kind of injury has grown
up with you. It has not been suppressed under a blanket of shame, fear and
secrecy. If you scraped your knee today, it would hurt physically as usual,
but your grown-up thinking would process the event in an age appropriate
manner. You would not be panicked. Because you've had the opportunity to
allow your thinking to grow up, the fear and panic thinking has not become
habituated, as far as knee scraping goes at least. Scraped knees are a
temporarily painful nuisance, not a tragedy. Being able to recall incidents
of sexual victimization with only modest discomfort is a realistic goal. It
is possible to downgrade sexual victimization from being a life-altering,
never-ending trauma, to difficult experiences that once happened, that are
not traumatic to recall. I kid you not. This is possible.

The Truth Shall Set You Free
*Faulty beliefs and thinking errors remain effective, doing their damage, up
until the exact moment that you truly see right through them, and with your
own grown-up intelligence understand how untrue and illogical they really
are. Habituated patterns may continue to recur again and again, but once you
have achieved a breakthrough, you can do it again and again, with
conviction, so that seeing the truth becomes the dominant habit. Example:
*Some people experience pleasure or cooperate with their sexual
victimization. Based upon these experiences, they falsely conclude that they
are to blame and that they are some kind of sick, whacked-out,
scum-of-the-earth, unlovable type of person. When they have come to a truer,
more realistic, well informed understanding of sexual victimization they are
naturally much less troubled emotionally. In the wonderful aha!!-moment
during which they see through their own self-blaming and self-shaming, they
become free of these insidious notions, at least until the next time that
the old thinking reappears. However, the pathway to deliverance has been
walked once, and it can be walked again and again, as the erroneous thinking
gradually becomes defeated. That is the gig. The truth shall set you free.
The methods of doing this are straightforward, but require practice. I am
sure that you understand this. You did not ride a bicycle perfectly the
first time that you tried it, did you? Naturally, it took several tries and
a lot of practice to get past the shaky, uneven stage. You practiced even
more before you were able to safely navigate in traffic. Ditto for the
following method. Practice doesn't make perfect, but it does make
accomplishments happen.

*Remember the golden rule of truth-seeking: Don't assume what it looks like
before you find it. Be open to discovering something
new. You are able to make up your own mind anyway, that is something that
cannot be taken away from you.

Uncle Albert's Method
*Albert Ellis is at this moment an elderly, professional Helping-Dude living
somewhere in the USA. In the 1950's he developed the following way of
helping people deal with their mental pollution - though he didn't call it
mental pollution. He called it having irrational beliefs. His approach is
called Rational Emotive Therapy. Albert Ellis's method goes as directly as
possible to the roots of emotional distress, the actual thinking errors and
the faulty beliefs that are active in the present moment. It is a method
that relies upon you to develop the ability to observe your own thinking,
tracking down the erroneous bits in order to challenge and to dispute them.
It is based upon the notion that your greatest asset is your ability to
expand your understanding.

*In the rational emotive way of looking at emotional distress, anything that
triggers habituated thinking and feeling is called an activating event.
*Makes sense, doesn't it? An activating event can be anything that happens:
--an insulting remark, a conversation, a smell, a memory, a shouting match,
bad news, good news, the time of day, the weather - anything at all. The
activating event triggers some of your habituated thinking patterns -
thinking which conforms to your beliefs - your irrational or faulty beliefs,
and your realistic, reasonable, rational beliefs. When your thinking
patterns kick into gear - presto! - your emotional energies are given their
shape in that moment. What wonderfully responsive beings we earthlings are!
Here is the gist of Albert Ellis's method:
1. You notice that you are upset, disturbed, depressed, angry,
frustrated, scared or whatever.
2. You watch your thinking, so that you know what emotion-shaping
thoughts are going around in your noggin. (This skill takes some time to
develop, since so much of our thinking is automatic and habituated - it just
happens without our awareness of it.)
3. You identify the irrational, faulty beliefs and the crooked logic.
4. You debate, dispute and argue with the faulty beliefs and thinking
errors. You insist on reliable evidence. You dispute your habituated, wonky
notions vigorously - you do not just sit back and let them pummel you.
5. In the instant that your disputing and debating begins to take
effect, your emotional state will change. Of course it will. Your emotional
energies have just been given a different thought-shape to flow through!
Good work.
6. Reach over your shoulder and pat yourself on back.

*The above is Albert Ellis's famous ABC diagram. Does it look familiar? (See
The Double Whammy.) Where do you think I got the idea? From Uncle Albert of
course. The next diagram shows this process including the disputing of
faulty beliefs which when successfully done, leads to a new improved
emotional state.
Here is the main point - memorize it:
Honor Your Feelings
*You are getting the idea that troublesome, disturbing feelings are caused
by thinking. On this basis, you may begin to censor some of your difficult
emotions because you have an idea that they are based upon sloppy or crooked
thinking. You also may be censoring feelings because they are no fun - shame
for instance is a common candidate for censorship, and shame certainly is no
fun.
Alert: Try not to censor your feelings.
*Your feelings are your direct experience of your self - your life energies.
Even if they are all dressed up into the shapes of panic, depression,
disgust or shame, try not to censor them. Suppressing your own life force is
not a good idea. It will make you sick and eventually turn you into Mount
St. (your name).
*When you push your feelings away, it will be difficult for you to get to
the roots of your tough-to-live-with emotions - your thinking. And pushing
your feelings away is actually throwing the baby out with the bath water.
You really want to help your emotional energies to get out of the
confinement of habituated thinking. So don't censor your feelings. For you
who have been sexually victimized, the experience of emotions may be
difficult. Be gentle with yourself. In the victimization experience, your
rights were severely trampled by the person who assaulted you. You have a
right to all of your feelings. "I shouldn't be feeling like this!", is a
thinking error that is begging for demolition. Of course you should be
feeling whatever you feel. You arrived into this moment with your life
energies intact and flowing. You bring your thinking patterns with you into
this moment - they create your emotional experience of right now. If you
have a garden, then you know that you have to let the weeds grow big enough
so that you can get a firm hold on them, in order to yank the little
blighters out by the roots. Much the same thing here with the faulty beliefs
and thinking errors. Honor your feelings. Find ways to get them out on the
table - through talking, writing, screaming at a friendly tree, crying,
laughing, giggling hysterically, listening to music, painting, playing
music, singing, dancing or though relaxing, calming yourself and resting.
Honoring your feelings means experiencing and expressing them as fully as
you can without getting arrested or tromping on someone else's rights. It is
the first step, which once taken, allows you to do the rest of the work.
Here's a clue: Saying, "I'm a jerk, or You're a jerk," is not a feeling
statement. It's a position statement - an opinion - a value judgment.
Feelings statements often start with: "I feel . . . " Bummer feelings are an
opportunity, not a sign of failure. Period. If they aren't out in the light
of day, how the heck are you going to track down the thinking that shapes
them?
Affirmations Anyone? Maybe ...
*It may sound as if this manual is asking you to replace troublesome
thinking with positive statements to yourself-positive rather than negative
thinking. This is true, but . . .
*Making positive statements to yourself and repeating them is called
affirmation. Here are some sample affirmations: "I am worthwhile, no matter
what I have done, I am OK. Everyday I am getting better and better in every
way. I am content to be me." And so on. Get the picture? Affirmations work
for some people, some of the time, and sometimes they make things worse.
Suppose that I believe that I am a scumbag. Suppose I practice the following
affirmation: "I am worthwhile. I am worthwhile. I am worthwhile. I am
worthwhile." The idea here is to have thoughts in my head that will shape my
emotional energies in a positive manner. But, do I sincerely believe them?
Not necessarily. In fact, I just might generate stress and eventual
discouragement as this affirmation collides with my entrenched faulty
beliefs.
*Affirmations will not necessarily convince me that my faulty belief is as
loony as a penguin with a Gucci bag. Clearly understanding the untruth of a
faulty belief is the thing we are after, not more mindless repetition. Past
Event Cause Misery Today - NOT!
*At the risk of being repetitious, I am going to re-state the good news.
Past events, such as incidents of sexual victimization, are the occasions in
which traumatic thinking gets started. The continuation of those patterns of
self-injury are the cause of emotional distress in the present. Sexual
victimization is not the only source of self-defeating beliefs and thinking,
but it does act as a kind of mental poultice, activating and strengthening
much of the mental pollution that is already present. These patterns of
thinking are then applied to the whole range of experiences of your life.
These self-sabotaging mental processes are not written in stone and you can
free yourself from them. There is a way out. The way out does not depend on
the external events of your life, be they good or bad in your assessment.
The way out is in re-thinking and upgrading the obsolete positions that you
have taken about yourself and your life.
Common Garden Variety Faulty Beliefs
*We understand that Chris Columbus & Co. tortured themselves with fear and
panic because of a faulty belief that they would sail off the edge of the
world, but what about you and I? What faulty beliefs do we carry with us?
Here are some of the usual ones. How they work in relation to sexual
victimization will be discussed further along.
Should Statements
Let's suppose I say to you: "You should do better. You should handle your
life better. You should take care of yourself better. You should get the
dishes done. You should . . . "
*Is your automatic response to tell me to take a flying leap at a rolling
donut, or something to that effect? That would be mine too! And no wonder.
It is disrespectful for me to assume such a better-than-thou position. It's
also illogical of me to assume that it is my job to run your life for you.
The word should implies a self-appointed, superior, ruler-of-the-universe
status - a very wonky notion.
*We often use should statements on ourselves as well as others. Should
statements cause emotional distress when they are applied to one's self, as
in:
* "I should have . . . .",
* "I should be more . . . ." ,
* "I shouldn't be . . . ." , or,
* "I shouldn't do . . . . "

*Should statements may also mean:
"I should . . . . and if I don't, then I'm an enormous let down!" In this
instance, the emotional distress will be greater - obviously. The
"I'm-an-enormous-let-down" part is a superb way to shape emotional energies
into bummer feelings. Instant karma. Service with a frown. Should statements
mean that life has absolutely got to be the way I say, OR ELSE IT'S HORRIBLE!
They are powerful emotion-shaping thoughts.
*Should statements are a form of what is called absolutistic thinking -
thinking which is rigid and possibly even fossilized - thinking that
characterizes the phenomenon of the closed mind. Yikes! There are many
common variations of should statements. Here are three popular ones:
* "I got to be . . . (or else I'm no damned good.)"
* "I have to be . . . (or else I'm no damned good.)"
* "I must be . . . (or else I'm no damned good.)"

*Let's take a quick look at a typical should statement, and then dispute it.
"I should have handled myself better than I did." Or in other words, "I
got to be perfect, in most important things, or else I'm a lousy failure."
Don't take my word that this is a cockamamie position to take. Kick it
around, dispute, debate and seek reality.
*Here are the big questions: "Do I know anyone who is perfect in most
important things? Is this possible? Might I meet someone who is perfect? Is
it possible for even one of the billions of humans on this planet to handle
things perfectly most of the time? " No. Of course not! Here's the next
question: "Why do I think that I could be perfect when no one else is able
to be so? Am I the Queen or King of Perfection?" In disputing, we challenge
our wonky beliefs, and hold them up to the light of day rather than just
passively letting them clobber us. We seek the aha!-moment in which we see
right through them - knowing their falsehood. Should-ing, must-ing and
gotta-be-ing are very hard core mental pollutants. Should statements are
also applied to other people and to life in general, and their
emotion-shaping effect can be much the same, as in:

* "She has to agree with me on most important issues, or else ..."
* "Things must work out the way I want, or else I can't stand it."

Should-ing is also called the "Tyranny of the Should's", or "masturbation".

Awfulizing Statements

*Awfulizing statements say that something is so horrible that it is
impossible to cope with it. In repeating them in our heads, they become a
pernicious form of self-propaganda, which soon results in self-defeat. For
example: "When she or he doesn't show love and approval towards me, it's so
awful. I just can't stand it."

*The first problem with this statement is that it immediately shapes good
emotional energy into an avalanche of anger, depression or frustration. The
second problem is that it is based upon the faulty belief that your
emotional well-being depends upon someone else's approval. These statements
create emotional distress. Why just sit there and take it? Debate, dispute
and argue towards more enlightened points of view, until you actually
understand, all by yourself, what is so illogical about them. Awfulizing is
extremely habit forming, and requires a patient, persistent approach to see
through it. Be gentle with yourself. Be lazy. Do just a little bit of work,
and do it daily. Fuller understanding will come. Example: We habitually
think: "I can't stand this!" The truth in many instances is this: "I can
stand this, but it is a nuisance." The problem with I-can't-stand-it
statements is that they are emotion-shapers. They say:
"This is a catastrophe!", when there isn't one.

*When you can downgrade an "I-can't-stand-it" to a
"this-is-just-a-pain-in-the-butt", you will have made progress. You will
have taken some habituated thinking to the cleaners. Awfulizing is known by
other names and terms, such as: making- mountains-out-of-molehills,
catastrophizing and exaggerating.

*A common awfulizing exaggeration uses the words always or never,
incorrectly and inaccurately. Emotions will follow these wacky thoughts:
"You never say a nice word to me!"; "You always forget to take out the
garbage!" Most of the time, the truth is not never or always, but sometimes:
"You sometimes don't say a nice word to me." "You sometimes forget to take
out the garbage." When we convince ourselves that these exaggerations are
true, we will naturally feel as if they are true. Normal everyday language
is littered with these distortions - so are feelings.
Have-Have Statements
*Have-have statements express the belief that I got to have something or
someone, or else I cannot be happy. They tell me that "I got to have or I
really need your affections or approval, or else!" Let's suppose that you
have a close friend who deserts you or ignores you. Let's pretend that you
fill your head with need statements, else-have-or-else statements. You are
now in a major bind, having convinced yourself that because of what has
happened, life is hopeless. Consider this: If your happiness and well-being
really depends upon your friend's affection and approval, that this is a law
of the universe, then how come you actually had some happy moment before you
knew your friend? Do you see how this works? By learning how to debate and
dispute these cockamamie beliefs, it is possible to downgrade a catastrophe
to a disappointment that is not emotionally disabling. Look around you.
People are doing this all the time. Relationships begin and end. Friendships
are won and lost. People recover from this. They recover faster and more
thoroughly when they clear up their self-injuring thinking as soon as they
can. Of course, some people will torment themselves mercilessly for ages -
becoming full-time citizens of Double Whammy City.
Human Worth Statements
*Human worth statements are based upon the faulty belief that we have the
god-like status to rate humans beings, ourselves and others. They are also
based upon an error of logic, which goes like this:
"Since I (you) have done a lousy thing, I am (you are) a completely lousy
person."
Or, try this one:
"Since I have made some mistakes, I am one huge mistake." The illogic of
this kind of thinking means that if I have a pimple on my nose, then I am,
as a person, one complete pimple. It means that if my behaviour has some
blemishes, then all of my behaviour is blemished, and that I am a blemish.
Because I haven't handled everything in my life perfectly, does that make me
a complete washout as a person? Human worth statements sometimes act as
filters. Non-blemishing evidence is filtered out and ignored. For example:
"I am a loser." In truth, there is no such thing as a loser.

All of us lose at some things, some of the time - but never all the time.

*Destructive self-worth statements are often tied in with
"I-perfect-be-perfect" thinking which is equally loony. By now, you have
begun to realize how much mental pollution there is in our world. Mental
pollution is rampant - in some circles it is out of control. The fashion
industry, for example, really counts upon the rest of us making absurd human
worth statements to ourselves. For instance, if your body or wardrobe
doesn't conform to their standards, then you are definitely a sub-standard
human. How about the messages from TV commercials: If I drink a certain
brand of virile beer, or drive a virile car, then I will never be impotent.
Good grief.

Here is a list of common garden variety faulty beliefs:
I got to have the approval of the main people in my life - all the time.
I got to do most things well, or I'm no good.
I can't stand it unless things go the way I want most of the time.
Life must be fair to me most of the time.
Anyone who treats another person unfairly is a completely worthless person.
If I can't depend on others, then I can't be happy and life is horrible.
Human value can be rated.
I am at the mercy of past experiences. There is no way out of this trap. I
cannot change the way I feel. It all depends on what happens to me.
When other people are unhappy, I can't be happy. If I don't spend a lot of
time fussing over problems, I will never be able to solve them. I got to be
perfect in my efforts to solve my problems.
I can't stand it when other people don't see things the way I do.
Walking away from problems is easier and is less work than facing them.
It is possible to have a perfect relationship.

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