Tragically, like other victims of abuse, she sometimes feels that she deserved the abuse, that she was a bad person, that she didn’t measure up, that she could never make it on her own in life.
Do you ever feel like you deserved the humiliation or condemnation that Teen Mania heaped on you?
Well, you didn’t!
It’s not your fault. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You have nothing to fear. You have no need to feel guilty.
It is absolutely not your fault that you were mistreated, lied to, taken advantage of, abused or otherwise exploited.
You were just caught in a damaging system – mistreated by other interns that were given very bad advice and way to much power and by staff that cared more about preserving their own egos and reputation than about really caring for God’s people.
So the question is, do you really believe this? Or do you still think you did something to deserve your abuse?
5 comments:
Thank you so much for posting this, RA. This is something that I — and many others, I’m sure — really need to hear right now.
Good Post RA.
“So the question is, do you really believe this? Or do you still think you did something to deserve your abuse?”
I read this yesterday as well http://www.quiveringdaughters.com/2009/03/curse-of-eve-when-free-will-isnt-free.html
I’ll share why I still think I deserved it with the quote from The Quivering Daugthers Blog by Hillary McFarland. Her words are better than mine.
“Low self-esteem and sense of worthlessness. Your opinions, wants and desires do not matter.
Learned false humility. Be like Jesus! Consider all others as better and more important than yourself.
Learned false-generosity/over-spiritualizing. Be giving. Let others choose what they want to do. It’s okay to be last/least/sacrificial.
Reinforcement of past poor choices or decisions. You make foolish choices. You need to think! You are not being smart!
A learned sense that at the core, I truly do NOT have a choice in the matter.”
I hope I communicated that to make sense. I meant that it’s because of things like low self-esteem, false humility… that I still believe that I deserved it.
Thinks a Lot it made perfect sense to me. I agree I am still great at making myself think that I deserved it all or that I deserve less than what I do I know in my logic brain it isn’t true but I don’t always translate that to the rest of me.
For the first few year out I would ask my self ‘what did I do to deserve that?’. I eventually let it go, but it was always in the back of my mind and made me wary of people.
Being able to process that it in fact wasn’t me, was a game changer. 🙂
Excellent post!