This is a big one. If you read this, it should sting. If I write this right, it should sting me too.

Recovery is about responsibility. Healing is about you taking responsibility for your healing. It’s not down to anyone else. Your healing is no one else’s responsibility.

This is entirely unfair. You were the victim and now you have to take all the responsibility for your recovery.

Yes.

The sooner you grasp this, the better. The sooner you accept this concept then recovery will be easier and you will go further faster.

Accepting this may seem impossible. What do you feel when you ask yourself point blank whether you are taking total responsibility for your recovery? Angst. Resent. Anger. Hopelessness. Injustice…You should, it’s natural. But you must recognize any of these feelings and then stick with the decision to take total responsibility for your recovery.

First connect the abuse with the thoughts and feelings then connect these with your output. How do you behave? Your behaviour is destructive right? So what are you going to do about it?

Make the decision to recover and make the decision to take total responsibility for your recovery. Then you will recover. Life will be easier and you will enjoy living it; enjoy being you.

Taking responsibility is the opposite to what you might think. You might think that it’s about carrying a weight on your back; about carrying all the negative feelings; harbouring guilt and shame.

No.

The responsibility for the abuse is the abusers’.

The abuse is not your responsibility. Your recovery is. There’s a big difference. It’s time to recognize this, for your sake.

Responsibility is about choosing freedom.

Once you choose responsibility then you have empowered yourself to deal with everything. You choose how you deal with your thoughts and feelings and behaviors. You have taken responsibility for them – they are yours, nobody else’s!

Once you take responsibility you become aware. You become aware of yourself, your communication patterns, your feelings, your behavior. They no longer engulf and control you. You see them for what they are. You see where they come from and why. You watch and learn. They no longer overcome you. Your thoughts, feelings and behavours no longer define you, you define them.

But, in fact, you may be comfortable not taking responsibility, going round the same circle in the same pattern thinking the same thoughts and doing the same self destructive things. Before you didn’t know why you did this because you were a victim. Further on your journey you may have noticed these patterns and realised that what happened to you isn’t everybody’s fault after all, it’s the abusers. But you persist in taking it out on everybody around you, spewing your abuse onto others and yourself.

Being stuck is just the comfort of the devil you know…we like patterns, routines, habits…it’s safer that way. It’s up to you if you want to go round in the same patterns. That’s your choice. No one is going to stop you. No one is going to take the pain away. You may think at some level that if you keep doing, saying and thinking the same things round and round that someone is going to reach in and stop you – they’re not. Only you can break your habits…change the way you think and feel and behave. So why are you thinking those same thoughts round and round, doing the same destructive things over and over having the same hopeless thoughts…yes, it’s because you are a survivor of abuse…but know this – everybody has these thoughts and feelings: it’s just that yours are exaggerated. So you are perfectly normal, you’ve just got to deal with the volume…it’s too high!

But you, reader, are not going round in a circle. You are on a journey. You are responsible for your journey, no one else. No one else can tell you where to go, what to think, what to feel and so taking responsibility i.e. choosing to recover, is about choosing freedom.

Taking responsibility i.e. saying ‘this is my life, my body, my feelings, my thoughts and I am totally responsible for them and I can choose how I deal with them. Typically those that don’t take responsibility numb out or blame others or are aggressive or critical or destructive or get depressed or create crisis and persist with the same story round and round. They are stuck. We all get stuck.

If we get stuck then we reach out and we keep moving. We become aware that we are stuck and decide to choose to move on…accept something we are not accepting and then we choose how we are going to deal with it.

Although important, it’s beyond talking about the abuse, about what happened, about expressing your thoughts and feelings, having counseling, going to groups – it’s about you doing something about it. Deciding you are going to change.

This is a journey everybody should be on. It’s a journey that we as a species should be on, at all times.

It is your responsibility to get on that journey. Why? It’s for you and those all around you.

And recovery? If you’re going to choose to recognize and ditch the comfort of the old patterns what then? A scary void? Well that’s up to you…you choose…for me the net result is about not wanting to kill me or anyone else and feeling calmer and having a strong sense of self worth regardless of what’s happening at any given moment. So now even the darkest, despairing, suicidal times of recovery were worth it. Because with responsibility they are now gone.

Going to nail me to a cross? No, I don’t qualify…am still journeying along…take care.