My Logic Is Sound- When the Victim Blames Herself

One of the most difficult aspects of my psychological make-up is that I can intellectually know something, and believe it, but cannot relate it to myself. For example, I know that sexual abuse is not the fault of the victim. I know that the victim will often blame themselves for abuse, but that it’s not their fault and healing comes through letting go of that blame. My mind can completely grasp this concept. I could, with great feeling and passion, share this information with others. But you know what comes next, don’t you….I have overwhelming and oppressive shame. I think everything is my fault. I know it’s not my fault, but it feels, without exception, all the time, like I am not only at fault, I AM faulty.

Imagine watching tv and the channels keep changing. If your spouse is a channel surfer, you know what I mean. This is my mind. The channels keep changing and this makes identifying what happened to me very difficult. I can slow the channel changing down a bit sometimes, and I can write or speak about what happened, but the act of writing or speaking is detached from what is happening in my mind. My mind won’t hold that channel, so I have great difficulty identifying the solid, realistic events of my past. I often wonder if what I have said happened, really happened. I wonder if the brief view of my past is real, or if it is a fabrication to justify the intense and horrible reality of my emotional state. In truth, I wish it was a fabrication…

Before I went to the hospital that had a special program for treating dissociative disorders, I wrote my therapist a letter. In the letter I wrote down what happened, for the first time, and said something like “I know this is true.” I was afraid the hospital staff would try to fuck with my memories and I would come out with some crazy story of horrific abuse that wasn’t true but that I believed nonetheless. I wanted proof for myself that what I knew, I knew. So I know. But it doesn’t seem all that bad. It seems like I should just be able to accept that it happened and move on. But it profoundly affects me. The worst way that I am affected, I think, is that I feel incredible shame for what happened and have spent my entire life re-enacting in some way the role I played then, compounding the shame and solidifying the belief that I asked for it, I liked it, I participated willingly in it, and that makes me a monster. Additionally, I think I created the sexual component of the behaviors. What was done to me was meant to be loving, nurturing, and normal and I am the monster that made it something sexual. I cannot escape this belief. And since I was a child, the shame is exponential as a sexual CHILD is most certainly a monster.

Even writing it down and re-reading it, I can’t find the faulty logic. Children are not responsible for the abuse perpetuated upon them, but my experiences weren’t abusive, I MADE them sexual so I’m the one to blame. Certainly, in the manner of a true dissociative mind, I can step back and ask the logical one inside to make a comment on this. And he says “the behaviors were sexual in nature, and since you were a child you were not to blame. The perpetrator was abusive. The perpetrator was meeting her sexual/emotional needs through you.” Immediately my mind spins, my stomach develops that bottomless pit of sickness, my flesh crawls, and I want to scream and hit myself. It’s easier to blame myself. It’s relaxing and calming to imagine punishing myself. It’s normal and comfortable and safe to blame myself. The awful, threatening, deeply disturbing pit in my stomach disappears as I reject the logic of “she was at fault” and embrace the belief that “I am faulty.”

I also know that there is more to this story. It’s not just about the confusing her-me relationship. It’s about someone else, because I can smell him. I can see, before the channel changes, brief scenes. It set the stage for everything else. I just cannot, for the life of me, determine whether or not it is a fabrication to justify my feelings (and my behavior) or if it happened. I once said to my therapist, “I know for a fact that this happened, and also I know for a fact it did not.” If only I could unlock that part of my mind, and see what happened, and know that it wasn’t my fault…then I could transfer that to the her-me shit. Change the channel.

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