How Sexual Trauma affected my life

Transcript:

Hello, hello and welcome to Empowered to Thrive. I'm so happy that you are here with me. Thank you for taking time out of, know you have a busy schedule, but you're choosing to be here and I am thrilled, thrilled to have you. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. This is a space for you to get to breathe for a moment, to hopefully relax and feel safe. Listen from your heart as I share from mine. This is not something that is meant to be polished and perfect. And it never is meant to be that way, whether I'm sharing a concept, whether I'm sharing parts of my story like I am today, whether I'm meeting with a guest on the show.

So if you haven't heard other pieces of my story that I've been sharing, you may want to go back and listen. Everything is in and of itself enough that you don't have to hear any backstory to continue listening to what I'm going to share today. But just to recap, I was sharing a little bit about the family I grew up in, the way the home environment was, how that impacted me, the choices I made along the way because of the codependent lifestyle that I live. And as I often say, you know, the healing journey is layered. We are healing more and more, and yet we're still struggling with some of the same patterns. So I was extremely codependent, always looking to meet other people's needs, wanting to be sure they felt happy and comfortable so that I could be relaxed, that I could feel okay.

Think about the young child who sees their parent getting angry and they think, what can I do to help appease them so that my parent settles down? Now, of course, it's not a cognitive thought out conscious process. The child doesn't realize what's going on deeper, but I was that little kid who said, I see my parents starting to get angry and if I do this, that or the other thing, they will settle down and then I will feel safer because of course they'll be more calm around me. The energy will change.

So I started to live my life predicting, trying to predict the future so that I could keep myself safe, so that I could try to change what the outcome might be. And that will get any of us really stressed out! It's a really difficult way to live. We don't notice the needs of our own self because we're focused on the needs of others. And that's just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit about how codependency showed up for me.

Coming out of codependency has been liberating and there's more layers to go. I shared different pieces. I shared about how motherhood and that journey has been for me. And I talked a little bit about what it was like growing up in a Christian family and being a part of a church community that was different than the spiritual experiences I was having and what it was like to not feel known and to not feel understood for who I am and for the experiences I have or have had.

Today, I wanted to share a bit about the impact that moments of time can have on us. Think about the moments, the experiences you've had that feel like they really affected your life, maybe you would use the word they traumatized you, we each have them. And I don't know which ones are coming to mind for you. I'm gonna share some that come to mind when I say that though, when I pose that question.

As a little girl, I had some extended family members that mistreated me sexually and it impacted me deeply. All trauma, all abuse is deeply impactful. But until I was 18, I didn't even name the sexual experiences that I had as sexual abuse or sexual trauma. I actually hadn't even come to terms with the fact that that's what had happened to me. Nobody else named it as such. Nobody else acknowledged it as such. And I heard a counselor speaking. I was at a training conference and something she said made me step back and think, “My goodness, I think I've been sexually abused.”

The experiences I had were with some extended family members and how they impacted me, what it set in motion. I was, who knows, maybe between 8-10 years old of the times I remember. There were other things that did happen at other times that were less, that are less solidified in my mind.

I lived afraid of men. I lived in a cowerding position. Physically speaking, I was living hunched over, in that cowering position.

As I realized how much of my life was impacted by what happened to me, I think it's worth bringing up because there are those of us who have children or we've been a child ourselves and we're minimizing the impact that experiences are having. I wasn't only afraid of men - uncomfortable around them, feeling terror in my body, constriction in my body. I was also ultra hyper aware of the way I presented myself, the type of clothes I might've worn or how the clothes I wore might impact the way that a man would look at me or the way that a man would interact with me.

Now, coupled with that, the Christian environment I grew up in was very restrictive. They also put a strong emphasis on how a female presents themselves and the impact that that could have on other people, specifically males. That's how they would talk about it. There was a lot of emphasis on a female not doing something that would cause a man to then do something in return. What's so awful about that is it put the responsibility of someone else onto the opposite person. The woman is not responsible for the man's actions, for the man's thought processes, for the intentions in his heart and mind. She's not the one who's responsible to control that, to manipulate that, and she's not the one that determines it.

As I've heard a man say, even if a woman comes in in a flowy dress, you don't see any part of her figure accentuated, a man can still look at her and undress her in his mind's eye. It's not because of what she's done. It's time the responsibility be taken off of the woman. And I say this speaking about the environment I grew up in. But there's a lot of religions - a lot - that recognize the impact that a woman can have.

A woman has a beautiful impact. Beauty is not meant to be hidden. A woman who is kind and compassionate, even if physically she's not very stunning, she is beautiful. And you know how powerful that is, to come in contact with someone who's kind and compassionate? It softens the heart, it makes someone feel safe. And when you feel safe, a lot can happen.

It doesn't mean it has to be inappropriate. It simply means, we let our guard down. We start to share from our heart. That's very intimate. Take away the sexual, physical ideas when I say intimacy. I'm talking about a close heart to heart connection. That is intimate. And some people are afraid of that. We're afraid of that in general. That's why a lot of people don't show up real and authentic.

I'm not even trying to refer to romance here. I'm just saying we're afraid of being known and being seen and being understood. Many times it's uncomfortable because when that may happen, we're then judged. Somebody pounces on us. They criticize us. They tell us how we should be doing it differently. Right? So sometimes we're trying to avoid it for those reasons.

But this idea, it's so codependent to think, I need to show up in a certain way to make sure the other party does this, that, or the other thing. No, it's not my job. It's not your job. It's not the next person's job. It's not the female's job to be a certain way so that men or whoever don't do X, Y, or Z.

But this was a part of my experience. And so coupled with the sexual abuse, I was somebody who was living in terror, feeling unsafe in my body, noting so often how I felt so uncomfortable around certain people. And you know, it is a beautiful thing I can say. It wasn't all men. There could be men I would be around and I would feel safe and comfortable. I really do believe that there are some people that live in a lot of purity and there are some people that are consumed by their lusts and objectify women or people, you you put in the term that's right for you. I'm speaking from my experience as someone who identifies as female who the perpetrators were male. Okay, so that's where I'm coming from when I say these things.

I lost my train of thought. Not new news! Hey, it gives us a moment to laugh. Feels so good to laugh. Recently, I was reminded that we're supposed to, like it's so good for our bodies to laugh so often, and children laugh so many more times than adults. But why does that have to be? It doesn't have to be. It's just what's most common. So let's just take this moment. It started out with laughter. Now I'm in tears. These are emotions meant to be felt.

This is what happens in a safe space. You start to cry, you start to laugh. I sit across from people all the time, in person or over the screen, and they start to cry and they want to apologize for their tears and I'm like, my goodness, no. I think tears are beautiful and it's also a wonderful sure sign that you're feeling safe and that the processes that need to happen are happening. join me, join me in my laughter and my tears if you wish.

And for those of you that wish you could feel those emotions and aren't able to, my heart goes out to you because that's tough. That's what I'm here for. I'm here for people to help them connect with their emotions. All right. So I was saying about the how unhealthy it is to start to be responsible for other people, and the experiences I had impacted the ways that I showed up to the world.

The healing journey is layered. I said it before, you're going to hear it a lot. It's so true. So as I was healing, it wasn't instantaneous that I started to be comfortable around men, that I started to feel comfortable showing up in as myself in whatever way I needed. But over time, little by little, it was happening. And then there came a day where I just realized, my goodness, I don't feel afraid around men.

This doesn't mean I never will feel afraid around a certain person. In general, I felt afraid around men and that changed. That is huge. Huge, huge, huge. To be able to feel empowered, to feel safe in my own body, to show up and be able to interact with people and not be stuck in my head about what are they thinking, what are they doing, how are they perceiving me, how am I affecting them? That takes a ton of pressure off. It's more restful for the body too. The stress that we live under when we're going through all of that that I just said in our bodies, in our minds, it's exhausting.

I don't know that I can say what happened and when, I just will tell you that doing the inner work consistently - and it's okay to take breaks from it - but it was my intention to do the inner work, it was my intention to heal. I was willing to look at my past, to sit with the uncomfortable emotions, to do the actionable steps. That's what it takes. Different modalities will support us at different times.

I don't think there's one right way, one perfect modality. Try things out; see what works; see what doesn't. It doesn't even need to have a proof. More like, does this feel like it's good right now? Something might be working well for you right now that wasn't meant for you in the past and won't be helpful in the future. There's a lot of nuance to this and to life. I think anyone who's saying there's only one right way to heal, I strongly don't agree with that. Just think, there's so many beautiful ways and tools and supports, people and tools, you know?

So just coming to this place where I kind of woke up to, whoa, I feel different, I feel safer. And it wasn't just with men, it was overall. I feel more empowered. It wasn't just with men. I felt overall more empowered. There was a byproduct to the deep inner work I was doing. And you know, I mean, I'm sure a lot of you listening know what I'm talking about in your own lives.

And it's such a gift. Such a gift. To live feeling safe or safer, to live knowing that, you know what, I'm here to protect myself. So I don't need to feel like the little girl who was unprotected when I interact with adult men. I am an adult. I'm no longer the helpless child who was being taken advantage of without parental figures and caregivers to step in and put a stop to it. Now I am able to be the protector that little girl always needed and didn't always have. That's a lot of the inner child work.

My sharing is probably meant for a gazillion reasons that I don't even know, but I at least want to highlight the idea that things that go on in our lives, in the lives of our children, the people around us that are sometimes deeply impactful and we may not always realize it in the moment. And we always need to know somebody is there to protect us and support us, to be our ally, to be our voice box when we need it. We're not going it alone. A child is meant to know all of that and to experience all of that. If you as the grownup didn't get that when you were a child, you now have the responsibility and the opportunity to offer that to the child you once were, your inner child.

This is a lot of the work I do with people. If you are interested, fascinated or curious; maybe you've already done some of the work, but you're wondering what more could you experience in connecting with me? Cause like I said, there are certain people, certain modalities, certain tools that we need at different times in our life. The work I do with people may not have been what you needed a few years ago or six months ago. It might be for now. If it's not for now, it might be for six months down the road or two years down the road. But if you're hearing what I'm saying and something is hitting your heart in a way that's tugging and pulling and you're saying, I hear that and I don't think I know that, but I want it. Would you love yourself in this moment and be willing to offer yourself the gift of support?

I hope cost will not get in the way. If money is the barrier to you coming and meeting with me, please say so. I'm at a point where I'm just not willing to have money be the barrier. And so I don't want to neglect my own needs in this. But I also don't want to minimize the fact that sometimes it can feel like money's the barrier. And I just don't think that money should get to have that much power in this case. So please know that, all right? If you're willing to do the inner work, you hear what I'm saying, you're like, you know what? I really want to sit with Corinne and I want to talk through some of the things that I've experienced in my life then I hope you'll do that for yourself. You deserve that. And what I can do is come alongside and work with you on a price that feels manageable.

That is an exhale. Allow yourself to exhale all that we have just talked about, that I've just talked about, that you've graciously listened and participated in. It can be heavy, but also couple it with what I'm saying I'm walking in right now. Yes, it's super heavy to be abused and traumatized and to hear about the impact it has on one's life, because you know it's not just my life. This is happening to all people. In some form, we're all impacted by what we've gone through.

Just don't isolate that, couple it with what I'm saying that I am living a different experience. No, everything's not perfect. I live so feeling so much safer than I ever did, feeling so much more empowered than I ever did. The healing journey is worth it. The 20 years of doing the deep work has been all worth it. And I'm not going to stop. It's always worth it. And it's what I'm all about. I can't get away from it. It excites me. It motivates me. I love it.

So my friend, new or old, you are worthy of care. You deserve healing too. My hope for you is that you get to feel safe in your body, that you get to feel empowered and that you will know, I am not the little child I once was. That scared, helpless, lonely, misunderstood child deserves now to be understood and to be loved, to be cared for and supported. That little child deserves to know somebody sees me; they notice me, and they notice me with eyes of care, with eyes of purity. They notice me and they're going to help me. They're going to do something about it.

Yes, you deserve that. And the little kid you used to be deserves that. I deserve that. We sit together in a circle, all deserving. No one greater than the other. Yes, picture that in your mind's eye if you can. Allow your heart to feel that. Go back 30 seconds and re-listen to that as many times as you need.

Alright, I'll be back soon. I look forward to connecting with you again. Much love.