If someone said to identify yourself how would you do that?
What do you consider your identity?
We can’t use our bodies, or our titles, but our own inner identity, what would that be?
How do you explain your own inner identity?
I am sure self has to be connected with identity, or otherwise we would be describing something outside of us.
It is not our bodies, it is not our brains, our thoughts our minds, is it the heart of who we are?
Is it our passions, our joys, the things that make us smile, laugh and do what we do?
What is our identity that gets stolen with abuse?
Dr. Robin Smith spoke of this on her radio show about addictions. That little children who get abused lose their identity.
What happens to us at that time, what leads us on a life of addictions, of being cold and treated like an object?
I have been trying to write about this, but damn this seems like a puzzle with no answer, that the more you look and the more you twist the less clear it becomes.
If I can’t use this body to identify myself, then how do I do that? My actions? Do they point the way?
What is taken out of us so that we are left a barren vessel that we will use and abuse trying to get back what was stolen!
When a two year old learns the word “mine” is that how we begin to identify ourselves?
But usually the child is referring to an object that she wants.
It seems we have many ways to prove who we are by credit cards, driver’s license or social security cards, but does that really tell us our identity, for when a small child is abused, she has none of that, so how do we identify our self?
Stolen identity is when someone creates a false life using our identity.
Did my father steal who I thought I was, and replaced it with his idea? Did he take who I thought I was and make me into a new thing? Did I go from being his daughter to something else? Is that what Dr. Robin means?
Did I change from being a little girl into a thing that no little girl can describe, but a little one who is used for things that she can’t comprehend? Is that how it was stolen, my young little innocent girl identity was stolen from me? I then became a part of a twisted dance.
Instead of seeing myself free to be me, I am now an object for him.
How did I let my identity go so easily to be replaced by something so sordid?
Why was I so easy to convince that this new me was a better one? What did he do to win my approval to make me lay down my own sense of self?
Did he threaten me, shame me, blame me, did he convince me that this is what I wanted to, to be this new me?
It seems hard to go back to that point in time, to the innocence of a being such a small girl, to put my big lady self back there, in that land that is even hard now to view.
We have to picture an innocent girl doing acts that are way beyond her years and understanding, with a man who holds the label father.
Maybe his identity is what really changes, maybe he no longer looks and acts as a father should but convinces me it is.
Perhaps Dr. Robin is partially right in that we lose our identity, but we also lose the father’s identity too.
He no longer acts nor behaves like a father, but instead of changing our identity of him, we change ourselves.
Is that what is meant by our identity getting stolen?
That being a loved and protected daughter dies, and is replaced with one who is damaged.
Not loved, not protected, no longer good enough to handle with care and compassion.
So the loved and protected part of me, the trusting part was stolen and it was replaced by the opposite.
There is a small book I picked up a few years ago called “when I love myself enough.”
After living 40 some years in a body without love of self inside, I now am able to speak of what I need, what is good for me and what I want.
I am free to move away from people who hurt me and treat me like an object, I no longer see myself that way.
I see myself as love. So the identity inside is Love?
When love disappeared, I lived in Fear.
Reaching forever outside in fear trying to grasp on to the love that is missing inside. That makes sense in my experience.
I also heard Dr. Robin speak of boundaries, and that once they are trampled down as a little child they remain down until we build them back up.
So we are walking around in fear, exposed and vulnerable with no inner sense of love and boundaries, easy prey to be manipulated and tossed about. It is no wonder our bodies are forever anxious, for no one is minding the door, there is no inner guard, we are wide open for abuse again.
This is very intriguing to me, it explains my lack of knowing, my lack of control, my lack of love, my lack of boundaries, it explains how I built a mental lady identity.
When I look at myself now, I can see how I slowly erected boundaries, each little no set this in place, each time I refused to attend a gathering of folks with lost identities, I succeeded in gather more identity for me.
I am amazed, grateful beyond words to have this inner Love. My words and actions match what is now inside, I no longer feel so out of control, to be whipped around in the wind in a thousand directions for my long lost love.
Instead I stand with my Love in hand, looking out at the world, with the greatest understanding and awe at those folks who are still empty inside, I know, for I walked there, “forgive them, they know not what they do.”
I recall telling my brother that it felt like I was walking out of rehab, that each time someone asked me to go back to the family with no boundaries and lost identities, it was like a drug that I had to resist.
Now I way know why. They were my drug of choice, my responsibility for them was my drug!
Addicted to responsibility.
I am a recovering addict, I am recovering my self, my love and my control, I am outside of the rehab and now the real walking begins.
A no to you is a yes for me!
