So much for being excited about yesterday’s phone call, which was from my former airline, regarding an interview in Pilot Training Scheduling. My boss won’t let me take the time off UNLESS it is a medical appointment, since it’s the first week of the month (*eyeroll*) even though I would only be missing ONE hour and I worked it out so that there would be full coverage. So that is one set of hopes dashed, at least for now. Still, it was scary, with everything going on in the airline industry, anyway. I mean, I seem to have that bad luck of starting jobs JUST as they go away (witness what happened at the airline LAST time, and what happened with the ISP in Utah.)
COURAGE TO HEAL, pp 230-231
A high percentage of women who were sexually abused as children have been revictimized in adulthood through assault, rape, and battering. When this happens, the adult survivor frequently blames herself or feels she somehow deserved it. This is completely false. The reasons so many survivors experience violence as adults is that they were trained to be victims. The effects of childhood abuse leave them especially vulnerable to attack.
If you are unable to identify your own feelings or gauge other people’s intentions, you may not recognize danger. If you space out, you may be oblivious to warning signals. And if you freeze when you’re frightened, it will be harder to act appropriately. More generally, if you have been indoctrinated to believe that you deserve abuse, if you expect to be a victim, it’s less likely that you’ll be able to defend yourself.
COURAGE TO HEAL, p. 237
If [trusting someone] fails and you are let down, try to analyze what happened. This is a learning experience. Ask yourself:
*Whom did I pick to trust?
*How long did I know this person?
*Did we have good communication?
*What kind of thing did I trust this person with?
*Did I explain what I was doing, letting them know it was very important to me?
*Did I make my expectations clear?
*Were there any elements in the interchange that paralleled my original abuse?
Food for thought, I think. I am proud of having finally finished COURAGE TO HEAL; I do have other books (as mentioned previously) that I am going to start on, now. I DO believe an end is in sight. I was always a woman worth fighting for, and now I am doing exactly that.