Both Lighter and CB123 brought up some points in an earlier thread that caused me to stop and think about this.
Lighter made some comments regarding being sick at heart about the women in the news who end up shot, or otherwise killed by their abuser.
And CB123 commented that some women really ARE trapped in relationships. For whatever reason. And she also stated that when she tried escaping from the relationship with her N, he tried bribing her to come back.
I also experienced the bribing.
N's have this uncanny ability to zero in on our "weaknesses". Not really weaknesses, just the human drivers that drive everyone. They happen to know the ones that move us the most.
For alot of us, it's some kind of economics issue. Money, or sharing of kids, or not having ever had the opportunity to go to college, advance our skills, etc. So we feel at a disadvantage. In the world, as in our relationship with our N. Always at a one-down. That's how N's like it.
I just wanted to comment on a few sweeping things that really helped me. 1- Examples of overcoming in the world really helped me to see that it IS possible to overcome a bad relationship, a one-down relationship. What kind of examples? Actually, 9/11 helped me. This happened just before I was ready to leave my N. At first it terrified me - oh the world is in such turmoil. But as I heard about the suffering, the pain, the loss of all those people, it really made my situation seem manageable. If people can begin again from scratch, why can't I? Another enduring example - Dateline Sunday had a story about how in Germany there is a sort of crypt where they have been keeping all these records from the Holocaust. Detailed logs of each prisoner and their state of physical being upon entering the prison camp and throughout their stay. Dateline found 3 survivors, alive today, who were logged in those books. They brought them to this place in Germany and let them sit down and see the entries about themselves and their families. One man stated, "Oh, the memories that brings back. What popped into my mind." What? "There was a sort of trough that ran through the middle of the camp - a trough where the prisoners could urinate. When a prisoner got to the point of near death, the guards would drop them into the trough, and there they would die."
Inside, I am dying as I listen and I watch this poor soul, remembering, seeing in his mind's eye what he could not escape from. What he had to be RESCUED from. What he SURVIVED.
And I think - if he can make it through that, then I can certainly pick myself up and do what I want. I have no physical chains on me. I have no mental impairments. If I was dropped naked, in the middle of a bustling city, I'd have the means to survive. Myself.
Perhaps this is a super extreme example. But these events HAPPENED TO THESE PEOPLE in our lifetimes! Survivors are still living with these memories.
We have the power to make our lives different - we do.
Mentally, we may feel strapped, bound, chained. But we are only to the point that we believe our untrained, unconscious minds.
In "The Road Less Traveled" Scott Peck describes how he talks to his patients when they come in. He draws a big circle on a piece of paper. Then he draws a little circle within the circle. He describes the little circle as our conscious mind. The big circle is the unconscious, which controls much of what we do.
Here's to uncovering our unconscious, and taking control, power back of our lives.
Dandylife