Rape and Negativity

 73. RAPE AND NEGATIVITY 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me in a short walk in my journey of healing from sexual trauma. Don’t forget to stay to the end so that you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

There is one thing that I’m finding to be similar in the other experiences from sexually traumatised people who have shared their own stories and struggles with me. That one thing is negativity. Let me try to explain how it is for me.

After the childhood sexual abuse, I became extremely emotionally sensitive. I’m told that before the abuse by pedofiles, I had been an outgoing, happy, cheerful child. But afterwards I changed, and my family couldn’t understand why. I became what they called “the ultimate Negative Nancy”. 

In my mind, there was no possible way of any given situation having a positive outcome. I was sure that if something could go wrong, it would. That negativity has carried over through all aspects of my life.

After the horrific sexual assaults as an adult, that negativity was then reinforced onto myself. I couldn’t think or feel, or even say enough negative things. These were, and in many ways still are, negative thoughts and feelings about myself.

If I dropped something, as we all do from time to time, I wasn’t “just a bit clumsy”. I was a “clumsy stupid slut who wouldn’t know how to not drop something if my life depended on it”. That’s how I talked (and sometimes still talk) about myself. I was a slut; a whore; an evil demon. I even turned something Dr Q said around on myself so that I wasn’t even counted as a human being.

This negativity drove me to the darkest places within myself. I honestly thought that there was absolutely nothing positive to say about me. If given a compliment, I always turned it into a negative. If someone said I looked good today, my autocorrect would say “yeah, I thought I’d be a bit different from my usual ugly self”.

But all of that negativity didn’t help me to heal from my tortured past. In reality, it actually helped to keep me trapped with my toxic perpetrators. You see, I was in fact blaming myself for something I hadn’t done. All my negativity was just hurting me, and I’d already been hurt enough.

Even to this very day I battle with my feelings of negativity. My thoughts still always jump to the negative as a matter of course. It’s a long hard fight each and every day. Unfortunately most days, my negativity wins. But no longer always. And each time I do win over my negativity, I’m beating those perpetrators. Little by little, thought by thought. I’m getting there.

And what about you? Do you struggle with your own negativity too? You don’t have to. You deserve to live your life to the fullest, without the baggage left behind by your past traumas. And that includes all the negativity. To heal, the negativity needs to be left behind. It won’t be easy, but it is doable. Just like me, you can start to heal too.

This time, the gem of positivity is a quote widely attributed to Simon Sinek:

“People who say the the glass is half empty or half full are missing the point. The glass is refillable.”

This is so true of negativity. I don’t have to keep myself in the half empty glass. I can refill my life with good memories and positive thoughts. That’s how I know I’m on the road to healing. How about joining me?

Thank you for taking the time to walk this short while with me in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on how you are refilling your life. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby