“Still Breathing”

by Lavinia Masters

Amazing how those things that you use to bring you shame and great fear now is seen as a badge of honor and courage and your life’s purpose. Imagine living in darkness and silence for so long that you actually believe that you can’t physically see or speak. I never knew that darkness and silence could be so loud that your vision of life would be obscured and your very voice muted.

Being alone in darkness and not being able to scream is no fun for anyone especially a child. A place where your imagination run wild as you know that there are monsters lurking over your very head and if you dared turned the lights on to expose them that the fear of their snarling faces is greater than that fear of the unknown. Now you remain silent because you fear that if you speak or scream about those things that lurk in the dark that they will hear you and cause you great harm maybe even death.

How foolish it was to remain silent for so long but the fear that if you speak on these things in your darkness that the world would then judge, blame and ridicule you for trying to bring such things as sexual abuse/assault to the light. Here is where your screams go unheard, your tears unseen and your fears remain unknown…in darkness and in silence.

When in darkness you make many mistakes. You will find yourself bumping into and offending those that are just there to try and help you onto your road of recovery yet you knock them out of the way because you can’t see the obvious. Falling into ditches becomes common for you but could have been avoided as you could not see the many hands and signs that was there to warn or guide you along your way. Finally falling down and failing to get back up has become your greatest defeat because you fail to see that there is still good in others and many was sent by God to help you get back up again.

No one can listen to what they cannot hear. If you don’t scream how can anyone know that you are afraid. If no one can hear your cries how can you expect for someone to come to your rescue. If you don’t speak how are others to know that you exist and that you have been hurt and care about what you have to say. I’ve learned and have shared on numerous occasions that silence can be your demise as you continue to hold all the negativity of sexual trauma within it can be the same as inhaling and holding poisonous gases in your body.

As you remain silent the poison not only destroys you internally but it begins to leak on the outside and destroys you externally. Now you have a form of cancer destroying your inner being and a form of leprosy disfiguring your outer appearance and alienating you from the world. Your attitude changes, your mood swings back and forth from negative to unenthusiastic. Depression creeps in more that you care to admit then finally it finds a permanent place of residence within your mental state. Medically you could be diagnosed bi-polar or manic depression but spiritually I believe that your diagnosis is that you are in need of a healing.

Sometimes coming out of the darkness and breaking the silence is a matter of opening your mouth and stepping out on faith to share your testimony with others. Telling the world that fear has no more dominion over you and the sexual trauma that occurred in your life will no longer keep you in bondage. You must have a desire to be courageous…you must have a desire to be free but most importantly must have a desire to be healed.

Lavinia Masters is the Founder of S.A.V.E Ministry, a survivor of childhood sexual assault, a speaker for RAINN, and a faithful advocate. She has appeared on all major news network shows, has been instrumental in passing legislation in Texas, and is the author of "Breathe Again." SaveMinistry.Org

The Gift of Fear/The Curse of Anxiety

By Sandra L. Brown

Is it Fear Or Is it Anxiety?

Women who have been in pathological relationships come away from the relationships with problems associated with fear, worry, and anxiety. This is often related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or what we call 'High Harm Avoidance'-- being on high alert looking for ways she might get harmed now or in the future. 

PTSD, by it's own nature as a disorder, is an anxiety disorder that is preoccupied by both the past (flashbacks and intrusive thoughts of him or events) and by the future (worry about future events, trying to anticipate his behaviors, etc.). With long term exposure to PTSD, this anxiety and worry begins to mask itself, at least in her mind, as 'fear.' In fact, most women lump together the sensations of anxiety, worry, and fear into one feeling and don't differentiate them. 

Fear is helpful and safety-oriented whereas worry and anxiety are not helpful and related to phantom 'possible' events that often don't happen. To that degree, worry and anxiety are distracting away from real fear signals that could help her.

In the book which is now a classic on predicting harmful behavior in others, Gavin deBecker in 'The Gift of Fear' delineates the difference between what we need fear FOR and what we DONT need anxiety and worry for. In some ways, the ability to use fear correctly while stopping the use of anxiety and worry may do much to curtail PTSD symptoms. 

deBecker who is not a therapist but a Danger Anaylst has done what other therapists haven't even done--nix PTSD symptoms of anxiety and worry by focusing on true fear and it's necessity versus anxiety and it's faux meaning to us.

The term fear was used by Freud (in contrast to anxiety), to refer to the reaction to  real danger. Freud emphasized the difference between fear and anxiety in terms of their relation to danger: 

~ Anxiety is a state characterized by the expectation and preparation
 for a danger--even if it's unknown ~ 

~ While fear implies a specific object to be feared in the here/now. ~

(Anxiety is: 'He MIGHT harm me' where fear is: "He IS harming me with
 his fist, words, actions, etc.")

If you heard there was a weapon proven to prevent most crimes (including picking a dangerous partner) before it happened, would you run out and buy it? World-renowned security expert Gavin deBecker says this weapon exists, but you already have it. He calls it "the gift of fear." 

The story of a woman named Kelly begins with a simple warning sign. A man offers to help carry her groceries into her apartment—and instantly, Kelly doesn't like the sound of his voice. Kelly goes against her gut and lets him help her—and in doing so, she lets a rapist into her home. 

"We get a signal prior to violence," Gavin says. "There are preincident  indicators. Things that happen before violence occurs." 

Gavin says that unlike any other living creature, humans will sense danger, yet still walk right into it. 

"You're in a hallway waiting for an elevator late at night. The elevator door opens, and there's a guy inside, and he makes you afraid. You don't know why, you don't know what it is. And many women will stand there and look at that guy and say, 'Oh, I don't want to think like that. I don't want to be the kind of person who lets the door close in his face. I've got to be nice. I don't want him to think I'm not nice.' 

And so human beings will get into a steel soundproof chamber with someone they're afraid of, and there's not another animal in nature that would even consider it." 

Gavin says that "eerie feelings" is exactly what he wants women to pay attention to. "We're trying to analyze the warning signs," he says. "And what I really want to teach today and forever is the feeling of the warning sign. All the other stuff is our explanation for the feeling. Why it was this, why it was that. The feeling itself IS the warning sign." 

What happens over and over again is that women dismantle their OWN internal safety system by ignoring it. The longer she ignores it, the more 'over rides' it receives and retrains the brain to ignore the fear signal. Once rewired women are at tremendous risks of all kinds...risks of picking the wrong men, of squelching fear signals of impending violence, shutting off alarms about potential sexual assaults, shutting down red flags about financial rip offs, squeeking out hints about poor character in other people...and the list goes on. What is left after your whole entire safety system is dismantled? Not much....

Women, subconsciously sensing they need to have 'something' to fall back on, swap out true and profoundly accurate fear signals with the miserly counterfeit and highly unproductive feeling of worry/anxiety. 

LADIES-- WRONG FEELING! 

Then they end up in counseling for their 4th dangerous relationship and wonder if they have a target sign on their forehead. No they don't. They have learned to dismantle, rename, minimize, justify, or deny the fear signals they get or got in the relationship. As if their ability to 'take it' or 'not be afraid' of very dangerous behavior is some sort of win for them. As if their ability to look danger in the face and STAY means they are as tough or competitive as he is...

No--it means they have a fear signal that no longer saves them. Their barely stuttering signal means it's been over-ridden by her. She felt it, labeled it, and released it all the while staring eye-to-eye with what she should fear most. 

Then later, or another day or week passes and she has mounting anxiety--over what she wonders? She has a chronic low grade worry, whisps of anxiety that waife thru her life. She can't put 2+2 together to figure out that ignoring true fear will demand to be recognized by her subconscious in some way---an illegitimate way through worry and anxiety that does nothing to save her from real danger. Her real ally (her true fear) has been squelched and banished. 

When coming to us for counseling she wants us to help her 'feel safe'again when actually, we can't do any of that. It's all in her internal system as it's always been. Her safety is inside her and her future healing is too. 

She will sit in the counselor's office denying true fear and begging for relief from the mounting anxiety she is experiencing. She doesn't trust herself, her intuition, her judgments--all she can feel is anxiety. And with good reason! True fear is her true intuition...not anxiety. But she's already canned what can save her and now on some level she must know she has nothing left that can help her feel and react.

Animals instinctively react to the danger signal--the adrenaline, flash of fear, and flood of cortisol. They don't have internal dialogue with themselves like "What did that mean? Why did he say that? I don't like that behavior---I wonder if he was abused as a child." 

An animal is trained to have a natural reaction to the fear signal--they run. You don't see animals 'stuck' in abusive mating environments! In nature, as in us, we are wired with the King of Comments which is the danger signal. When we respond to the flash of true fear, we aren't left having a commentary with ourselves.

"The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.” - John Schaar