Perpetual Rape

Perpetual rape. The stigma perpetuated by our young ladies.

Standing in the middle of my kitchen, surrounding the island, were 4 teenagers chatting away about local gossip. As I approached I heard an unsettling joke coming from one of the girls. Mind you, this young lady is a junior in high school with a 4.73 gpa, great parents and a comfortable lifestyle. A young woman at their school had claimed that she was raped a few years ago and ever since then she has been the subject of doubt and ridicule. The joke was unsavory and it hurt my heart to hear such degradation of a victim/survivor.

Nevertheless I took this as an opportunity to help these young ladies see that they are perpetuating a culture of shaming the survivor and degrading women. We are supposed to support one another!

When asked, it all came down to how the survivor “handled” the situation and she “put herself in a bad place in the first place” and that she was “probably lying”. Coming from two young ladies, my jaw hit the floor, my face became red as I became triggered. Inserting myself into the conversation, I really wanted to understand how they would handle a sensitive discussion on the topic. Survivor mommy took over and the conversation went something like this:

Q. (Me) >Your best friend comes to you and says that she was raped by a boy. What do you do?

A. “Uhh clearly she has to go to the police, go to a hospital and get a rape kit!”
My response- Really? If she knows how the last girl who came forward was treated by you, and others, do you think she will make the decision to tell you and get help? (Deep thought ensues)

Q. (Me) >You are raped by your boyfriend. You may have been in a position but you changed your mind, got scared, expressed your discomfort and said you didnt want to and he overpowered you. What do you do?

A.- “I don’t know”

So many things to think about, right?! Now think about being ridiculed, joked about, and degraded after you came forward. Your own friends abandon you.
Doesnt sound like the support women are supposed to have for one another, does it? Would you want your mother treated that way? Your sister? Your best friend? Yourself?

Truly amazing how just a little conversation from a parent can start a discussion between young men and young women that will live & resonate with them. Ironically, the young men were far more protective and supportive of the female survivor than the females.

Females are alienating each other at every level and age group. We are acting like crabs in a bucket. Have you ever seen crabs in a bucket? None of them ever get out because they are too busy pulling each other down and stepping on their heads! Let’s keep the conversations going and make sure our young ladies are in them. 🙂

Mental Health Disability Haters

Mental health disability is a complicated topic. According to NAMI Currently almost nine million individuals receive SSDI, and as of 2013, 35.2% of recipients qualify for disability based on a mental health condition. Much like Lady Gaga’s latest song, you really can’t fully understand how it feels until it happens to you. I’ve heard it and still hear it from time to time, the rantings from the outsiders:

• “Seriously, get off your ass, you’re fine.”
• “Get over it.”
• “Why are you so weak?
• “We all have anxiety, it doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end.”

I’ve heard it all before and now it just falls on deaf ears. At first though, I felt shame. I was being judged and being judged can hurt.

Fear is judgments secret weapon, like a scorpions stinger. 

Truth be told, I was an outsider once. One of those judgmental people who thought she was so strong and didn’t understand how people could be so weak. I was fine and after what I have been through..well, if I can do it then anybody can do it. It wasn’t until I had a serious “break” that all of the pain and tragedy and trauma came gushing out. I was a house of cards all along.

It was then that I realized how incredibly strong those weak people are!

It takes more strength to be vulnerable than I ever could have imagined. I couldn’t keep going and I didn’t understand why. If I didn’t understand, then how could I expect anyone else to understand? It takes enormous strength to begin the journey.

It’s hard for people to see me as being someone who has survived multiple sexual assaults, PTSD, bipolar, and on and on.
I still hide it well. I “present well” my therapist tells me. The key for me is only coming out of the house when I can hide it. Why? SHAME, duh! I’m ashamed of being seen as someone who isn’t who she used to be. I’m ashamed of being judged by the outsiders who think how I used to think.

Once you have reached your limit as a survivor and come out on the other side, you see the world differently. Things that are daily life for others trigger you. It’s different. Let’s face it, if workplace culture is killing people who don’t have disabilities what will it trigger for those of us who do?

I would have never been able to get my bipolar stabilized and begin the process of trying to manage my comorbidities without being able to fully focus on myself and my journey. Being able to be on SSDI and focus on my health makes me a better person for society and my family. Truth be told, I started paying Social Security before I was even of legal age to work. So for all the haters out there, I hope that someday you can have the opportunity to truly focus on yourself and forego the ego that controls your judgement. Perception isn’t always reality!

 

What If I Told You?

You have no idea who I am. You have known me for years and you have no idea who I am. You think you do, but you only know what I choose to show you. If you had taken an interest, I may have let you in, but you haven’t taken an interest, so you stay on the outside. I want to tell you, but I don’t know what it would solve for me. I may feel an emotional release for a moment, but then what if you didn’t react the way I expected or intended?

• What if you still didn’t come by to say hello, maybe have dinner or check in with your grandchildren?
• What if you didn’t recognize the absolute heart wrenching pain your son has gone through and how he has traversed a 99.9% deadly ongoing sea of rapids and come out a different man?
• How he has supported a wife that lay on her deathbed 20 times over for the past 4 years and helped keep her alive.
• How he used up his vacation time sitting at my bedside instead of driving me to an emergency room.
• How he protected your grandchildren from seeing the pain.
• How he managed to thrive in his career through it all.

I don’t know how to tell you without expecting something in return. I don’t know how you could possibly understand. I don’t know if I could understand if I were in your shoes.

Maybe being 100% unashamed isn’t about telling people what you have, its about accepting who you are. I’m still navigating this part of my journey. Suggestions and experiences welcomed 🙂

5 Tips To Unlock The Success Inside You

Most of us have read the habits of highly successful people and utilized them as best we know how. If utilized out of the box, those habits will help to a certain extent, but unless you change your mindset and the intrinsic factors that either drive you or hold you back, you are likely to remain exactly where you are and/or have always been. I have found 4 key factors that I use as much as I can (given my bipolar self, it comes and goes lol). When I use them they work…

#1) Make a commitment to get to know your intrinsic motivators and to think differently than you have ever thought before. If you don’t make the commitment to change your thought patterns and the way you normally make decisions then you will likely fail at changing your path in a positive direction for any length of time. For instance, professional athletes must make both mental and physical commitments to their training in order to improve their performance and physical skills. You too must make a similar commitment in order to change your mindset.
There is a great Ted Talk by Dan Pink on The Surprising Science of Motivation that shows how important intrinsic rewards are to performance. The intrinsic rewards, such as the ability to direct our own thoughts and lives, the freedom to become better and/or the best at what we do, who we are, and to be a part of something that has meaning or purpose are what really drive us and get our creative juices flowing.

#2) Ask yourself challenging questions and think about your desired outcome. You may think you know who you are but chances are, if you’re reading this article, you don’t! Start by thinking very clearly about how you feel when faced with a situation. This sounds easy but you need to really sit down in a quiet space several times and really dissect how you feel and how you react in situations. For example, when a difficult or delicate situation occurs, what is your reaction? Do you react positively, negatively, emotionally, instantly, or do you give it some thought prior to reacting at all? Recognizing your individual emotions, both strengths and weaknesses in those initial reactions, and understanding how they drive your outward reactions is a very important first step toward harnessing your raw emotion and utilizing your strengths to achieve your desired outcome.

#3) Learn how to manage your emotions and communicate clearly with consistency. Yeah, I’ll get right on that! BABY STEPS! I have always said that surrounding yourself with those who live the life you want to live, both personally, financially, and professionally will provide you with a priceless education. It’s something like learning a foreign language by emersion; it just works better when you have real life examples in front of you. Much like bad association can spoil you, good association can build you up, creating useful habits and priceless shared knowledge.

#4) Use positive self-talk and visualize yourself at the top. When you can picture your goals they are much more attainable. I have such trouble with this step that I actually put in my headphones at night and fall asleep listening to meditation, primordial sound, binaural beats with underlying subliminal messages of gratitude. Each of us hear criticism on a regular basis so positive self – talk is essential in keeping that positive attitude and continuing to believe in yourself. According to the Mayo Clinic, the possible benefits of positive thinking are as follows:

• Increased life span
• Lower rates of depression
• Lower levels of distress
• Greater resistance to the common cold
• Better psychological and physical well-being
• Reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease
• Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

#5) Whatever it may be that you are striving for, dream big and outline the steps to get there so that you can see the path clearly. Having the steps clearly defined will also help you verbalize your needs, as well as the benefits of your achieving those steps, to those who have the ability to assist you along the way.

I’m not perfect at this but I keep trying to follow the steps and I don’t think any of  them can make me worse so, why not?! I have also found that my children soak it in too 🙂

NO! Note to Self..

I tend to avoid saying no, even when it’s at my own expense. If you are anything like me, you have your own goals and priorities that are extremely important to you. Deciding what your boundaries are, having that difficult conversation, and reinforcing your boundaries, can be difficult but, are necessary to protect those goals and priorities.

I’m not always good at saying no and because of that I created a personal vision statement. I can kind of go overboard on making sure I have boundaries, mostly because I usually don’t follow them so I have a lot of fail-safes. Deciding what I will and will not allow into my life is my first priority. Having a personal vision statement, written into my core, helps me instantly assess when a “no” is in order.

When you encounter things like; a friend continually asking for your time and/or money without ever returning that favor,  a family member requesting to crash on your couch for an indefinite period of time, or a boss who wants drinks on a weekly basis when you have a family waiting at home. Whatever the situation, these are the times when a solid vision statement comes in handy. My personal vision statement looks something like this:

If the request or opportunity does not add value to both my family, and myself it gets the axe. The sharpest and least painful axe, but an axe nonetheless.

Plain and simple! It may sound selfish but it isn’t and here’s why:

• Always saying yes isn’t healthy for anyone. You become stressed out, overcommitted, and quite frankly are unable to give 100% to each and every thing you have committed yourself to. The commitments you are making may be healthy for others but may not provide you with what you need to thrive, whether it be emotionally or financially. As an example, my children and I enjoy feeding the hungry. It adds value to us all emotionally as well as adding value to many others. The obligation is once every 2 months and does not take away from anything else we may be obligated to, nor our time together as a family. On the other end of that spectrum, taking that daily call from your emotionally needy friend or family member, who never even asks how your doing but spends an entire half an hour of your time complaining, probably isn’t adding value to your life.  It is in those times when setting boundaries can be critical to your well-being.
  
• Good things come from saying no. This can be hard to believe when you are feeling guilty about wanting to say no and are trying to figure out the best way to have that conversation. Saying no can help the person you say no to and allow opportunities for others. Maybe not picking up the phone for that friend who sucks the life out of you from time to time will allow him or her to gain perspectives from others.

Why is it so difficult to stand your ground and reinforce your boundaries?
I often feared the other persons’ reaction and placed their feelings above my own.  When I set boundaries in the past, others haven’t exactly listened and I often resorted to the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech and began to share false weaknesses in an effort to reinforce my boundaries without making the other person angry. Such behavior on my part often helped them to further chip away at my boundaries using my false weaknesses against me.

Knowing what to expect is half the battle. It’s fair to say that you can generally expect the following reactions when you set boundaries:

• Resentment and/or anger.  This is where keeping a journal or private notebook comes in handy. When you write down the reasons for your decision, it makes it easier to accept their anger and maintain your boundaries. Those who become angry, when their desires are frustrated by your boundaries, have some emotional growth of their own to pursue. It is important not to take their anger personally. Easier said than done and the tip about the notebook is really an extra step that I struggle with…
  
• Placing guilt upon you. This can be one of the most difficult of responses as it can come from both the other person as well as from within.  I have a brother who comes at me from all angles, trying his best to force my action with such statements, as “I can’t believe my own family won’t help me“ and, ”How do you look at yourself in the mirror knowing your own brother is struggling?” These types of reactions are common. In my brother’s case, he has lived off of anyone he can from 18 years of age until 30 years of age. He has never even applied for a job and has no intention of doing so. If I were to help him, I would only be another enabler in his life, which would not genuinely help him. 

Learning how to say no can make it easier. The Mayo Clinic has an effective list, with advice, on things to keep in mind when you need to say no:

• Say no. The word “no” has power. Don’t be afraid to use it. Be careful about using wimpy substitute phrases, such as “I’m not sure” or “I don’t think I can.” These can be interpreted to mean that you might say yes later.
  
• Be brief. State your reason for refusing the request, but don’t go on about it. Avoid elaborate justifications or explanations.
  
• Be honest. Don’t fabricate reasons to get out of an obligation. The truth is always the best way to turn down a friend, family member or co-worker.
  
• Be respectful. Many good causes land at your door, and it can be tough to turn them down. Complimenting the group’s effort while saying that you can’t commit shows that you respect what they’re trying to accomplish.
  
• Be ready to repeat. You may need to refuse a request several times before the other person accepts your response. When that happens, just hit the replay button. Calmly repeat your no, with or without your original rationale, as needed.

When your attempts to say no don’t work. Some people are simply overbearing and others toxic. It is extremely important that you do not give away your power by giving in. Giving in gives the other person power, allowing them to control you, which can make saying no even more difficult the next time. Focus on what you can control, which are your emotions and your reactions, not theirs. You cannot please everyone, nor should you be concerned with doing so. What matters is that you have stood behind your personal vision statement, responded in a kind and fair manner, and maintained respect for yourself and your life over the wants of another.