“Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.” —Don Miguel Ruiz

There are many horrors inflicted by one human being upon another. Then to hear acts of violence or cruelty as “people behaving like animals” really bothers me because it insults creatures that never kill just because they can. Animals do it for survival or because they feel threatened. They don’t plot and scheme and conspire to commit murder or to hire others to do their dirty work.

And they don’t violate trust for their own selfish pleasures, robbing children of their innocence and making the world a terrifying place of abuse.

Over the years in my work as a counsellor, then a homeopath and a psychic/medium, and in my personal life, too, I’ve been shocked to learn just how many people have been sexually violated as children. What has been more shocking is that in many cases, they don’t even realise it — as in my own case. As children, we think our environments are “normal.” We’re hard-wired to trust our parents; it is our survival instinct at its strongest. Therefore, we don’t recognise abuse for what it is. 

I’ll never forget the day the “A” word was dropped right smack in the center of my life. The day a psychologist listened to the reasons for my ending a marriage, then listened to some details about my background, and promptly — but ever so gently — asked if I knew I had been abused. Not just in that marriage, but going back to my earliest years.

I felt as though my life, everything I knew, everything I believed, everything I trusted had been blown apart and was lying in a million little puzzle pieces on the floor. I knew I’d have to put them together again but in a way that created a whole new picture. The problem was that I had no idea what that picture was supposed to look like. 

And I was sure that with so much damage to my soul, many of those pieces would be missing anyway, leaving me with gaping holes that could never heal.

But I was wrong. Thank heaven I was wrong.

I thought I would feel like a victim forever. But that was before I learned why I felt that way in the first place.

Abuse, whether physical, emotional and/or sexual, makes children feel worthless. They feel dirty, disgusting, inherently flawed and “bad.” In their egocentricity, they believe they deserve every rotten thing that happens to them. In their trusting little hearts, they cannot differentiate between the abhorrent behaviour of adults and their own value and perfection as spiritual beings.

Chances are that they will carry these beliefs into adulthood and will continue to find relationships that are unhealthy. They’ll hook up with partners who demean them, are controlling, abusive or toxic in some way because in the deepest parts of their souls, they believe this is all they deserve.

It is only when they understand that they did not deserve the abuse they endured as children, and that it was not their fault, that they begin to take back their power. When they can begin to heal the damage to their self-esteem, self-image, and self-worth, and understand that the perpetrators of the abuse were at fault, they feel an emerging sense of strength and value.

Imagine that you’re wearing some yummy new clothes that you love. You think you look great. You feel fab in your new threads, confident and seriously hot.

You see a complete stranger who says, “I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that. It doesn’t look good on you at all.”

You might become angry or indignant. Who the heck is this moron? Who asked for his opinion? And who gives a rat’s @$$ what he thinks anyway?

But then your partner sees you and says, “Oh, I don’t think that outfit suits you at all. I don’t like it.” You’re crushed. You wanted him to think you look splendiferous. You might contemplate taking your new clothes back to the shop. Your confidence is shattered. You think you look like a weenie and you don’t want anyone else to see you looking like this.

It is human nature to want to please the people we love. This is why we take their actions and opinions to heart. And this is how we end up feeling like we deserve to be abused. “There’s something wrong with me. If only I hadn’t done this or that. I must be a very disgusting person if they did this disgusting thing to me. I deserved it; I should have known better.”

That kind of thinking leaves a person feeling like a victim. “Come on, do it to me again; I deserve it.” And so that person keeps finding people who will validate the belief, “I’m a victim. I am trapped, helpless, powerless.”

We take back our power when we understand that what other people do to us is not about us. Their choices are their own. And if they’ve chosen to be abusive, they are the only ones responsible for it.

We enter this world as pure and perfect spirits in little human bodies. We do not deserve abuse of any kind by anyone at any time. And therefore, we are not “victims” unless we choose to think of ourselves that way.

There are some people who prefer to live like that, people who have been told the abuse was not their fault, people who have heard that there is hope and help, and that they don’t have to feel like that any more. They could choose to step into a position of power. But they prefer their “victimhood.” It allows them to stay stuck, to get attention, to get sympathy, to be dependent, or to wait to be rescued and not take responsibility for their own lives, their own healing, and their own happiness.

But for those of us who want to be happy, to move forward in life and to find peace and healing, we reject holding onto the sins that have been committed against our perfect souls, because to do anything else is to perpetuate them ourselves. We seek wellness, find our strength, stand up for ourselves and refuse to allow any further attacks on our vulnerability, which is so precious, so beautiful and so perfect.

There is hope. And I can promise you, there is healing. You just have to want it. And you don’t ever have to feel like a victim again. 

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Feeling stuck? Need guidance or a numerology reading to help you with clarity?

Spiritual Arts Mentor and Master Teacher, Liberty Forrest, guides you in discovering who you are, why you’re here, and how to follow that path.