I have another "homework" to do for my follow-up in cognitive and behavioral techniques.
I have to answer questions about my past and what it says about my usual functioning.
The first question is: what is essential for me (values, pride, qualities)?
This question is complicated for me because a lot of things are intertwined. I have values that come to me from the sect and that I try to modify and adapt to real life in society, to dissect them to understand the false beliefs instilled and to stop obeying them ... And I have values that are clean to me.
My values :
- I am a very upright person. Keeping promises, loyalty are very important to me. In themselves, these are good values but for me they have a very sacrificial connotation coming from the sect. In the sect, the commitments were for life, we gave our life to the sect, even if we weaken, even if we suffer, even if we are not happy, we had to continue to give again and again. And it had a very gift of self, holiness aspect ... And I'm still in it a bit today. I find it hard to understand that I have duties but also rights. That if I am unhappy or exhausted, I have the right to say stop, no ... For me it is perceived as cowardice, selfishness, failure, weakness ... It 's is for this reason that making my steps of recognition of nullity of my marriage was very important for me. I needed to be recognized, for someone to recognize that my marriage had been arranged by the cult and that it was not my fault. Unfortunately, justice does not allow this kind of approach. The status of divorced is the same for everyone, there is no distinction between marriage and arranged marriage in the law and the declaration of divorce.
-Be a good mother, listening to my daughters, protective. To be there for her, to save them. And that's what I've been doing for all these years, I've fought the best I can to protect them and keep them away from the cult.
-Be someone who sees and acts. I'm afraid to realize one day that I acted like the adults of the cult, that I saw and did nothing, that I acted as if nothing was happening in front of my eyes. I refuse to be a coward like them, selfish like them.
My pride:
-For that I have trouble. I tend to put myself down or not really realize my qualities, what I went through and how difficult it was, how much energy it took from me. I find it difficult to compare myself to others and to situate myself in relation to them.
-I can be proud of myself occasionally when I've had a grueling day at work, running around and managing to keep up a hellish pace without being overtaken. I feel strong and powerful then and I really like that. It is especially my dissociative part "the guy" who feels and appreciates this.
-Being proud of oneself has for me a connotation of sin, of selfishness and it is something that I tend to reject and hide in myself.
My qualities :
- Again, it is a delicate subject. In the sect, we could have qualities but these had to be said by the guru or certain members. Being aware of it and bragging about it was frowned upon and seen as a sin of pride. We had to be humble, put ourselves at the service of others, and be grateful when the guru saw qualities in us and assigned us a job or a task based on those qualities he perceived. To boast of his qualities was to be banished or to lose the right to exploit them. If we wanted to do something we were "good at" or loved, we had to be quiet and be humble. It was also dangerous to be too praised by the other members of the sect because then the guru could take offense and punish us by mutating us because we took too much space or too much importance. He was doing it for our good. In any case, that's how he presented it ...
-I believe I can adapt very quickly to a new situation, quickly understand the rules of the group, how it works and adapt to it. When I meet someone for the first time, very quickly, I look for by observing which dissociative part should interact with this person, which part is best suited ... I very quickly manage to put myself in the place of the other, understand it. But that plays tricks on me because I tend to erase who I really am, to no longer know who I am and what is important to me. And I also find it difficult to put a framework and my own limits in the relationship because as I put myself in the other's shoes all the time, I tend to understand why he or she is like this and find him or her permanently excuses.
What are my rules of life?
-I think the only word that comes to mind is SURVIVAL.
I have to survive and adapt to survive.
-Keep my commitments as a mother, to be a "good mother", a "good companion", a "good employee". Comply with what is expected of me, as in the sect ... My daily life, my cognition are still so imbued with the notion of sacrifice, of "self-giving" inculcated in the sect ... And that despairs me !
What am I dreading, what are my conditional patterns?
-I'm afraid of dying, of being punished for having done wrong. These are thoughts related to the threats I suffered during my childhood.
-I'm afraid that by my fault others die. Again, the guru's threats to harm my family if I don't obey are still very much present. And the guilt I feel over my brother's suicide further reinforces that. He died through my fault, if I had been silent, if I had not fled the sect, he would still be alive ... My efforts to file a complaint have awakened these beliefs a lot and I have to fight against them a lot. I am very afraid that my daughters will die, or my sister or my mother because I am filing a complaint.
- I dread being alone, abandoned. I am afraid to live alone because it is very difficult for me, I have always grown up surrounded by hundreds of people in the sect. On the one hand I felt invisible, dead, non-existent in the midst of lots of people and on the other hand, being alone means being rejected by the group, being an outcast who disappears from memories. A person who was rejected by the sect disappeared from our memories, from community photo albums, we no longer had the right to talk about them, we had to act as if we didn't know them ...
-I'm afraid to be alone because it means that I am not a person to be loved. If no one is my friend, it is because I am not worthy of being loved. On the one hand, I desperately seek to be loved, in an almost begging, supplicating way. And on the other hand, I run away from the bonds of friendship because I have always been abandoned and I expect this to happen again in all my meetings. To protect myself I therefore flee these links so as not to suffer once again. I look for him and I run away from him ...
-I'm afraid of not being in a relationship with a man. I have a very strong belief that if I don't have a man in my life the guru will kill me. I need a man's protection to stay alive. I need the presence of a man in my life to guide me, tell me what to do, how to do it ... All of this is linked to the guru and the hold he had over me as well as to the very misogynistic vision of the couple, of sexuality, of the family that the sect, my father and the guru instilled in me. However, I know for a fact that since I left the sect, I have survived on my own, making my own decisions. I take care of the education of my daughters on my own. I don't need anyone to tell me what to think or how to make my decisions. Despite everything, I feel in danger if I am not in a relationship and I have the impression that I will not achieve anything without a man to guide me. In addition, I am very afraid financially of not surviving. Not having the income necessary for our survival my daughters and me, not being able to manage my money and I have the belief that if I am alone to assume financially, I will find myself again in the situation in which I have been a little after leaving the sect. In a caravan to die of hunger and cold. And I am terrified. However, since I left the sect, I have always managed to have a job, an apartment, a car ... And I support myself and my daughters alone. Having a man by my side is seen as an essential safety net for me.
-I am afraid that one day my daughters will tell me that they have suffered violence and that I have not been able to see him and put them to safety. It would mean that I reproduced what my mother did with me and I am very afraid of that. I don't want to be like that. I want to see, I want to hear. So far, they haven't said anything to me and I've done everything I can to protect them. When they spoke to me about inappropriate situations at school or in their daily life, I always intervened. I taught them to see disturbing and abnormal situations, to speak, to trust what they felt ...
What are my solutions to adapt, my conditional patterns?
-I sacrifice myself. I go after the needs of others. To stay in a relationship, I tend to forget my own limits and my own needs because I tell myself that if I demand things, the person will leave me. To be a good mother, I tend to be just my dissociative "mom" parts and forget about my needs to meet those of my daughters.
To keep my job, I give myself completely, even if I feel that I am on the verge of burnout, because I believe that if I show my weaknesses, my boss or my boss will no longer want me.
-I dissociate myself, each of my dissociative parts has a role, a function to fulfill. So it allows me not to hear my other needs, my other thoughts, my other beliefs ... I pretend I don't feel anything, as if I don't exist. All I have to do is accomplish the tasks incumbent upon me, fulfill the roles that life gives me, thus keep moving forward at all costs. If I stop, I die or people I love die because of me.
-I adapt to each situation. I don't make real choices. I adapt to what circumstances or life offer me at the moment T. Without really thinking and asking myself what do I need, what would help me or do me good ? Suddenly my daily life is always shaky, unsuitable. And I still feel in failure and with a pessimistic view of the world and connection to people. I know what I need, an understanding and caring environment. To be able to no longer hide, to hide my dissociative parts. Have time to learn to take care of myself. And I am obviously disappointed with my surroundings and my daily life because it does not meet these basic needs for me ...
What is the image of myself that scares me, the worst, my unconditional patterns?
-What I'm most afraid of is that my rapists will win. May they succeed in killing me, silencing me forever, making me give up.
-To kill me by an excess of despair of one of my dissociative parts. I'm afraid of the despair that I sometimes feel with the impression that if I let it express itself, I will drown in it ...
-Be seen as crazy or lying, fake. Don't believe me.
- Disappear, be invisible, that no one sees me.
-Whether people hate me or hate me.
- To be a bad person, to do evil, to reproduce what was done to me. I am very afraid that I will be likened to my rapists and the despicable acts they have done to me.
-Be a bad, cowardly and blind mother who prefers her own safety and well-being to that of her daughters.
- Fall back into a sectarian movement, make me manipulate again and not realize it.
-Not succeeding in freeing myself from my past, failing to heal myself and continue all my life to obey triggers that force me through invisible threads to act like a puppet like I did in the sect. Not controlling anything about what I live, feel, think, believe ...
-Let my anger and my hatred speak and no longer control anything.
- To be still, to see, to hear but to be unable to act, to defend myself, to protect myself as has often happened to me. To be a spectator of what is happening to my body, to be powerless.
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