Perceptions

"The healing for a hurt and wounded spirit is the love with which you honor it yourself.  So begin now to honor your beautiful spirit by trusting what you see, feel, and know." ~ Kingma

 

Spiritual abuse is the most subtlest form of abuse.  To have everything that you know and hold dear and be told that it is wrong or different than you believe or sense can be devastating.  It is subtle because like the wind or water on a mountain. It slowly erodes your sense of self until there is nothing left of its former glory. 

One of the biggest things I have had to develop over the years is what I like.  What are my opinions without having someone tell me what kind of person I am for having them.  Friends were amused for a while when I use to go furniture shopping just to see what I liked and didn't like.  I wasn't buying anything, but it was an important first step with a neutral topic to state "I like this" or "I hate this." It's still a workout when I think I have been treated unfairly.  The battle usually has been already fought in my mind and I have already lost before it has begun.  However yesterday with my bank problem I have seen that it wasn't as much of a battle as it use to be. 

The biggest, most important thing I ever learned on this topic was from the Verbal Abuse book by Evans.  That while I might think that another person and myself are in the same reality and want the best for the both of us.  The other person is in a different reality and they want to be one up on me.  All of my explaining, understanding, and compromising just doesn't seem to work to make it better.  We are just in two different realities.  Hard pill to swallow.