Agency is one of the hardest parts of my recovery. Because I know that the ones that should have protected me were the ones using their agency to harm and violate me. Every time the abusers used their agency in this way, I received the consequences. I didn’t have the capacity to understand what was going on, let alone understand how to manage the consequences.
At a very young age, I disconnected all emotion and feeling to the environment around me. It was too difficult to take the beating and also the physical and emotional reaction that would follow. Every act of violence I experienced, left me feeling that there was something shameful about who I was and I probably deserved what I was given.
At times, I couldn’t imagine someone hating me so much that they could frequently beat me until they felt better. The shift in their emotion was sudden.They would walk away and give no thought to what they had just done.
To this day, I cannot understand why, as a little girl, I just kept getting up again and again and believing that if I was good enough, tomorrow they would love me. My heart cannot contain the pain of all that I experienced as a little girl, let alone all the way up to my age now. How could this supernal gift of agency bring about such pain and torment?
Using agency, in the way that I was treated, is contrary to what it was designed for. The effect that this has had on me has been very crippling for me, as I come in contact and have to associate with people. This came to light in a very defining moment for me during a counseling session.
I had become frustrated because I couldn’t understand what my counselor was saying to me. I was beginning to feel parts of my body react and I didn’t know why or how to respond to that. My mind was spinning and I felt very out of control. I left that session very frightened, confused, and disconnected. I knew that I needed something different, something that I couldn’t identify or ask for.
I remember praying to understand each part of that counseling session. I specifically asked for a way to bring clarity to that experience and to break down the fear into truth. Even though I had a sincere desire to learn, I felt at a great disadvantage. Feeling inadequate, created a response in me to draw away from all the people that I knew and to shut down all responses inside.
I continued to pray. After a couple of days, I was at work and logged on to my work email account. This email for higher learning courses was highlighted and the reference said, “Emotional Intelligence-Managing Emotions to Make a Positive Impact on Your Life and Career”. It was so out of place for where I work. I just ignored it.
The next day I logged on to my email again and it was highlighted once again, even though it was yesterday’s email and new ones had come in. I ignored it once again. The next work day, it was highlighted once again, and now there were 2 days and a weekend worth of new emails above it. I decided to pull up the reference. It happened to be a book by Gill Hasson. I began reading it. It was amazing! It was as if it was written for the sole purpose of breaking down that counseling session days before. I went home and ordered the book.
This book has been so profound, because it taught me how I had been able to suppress my emotions for so long, the effect this was having on me, and what my body would begin exhibiting when it couldn’t suppress them any longer. It also taught me, to understand the purpose of emotions, to not fear them, and how to understand how to break them down and identify what they are wanting me to know. This has been a great blessing in my life. It has brought me to the point, where I could respond to a situation that my son brought to me recently.
Last night, my son woke me up at 1:45 am. He said he needed to talk about a difficult decision being made in his relationship with the girl he is dating. He didn’t want the decision to be made, but he was not the one choosing it. He said that the confirmation he was receiving was opposite of the direction this decision would take the relationship. My advice to him was to say to her, “I Love You Enough…”and then share with her that you are willing to respect her decision and allow her to grow. I said, ” it won’t change the sadness you feel about the decision, but it will validate, to you and her, your actions and confirmations were true”.
The lesson that I wanted my son to learn, and to show this girl, is that just because it hurts does not mean you have the right to manipulate and coerce to get your “needs” met. When you are secure with yourself and what God has spoken to you, you will be alright when you are faced with a choice to show respect to someone’s belief and allow them to pursue their “need”, even though it causes sadness in you.
I know that in all relationships, each person has agency. Decisions are made based on, the knowledge an individual is willing to acknowledge they have and the comfort level to act on that knowledge. Another individual cannot transfer their knowledge, or comfort level for making a decision, to another. It is not healthy to force or coerce another to go beyond their level of judgement to satisfy you; otherwise they have assumed your definition and did not stay true to themselves. Emotional Intelligence plays a key part in this.
With the situation my son was faced with, he needed to be calm as he allowed the girl to express her belief and position for making the decision. Then afterwards, he needed to be secure enough, in what he knew, to respect her limits and say to her, I Love You Enough to allow this to happen.