What to do with your despair
Feeling it, leaning into it and using it to help you stop being emotionally abusive
I’m wondering if you’d be willing to think with me about despair. It’s a big word, and there are lots of things that can cause that feeling in our lives, including global issues like climate change, police brutality, or cruelty to animals.
But specifically I’m wondering if you ever feel despair on an individual level, about your own life.
You see, when I was at the beginning of understanding my abusive behaviour, the only word that comes close to describing how I felt was just that: despair.
It was as if I was having the most excruciating awakening, and with each passing day some new realisation landed that I had been very cruel. My ego did not fare well. I like to say, tongue in cheek, but for real: my shame had shame. It was as if my body was waking up from a decade of being numb, and the most intense case of pins and needles would not let up. I had behaved unbelievably, outrageously badly for a horrifyingly long time:
For years, I took my anger out on my husband, yelling at him to be someone he wasn’t. That he was a failure in every way. I was very creative, extremely loud, and persistent with these messages. I used a lot of mean words.
Over time, when I was physically present and in a bad mood, my husband tells me he would get sweaty palms, a racing heart, and even felt like throwing up. In the middle of that, he had to pretend to feel sweet towards me because otherwise I would become furious. Unimaginable but true.
Even after I started getting better, he never knew ‘which Andrea’ was going to show up. In some ways, that was a whole new level of difficult because it meant that he would finally let his guard down a little, and try to rebuild some trust between us. He would take a risk that he was with ‘better Andrea.’ And then I would break his trust again by showing up as abusive Andrea.
It’s hard to stay connected with this, so I want to remind us that all three of these examples, and many other similar things, are happening around the world in this very moment in time.
Emotional abuse is going on right now between parents and children, roommates, siblings, at work, in eldercare situations and yes, a lot on a daily basis between spouses, and life partners.
If you’re in one of these situations in this moment, you know it’s true. I see you there. The fear of abuse can be so heavy, it’s really more like dread, am I right? And people who are being abusive like I was, maybe like you, are also feeling it in this moment. Both dread and despair, more so if you just recently started the work of stopping your abusiveness.
This is hard stuff, and all pretty awful sounding, so you might ask, “Why the heck would anyone try to change if that’s how it’s going to be?” Or, “How can I stop being abusive and avoid all that pain on top of the suffering I’ve already caused?” These are really good, reasonable questions to ask.
We do the work of stopping our abusiveness because it’s the right thing to do, for starters
Because you’re here reading this, I know that you have the empathy and compassion to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Just like you would help an injured animal, or feel badly in the presence of a crying child, your bone-deep natural impulse is to do the hard work because you know it’s right.
But there are other reasons to stop being abusive, including your own happiness
Has it occurred to you yet that it’s impossible to feel happiness when you have pain inside you that causes you to be abusive? You can’t be an abusive person and expect to also be a happy person. It doesn’t work that way.
Back to the word despair. I know the path to stopping your abusive behaviour is hard because I walked that path. The hope that I want to offer today has to do with your despair, and here it is:
If you didn’t feel despair, I believe it would be impossible for you to make it to the ‘other side’ of being abusive. Despair is an essential ingredient, an important part of what’s in your gas tank, the fuel that you’ll need to change, and get to freedom.
What I realised on my way out of abusiveness is that my best learning happened when I really didn’t know what to do. When we don’t know something and we despair of ever knowing how to do something, that internal pressure pops us open. Like a hole in the wall of our old self, the despair lets possibility in. As Leonard Cohen sings, ‘there is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s where the light comes in.’
When, in your despair you find yourself saying, “I don’t know what to do” or “I just don’t know if I’m ever going to be better” that’s the beginning of the new you you want to be.
So that’s my suggestion for today. Keep not knowing. Keep despairing, because it means you’re on the right, good path. Lean in and stay in it. Keep going. It’s the way through.
And when you’re ready, take your despair, or any strong emotion you’re feeling, and pick one thing to do today, maybe from this list.
The times are so different now than they were 25 years ago when I first started looking for help with my abusiveness. More and more support is available. There is real, evidence-based proof, and hope for your peaceful life, your happiness, your change. I hope you seize that hope.
Every hour, every day, every single week of not being abusive is worth the effort.
May the feeling of despair fuel you, like it did for me.
#doonething #doingtheimpossible