From my journal for Sept 5,1995
Reading the new version of Son-Rise — a friend offered it to me because of their practice of radical acceptance of their autistic son — I find myself very angry at the exposition of their philosophy, the idea that “happiness is a choice,” that nothing is impossible, that all we need to do is change our beliefs (which they see as an easy matter, subject to an intellectual process) — “change the belief and we change the feelings as well as the behavior.” [Margin: not according to Anna Salter] While I agree with this last statement, I think their whole philosophy is dangerously one-sided, they have failed to take into account the differing nature of beliefs that have been adopted through different means, at different ages and stages of development, they have no idea of the power of conditioning. I remember how easily, and with amusement, I was able to drop my belief that Sears & Roebucks was a terrible store, that no one could live in Maine through the winter, and how I continue to struggle with the belief that I am worthless and powerless, how long it has taken me to learn to believe in my own creativity and generosity and how that belief easily crumbles in the face of adversity. I can see why their “option process” failed to work for survivors of childhood sexual abuse — our belief that we are evil and worthless, that we deserve to be the objects of someone else’s exploitation, is one that we learned through experience, from how we were treated. It’s not like beliefs we learned later on, about what we can and can’t do, that were learned through an intellectual process and can be disempowered through intellectually understanding. The idea that “nothing is impossible” is a very painful invalidation of the experience of survivors, if nothing is impossible, we should have been able to prevent our parent from molesting us, we should be able to heal ourselves, we should be able to make everything OK. All our lives we’ve been trying to do the impossible: make it that it never happened, get our parent to stop drinking, so to be told that nothing is impossible just adds to our pain and guilt, increases our self-hatred and self-invalidation. What we need most is the revelation and reassurance that some things are impossible, that a two-year-old can’t prevent her father from orally raping her, and that she can’t just make the resultant damage disappear by “changing her beliefs.”
At that time I still thought that I had been a victim of sexual abuse, and had no idea that I had been traumatized. Interesting that I had dropped my belief that Sears & Roebucks was a terrible store, because Mother had threatened to send me “back to Sears & Roebucks.” What I still had, alas, was the belief that if I didn’t behave as authority wanted, I would be “sent back” — that is out on the street, unable to take care of myself. The story about the “two-year-old” was the story of one of the women in Journey Into Courage.