That’s a serious question, and one I’d like you to think about for a moment: how do you know who you are? (Most emotionally abused women really DON’T know.) Maybe it will help you if I rephrase it:

How do you get a sense of who you are?

Where does that sense come from?

And who would you LIKE to be?

I wonder if I can answer correctly on your behalf.  Let’s see…

It’s my belief that your sense of who you are comes from your abusive partner and, quite possibly, people in your past who paved the way for him, long before he ever appeared in your life.  These people were, for their own reasons, negative and damaging in their assessment of you.  Or, at the very least, you experienced their assessment as being quite damning.

Am I right?

Thought so:-)

Losing sight of the person you were born to be damaging  and painful.  If you want to get rid of all the negativity in your life, I can help you.   CLICK HERE

Last week’s ezine, “Out Of The Relationship, But Not Over It” touched a nerve.  A lot of readers felt motivated to share that they felt just like Deb.  They also experienced that sense of being stuck on a plateau; not feeling desperately, overwhelmingly miserable, perhaps, just hollow, and jaded, and wanting rather more than they believed Life might hold for them.

So many women.

So many casualties of The Universal Abusive Man.

No matter whether he is 5 ft 2 (1.57 M) or 6 ft 4 (1.93 M), we know he stirs up the same emotions in so many of you…  Which means one of two things:

a) either all of us – I include myself in the number – are secret clones, the result of some top secret worldwide conspiracy to create a secret army of miserable, female mutants programmed to people please until they auto-destruct…

b) or else, The Universal Abuser is pretty damn good at brainwashing us into internalizing his negative thoughts, and his all round nastiness.

If you were to take about 30 seconds out from beating yourself up for anything and everything, and really THINK about what you are doing, you would be amazed… and disgusted.

How could you be so out and out mean and nasty to yourself?

Sorry, but that’s what you are: you are truly vile to yourself.

There is no way you would go around saying the vile, hurtful things you say to yourself to anybody else – except maybe him, once in a while…( and that’s material for another occasion, and another blog post).

Which leaves you with a slight problem: what on earth is happening to lead you to spend your time beating yourself up in this, horrible, destructive way?  (And, please understand, I’m not judging you.  I’m not in any position to judge you; I’ve done it all myself.  As regards self-destructive internal dialogue, I was absolutely World Class.  But there are no prizes for that, no public recognition, no pay-off that anyone would really want.  The better you get at self-destructive dialogue, the more vicious the weapons you turn on yourself, and the deeper the wounds you inflict…  Period.)

It’s all crazy because you are NOT a destructive person.  You spend your life trying to shore up people – and situations; especially your abusive relationship.

Which means the self-destructive dialogue in your head is not of your head.

It’s The Universal Abuser’s ‘stuff’ that you have, very kindly, given head-space.

Your head is full of his thoughts, and his sentiments.  And maybe those of one or two of his predecessors who were very good at Extreme Emotional Nastiness, too.

So, coming back to my initial question: who are you? Or, at least, who will you be when you have evicted his misery from your head?

“Ah but, how do you do that?”, you might ask.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as just giving you a set of instructions.

Once upon a time, I wrote a cookbook as a fundraiser for my daughter’s school.  I tested heirloom recipes over and over again, and proof-read them carefully to make sure they worked.  And they did work.  But still, I had queries and questions from people who changed ingredients, receptacles, timings, methods, etc, or cooked with fear and resentment rather than confidence and love…  Their results ended up typically disappointing.

The techniques for working through your discovery require more skilled handling than does any heirloom chocolate cake recipe.  I can’t simply say: “Do this first, then that, then that, and, hey presto,  job done.”  I can’t say that because you can do all of those things, but if you do them with your customary lack of faith in yourself, they won’t work.

Ideally, you need someone who can guide, support, and reassure you through the emotional wobbles you will undoubtedly experience.  Someone who can make you see that a wobble is just that:  a wobble.

You’ve been programmed to believe a wobble is a cataclysm.

It isn’t…

Unless your mind tells you it is, of course…

And I know enough about you to know that is exactly what your mind tells you, over and over again.

So, sadly, there will be no neat little recipes from me.  They won’t work.  They won’t engage you sufficiently to enable you to change the way you think and feel.  Committing to engage in a teleclass program will enable you to change, and far more quickly and profoundly than you could possibly imagine, but words in an ezine cannot have the same effect.

They will enlighten but, most likely, they won’t transform.

So, let me leave you with something that will create a shift in your mindset, if you commit to working with it.

Recently, I was working with a client who was telling me about what she could and couldn’t do – you probably won’t be surprised to know that most of it was what she couldn’t do.  I asked her if she knew any woman who had a true “Can Do” mentality she could learn from.

She mentioned a woman called “Goddess”.

A woman called Goddess!

Now, I don’t know this woman – although I sure as hell want to.  But I’ll hazard an educated guess that she didn’t start her life called “Goddess”.  Most likely, one day she looked at the shattered pieces of her life that lay all around her, and asked herself:

“What am I doing? Why have I spent so long struggling for survival in an emotional war zone, when I am a beautiful, brilliant, loving woman with so much to give and receive?”

And then she renamed herself “Goddess”.

She didn’t hang around waiting for anyone to give her that name – or else she’d still be waiting.

She made the decision and changed her name to “Goddess”.

So, here’s the thing.  You want change.  You want a happy life.  You want love and respect.

But you have to do something to let the Universe – and yourself – know YOU MEAN BUSINESS.

Am I seriously suggesting you change your name?

There are far worse things you could do.

(If I discovered, tomorrow, that thousands of women had changed their name to “Goddess” I’d  feel I’d achieved something huge in my life.)

Of course, you can “Ahbutt” me, as in:  “Ah but, Annie, I can’t because…”

Can’t you?

Are you really sure you can’t?

What’s to stop you, right this moment, making “Goddess” your middle name?

My love to you,

Annie G

Annie Goddess Kaszina