Once my eyes were opened to the freedom of God’s grace, I was prepared to work at changing the faulty behaviors my abusive childhood had caused me. I no longer condemned myself. Instead, I rose to the challenge of ridding my life of those problematic behaviors so that I could live a successful and purposeful life for God. I will admit it has not been easy. It was, and is, downright painful to come face-to-face with my faulty behaviors, but I must if I want to eradicate them. 

While I did not exhibit all of the multiple symptoms of abuse, there were enough of them to cause me heartache. Among them were the following:

•   Depression­. The smallest of events could hurdle me into a depressive state of mind which could last days or weeks. Most of the time, the trigger was an event where I felt I had messed up, and my bent towards perfectionism caused me to berate myself in my head.
•   Misdirected anger. I frequently became unreasonably angry at inconsequential events. Many times these events were things I had no control over, but the true red flag was the fact that most of the events did not warrant an angry response.
•   Anxiety. As an adult, before going through therapy, I experienced anxious feelings when around my dad because I was never sure what hurtful words he would direct towards me. He was a master at intimidating those around him. The fact that Scott was never intimidated by him was a huge strength in my life.
•   Guilt/shame. As a child, I thought I had done something to cause the abuse against me. I didn’t want anyone to know how bad I was so I never told anyone about the abuse…not even my best friends. As an adult, my life was filled with guilt about everything. If something didn’t go right, I made it my fault even if it wasn’t. When I sinned and asked forgiveness, I felt I had to ask multiple times and for many days before letting myself off the hook.
•   Difficulty establishing relationships. As a teen, I craved relationships with guys to the point of feeling like I always needed a boyfriend, but not all of the relationships were healthy for me. I truly needed to focus on healthy friendships, but I was not good at that. Thankfully, the Lord took care of my relationship dilemma when He brought Scott and me together. I have to admit that I still do not have strong female friendships. I tend to focus my time and attention on my family and not on my personal friendships.
•   Shut-off/over-controlling of emotions. I didn’t really “shut-off” my emotions, but I did try to control them as well as the circumstances of my life. Since my dad had controlled my life when I was a child and teen, as a young woman, I subconsciously tried to control all aspects of my life. I tried to make things perfect, and when they fell short, I thought I had failed.
•   Sexual problems in marriage. Prior to marriage, I told Scott about the incest because I fully expected it to cause me problems. I wanted my husband to know and be prepared to help me through any issues that might occur during our intimacy. As a result, we dealt with any issue that came up, and we have never had any significant problems.
•   Poor self-image/low self-esteem. Childhood abuse of any kind is going to cause the victims to suffer from a poor self-image. As a victim of incest, I viewed myself as “bad” and “dirty” because I was quite sure that “good little girls” didn’t have fathers who did that sort of thing to them. Since my father was good at making everyone think he was in the right, I felt everything about me was wrong. I was always trying to do better and be better. I was always trying to be perfect, but never felt I even came close. I didn’t trust anyone’s compliments of me or my actions. I felt I always fell short.
•   Eating disorders. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to start starving myself. It was a gradual process. At first, I began dieting because I truly was overweight and wanted to slim down. My mom taught me how to follow the Weight Watchers’ program, which I followed faithfully but felt my progress was too slow. My dad did not help my frustration over it when he told me, “You’re fat and will always be fat! Your mother is fat! Your sister is fat! Your grandma is fat! All of the women in our family are fat, so you might as well get used to it and learn to live with it.” I can be very stubborn at times, so his words caused my stubborn streak to come out with a vengeance. I determined inside myself to show him. That is when I developed the mindset of “less is more,” which meant “eat fewer calories so I could lose more pounds.” It worked too. Between starving myself and using laxatives, I was able to drop the desired pounds and inches.
•   Memory blocks/memory lapses. I have a total memory block of the period of time when my father was turned over to the authorities for molesting my older sister. I was an adult before I finally did the math and realized I was five years old when he was taken away. The ordeal was so traumatic to my five-year-old brain that I have no conscious memory of it. When I was around 30 years old, I had a dream which I shared with my sister because I didn’t understand it. The details were so vivid in my mind that she began crying as I shared it with her. Through her tears, she told me that I had witnessed what I was describing. My dad’s mother had violently screamed at my sister the night the authorities took our dad away. My bed was situated where the ordeal took place over my head. I witnessed my sister force herself into the corner on her bed, and cry to our grandparents begging them to believe her. It was all too traumatic for my 5-year old brain; to this day, I still have no conscious memory of that time in my life. My younger brother, on the other hand, has many memories and even remembers our dad being taken away by authorities.
•   Nightmares & flashbacks. I’m guessing that nightmares and flashbacks are common with almost all incest victims because it’s almost impossible to get away from the memories.
•   Overly perfectionistic. I felt I had to make myself and everything associated with my life perfect otherwise, I was a “bad person.”
•   Critical spirit toward others. A critical spirit goes hand-in-hand with a perfectionistic mindset. No one and no circumstances in life are perfect; therefore, when things were not perfect, I became critical. I also became critical in my efforts to make things perfect.
•   Critical spirit towards myself. Through the years, I have been much more critical of myself than of others, but I only recognized it a few years ago.
•   Manipulative behaviors. I had ideas in my mind of what the perfect set of circumstances looked like, so I went to great lengths to try and manipulate people and circumstances to fit into my view of perfection. I daily used manipulative tactics. Instead of simply asking my husband to take out the trash, I would say or do something manipulative to get him to realize he should take out the trash.

Once I had identified these problematic behaviors, I slowly began to correct them. At that time, I thought I would be through the process within a year or two, and while I covered a lot of recovery ground during the first couple of years, I soon learned that healing from my emotional wounds would be a lifetime endeavor.