Vicki Dau (00:00)
Is that a possibility? And how would that feel for you? It might feel different because
you're not used to putting your feelings like they matter. So you might feel guilty. You it might feel weird and but look for the good in that. Look for the good that you feel and how relieved maybe that you feel. It's okay to love yourself and give yourself grace to love yourself.
Vicki Dau (00:31)
Welcome to Re-Framing Life and Love, where Tom and Vicki guide you on a transformative journey through healing and connection. Together, we explore the profound effects of childhood sexual trauma on adult relationships and share practical tools to help you build a loving partnership. Two things. We do have a trigger warning.
This podcast discusses sensitive topics related to childhood sexual abuse and trauma. Listener discretion is advised. And we have a disclaimer. We want to remind you that we are not medical or mental health professionals. This podcast is based on our personal experiences and what has worked for us. While we aim to provide valuable insights and support,
We encourage you to seek professional advice for any specific mental health or relationship issues which you may have been facing. Now, here is our next episode.
Vicki Dau (01:41)
Hey there, welcome, welcome. Hi. This episode is about handling the holidays. One of the things that we know as a survivor of sexual abuse, oftentimes we are abused by a family member or someone that is close to the family. And so that makes holidays tricky. And so we wanted to bring up some things in this episode about how to handle them. You guys, every situation,
is, you know, yours and you make your own choices. We're kind of speaking from our own experience and our own conviction. I'll show you some options. Yeah. Yeah. What are the possibilities for your holidays to be more enjoyable, safer, whatever you're looking for? Yeah. So to dive right in, one of the first things to we have some kind of questions that we wanted to ask is
Who knows what is it still a secret? Has it ever been, has your abuse ever been shared? Have you confronted the abuser? Has he apologized or what was his reaction? What was family members reaction? so that's actually a really big thing initially to be aware of is, and that affects your decisions is
been keeping it secret for five, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
Even if you've been keeping a secret for 50 years, it doesn't have to be after today. If you choose, you can change your mind. You can choose to not keep it a secret anymore. I think there's something, I think it's really hard to keep it a secret because it almost is like you're the one that's hiding something that you did something wrong.
And I think that plays with our self-esteem, our self-image. But it's your choice. Absolutely your choice. A lot of times we don't want to share because we're going to upset the family apple cart. I shared with a family member what happened to me, I was told that I was a bad girl and don't you ever say anything like that ever again.
So then when another family member came after me about six months later, I heard in my head, I'm a bad girl. Don't say anything ever again. So I didn't speak. And I think that was part of where the repression of the memory started was because of that message that I was the bad girl and I can't talk about it was interesting because the first abuse
I went back, my first abuse happened over Christmas break. And when I went back to school, remember, five and a half. And I remember I had the memory come up that my teacher said something to my mom, something's wrong with Vicki. And within one month I had like totally blocked the whole thing, totally blocked it. But it was interesting because someone else,
person of authority saw the change in my behavior, whatever that was. don't remember called it out and that was then, cause I'm almost 60, right? So back then this, you know, telling a trusted adult wasn't even a
When my memories came back and I had as clear of a story as I decided that I wasn't going to no more secrets and I'm not pretending. the one family member who I confronted about the abuse.
We had plans to celebrate Christmas, think, with him.
I spent, I don't know, five minutes and we, I confronted him. He denied it. And Tom was standing at the door when he walked out and he basically, took, shook Tom's hand and said, well, if you change your mind about Christmas, let me know. It was just like, what, what, what, what? So, we have not celebrated anything with that family member. we've not seen that family member. We have done nothing.
for since I confronted him, like we've never had any interaction. Many, many years ago. Yeah.
what I feel like is each circumstance can be different and take each event on its own story, its own situation. you've, like Thanksgiving at the time of the initial airing of this episode, we're right near Thanksgiving. are you having a really big event where you could maybe not be in contact with this person or you don't even want to be in the room with the person?
There is a concept called DARVO, and it's an acronym for what the family or friends of survivors do to the survivor when the survivor shares their story. DARVO, deny, accuse, no, deny, attack, reverse, victim, and offender.
It that pattern has happened so much that there is a woman who coined this phrase. So, and that's exactly what happened to me. Everybody denied it. that family member when I shared in the letter, if you go back to the episode where I share my story, no, no, no. How dare you defame the name of that precious family member. He's dead. He can't defend himself. How dare you? How dare you? Then they started attacking my story and they picked apart every detail.
of my story and then they started, they reversed the victim and offender role. how horrible it is for us. Look at what you're doing for us. Look at, look at how terrible you're giving. Yeah. Look at what you're causing our, our family and, what you're doing to our family. Classic, classic responses. Classic.
now what has happened for me because of the length of time, they're just acting like nothing ever I can't do that. So I'm not really seeing any of them for any holidays. But what is interesting when all that took place with the initial person inviting us to Christmas and we saying, you know, we said, no, we've never seen that person again. Other close members of the family in that, in that relationship.
We still, I would consider them to be abusive to Vicki, not in that particular way, but in their inability to support her, in their inability to understand where she was coming from and support her and defend her. None of those things happened. So for me, that is another form of abuse that was going on relative to the main abuse that occurred to her from the other family member.
but we didn't remove ourselves from those people in regards to family events and stuff like we did the other person for many, many, many years. We decided it was going to be easier on us and the kids to not do that for a period of time. And also thinking that maybe, maybe they would come around. Well, eventually we decided that's not gonna happen. And so we now...
don't deal with those people either. So my point is, like Vicki said earlier, take everything on its own merit and what works best for you and don't, you don't have to pigeonhole everything. Everything can be, you can work around it the way you need to work around it, whatever makes sense. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing with the group. It may end up being that way and maybe it is that way. With her extended family, was, boom, done.
All of you were done with the more nuclear family. It was done in pieces. Yeah. And so what I would suggest for you to do is the two of you get on board, get on the same page. guys, you got to easy. It hasn't been easy. but it, we've been a team. Thank you. And
It makes it doable. Things might look different. People may not understand your decision or support you if you decide to walk away.
That's kind of another thing that I wanted to create. We wanted to create was almost like an extended family with you and us. and other people who are like us who have chosen to walk away. You can redefine family. I give you an invitation that you don't have to be the one that stuffs.
all the pain and suffers while everybody else goes along and acts like nothing is fricking wrong. You can say, know what, my feelings matter and I can't stand to be in the room with this person. I'm not coming this year. Now you may use whatever words you want depending on who knows what, but to say, you know what, I'm done acting like I should be the one.
to be uncomfortable. In pain. In pain. Yeah, actually. You do not have to be in pain. You don't want to be in and you have control. You can. Yeah. You have the ability to control what situations give you pain and what situations you can work around so that you don't have that pain or you lessen it. Do it. And here's another invitation I'll give you is to share with your kids what you're doing and why you're doing it.
and invite them to join you. That was something that has happened to me where I said, this happened. This is the choice that dad and I made. So we've done things two different ways. So about three years ago, we had an episode come up and we had a major conflict and we had a family cutoff and we told the family member, we told
them were done with you. And then.
We told the kids that we decided not to have any more contact with this person. You guys make your own decision. Every one of my kids and their spouses said, well, we're on board with you. We want to support you.
And that was really beautiful for me.
and I felt it. I let myself feel the magnitude of their decisions and I thanked them.
The second time it happened was just recently when a different family member was accusing me of things. up until then, I was like, you know what? You kids do what you want. If you want to have association with that person, go ahead. then I said, you know what? I'm going to ask them to not. I'm going to ask them to choose me over her.
and every one of them did. Every one of my kids said, you know what, mom, we're behind you. We love you and we're behind you. We see the abuse from that other person and we want to support you and we'll do that.
because I was feeling betrayed with the kids being with that other person.
And I was feeling betrayed by my own kids. And so I shared that that was really hard for me.
and I asked them to support me and they did. So don't underestimate your kids in this matter depending on their age, have created our own events with them. of them we've, you know, that used to be fun and a lot of people and now are not.
We've tried to boost in other ways and, you know, like build up the event and maybe do something special we've never done before for that particular event because it's different than it looked before or whatever. So be open. So one of the things you already mentioned this is what are the possibilities of what Thanksgiving, I'll just use that as an example, what Thanksgiving could look like without me having to be in the presence of my abuser.
or the person who abused me when I was eight or nine or 10. What are the possibilities that I could do something else?
And then brainstorm. Maybe you work a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. Maybe your family gets together and maybe you invite other people. We used to do this. We haven't done it a lot lately, but we used to invite people to our house on Thanksgiving who didn't have anywhere else to go. And it was so cool. Every year it was different. We would have one to two to three to four extra people at our Thanksgiving meal.
And that went on for years. That was really cool. ask yourself, what are the possibilities of what we can make it look like? If it's Christmas, could you have a Christmas without that person who abused you along with other people that you invite, but not them? Is that a possibility? And how would that feel for you? It might feel different because
you're not used to putting your feelings like they matter. So you might feel guilty. You it might feel weird and but look for the good in that. Look for the good that you feel and how relieved maybe that you feel. It's okay to love yourself and give yourself grace to love yourself. Certainly. It's not easy.
but give yourself permission.
to take action that your feelings matter.
Even if every other year before this one, you haven't taken action. Or it may be this isn't the year, but now you're thinking about it for next year. And that's okay too. Wherever you're at.
Some people choose to do the path of least resistance Which can mean doing everything the same as you've always done it and Some people choose To be like I'm done not doing this not pretending. I'm Just done and then you take the fallout from it
But choose who you spend your time with. Choose what thoughts you have in your head regarding that. Because you can control that, and you can build yourself up. Keep listening to sources that reinforce your decision, that support you as a person.
in how you are handling it and what stage you're at. But make your decision together. Feel supported.
and create new memories.
Give yourself permission to be uncomfortable for a little bit.
Don't forget to subscribe and like this episode. Fill your mind with good things. Go to our website, get your exclusive offer. Three things that every husband know. Three, three, three things that every committed couple must know to have a great relationship. Whatever the title is, just get your offer. If you haven't already.
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Vicki Dau (18:53)
Thank you very much for joining us on this episode of Reframing Life and Love. We hope you found the inspiration and actionable insights to enhance your relationship. Don't forget to subscribe for more empowering discussions.
