Reply To: When it was 100% true in the past…
Jessica AlbonThank you, Paul! That gives me a lot of food for thought.
I guess since this is all anonymous, I may as well share the specific belief. I was sexually abused by an adult family member as a child and as an adult have avoided men completely. The handful of times I've dated, the men I've met have been pretty legitimately crazy (one had a meltdown when I was busy on the day he wanted to have a date–it was my best friend's birthday and he and I had been on one date and he outright accused me of cheating on him which made zero sense since we'd only had one date) and that's sent me right back into avoidance.
But I'm ready to get rid of that and be in a healthy relationship, so I'm trying to process everything that seems to be getting in my way.
So, I've been tackling a bunch of stuff around trying to not be attractive to men, and the belief that came up that I can't seem to get around was, “I didn't want to be sexually desired by men.” Using that belief, it brings up all of that victim blaming that I internalized–that it was my fault, that somehow I'd seduced the relative, that he'd been powerless because I wanted him to desire me… But the thing is, I'm ready to let go of it, because although I don't know that I'd like being sexually desired by men at large, I do want to be comfortable being sexually desired by a partner. So, it's a belief that was 100% true in the past, and the past tense seems to be hanging me up in a way because it feels like saying it's not true or “rubbish” means I did want those attentions.
It seems, though, that there would be a lot of times when people have formed a belief based on something that genuinely was true in the past (whether because of honest limitations of being a child or something else).