with Dr. Carol Francis
After abuse or inhumanely caused trauma, you likely will face the need to regrow your self-respect. You will need to work beyond blame and self-loathing or self-harming attitudes or statements or actions. You will need to pull out of your abuse or trauma what aspects of you which helped you endure, escape and survive. You will also need to rescue some personality qualities such as your ability to love, to be kind, to be generous and to be trusting of others; rescue those qualities away from the clutches of your abuse or trauma experiences. In essence it was not your ability to trust, love, be kind or be generous that caused you to be:
1) manipulated by the abuser, or
2) pulled into a horrible situation innocently, or
3) blinded by situations.
Rather your lack of wisdom or savvy about the evils and ill-intents of some other vile humans caused you to be vulnerable. So as you grow your self-respect, you will need to educate yourself about how manipulators groom their victims and how con artists spot their marks. Your self-respect will grow as your ability to discern becomes keenly wise. Remember, trust is never given, it is ALWAYS earned by the person wanting your trust. So let them earn your trust with repeated reliability. In like manner, you don’t give someone a second chance. Instead, the other person must prove themselves worthy of any next chances. Don’t sacrifice yourself when someone else needs to do the work of being worthy of connecting with you.