What I have come to discover lately, and mind me, no one really writes about this excessively when they comment abusive childhood, is that you have to come up with the totally new set of morals. Let me explain further….
It is likely that you grew up with skewed morals and values and furthermore, did not really develop a personal belief system strong enough. From my own experience, my understanding of right and wrong was highly dependent on the fear of punishment. That means – I did not do ‘wrong’ things because I thought they were somehow immoral, but rather I was sooo afraid of being punished for it. Let me tell you, this is a crappy reason for keeping you out of trouble.
The reality of the situation is that many abused youth do not establish a sense of right and wrong that would be coherent. As long as I was still afraid I was able to keep to a certain idea of right and wrong out of pure fear. However, after the fear was gone, I noticed that I started to shamelessly test with things that were considered bad. I did things which previously were considered shameful, bad etc. I did not really feel bad about it. I think mostly because the ‘moral code’ which I had been holding was connected to fear of punishment more than any other deeply ingrained values.
I don’t believe my case to be unique. I think all abused children, if they now deal with their abuse, must go through the similar chaos. Suddenly you don’t know what your values are. What is right, what is wrong? The old values don’t seem really important but they have not been placed by new ones…a total chaos.
What I am trying to say with this post is that it is normal part of healing. Give it some time. You will probably come out of this chaos and develop some steady values and morals which you will believe in.
What comes after the abuse? 