No More Words, Show Me

The Skinny on Verbal Abuse

Any woman who has experienced abuse has two choices. She can either get the hell out and preserve whatever dignity still remains, or swallow her pride once more, suck it up, and go back for more curtain calls.

Oh, there’s a third choice, too, one that every abuse survivor has thought about a time or twenty, but last I checked, murder is still a criminal offense ...

The abuse I saw most often was verbal and psychological. Name calling was at the top of that particular flagpole, although put downs were fluttering around near the top as well, like moths around a porch light at night.

The following poem was written with verbal abuse in mind ...

No More Words, Show Me
By C.J. Heck

Mean words slowly 
chip away at the good 
that was, until they 
deaden a loving heart.

Plates piled high
with hurtful names,
or full of blame,
pointing angry fingers
with words.

(Clean up your plate,
must eat up the reasons,
all the reasons
why I have to change,
never you).

Finish lines moved
with more mean words.
I love you's
thrown like confetti,
as if your 'I say this 
because' was real.

No More Words!
If you love me,
then show me.


[from the book, "Anatomy of a Poet", by C.J. Heck, available at Amazon.com]

I'll share something I learned from the therapist who helped me most after my divorce.  Maybe it will help you, too ...

During the first session, he told me to buy a pack of stickers --the kind I might use to put price tags on items for a garage sale.

The next session, I was directed to write a hurtful name that I was called on each sticker.  I should label as many stickers as I could remember and bring them with me to the next session.

At that session, he asked what I had created. I said they were stickers with hurtful, rude names written on them.  He asked if any of them say who I really am.  I said, "They Do Not!"  

He said, "See them for what they are. They are only labels.  They're not who you truly are."

When he handed me a pair of scissors, I cut the sheets of name labels into tiny pieces and threw them in the small trash can by his desk.  

It was the perfect visual aid.  The name-calling was finished and put behind me.  It was the ideal way to show hurtful names are only labels. They do not describe the person.

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