3 Steps To Escape The Cage Of Abuse By Dr. Lisa Cooney

Are you stuck in the invisible cage of abuse?

Abuse – all forms of it (physical, mental, emotional, sexual, financial, etc.) – is pervasive. It can still constrict and limit your present day life, even if the abuse happened decades ago. The effects of abuse show up in every area of life: health, relationships, finances and career.

This experience of constriction and limitation is what I refer to as the “invisible cage of abuse.” The thousands of clients I’ve worked with around the world have all described a similar experience of the effects of their past abuse. If you’ve ever experienced abuse you may also feel locked in an invisible cage that you can’t find the key for.

Living life stuck in the invisible cage of abuse is like watching yourself have the air sucked out of the balloon of your life. You don’t know how to stop it or change it. It feels like the cage owns you.

When you’re in the cage, you’re fueling yourself with limitation, lack, anxiety and depression. You live on autopilot. There is nothing generative in this, and when there’s nothing generative in something, what do you do?

You become less generative, and the sadness, anxiety and depression increase. This is often when people start popping pills, drinking or hiding under the covers, isolating themselves. They may also get in accidents or put themselves in dangerous situations because it’s familiar to them to be in crisis.

The worst of it is that life inside the cage of abuse becomes familiar: feelings of worthlessness and patterns of “not enough” or “less than” get repeated in all

areas of your life. The invisible cage of abuse is designed to keep you out of freedom, out of pleasure, out of possibility.

When you begin the journey of moving beyond abuse, and leaving the cage, something quite surprising occurs. The freedom, pleasure and possibility you experience is so unfamiliar that it can feel shocking, scary, crazy, and all you want to do is crawl back into the cage.

Because the cage is what you know. The cage is what feels safe. You grab hold of the bars and become more rigid, more confined, more limited than ever before. You desperately want to leave the cage but it feels wrong somehow to do so.

How do you move beyond abuse and escape the cage without it feeling so painful?

Start with these 3 steps:

Step 1: Acknowledge the Pattern

The biggest problem is returning to the cage and going unconscious again. If you do this, you’re just going to continue the patterns of abuse that have you in such pain in your life.

Becoming aware of this pattern (of trying to leave and getting scared and returning to the cage), acknowledging it, and knowing it’s normal is essential to staying awake and choosing something different rather than staying in the familiar zone of the cage.

Step 2: Make Friends with the Cage

I know this may sound crazy, but the only way to create change in your life and move beyond your abuse is to first accept this cage that you’ve been living in. Honor the cage as your friend as it’s actually been your biggest ally in healing.

Express your gratitude for its strength and resourcefulness: it protected you during a time you needed protection.

When you embrace the cage and choose something other than shutting down, you soften. You open to the possibility of being in communion with your pain. This is ultimately the only way to dissolve the bars of the cage and step into true freedom.

Step 3: Get Support

We’re wounded in a relationship and we’re healed in a relationship. Abuse twists things up inside – we end up pushing everyone away yet feel desperate for support.

Reaching out to enlist support in your journey is essential. At first, you may still be in a fetal position in the cage, yet having someone there with you giving you space to stand up is the best feeling in the world.

And then, with support, you discover how to leave the cage in a way that’s not so painful or scary. You step into greater freedom and pleasure and embrace this new naked vulnerability that is you, and what I call Radical Aliveness.

Trust me, my friend, I know from personal and professional experience: it is possible to unlock yourself from the cage of abuse. These three steps will support you in choosing empowerment over the familiar pattern of disempowerment that the cage reinforces.

Let’s kick abuse in the caboose, together. Your life of Radical Aliveness awaits.