The Painful Pivot that Keeps People Alive

I had a client ask me how I didn't off myself because of what had happened to me.

It's a good question because they are struggling with a horrific crime that happened to them that there will be no justice for.

At some point there was the realization that it wasn't the event that had really crushed me in the long term, but the seeing behind the curtain of the malevolence of the person who was committed to destroying me that propelled the wish to not exist.

And when I had come to terms with the evilness of the person(s) then treatment changed because I stopped contending with the horrible event (after I had contended with it enough) but now contended with the horribleness and real evil being revealed and seeing the evidence in the aftermath of pain.

You know, it's not so obvious that able to contend with knowing that a human face hides such demonic features so easily.

The timely and appropriate changing from victim (this happened to me and I'm trying to figure out how to handle it) to 'contender?' (I faced the most evil malevolence I could handle, survived, and now know that evil exists so what do I do now?) positioned me, and treatment of those I work with, towards a good aim upwards which allows us to make changes and touch the world in constructive ways, instead of looking backwards at the devastation we can't do anything about which brings us to staring at death with no way of conquering it.

That painful pivot is the beginning of what stops people from offing themselves due to meeting malevolence.