Post Workplace Abuse: Confronting the Lie "Perceptions and Assumptions" Part 1

 The road to recovery post workplace abuse, is not always a road.  Nor is it always well-defined or even in a straight line.  Sometimes it's like a dirt path across a field. Sometimes it's an offshoot of a well-defined path. It can even be a sidewalk or a staircase.  Or climb up a mountain.  It's always changing and evolving as the survivor passes through from one piece of recovery to the next.  It's also different for each survivor as each one of us comes to the path with different experiences, different strengths, different weaknesses and different injuries from the experience.

Whatever.  

Our paths are usually pretty vague.  And not very popularly travelled.

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Today, we're continuing on the path of debunking the lies we internalized during the abusive situation.

I say "we" because, while the lies I internalized which have been holding me back from full recovery are specific to not only my situation but to this one particular situation (note that I had two back to back workplace bullying situations and the lies were quite different in both), each one of us has our own version of the lies we internalized in our own personal and unique situation.

We are alike in that we're on the same journey towards recovery from a horrific situation in our workplaces.  Yet, we are also different in that our injuries, our lies are unique to us.  Specific to our own situation, strengths, weaknesses and personality.

So today I present to you, my loyal reader, the beginning of my journey debunking the lie key I internalized in my own situation:  perceptions and assumptions.

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Lat week, I reposted a post about an experience hubby and I had shared at Myrtle Beach in 2013 called Togetherness.  Today, I will revisited the same place, the same timeframe, even the same experience - from a totally different perspective.  That of debunking the lie.  The lie regarding perceptions and assumptions.

My journey toward confronting head on that lie began, whether by intent or coincidence I cannot remember, in January 2013.

I had swallowed that lie hook, line and sinker.  So much so that whenever I said something that was not a hard fact and could not be verified by hard evidence, I would always add the codicil but that's just my perception and assumption.  Meaning it had no value.  Devaluing myself, my thought processes, my cognitive skills, etc.

My dear hubby who has been my longest and most loyal support would say something about my perceptions and assumptions being amazing.  However, I could neither believe nor internalize that at the time.

Hubby loves to watch an earth cam of Myrtle Beach.  Before we left, he showed it to one of our daughters who was going to house and cat sit for us.  She remarked that it would be fun if we could find it and then call her from that location and watch us talking to her.

Me, I was sceptical.  But out of that simple statement, the great "Myrtle Beach Earth Cam search" was begun.  We spent our week at North Myrtle Beach searching for this earth cam - which proved to be very elusive - at first - for us indeed.

First of all, we had a misperception.  We thought it was in North Myrtle Beach which is where we were.  Why?  Because at one point there had been a web cam at one of the resorts in North Myrtle Beach and we had even located it once.  For another, the earth cam page had originally been (mis)labelled as North Myrtle Each - for whatever reason.

So, we ended up looking for this elusive earth cam in the wrong area.  Approximately 20 miles north of where it actually was.

Needless to say, we didn't find the earth cam - at least not in the original part of the search, but we did find areas of North Myrtle Beach - and environs - which we had no idea existed.

Like these and dunes at the very, very end of North Myrtle Beach.

A fishing pier - which, of course, we'd never seen before.  I had the opportunity to take lots of pictures of this area which in and of itself was a piece of recovery for me.

Note:  most of these pictures reflect late afternoon sunlight as my energy was so low that I had to rest most of the day in order to go out for even an hour or so late in the afternoon.

I'm not sure what this is called whether it's a creek or part of the intercoastal waterway - which we hadn't known before existed either.

It began in that rugged beach area I've just shown in pictures.  Again something I would never had seen or experience had it not been for our search in the wrong area for this earth cam.

The vista at this far end of the beach at North Myrtle Beach totally fascinated me reminding me in some ways of South Padre Island in Texas:  the dunes, the wildness, the isolation.

We also found an area of North Myrtle Beach where homes are built with their own boat docks to cruise the intercoastal waterway.

We found the intercoastal waterway which we had never even heard of before.

We found a boardwalk over a salt marsh.

A salt marsh

Incredible photo opportunities.

a red-capped woodpecker

even a flying blue heron

All of this because we were searching in the wrong place.

But, alack and alas, no earth cam - because we were searching in the wrong place.

I began to give up on the idea of finding this earth cam.  I was having so much fun starting to experience and enjoy life on the search.  The search itself turned out to be more fun than actually finding the objective.

I had gained so much positive that finding it would only add the whipped cream and cherry topping on the sundae of our experience.

I learned later, much later, that perceptions are based on the information that we have available at the time.  My perceptions of where to look for the earth cam were based totally on its having been originally labelled as North Myrtle Beach and our experience of finding the resort-based cam years earlier.  Was there anything wrong with my perceptions and assumptions?  Not really.  They were simply based on the information I had at hand at that particular time.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Tomorrow, we continue the experience.

See you then.