Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Still need to work through early trauma
Gaining Strength:
For my entire life getting up in the morning has been difficult. For years I tried to determine why but decades ago I finally realized that for. My first 18 years the appointment of breakfast was so stomach turning that facing the day started immediately with a stomach ache. I can see how I might be moving through that soon enough. What a blessing it will be.
So much understanding is flooding in. I am beginning to see a bit of daylight of relief of action. I have glimpses of how the resolution of the shame will release the shackles that keep me from it all.
Lifelong I could start anything but the stomach grip would attack almost immediately after the first action and I would know that I was in legions there on out, tripling the shame. Even if not free yet the multiplier effect has been released because I know why I am stymied.
Doing something for myself was the greatest generator of crippling shame - reading, needlework, gardening, dressing nicely. That too had been a mystery to me, it still is to an extent though at last I have the intellectual information that my parents had to destroy me for their narcissistic feed. That is something that I have not read about. I have mostly read that n parents fed off of their children's success but with mine it was my failure and suffering. Why isn't that anywhere in the literature. Now that I know that it is very, very freeing. It gives me such a sense of hope. It relieves me of being such a huge failure.
Very thankful for this board Dr. Grossman. Through it I am able to work through this stuff and feel connected. Both of those pieces are very essential (redundant) to my healing - to have a place to express myself (have voice) and to have connection. The greatest damage done by my parents was to become disconnected from humanity. That was the greatest. But also to be broken off from my ability to excute my will. That has left me horribly crippled in every way. But I am resurrecting today.
Dr. Richard Grossman:
--- Quote from: Gaining Strength on July 23, 2014, 10:42:40 AM ---Very thankful for this board Dr. Grossman. Through it I am able to work through this stuff and feel connected. Both of those pieces are very essential (redundant) to my healing - to have a place to express myself (have voice) and to have connection. The greatest damage done by my parents was to become disconnected from humanity. That was the greatest. But also to be broken off from my ability to excute my will. That has left me horribly crippled in every way. But I am resurrecting today.
--- End quote ---
I'm so glad you're here, GS!
Richard
Gaining Strength:
For years when my stomach roiled I tensed up mightily to repress it - all unconsciously. I was very serious and very tense. My father had trained the joy and exuberance out if me and my mother trained other displays of emotion out as well. ( I was profoundly aware of this remotely when I has taken my child with friends to an amusement park. . Aware that squeals of joy or screams of any sort were totally verboten. It separates me from others. When younger I had such resentment of people who freely s'mores and was utterly puzzles by the attention for such displays. Mow I understand it all.
Almost 20 years ago I went to a therapist to get help with my complete inability to deal with things financial including the basic paying of bills on time. Today as I entered the laundromat, thinking about how much it would coast, I understood on an initial level that all of that financial angst came from the same cesspool. Could there even be hope for that.
All of this stuff is emerging, steadily, gently, at a pace that I can process it. The stomach turning is decreasing and at long last the tools I have tried for so many, many years are at long last chipping away. It has been a forever journey.
Gaining Strength:
For YEARS every single phone call and every piece of mail has sent me into huge anxiety. I see that is easing. I was doing very well today and then suddenly my stomach began to ache. I have no idea why. Knowing helps me move through it. I feel I could throw up.
Hopalong:
Yes, there's hope for all of it!
Re. the prayer group. Do you have the option of forgiving them for dropping you from their email list? It may not have been a big personal rejection. Perhaps they didn't know how, for you, it would be experienced as a huge, cripping rejection.
What might happen if you just reached out to one of them and said, 'I couldn't come for a while and realize I got dropped off the list. Can you add me again?"
If you kept it that simple, couldn't you return and enjoy the group again?
Just a thought.
xo
Hops
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