Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Still need to work through early trauma
Gaining Strength:
Step by step. with small deadlines, tiny bits of pressure I am able to stand right in front of the shaming shame and find that switch to flip to step into the supporting encouraging being and out of the shamed, humiliated child. It takes so much work to connect with that child who was trained that shame and belittlement = love. That child was emotionally abandoned from the git-go but the abandonment as a young adult was even more confusing. It did not add up to any expectations I had been trained to have.
Finding an image of love and acceptance has been so difficult but I am on that path now. I owe it to myself and to my child. Believing that I can do it is a large part of the work. To even hold hope and desires is part of the old pattern because expressing it was opening myself up to attack. There was no hope for help because help meant opening up for attack. This cycle continued for my parents entire lives and as long as I was in contact with my brothers. So now I am out of that loop.
Gaining Strength:
If one thing is accomplished the focus shifts to something left undone or not done up to standard. There is never celebration.
Rejection became expected, anticipated. This tug between longing to be acepted and embraced and the fear and expectation of being put down and belittled and rejected. Unable to let it slough off reacting to the pain of it all generated more pain.
You always brought the pain on yourself. You deserved it.
So hard to keep pushing through that pain. That expectation, that sense of deserving the ridicule and rejection.
Stepping into this pain is hard to experience.
Gaining Strength:
the only way out is to be able to stand in the pain and acknowledge it and move forward in spite of it. To not repress it, supress it, avoid it, distract from it but to stand in it and keep moving forward. This is the hardest thing I will ever do. I don't know if I can do it but then again I have no choice.
It has been such a long battle to get to this place and in many ways I am nowhere on this journey.
I thnk of how important the preparation for any work is. Perhaps all the word done for the past 30+ years has been preparation and now the work will happen. Yes. That is where I am. Standing in the pain, ready to move forward.
I know I must begin to commit to meditation. The ability to stand separate while present to the pain.
Dr. Richard Grossman:
Hi G.S.
First of all, welcome back! It always gives me great pleasure to see the “old timers” return for whatever reason. You have written such a courageous, painful thread for all to experience and connect with.
If you came to my office and described your history, this is what I would tell you—for this is what I have done with others in your situation. There is something crucial missing in your life, and that is an attachment to a loving, caring, empathic person. Without that attachment and the brain wiring that goes with it, all of your shame, pain, humiliation, “unlovability”, etc. will be lived over and over and over again in your life because it is the only wiring that exists. Many would disagree with me about this, but I think producing new attachment “wiring” is more important than forcing yourself, via whatever means, to come to terms/accept/desensitize oneself to the horrible pain that you have experienced. The reason is, speaking metaphorically, if the train travels along the healthy attachment tracks for long enough, the other set will become less and less “relevant” over time, and pain-wise, will begin to rust away. In my practice, I have seen this happen often. I don’t ask people to purposely relive any of their past trauma, instead I develop a relationship with her/him different than anything they’ve experienced before. That means, of course, that my attachment to them (even when they’ve stopped seeing me) is life-long, and they become an important part of my life—just as I am in theirs. This doesn’t mean that I prohibit them from speaking about their torturous past—it just means that they know they are doing it with another person who cares deeply about them (as some of the people here care about you). It also means the two of us find things to laugh about together, as well as cry about together—because life often provides plenty of opportunity for both. Importantly, the people I work with know that the “therapy attachment” is two-ways.
What is critical, given that my means of healing is not technique based but human-to-human based, is that you need to find a therapist who is a wonderful human being (like sea storm!). And someone who is willing and able to “open” their humanness to you. Sometimes this can be very difficult to find (I never found one)—although perhaps it is easier now than in the horrifying Freudian years of my distant past.
I hope this does not come across as discouraging to you—and certainly there are other methods of “healing”, but I wanted to share what has worked in my experience.
Again, welcome back and thanks so much for opening your life again to us.
Richard
Izzy_*now*:
to Dr. Grossman,
--- Quote ---There is something crucial missing in your life, and that is an attachment to a loving, caring, empathic person. Without that attachment and the brain wiring that goes with it, all of your shame, pain, humiliation, “unlovability”, etc. will be lived over and over and over again in your life because it is the only wiring that exists. Many would disagree with me about this, but I think producing new attachment “wiring” is more important
--- End quote ---
Wow! How wonderful to have what I did be embraced by you! I was chopping away at my life and dropping things and picking up things and in the midst of the physical struggle from March 2009, accident, Karla was introduced to my life.
I see that she has inadvertently become my "new attachment wiring", without my understanding the concept and why she has been so important to me these 5+ years. Because of parts of her life we identify more and more over more and more things, until we are excellent confidantes.
This also made me wonder if I were replacing my estranged daughter, some 38, or 30, 23 or 5 years ago, with Karla. I never really knew the exact date my daughter gave up on me, and threw me for a tailspin but I believe now that 38 years ago she suspected something was "different" about her. Through the rough years she was quite cruel but by 5 years ago, a nice respectable letter from her told me she was lesbian with a partner
I honestly cannot imagine the mindset she had in those 33 years---not understanding herself and not talking to anyone about it, but she is settled now, as am I, and now have an explanation why I am comfortable in not dwelling on her cruelty, as her life wasn't easy either.
Once again,
Thank you very much for your post and it wasn't from anything I posted because I was in a confused but not angry state. This shone a light!
Izzy
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