Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Still need to work through early trauma
Gaining Strength:
I have not tried hypnotherapy but did go to a craniosacral therapist for a year. I find it helpful but it didn't get me through enough.
I still go to the 4 Steps described by Jeffry Schwartz and The Tools. I've tried a couple of other therapies that might be more effective if I were working with someone, therapies like EFT and other psychosomatic therapies. For now, I am working on connecting the behaviors that are crippling to me with the early trauma. I think of this as Step 1 from Schwartz - identifying and naming what is going on.
This year has been an exceptionally difficult year filled with traumatic event after event, sabotage, betrayal, and more, all of which would have been difficult in an of themselves but even worse for me because they pile on my base experiences.
Gaining Strength:
Moonlight, I have found that recognizing that PTSD is at play is very helpful. Peter Levine's book Waking the Tiger helped me to see so clearly that my experiences were indeed traumatizing. His writings also demonstrate that having power over the perpetrator can be healing even decades later.
I don't think I'll be writing about specific events because each one sounds trivial in description but the cumulative effect was devastating. Doubling crippling was that my parents took the occasion of my request for help or my verbalizing hurt to double down their humiliation and belittlement. They trained my brothers to participate. To be an adult and find myself expecting any simple request for help usually met with closed doors is still quite frankly traumatizing. This has made it double difficult for me to deal with any type of bureaucracy - it is one other place for paralysis when ever I have to deal with governmental agencies, banks, utilities etc. Right now I am totally overwhelmed because I cannot find paperwork I need to get my expired car tag renewed. It is very crippling.
lighter:
GS:
You'll find your paperwork.
I SO understand that particular struggle....
having to lay your hands on something you know is there, and it is, but in a time cruch, and buried.....
it's an overwhelming shame spiral.
((((GS))))
Lighter
moonlight60:
Awe GS ....
I would not ask for details of the trauma. Maybe my experience will help.
My childhood abuse caused conflict within me.
On one hand I had a parent that loved me but could not stop the abuse ,
And a parent that inflicted (because of inner rage) physical and verbal abuse upon me and other siblings.
As a child I remember knowing I did not deserve to be wounded and yet at the very same time I asked why ...why what had I done ...am I just bad...I felt these emotions strongly at the same time.
I have spent a lifetime finding my answers .The rage was not mine , and it was just sad for all ...I have found compassion and acceptance for what has occurred......I do not feel any responsibility for this parent's rage... compassion for this parent is compassion I gifted to myself.
It took a lifetime of very hard work.. But I am free.. now finally I am free.
GS please be so gentle with yourself ...I am filled with tears of understanding .
So much love to you ... just know right now you will find your way ..
love and light and so much more .....
Moonlight
Gaining Strength:
As a child, if I had a task at hand and I performed 9 of 10 steps well and one less well, my parents would take me to task and highlight the error. If I then made an effort to fix the problem the humiliation would escalate. But it would not be contained to that incident in time, it would be brought up over and over.
It took me almost 15 years in therapy to understand that I had been abused. And even when I recognized it it took me several more before I could fully accept it. I had been so fully brainwashed into believing that I got what I deserved. That phrase was repeated to me over and over. If, as a young child, my feelings had been hurt and I sought comfort from my parents I was met with that sentiment. Only in the past couple of years have I come to see that they were both so deficient that they totally refused to offer any compassion - at any time in my life - no matter what my struggles. "I don't want to hear it." from my mother and punishment from my father. It was worse if the offenders were my brothers.
I remember clear as day when at age 4 I was told to brush my teeth. Our toothbrushes were all kept in my parents bathroom and my brothers went in before me. (In everything done my brothers were grouped together and I singled out.) They said they had put toothpaste on my brush and I knew they were up to no good and I cried and asked for protection. I asked to put my own toothpaste on. My father excoriated me, told me I was ungrateful (a constant theme) and demanded I brush my teeth. I did, in tears (crying was also a punishable offense. They had put soap on my toothbrush. I cried out and again was punished. This time my brothers were punished as well but I was sent to my room.
I was so powerless to protect myself. My father never apologized, not that night nor any other time - EVER. My mother did nothing to protect me nor to comfort me. I was 4. This memory so clearly helps me understand why that sense of powerlessness is so controlling this half-century later. I will overcome it, but I still face the paralysis, humiliation and shame echoed by this story on a daily basis. It is exhausting.
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