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Still need to work through early trauma
Gaining Strength:
"Confession is good for the soul," they say. I brings the dark and buried parts of ourselves into the light, allowing us to acknowledge and own that darker part of ourselves and to release it of that powerfully controlling grip that it can have through our own self judgement.
I was chatting with a friend Wednesday when we careened into the topic of judgement, judgement we put on ourselves and on others. In truth the two are really one. I flash back to decades ago when I was going to a variety of al-anon groups and was introduced to the concept of "when you point a finger at someone else there are three pointing back at you." Initially a cunundrum that I couldn't or wouldn't fully unpack and yet couldn't let go of.
In time I came to see the painful truth of my judgements on others it it would take years before I could recognize that I was placing judgement on myself. I could only see the judgement I placed on others and more clearly the judgement placed on me. As we chatted Wednesday, something I knew came into a sharper focus. The judgements placed on me by my father and my mother and through them my brothers caused me to become bitter and resentful and unconsciously I accepted those judgements and perpetuated them on myself, ON MYSELF! I have been doing it to myself.
And in the reverse of that fingerprinting cliche, when I unconsciously judged myself I was extending it out to others, so full of resentment , doing a crazy two step dance of pushing people away by my bitterness and alienating myself as well.
Only as I have been peeling layers bak through the healing process, first relieving myself of the caustic anger to be caught in the horrific omnipresence of brutal, paralyzingly anxiety which has been always there underneath, I have come to learn so much about myself, so much about the human condition. And the most important for me now is seeing how I can now begin to shift away from this self accepted, self- inflicted judgement.
Being mindful of this pain is ridiculously hard. I tried for years but doing so brought pain I could not bear before. That pain was annihilating. But with the work that has taken me back to reveal the source of it all now allows me to feel it and hold it without being destroyed by it.
"Thoughts are real" Has a trite ring to it but it also stands on a strength of truth. But there is something deeper in there. Some of the power is before words or thoughts. That aside, the power of thoughts to harm, to heal is exactly where my focus is now.
Gaining Strength:
It is not so much what was done to me as how I reacted and continue to react. And I can learn to change my reaction.
Gaining Strength:
Today - I'm going to fight a war against this depression. I've lived with it far too long. I'm always thankful for the reprieves but when it returns it is always too much.
I've been having weird dreams lately - last night I was running. A couple of people were on the same pay and joined me. A woman joined one of the men and they started to chat with me. He said something about not running away and I answered that I was running to something.
Night before I had a recurring dream that I haven't had in a very long time. I have to go to the bathroom but the only toilet is in the hallway. With no options I use it and don't feel my usual shame but when I look there is poop on the floor beside me. Somehow I'm missed the toilet. So I try to pick it up before anyone notices but it makes a huge mess. ( this dream is all about shame and exposure.)
3 nights ago in my dream, I am standing with my father and mother and my father is rage at me about something I did. I feel the same shame and paralysis as a child. I hope for my mother to intervene but she doesn't. I remember that my brother had made the mistake and my mother acknowledges it. My father rages at me anyway. In spite of the shame and paralysis I see that his raging has nothing to do with me. (Had only I seen that as a child.)
These old themes clearly still haunt me. But their reappearance s a gift, a voice telling me to let them go. I am ready for them to go.
Gaining Strength:
I hate this stage of depression. I spend my days trying to stave off the worst of the yuck or working my thoughts for those minuscule lifts. But, I stay afloat by countering and knowing that this is not permanent. That is the worst of it all, that impending doom of no way out, and being stuck, unable to activate those things that will help me get out.
A week or so ago I called my psychiatrist who. I haven't seen I. Some years. He asked if I had a GP, when I said, "No," he suggested I see him to get a prescription for an antidepressant. That didn't help my feeling of helplessness, hopelessness. But deep inside I know there is a way out.
Gaining Strength:
Last night and this morning I was given a reprieve from the anxiety/dePression. Enough to allow memanwindow into seeing how anxiety has driven my fear and anger throughout my life. I am sonthankdul to understand what has been gOing on all of these years. Now to heal.
I continue to work on identifying negative and fearful thoughts.
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