Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Still need to work through early trauma
Gaining Strength:
Izzy, thanks so much. I wrote and rewrote a post to your thread and never liked the way my post sounded so I finally erased it all. But I wanted to say something along the lines of acknowledging your fortitude in enduring the physical and emotional difficulties that continue to come your way. It is humbling for sure.
As my mother laying dying my two older brothers who had been estranged from one another for almost 10 years banded together and went after me with a vengeance. It has abated but not stopped and it took a toll on me in many ways. One of the many things they did was to go to extended family and destroy my name and my relationships. They used vicious lies, things like saying I had stolen my mother's drugs and narcotics, stolen other things, that I was mentally ill and more. They filed false reports to have my 12 year old child taken within days of my mother's death. It was non-stop. Aunts and cousins whom they never even bothered to communicate with we're brought in on their side.
One of the many disadvantages, was complete alienation from extended family. As rejection is one of my greatest wounds this was indescribably painful. When it came to Christmas my child and I were not included in a single holiday event. Mind you, my mother and I had hosted Christmas dinner for many, many years. And, of note is that neither of my brothers attended any family holiday celebrations for decades and yet my child and I were totally rejected.
But the up side is that it allowed me to let go of all connection, and that freedom ultimately let me get deeper into the primordial wounding that is now allowing me to be on this healing path. I am so new to it yet I am able to claim it because it has a quality of freedom quite different from every previous venture down the healing road. Finally I am able to release my fear of the shame. That very fear kept me bound to it. It is all so crazy. But my indescribable need to belong, to be included, to be seen by family kept me bound to the shame because my role was to carry the shame for my family. I had been given that role on birth. And now I am free.
So even the the daily progress is incremental, so very hard to see and could be so easy to lose by backsliding, I call it real and keep plodding on, knowing that over time the incremental progress will add up and in time there will be a critical mass of success that I will stand on. For the first time I am able to acknowledge the shame that is attached to everything, give it a name, be aware of it and move on anyway. Finally I am able to see it and not fight it. Fighting it and fearing it counter-intuitively gave it power.
Step by step, bit by bit.
Thanks so much for your post.
Hopalong:
I call THIS real...(and not crazy).
--- Quote ---my fear of the shame. That very fear kept me bound to it. It is all so crazy. But my indescribable need to belong, to be included, to be seen by family kept me bound to the shame because my role was to carry the shame for my family. I had been given that role on birth. And now I am free.
--- End quote ---
Hoo-ah!
Hops
PS--and boy does the attack-by-brothers as Nmother dies sound familiar. Shudder.
Gaining Strength:
I've been very touched by twoapenny's post on Making New Friends. Especially the part about realizing the other people don't react the same way as her mother.
That shines a light on something that I have seen in myself that has been a huge problem for me.unconsciously I have expected other people to be demeaning, difficult and putting up obstacles. Becoming more conscious about my triggers is really helping.
In the past few days the level of anxiety from shame has definitely toned down a few notches. It is such a relief. Now I have to address the passive shut down part which is slightly different fron the shutdown due to being overwhelmed by current circumstances. For years now, every phone call, email, piece of mail has felt like a weight around my neck, an obligation, something more than I can deal with. I have worked hard to avoid them. But more debilitating Han that has been the upkeep of my house. Know I have to face it and start pushing a little bit. It is definitely a psychological issue. When we were renting a condo in another city during the week, I kept it up very well. But this house started going down several years ago when I had an enormous amount of damage. Trauma after trauma piling up. And financial burdens and fears on top of it all.
Because I have a way to face my fears at long last I believe I have what I need to start digging out. Out of habit I want to say this is scary but I have decided to not give into that. Step by step. We will see.
Gaining Strength:
One clear barrier is my habituated fear of failing and my own internal self-criticism and self-condemnation. For all of these years the criticism has felt like it came from others, it was a fear. I didn't see it all came from me.
Gaining Strength:
I think I'm going to shift my focus from the outcome to the first step. I get so paralyzed fearing failure and criticism that I can't even move. In the past year when I didn't feel like facing a chore like the dishes or the bathroom I used a rule of ten, where I just took 10 actions. It was such a great help. So once I completed,ten actions I could quit and consider myself successful or I could keep going. I'm going to try that more broadly. The big key is to just keep moving.
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