Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Continued healing
Gaining Strength:
Sorting out my mind, creating order.
Alienation is anxiety provoking and, for me, anxiety is alienating.
Failure and rejection are so profoundly linked for me. That link was made early, early in my childhood. There was profound shaming and rejection when I failed at things that were beyond my ability, my resources, or at times beyond human reason. None of that mattered. My father made me pay and my mother never intervened. Looking back, I think she reveled in it to a degree, the way she would revel in her younger sisters misfortune lifelong. And with her youngest sister, who was sweet, pretty and successful, there was still a disdain -never the love we think of, no real sense of bond. By the time I was 13 I saw that I was in much the same roll as a third sister -an annoying, younger sister who needed more than she was willing to give.
I experience a profound sense of failure before I even get started at times and at others that sense comes in when I hit a roadblock. I have believed for years that this aspect of paralysis comes from the sabotage and ensuring condemnation from my father. He often took perverse pleasure in belittling my ideas or attempts to learn something or accomplish something. And though he was wealthy, he would refuse me the resources necessary to accomplish something that interested me. My mother definitely participated I this. A couple examples: when I was 4 or 5 I contracted toncilitis. I was scheduled to have a tonsillectomy a few months later. In the meanwhile, my family had planned a short vacation with another family. I was the only daughter. I was not allowed to go because I might pick up an infection of some sort and that might interfere with the surgery schedule. Everyone else went and left me behind. My fathers mother had brought me a gift. I was not allowed to open it - for months - until I was in the hospital and then too ill to use it. It was a knitting kit. Once I was home and healing I tried to knit but I did not know how. I was very interested and did learn the knit stitch but couldn't figure out how to purl. And all I could make we're rectangles. I had no idea how to bind off or add or drop stitches. Neither of my parents could be bothered to find the help I longed for. Never mind that both my fathers mother and sister knit. But not having know how didn't deter me. I made several rectangles and then sewed them into things. But my brothers loved to belittle my work and berate my incompetence. When I cried, my father punished me and took my kit away.
As a young teen, I ran into a similar experience when I loved to garden. When had extensive grounds and I used to try to grow things far removed from my mother's observation. But once, my brother reported my gardening to my mother who did exactly what I predicted. She threw a tantrum, railing about how I ruin everything. I knew she was not connected to reality, that I had ruined nothing but I also knew that if she were informed that I had an interest she would do all in her means to cut me off for it. She did that throughout my growing up when I expressed interest in any sport. I was allowed to play tennis but that is because it was my father's sport and she could not deride it.
I hear the or words, spoken and unspoken, echo in my mind. They have gripped me my whole life. And see how my longing to be recognized, to be treasured, understood, celebrated kept me connected to my mother in spite of her refusal or inability to care. That same feeling has me gripped today. And I have learned in this long, long process that the physical feeling is essential in the healing process.
I do not know how to extricate or relieve myself but I am choosing to acknowledge it, be aware of it, hold it in my consciousness with the hope and belief that that heightened awareness will grant me a reprieve, will attenuated that grip and its wretched state of being and associated pain, that sense of worthlessness and hopelessness.
I have always been ready to move on. I am willing to reexperie de that crippling pain to get to the other side, to release its repression.
Paralysis comes from both the shame and her resulting anxiety, and equally from the subconscious fear of triggers. Both the experience and the anticipation are equally gripping. When the grip is released, I expect the fear of anticipation will dissipate almost immediately and I will forget it's wretchedness almost immediately. Time will tell.
And I will have this record to help me see the shifts and changes.
Gaining Strength:
As toxic as the belittling was the overall alienation, the disinterest and disdain of me as an individual. That is the ultimate shame, that I as a person, is shame itself. That I as a person, in making my presence known, in expressing my needs, my desires, my preferences, was setting myself up for derision and punishment.
That is the trap that was set and which I have railed against but not stepped outside of. That is the mission I am on - to begin to honor my needs and desires and sense of self. I have no idea how except to begin where I am by heightening awareness of the binds that have trapped and calling them by name.
I will see if that is a valid way.
Gaining Strength:
In my parents house, if I was struggling, or I needed help or advice it was a setup to bring down the hammer, to incur humiliation, to have myself berated and belittled. My decision would be rife for jokes for the rest of my life and my brothers loved to participate, which they were allowed to do, no, encouraged to do.. To this day, struggling to make a decision I feel shamed and humiliated, defeated from the gut go and then shut down..
I am struggling with a very difficult situation right now and being powerfully revisited by these lifelong forces.
I am bring them into the light.
Hopalong:
Yup.
They were assholes.
And they are gone.
It's just YOU, GS, finding your way to your OWN life.
You are not a shadow of them.
You are not a walking scar from them.
You are not an unhealable wound from them.
They are gone now.
YOU still have life, and many years to unfold it.
I am amazed by your journey.
I believe in where YOU are going.
You non-shadow, you.
love to you,
Hops
BonesMS:
--- Quote from: Gaining Strength on April 01, 2016, 06:57:59 PM ---In my parents house, if I was struggling, or I needed help or advice it was a setup to bring down the hammer, to incur humiliation, to have myself berated and belittled. My decision would be rife for jokes for the rest of my life and my brothers loved to participate, which they were allowed to do, no, encouraged to do.. To this day, struggling to make a decision I feel shamed and humiliated, defeated from the gut go and then shut down..
I am struggling with a very difficult situation right now and being powerfully revisited by these lifelong forces.
I am bring them into the light.
--- End quote ---
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
There's a special place in hell for abusers.
Sending you e-hugs as I've been there too!
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