GS,
I am new here to the board; I saw your posting just now and it really touched me. So, while I registered I read just a littlie of your story on the other venue.
I so hear and understand your story, and I just wanted to tell you that anything, most especially healing, is possible. The key is to have the immense amount of courage it takes to let yourself fully feel your feelings -- of shame, of anger, of whatever. It can be a long, long journey to get there, but you and anyone can do it. It is the greatest gift you can give to yourself.
The power to heal lies not in substituting other behaviors, or running away from our feelings or denying them; or in over-analyzing our families and significant others. Rather, it lies in giving ourselves permission to go to those dark places. You can only discover the light by walking, sometimes fearlessly, sometimes most fearfully, into the dark. Just make sure you walk with someone fully able to grasp your hand firmly while you do so -- i.e., a really good therapist.
How do I know? I know all about voicelessness. I have battled it all my life; I never heard it called such until I stumbled onto Dr. Goodman's site, while trying to heal from an unfathomable hurt someone had cast upon me.
This is not the moment to tell you my story, so I'll just tell you that my therapist, who is as practical and reliable and expert as they come, tells me that my family background puts me at the far end of the bell curve ... nearly off the charts. I have worked my whole adult life -- some 25 years -- to overcome the abuse and neglect and lack of caring, and lack of empathy. (Along with some other bad, bad things that happened.) It has been a long journey, and sometimes in the last few years it has felt not a little embarrassing to know that I have been in therapy this long -- yet I know with all that is in me that it has been necessary, and that I have wasted very little time. However my therapist said "jump", I asked how high -- and did my best to reach that height.
It took me a long time to understand my mother's neglect; in the early years of my group therapy, my fellow members said my life was just like a real-life Cinderella -- one of the things that I identified with in your post. It took me quite a few years to measure the hole that my mother left me in -- but I did, centimeter by centimeter, until I knew, and felt, the full and exact dimensions of that hole. I know exactly how wide and how deep and how long it is; and if you can understand this, I consciously carry those dimensions, and that image around with me, so I never forget ... but I also worked very hard to climb out of it, and I have. But the remembrance is important not for clinging's sake, but so that I always know why it is I need to be patient and kind with myself, and a good parent to myself.
My father's abuse was always the most visible and certainly not to be underestimated, but it was my mother's lack of caring that did by far the most damage. It was a real one-two punch.
Like everyone else here (I guess?) I never developed a voice, except through music (classical) and writing and poetry and other forms of artistic expression. Much of my dad's abuse involved tyrannical storms of verbal abuse in which I was not allowed to say a word; to speak up or defend myself before he was ready would have been suicide in my household. Finally, when his verbal reign of terror was over, he would say "Say!" and then I was magically supposed to come up with the perfect explanation for my "crime" (I never did much wrong -- I was too afraid to). Of course, by that time he had completely ground me into nothing, so aside from the fact that there was no perfect answer (except that I was a child), even if there had been, I wouldn't have been able to give it. I was completely shut down.
This, of course, was the obvious hammer that pounded me into silence, in addition to the very real factors that Dr. Goodman talks about -- all so very, very true for me. All my life I wondered why I never could answer questions about what I wanted, or why I seem to have so little conversation within me (except for artistic things) ... when I found Dr Goodman's article on Little Voices, it was the overlay I needed to understand at the next level. It was wonderful.
And here's where I begin to get to my point: underneath all those layers, and all those feelings, and all the many years of earnest work I did in therapy, I felt a deep shame. Shame because of the neglect and abuse -- why wasn't I good enough to be cared for? -- shame because of the neglectful (literally messy) way my family lived, and many other external factors. I had a brother who was injured in a horrible accident and left highly brained damaged and incapacitated; I even felt deep shame when out in public with him, as if there were something wrong with me/us for having a brother in that condition. (And I guess the case could be made that there was, given the circumstances of his accident.) Being ashamed of him, of course, made me feel even more ashamed. (I did feel great compassion and love and all what you might expect, but the shame was there.)
...on some distant level I felt the shame and knew about it, but it was so deep and pervasive and troubling that it remained in the background for all those years.
Then finally, for whatever reason, I got in touch with it some time last year. I had let myself travel the road to my complete emptiness, and allowed myself to feel that emptiness (and boy, was it/is it empty). It is a hard, hard, HARD thing to do, and very scary. But I'm glad I did, even if it's painful and certainly not resolved yet.
Somehow in that process is where my consciousness of shame arose. Here, this thing at the core of my being that had been at the foundation of my soul for as long as I have been alive, was alive and breathing and letting itself be made known. I allowed myself to admit how shameful I felt, and I named it in group the next time I went.
And you know what? As soon as I named it, it went away. It was that fast. I no longer feel it. All I had to do was acknowledge it, name a few reasons why, and name it for myself. Poof! Gone.
I'm sure that was only possible because of all the previous work, but boy, what a joy to have it gone and how freeingI I no longer feel shame.
A great deal of what I have gotten in touch with this past year, especially the past few months, arose from this very, very hurtful thing that someone did to me (long story); actually, he did it twice. After the first time, in the midst of feeling my feelings about what he'd done, and in that awful state of confusion, the word "offend" came flashing into my head. It happened to be Lent (last year). I had been thinking about how I had offended him (not really, it was the other way around) ... and those thoughts lead me to the question, What could I have done that was so awful, how could I have so offended my parents as a little child, that they ignored me and neglected me and abused me and did anything but nurture and affirm me?
The answer, of course, is that I could have done nothing. All this (the neglect, the abuse) was set in place and going on long before I even reached the age of 3 or 4. The deal was well cemented by then.
I was a child. There was nothing I could have done as a little child that would have offended them, or justified any of their behavior.
In an instant it was so clear that it was them, not me. I was just a little, innocent, helpless, vulnerable child. I could have done nothing. I needed them, and they chose not to understand and support that normal childhood need, but to foist their own values and needs upon me. I was to exist for them, not for myself.
It was so incredibly freeing to realize that. Two very important guideposts: understanding finally that I had committed no offense; there was nothing in me that brought this on; and naming the shame.
All that said, I want you to know that people are complex. My parents were actually two of the best people on earth. Yes, they were very freaky to me (the only word that came to mind just now), but I know, because I saw it, that they had hearts of gold and were truly good people. Sometimes I have had a glimpse of how empty my mother must have been, to neglect me so and use her own child to fill her needs; and although I'll never know what, I know that there was something within my dad that caused him to rage at me so, and bully me. But eventually we became very close; the man I once wished dead became, for the last 10 years of his life, my best friend and one of the greatest joys of my life. He changed, we both changed.
So, that is my message for you: hope and encouragement. I think, from quickly reading your post, that you are a Christian; or at least very spiritual. so here is my very best bit of encouragement: no matter what, put God first in your life. As it says in Proverbs, "Lean not to thine own understanding, but in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight thy paths." (As best as I can remember the exact words.)
I think the source of my strength and healing and endurance is that I love God; God is always first in my heart. My one great gift in this life is that I was born loving God in my heart; I never had to "come" to God; God was always there. If I have one talent, it is submitting myself to God each and every second; always, eternally putting myself before God with every breath. It is not so much that I have relied on God as a source of strength; most times, I confess, I haven't felt so much coming back or that my prayers were answered (oh, if you only knew!), but I've loved God anyway; my "getting" things is not the point (yet at the same time I have a keen awareness of God's presence in my life, even if I don't know exactly how or where or what it is; I think it is in just the very act of loving).
The great story of humankind, and of God's endless love and mercy and understanding, is that transformation and healing are always possible. People sometimes misunderstand, I think, and believe that these things are just to be given to us. Not so. It is our job and indeed our purpose and even our joy, to do the work we need to do to become complete and whole human beings. We must. But God will always be there to guide us in it, and to make straight our pathway ... even if it takes 25 years (and it will be more) of therapy, or a lifetime.
God bless you, and may you always walk in the light of God's peace and understanding. God's light is on you, and on all of us.
