Growing Better and Better: Journey of a Late Bloomer
by Gloria R. Nash, MA
"People don't grow old. When they stop growing, they become old."
---Anon
We have all heard of individuals who have overcome adversity and hardship to become successful because they had someone who believed in them.
Life orchestrated my circumstances forcing me to live and heal on my own, with almost no support, for the majority of my 50 years.
By the time I was eight months old I had contracted polio and my parents, survivors of the Holocaust, had abandoned me and then divorced each other. Throughout childhood and early adult years, these and other issues negatively affected my functioning at all levels, physical, mental, emotional, social, financial and spiritual.
I have often entertained suicidal thoughts because of the frustration, anger, and hopelessness I felt about handling so many painful experiences by myself. I learned to respond to people with terror and panic. I became increasingly traumatized from experiencing isolation, emotional neglect, invalidation and multiple failures at finding treatment or support. The gregarious temperament I was born with disappeared and over time, I lost my ability to verbalize and to connect to my emotions and with other people.
Experiences of approaching the mental health system for help usually left me falling between the cracks so I received little help or support. Not being served, I learned to survive by following my own inner guidance. In searching for answers to my painful experiences I ultimately devoted my life to researching and exploring the mind - body connection that energy is.
I have succeeded in clearing my energy system to a degree. Results of my healing are in the attached chart. I am still stuck with inhibited and underdeveloped abilities to connect with or maintain bonds with people, to verbally express or to feel closeness. Obviously my stuck energy is reflected also in the stagnant flow of money into my life. I have incurred many debts due to paying for alternative healing modalities that I have found helpful. I have plenty of willingness and motivation to continue with my healing.
Now in midlife I am just beginning to grow a success life as I finally give birth to my long buried, hidden and repressed undeveloped Self. I have become an enthusiastic and passionate individual, motivated and committed to achieving maximum growth towards expressing my full potential. My perseverance has helped me create growth in response to adversity.
Lack of socialization has its up side in that I never viewed myself as “disabled” or “mentally ill” but as a sensitive person responding to my circumstances as would any “normal” or “average” person.
In my teens I first sought help for depression and anxiety, but at the time it was assumed that only adults experience this. In my late 20’s I sought help for a two decade struggle with eating disorders. Again, I was invalidated when asking for help. Not until Karen Carpenter’s death did professionals even consider this disorder.
Parental abandonment during my critical early years began to show up as psychological disturbances that persisted into adulthood. Not until I was in my forties did those early traumas from infancy begin to make themselves known as repressed emotional states and an underdeveloped social self.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and Emotional neglect continue to be ignored by the psychological and mental health treatment communities. The invalidation and lack of support I experience because of this contributes to my distress and helplessness. RAD and PTSD make it difficult for me to connect with people or with my own feelings, as well as to verbalize my feelings and thoughts.
In addition, I am stigmatized because I some of my disorders have healed. I am careful not to disclose this in my present capacity working for a mental health agency. I graduated four years ago with an MA in Psychology and a CASAC certificate. In my work, I bring messages of self-empowerment and recovery to consumers in local hospitals, day programs, etc. I also facilitate classes helping others on the healing journey to understand how their energy system works and how to manage their inner resources.
It is a gift to be able to facilitate these workshops that bring hope to people who have lost hope and become skeptical and defended. My disclosures give them the safety to risk tearing down their walls. Many then open their hearts to freely share their tears, stories, poetry, music and artwork.
To help me connect with these individuals I share bits and pieces of my own shattered life and how I learned to empower myself by tapping into my natural resources which allowed me to grow and develop:
- My birth in La Paz, the Spanish word for "peace," on January 6, the day of the "feast of the Epiphany."
- Both parents survived the Nazi Holocaust by fleeing their Viennese homeland to start a new life in La Paz, Bolivia.
- born in 1954, the same year the Salk polio vaccine came out, however I had already contracted polio when I was 8 months old.
- fearful of contracting the disease, my father left my mother and me.
- My grandparents brought me to New York City to get medical care.
- living the first three years of my life in a children's hospital.
- from age 3-7 I lived in a foster home
- In 1961, at age seven, I was reunited with my mother who had remarried.
-alternated weekends with paternal grandparents in their Central Park West apartment and maternal grandparents who lived in Flushing, Queens.
- An only child, I felt isolated.
- attempts to voice my feelings and needs were met by my family with neglect, silence, and invalidation.
- Ignored by my caretakers I spent time alone in my room seeking comfort through my imagination, books, music, art, and photography.
- Isolation and dissociation from PTSD left me living in a fantasy world.
- Food and street drugs medicated the pain and emptiness I felt.
- Invalidation of not being seen or heard, I lost my ability to speak and feel, and labeled this my "wall" which I experienced as feeling "frozen"
- having no voice and few human connections further impaired my development, creating a downward spiraling cycle of shame, depression, anxiety, panic, and agoraphobia
The pain of living in "solitary confinement" drove me in an obsessive quest to discover ways to heal and thaw the frozen wall that stood between me interacting positively with people.
I sought answers to my despair by reading books. They nurtured my interest in psychology, motivation, mysticism, consciousness, physics, biology, art, energy, communication, philosophy, science, music, creativity and nature. Authors like Emerson, Thoreau, and Frank Lloyd Wright and biographies of successful people inspired me to find ways to rise above my circumstances. Highly sensitive and intuitive by nature, my studies awakened my passion for understanding and managing the human energy system.
In 1972, I was given the gift of a tiny gray Persian kitten I named Layla. The cat brought out in me psychosomatic symptoms of allergies, asthma and bronchitis but I was not about to give up the only friend and source of love I knew. Frustrated by allergy treatments that didn’t work, I adopted a natural lifestyle. Gradually all of these physical symptoms disappeared.
My journey of healing and empowerment was neither linear nor conscious as so little information was available at the time. I simply followed my instincts of listening to my body and to the energy of my heart.
From my earliest childhood memories I had always been extremely sensitive to patterns and feelings. Even when my feelings were invalidated I was aware of it. Sometimes I chose to follow my intuitive guidance, but more often than not, I learned to become a helpless victim of my emotions and rarely spoke up. With no support or validation, I responded to trauma by inhibiting and repressing my emotions. I became "voiceless."
In my earliest memories I sensed something significant about energy. When I heard pieces of music that had the power to move me---Copeland, Debussy, Wagner---I felt an "inner glow." Art, literature, nature, and animals all gave me this feeling of connection. They seemed to tap into some part of me that felt expansive, good, positive, healed and loved, if only for a moment. Drugs could do the same thing but there was always a negative consequence. The natural and innate moments of connection I felt drove me to search for ways to meet my hungry need for love.
In 1982, I sensed a call to go west. The beauty of the South Western landscape was awe-inspiring. I experienced the humility and awe that helped me to connect to my spiritual self. I found the faith I needed to continue my quest and began using helpful healing practices like meditation and visualization. Here I also found validation for my intuitive guidance.
It was at this time that I was desperately seeking help for eating disorders I had for almost two decades. None of the other addictions I had made me feel as helpless and defeated as did this. And no psychologist, doctor or therapist validated my experience. In fact they told me I had no problem.
With no one to believe in me and no human support, I looked within to discover my own inner resources. I created tools and techniques to help me grow more aware. Living each day with despair and pain made me fearless about confronting the chaos in my life. The road was long, distressful, and lonely. Many times I thought of suicide.
I learned to work with my natural energy system using trial and error. By listening to the energy in my heart I learned to say yes to the choices that energized and expanded me and to say no to the choices that made me feel small and constricted. Working alone, this was a difficult process and over the years my mistakes and poor judgment cost me in terms of lost or wasted resources of relationships, opportunities, money, work, time, etc.
After five years of persistently working with my energy system I learned to conquer all of my addictive behavior patterns, including decades of bulimia and drug abuse. I worked to uproot their initial cause, from the inside out and at each level of mind, body, spirit, and emotion. Over time, I observed that symptoms which dissolved and healed never returned.
I continued to listen to my heart's yearnings to fulfill my unmet needs and life's potential. In my mid thirties, I managed a General Nutrition Center (GNC). After being held up at gunpoint, I left the job and enrolled in Queens College at CUNY to formally study psychology. I was 38 years old.
In 1997 I graduated Summa Cum Laude with many honors including Phi Beta Kappa. I continued my education and in 2000, received an M.A. in Psychology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School.
During nine years of school I experienced how my painful inability to make or sustain human connections got in the way of my daily functioning. Fear of more failure caused me to postpone working on my Ph.D.
The shame and confusion I continually felt due to emotional frozenness, voicelessness and no social place became all-consuming. RAD and PTSD have had detrimental effects in my professional and personal life, incurring grief, loss and poor functioning in each area. I prayed for answers yet seemed to only experience more disconnection and trauma.
Never afraid of reaching out, I sought help from professionals in different fields such as medicine, mental health, social services, career guidance, etc.--anyone who would listen. The “voicelessness” made it so hard to articulate most of these experiences but sharing the pain and dysfunction came easily. Still, no one heard or saw me. I became even more invisible.
Throughout the 1990’s and in the new Millennium, doctors and therapists labeled me with more psychiatric disorders that I could expect to have for life. I was given many different medications to help my symptoms but they often made me feel worse, even suicidal.
Not once was I ever assessed for the unmet bonding needs and emotional traumas that had left me so blocked and numb. Feeling unheard and disconnected, I continually felt abandoned by the mental health community.
I knew I was not "sick" but I was simply expressing symptoms that anyone would express if they had not received the human love and attention all humans require to successfully develop their physical, emotional, mental, and social maturity. I knew my anger and reactivity were normal in light of the traumas I had experienced, including ongoing invalidation and neglect.
Occasionally I experienced positive breakthroughs using both conventional and holistic tools; however, they rarely proved permanent. Decades of failed results from trying hundreds of modalities guided me to keep on searching---but also instilled in me more despair and hopeless thoughts.
In school one day I was doodling on a pad and noticed how my initials of G R N when backwards spelled N R G---"E N E R G Y." Now I felt called to grow aware of the human energy system. Little information was available, however I discovered much in writings from the East and Australia.
I learned to keep an open mind and to quiet the voice of my innate New York City skepticism. Growing up unsocialized has a benefit of having no or fewer allegiances to people, places or traditional mindsets. This keeps ones mind more open to alternatives modes of healing but also keeps one on the periphery of society, thus having additional obstacles to overcome.
Nonetheless, I began to learn how ancient people all over the globe interpreted the human energy system. The more I became aware of energy the more I viewed this deepest layer of our being as an important link in finding solutions for disorders like RAD, PTSD and developmental delays that traditional Western medicine offers no hope for.
Eastern thought taught me to see adversity as half of the whole. The Chinese term "wei ji" paradoxically means both challenge and opportunity. Similarly, in physics, Albert Einstein said, "In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." This epiphany enabled me to begin to grow through adversity rather than just go through it. I realized that my authentic energy was still intact, hidden beneath layers of pain. I wanted to access these frozen walls.
When I learned that my challenges had a gift for me I began to do the work of letting go of reacting to my emotions and circumstances like a victim. In subtle ways I have witnessed the slow maturation my delayed development. Hidden, split off parts of my self are gradually being recovered. The work is tedious and painful as it makes conscious suppressed and buried pain that I resisted for most of my life. The work is also life-giving as it has the promise of making peace with and healing disorders still considered unhealable.
On September 1, 2001, I moved into my first apartment in 17 years. It was located six blocks from my office and 35 blocks from the World Trade Center where I had once worked and now enjoyed attending weekly concerts. I brought one item with me that first night in my new apartment---an old ornament that spelled out “P-E-A-C-E.” I found little peace in the two years I lived there yet trauma seemed to follow me like a magnet.
Due to the events of 9-11-01 I was able to receive several treatments of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). The first well-known energy psychology treatment, it did indeed give me relief from this tragedy.
It was one year later that I got out of bed on a sleepless night and searched the Internet for the words, "frozen energy of emotions." For years I searched the Internet using these words. Nothing ever came up---until this night.
I had used these words all my life to describe to others my traumatic state. No one understood. But here were these words on the website of Dr. Peter A. Levine, pioneering psychologist and trauma researcher for thirty years.
The articles I read appeared to confirm the symptoms I was experiencing. PTSD is the experience of feeling disconnected from one's self. Repeated childhood traumas create a split self, that feels shattered and fragmented. It is the antithesis of the connected and whole experience of energy I had been seeking. Emotions are experienced as frozen and withdrawn rather than fluid and flexible. The natural ability to experience the human range of feelings is replaced by chronic states of anger, resentment, sadness, fear, despair, and hopelessness. It’s like playing the piano with only the black keys. Mentally one feels guarded, scattered, unfocused and indecisive. Physically one feels fatigue, stuck and depressed. Issues with memory, sleep, and appetite are common.
The younger a person is when trauma occurs the less likely the individual can develop into a mature independent adult. Comorbidity rates of alcohol and substance abuse with PTSD are high.
This was the most acknowledgment I had ever experienced. Not only were my symptoms given a voice but the site brought me the hope that processes existed which could help me heal fully from my lifelong traumas. My delayed physical, emotional, and mental development can mature fully, thanks to the gift of plasticity that is innate to all human beings. I can recover a full range of emotional availability to live in the present and achieve my potential.
That every human being faces challenges is inevitable. The event does not create the problem. What counts is how we respond. I think this is one key in determining how much or how little an event affects us. Our perception is the judge of whether circumstances are negative or positive.
Like most people I have always reacted to "negative" circumstances by giving them the power to control my emotions. I caved in and collapsed. Reacting on automatic caused me to lose my spontaneity. My energy became constricted and I lost my freedom and peace as well as my ability to respond fluidly in the moment, fully present and emotionally available.
What I didn't know years ago that I am grateful for knowing now is that I had the ability to call forth my inner resources of responding to adverse circumstances by rising above these challenges. This would have allowed my energy to expand so I could grow into my potential. Instead, by reacting over and over I caved in and collapsed beneath my adversity which kept my life constricted and narrow. Now I know I have a choice.
The choice to grow is a process that requires commitment and is made each day, moment to moment. This choice to heal asks us to use the circumstances of our lives as opportunities to uncover our authentic core energy. We are invited to embrace both negative and positive experiences. Each is part of the whole, the shadows and light that Carl Jung wrote about.
How we handle the challenges in our live depends on our intention. Options include choosing to heal by facing circumstances. This solution works at the root cause and uses symptoms as feedback. It promotes growth and expansion of our natural energy; however it requires temporarily enduring emotional pain. Another choice is coping with circumstances. This is a choice to avoid pain and hide or eliminate symptoms. This often creates additional problems or it may work for a short time.
These choices are neither right nor wrong but simply different in the results they achieve, which can usually be experienced by each person as varying degrees of energy and expansion---freedom---or constriction and limitation.
At different stages in my journey I chose all of these strategies, sometimes consciously and sometimes not. The more my awareness grew, the more my intention was to seek growth from my challenges. This usually healed the condition and felt the most energizing and renewing. Going through the pain was worth the end result of recovering my wholeness, innate power, balance and integrity as this has allowed me to make peace with my past.
Jumping into the heart of life became a rewarding way to live. About two years ago, I discovered my passion for the athleticism of Track and Field sports. I started to train as a Masters Division Track and Field athlete, specializing in field events like the triple jump, high jump, long jump, and javelin throwing. I found a joyful, holistic way to keep fit, create balance and meet new people. After one year of competing, my performance continually improves. I look forward to many years of active fun participating in athletics
Gloria R. Nash, MA
N R G®: Natural Resources for Growth
718-760-1507
grn8nrg@verizon.net
© Copyright 2003, © Copyright 2004. Gloria R. Nash.
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