One person's story of childhood wounding and healing.

[Gaining Strength]

I am attaching in full an article that I came across in a publication devoted to healing through incessory prayer.  And though many here will not subscribe to the theology of the author, there is enough about traumatic psychological wounding and its subsequent damage that I think it of value to post and discuss.

   This is my dilemma.  I am a writer who can’t write.  Stories gushed out of me when I was a child.  My dad wrote them down for me before I could even form words on a page.  It was my favorite thing to do.  Then something went horribly wrong and, even though an intense desire to write remained, for me the process became formidable and cruel.  This is what I know.

   What I don’t know is how.  What happened in the meantime to break my heart? As a volunteer prayer minister at CHM, I realized this is a huge area of my life that needs inner healing, yet I would be the last one to ask for prayer for myself.  So, I pleaded with God on my own behalf, over and over again. “What’s wrong with me, God? Why can’t I do this?” I have a writer’s office.  It’s full of writery things.  I lack nothing that would keep me from the task except for one thing.  I’d rather be doing anything else! Sometimes when I try to write, I get physically sick.  Often times I get really sleepy.  When something interrupts my most ardent attempts, I cry “Sabotage!” though secretly I’m relieved to have a bonifide excuse not to write.  I console myself with quotes by famous authors, like German novelist, Thomas Mann who wrote, “A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”  “See!” I tell myself, “It’s not just me”.

   Recently while on my porch having morning devotions and minding my own business, I suddenly saw myself in my mind’s eye, walking down a school corridor at the age of five.  At the end of the corridor is the door to my first grade classroom.  It is the gates of hell as far as I’m concerned.  My heart pounds. Beyond that door lies the malignant domain of the sadistic Miss Silver, my first grade teacher.  For a second, my mind flashes back to the bathroom in my house where I just tossed my breakfast.  I throw up every day of first grade.  I can feel the orange-juice-flavored vomit burning my throat.  The thought of getting throw-up on my school clothes horrifies me.

   The classroom door opens and I step into the presence of the dread Miss Silver.  She is not good with children.  Miss Silver gets up close and yells.  Her body trembles with rage.  She uses every opportunity to embarrass us.  Daily Miss Silver scares the pee-pee out of the tine boy who sites in front of me.  All she has to do is call his name and whoops! There it is! The poor little guy sits in a puddle right now.  He tries not to cry, but Miss Silver screams, “Shame on you, you BABY! You go to the office!” He cries. We all want to cry. Who will be next?

   As I sink into this memory, nausea rises up in present-time me.  I begin to gag and choke.  As a prayer minister, I know what  that means.  Something ugly is making its way out of me.  I pray, “Jesus, please come!”

   And he does.  Jesus is right here with me.  Miss Silver is there also.  She sounds like a scary version of the grown-ups in a Peanuts cartoon.  “Waugh! Waugh! Waugh!” Jesus kneels beside my desk.  He holds up his hand to Miss Silver in a gesture that means “stop!” But she does not stop.  My writing assignment is on the desk in front of me.  It is graded “U“ for unsatisfactory.  On it are my practice words and lots and lots of big read Xs.  I cannot hold back the tears.  I am five years old.  I am new at words.  My little letters float above the practice lines.  I don‘t know why.  As hard as I try, I can never make those letters settle down.  They are correct and perfectly shaped, but still! There is no pleasing Miss Silver.

   Jesus looks at my paper.  He is awfully quiet. I can‘t look at him. I‘m sensing anger. Slowly, he stands up and walks over to Miss Silver. She yells “Waugh! Waugh!” and points to my paper in his hand.  Jesus gently takes her by the arm and walks her by the arm an walks her out of the room.  I can hear their voices fading down the corridor into the distance.

The classroom is quiet now.  I sit still and all alone in this moment.  Jesus comes back in the room.  He kneels beside me again. I feel safe that He is with me, but I also keep a close eye on the door. “We don’t want Miss Silver to come back,” I tell him.  He agrees. Then Jesus spreads my soggy tear-stained, red-marked, floating-word paper back down in front of me.

   “Now lets’ see what you’ve don’t,” he says.

   “Please!” I say, “Please, let’s just throw this one away!”

   “No,” says Jesus. “Your words are important to me. I would never throw them away!”

   Jesus takes his finger and rubs it all over the  cruel red marks. They disappear! His finger is just like an eraser! When he finishes, Jesus takes a deep breath and blows the read marks right off the paper.

   “There!” he says, looking very pleased. “Your words are treasure to me!”

   I feel so relieved! Then all of a  sudden and much to my surprise, my five-year-old self gets up from the desk, walks over to the classroom door and locks it! Jesus smiles.  She takes her seat and brings out a clean sheet of paper.  We are ready to write.

   In the following days it has become evident to me that his peace has supplanted my former anxiety. Jesus is in the process of healing all things that are broken inside of me. He showed me exactly where the root  of that brokenness was and then I simply invited him into that place.  Though my jailor had a human name, she sported many other names as well, Rejection, Fear, Shame. Jesus sent her and everything she stood for “to the office!” I stepped into that healing by sealing Him in and locking them out.

   And even though I am the last one to ask for prayer, I am not so different from many others who are in ministry.  We could ask for prayer.  We should ask for prayer.  But we don’t . We don’t wish to impose upon each other’s time or energy because we, of all people, know how much goes into praying for someone else! The good news is that even so… Jesus knows our hearts.  He is coming to rescue us in those dark places anyway.  He uses what we learn in prayer ministry and partners with us to  bring about the healing and freedom we seek.

[sKePTiKal]

This a beautiful story to me. The healing parts are so simple, so gentle, so kind. I think we all have that within us - the solutions; the salve; the heart-balm to "make everything OK" again and to go beyond the pain and limitation of past experience and the resulting fear.

[Gaining Strength]

I'm hoping, praying that the wounded memories come to me as clearly as they did to this writer.
Thaw would be a good start.

[Hopalong]

I am so weird.

Even though I have lost my childhood faith I do retain a relationship with, or real memory of, a comforting Jesus.

But this story made me anxious.

I think it's because I don't want anything unreal, ever, or fantasy, to be my cure.

What I conjure up when I conjure up Jesus is pure feeling. No narrative. Just a very primal tenderness. No comforting words. Just a sense of oceanic complete love.
Not based on faith or belief. Just experience. Memory and sometimes current.

I feel it in my mind and body. But I can't think it or it becomes false.

rambling on,

Hops

[Gaining Strength]

That is so interesting Hops.  I wish I could tap into that relationship with or memory of a comforting Jesus.
Or, honestly for that matter a comforting anyone.

I can see how such a kind of manipulation could be discomforting.  It is not to me but the real thing about this story for me, that reason I posted it, is that the narrator is able to, finally, go back into her memory and relive the horrors of that wretched Miss Silver and find a way to deal with the pain of it.  This author's way was her image of Jesus but that part would be different for us all.  For me the key is getting to those, locked away memories.  I want to get to them.  I long to get to them.  I must.

[Hopalong]

You are much braver than I, GS...

I don't want the memories. I've visited them, I know exactly what they are...and I do not want them ruining my present life.

This could be complicated denial or it could be...there is absolutely no way I can be happy if I excavate regularly. There's enough pain and struggle in my present -- if I keep reliving the past hopelessness and anguish I felt as a little girl, I would not get out of bed.

Hmm. I guess it's still so present that I don't have to hunt for it. I just want to shove it over with new feelings, let them grow larger, in an organic way pushing and crowding the others out of center stage.

But maybe...that's avoidance. I honestly don't know.

xo
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Well, I don't have any qualms about imagining that kind of comfort!

When you are literally without ANY... and all you've got is yourself... I don't think there's any shame (or moral taboo) about designing and fantasizing exactly what that comfort feels like and how it would be delivered. Balm is balm, no matter where it comes from. And ya know, if I can't imagine it - how do I recognize it when it is given? How would I know what it is... unless I knew from experience what it felt like? Maybe it's a good "practice" to imagine it... like meditation.

(When I think of all the useless things that go through my head on a daily basis... I think I could prescribe 10-15 minutes of this imagining twice a day for myself, instead... and see what happens.)

Hops, I don't think you're avoiding to not focus on your memories anymore. I mean, you have a right to be able function, correct? And if that means you don't allot time anymore to revisit and relive old pain... well, there's only so much time in one day... we do have to pick and choose. The way I see it:

if I couldn't resolve the pain when I lived it the first time
if I couldn't resolve the pain by reawakening the memories
if I couldn't resolve the pain by analyzing the memories under a microscope for years

then maybe I needed to do something different! Maybe the ONLY thing that relieves this kind of pain is that kind of comfort - or attunement, that GS mentioned on her other thread. In my case, I did imagine what that comfort was - and it didn't feel fake or pretend or silly.... it truly felt mystically comforting and very, very real. It got me through a lot of the worst "dark nights of the soul". I don't think is some special talent, unique to me...

But, I *think* I know what GS is looking for... there is a seductive, tempting, promise in memories... the first few times these come up (until one empties that mental/emotional file) and one works through them through prisms of emotion and perspective and then/now and... well, anyway, it's possible to get to a point where there is almost a physical sensation of a bubble popping, or eggshell cracking... literally a feeling of breaking through. And the world looks better, brighter, and colors are more intense. One feels like a huge weight has been lifted from one's heart and body. There's a recognition of a giddy, bubby sense of freedom - like kids waiting for the door to open for recess then spilling out onto the playground like packs of puppies and kitties...

and all of sudden you solve the riddle. And you KNOW.

I also noticed... I guess it was 2 summers ago... that this simply wasn't happening anymore with my memories... all I was doing was reliving the memory - and there was less and less "new" stuff or understandings or breakthroughs to be gleaned from it. I'd been at it for years... so maybe there's just a "time's up" that's different for each of us.

And that's when I thought - duh, why am I sticking my hand in the fire of memories again?? I know it hurts - and I'm not gaining any new insights from putting myself through the pain; I've hit the point of diminishing returns - maybe what I'm looking for, what I want - need - is somewhere else. It's like when a stream has been panned for gold so many times... each little glitter feeds the hope that there's another nugget in there... and yes, I was a greedy hungry soul for "answers"... I kept looking until I could accept that the stream was panned out.

And I didn't want to be a person, who's comfort zone was pain.... anymore. Time for something completely different, as the old Monty Python show said... but it IS tough... there is present pain, too... and like I said about emotional PTSD, I have to pay very close attention and not let myself drift off back into my old, "the only thing that exists, is pain" existence and mindset.

[Hopalong]

I don't want to be a person whose comfort zone is pain

That's it. Everything I was fumbling to say.

thanks for this, PR....

hugs

Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Yes - indeedy that PR has a way of nailing the elusive concept with words so efficient ...

But, actually Hops, you did that as well.  Your description was crystal clear.

This exchange has helped me see wherre I am and understand more clearly how where I am can differ from where others on similar journey may be.

I am definitely at a place where I have some things I must do but there is a debilitating experience which is stuck in the unconscious memory which is barring the way.  The writer in the story, unable to write until she accesses her memory, is so clearly me though the action is not writing for me.

i need to get to that memory to get free.  Though I have much understanding of the dynamics of my childhood there is still much that is frozen in the buried memories of childhood, so misunderstood from a child's limited perspective.

[sKePTiKal]

Hi GS...

Thanks for the kudos on finding words. Those words come out of exactly the process you're in right now. I too, lived a daily reality of pain and invisible, unconscious things that were "in my way"... and one day, things changed about that. I'm still trying to describe and put my finger on what changed... what that "invisible obstacle" might've been for me. What I find is more a collection of things, than just any one thing in particular (at least right now!). Anything that threatens to send me back to that - gives me panic attacks!! And ya know, daily life does this... so my focus these days is more on how I perceive things differently because of those childhood experiences... my whole "reality" is built on basic premises that "aren't necessarily so" when they're thoroughly examined...

fer instance:

even my understanding of my role in the FOO - that I was the scapegoat, always targeted to be the "adult in the room" and parenting both my mom and brother... is just one way of looking at things. There is, for sure, truth in that way of looking at things... but it's not the "whole picture". I keep trying to get at the "whole picture"... which is difficult because I can only see the close-up details of that picture, because emotionally I'm too close to it and I get sucked into only paying attention to the emotional part of what I see. And moving around looking at another bit of picture... I'm gaining more information... more details... but I don't see how they relate. I NEED to be further away from the picture... to see where these two sets of information are in the "whole picture"... in relation to each other. I can do that some, all by myself... but my brain is limited... human... in how much information it can hold at one time.

Information, all by itself, is important - those memories, for instance. Information = data. Computers can process tons & tons of data very quickly... as can our brains. Emotions can sometimes bias or even disrupt by excluding tiny bits of data or obsessing on others, how we interpret that information... assign it a meaning, that may/may not be the significance or meaning of the "whole picture". I'm finding that it's the various values or meaning or interpretation that we assign to these "snapshots" of data detail that are the functional processes that determine a good bit of our emotional "realities"... our comfort zones... our threat level threshholds... which in turn, become our total daily "realities" and how we describe our well-being.

Since I accept that my emotions can bias that data-stream and the conclusions I draw from that information.... I come here seeking someone else's understanding and input about that data. Hops, CB, TT, Guest... mud... and YOU & a whole bunch of people here have been willing to look at my "data" and give me back what they see in it. It's sort of a "collective consciousness" approach, I guess, to understanding what the hell made me - "me" - and how to fix what needs fixing... and even what DOES need fixing.

It's like a circle of different mirrors that reflects me back to me. That helps me start to understand and really SEE that "whole picture" I started talking about here. That collection of "mirrors" is absolutely positively a critical, fundamental, necessary piece of BEING that I didn't have growing up... thanks to my FOO. Since they were warped... all that got reflected back to me... were their own judgements, criticisms, unfairness, etc. They also couldn't see the "whole picture" - and how they saw me, was in my opinion - screwed up. I used to dream a lot about funhouses... you know the mirrors that distort reflections? Too bad, I didn't know then, what those dreams meant.... but that's life. I get it now.

I have pondered, asked, sought out answers ever since the time of those dreams - what makes people have two completely, diametrically opposite and opposed "realities"? What is it, that some people have, that I don't? I've got some close-up detail information now, about that... and maybe someday, I'll get to see the whole picture! But, one of those is significant when the topic is emotional abuse.... and it may be helpful to you now.

That's the relationship one has to one's own Self-Interest... and the morality surrounding the ideal of Fairness.

Mine was all upside-down, backwards and inside out. And, perhaps more importantly, I let other people decide what my "self-interest" was allowed to be. I let them decide what was "fair". I let them tell me what I was supposed to want. Eventually, this ground me down until I couldn't even create a list or tell anyone, what I might "want" - not even to know myself, what I wanted - because the consequences of that were, at one time, horribly PAINFUL - that kind of abandonment didn't make sense to me and made me feel like I was the one who was "crazy" - "selfish" - "unfair" - and yes, even "N" and "evil". I just accepted whatever crumbs I was allowed to have. I learned to simply take what was in front of me and be grateful for whatever that was... without even realizing that I was - in that act - giving up my own god-given right to decide for myself how much self-interest is FAIR... and how much was "greedy" or "selfish". I gave up all my rights... for the sake of a false "peace" and even false "freedom".

Because to say, stand up for, and decide for myself what was "fair"... what I wanted... and how much self-interest was healthy (and how much was N)... got me smacked down, repeatedly. Mom and bro still go for the jugular... even though I'm more comfortable than I used to be within my own BOUNDARIES of my own definitions of what is FAIR and balancing that with my SELF-INTEREST.

Maybe I'm wrong that there might be a few parallels in that for you. But I see enough of them to reflect this back to you and hope you can make use of it, with your own picture.

This does beg the question of how Ns balance self-interest and fairness, too. I'm coming to be convinced that in their realities - the only self-interest that matters is theirs... and that they define "fairness" in terms of that. They do not even see that someone else might have their own definitions of fairness... and they clearly do not accept that anyone except themselves is even ALLOWED to have self-interests......... hence the hugeness of working with boundaries for those us who've had contact with these kinds of people. Boundaries are kind of an "early warning system"... for when we're giving away our rights to our own self-interests, in hope there will be mutuality from the other person... which there never is, with an N.

((((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))))))))

[teartracks]

There's enough pain and struggle in my present --

Each day has a way of having its sufficiency of pain and struggle, doesn't it?

tt

[Hopalong]

Yes.

Thanks, kind (((((((TT)))))))), for noticing--instant comfort.

xo
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Hi tt!  ::waving::

Yes, I agree with you ... there are huge colonies of humans that have "other ways" of treating humans, and being, and other ways of balancing their self-interest with fairness to others. Someone's gonna come along in a minute and say that the difference is empathy... but I think there's more to it than that. More than just the "golden rule". Something along the lines of cooperation, unselfishness, and sharing... giving. Something that involves physical action and time.

I've got more to say... but my morning is slipping away... and I'm not sure my mumbling rambling thoughts make all that much sense right now.

It's a difficult thing, to give up the expectation in ourselves of other people respecting our self-interest - what we need and want - and learning that only our Self is obligated to do this - in truth, is even capable of doing it. I don't know why... and right now anything I'd suggest is pure speculation. But it's fairly easy to accept and learn where this isn't respected and to avoid putting ourselves in a situation where the probability is that we'll disapointed and hurt, repeatedly. Even easier, to seek out and spend time with people who do respect that we're allowed to look after our own self-interests... and even assist us. There is instant healing, in that. Even if it's scary... isn't guaranteed... the potential benefit far outweighs the potential danger... and offers the safest place to learn. Mistakes are forgiven more easily.