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personal reflections on healing from emotional trauma
I am feeling some happiness, sadness, excitement, relief, fear and disorientation all at once...
I found an article that helped me come to a deep acceptance of the fact that I was abused as a child. Abused and neglected emotionally and psychologically.
My father's rejection, shouting at me, belittling me, the domestic violence in my presence, the witholding of love and affection, particularly physical affection.....being bullied at school and my not being heard or offered any support...
I can understand now at a deep compassionate level the roots of my depression and anxiety. 'No wonder' I would turn out this way.
But I also want to be my real self and who I am now, with the full range of feelings and ability to assert myself.....to be strong and clear and exist.....not be like I am so used to being..either a ghost or an object of ridicule in the eyes of others.
Sometimes it feels a challenge to be adult...disorientating.....frightening...adults always took away good feelings, or negated or ignored them...I grew up to be wary of adults...and people my own age...
I don't want to be frightened of being adult...myself as an adult is compassionate and accepting and my heart can hold all the younger parts safely and warmly, so I don't feel as threatened.
It should not feel threatening for me to be an adult..I WANT to be me, with my own feelings.....in my own body....to feel and be real....
it is new and unfamiliar to feel real....I diminished my sense of being real by dissociating a lot in the past, so the pain hurt less, so, to feel real now takes time and patience and compassion.....its a challenging and beautiful journey....and I want to survive, to live...I don't want to have to be perfect.....
My therapist explained a model of recovery from grief, to describe how intergration of my personality might be, that in the beginning all there is is the child selves, but, over time, my adult self, with all its compassion and empathy, grows and can hold the child parts/states within it. I do feel my heart expanding to hold these ...
And I find this happening, and I am cooperating in the process. It is awe inspiring, hard work, and very precious to me.
Although it is 10 years ago that I first learnt my family had been dysfunctional, I am now stepping onto the ground more securely and safely.
For years I felt I have no personality......but now I am starting to feel that there is someone inside of me. Something of some substance, beyond the hard fragile shell of onlooker of my own life...that empty hollow frail exterior I build to survive in a bleak emotional landscape where I was left, lost and alone and frightened. As I start to have feelings about myself, my life, I begin to see that really, instead of me as a human being being 'ill', my environment was seriously unwell and unnurturing.
Something somehow allowed some semblance of self to exist within me despite the ruins of my heart..despite the neglect and rejection and abuse....I still don't quite know how this came to be...is it one of life's miracles? Or due to my dance teacher at secondary school believing in and nurturing my soul, spirit and creativity? But, that too, is a miracle come into a life fragilly drawn and broken.....
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