My Dog Gave Me An Epiphany About My Mom

[plantsandworms]

A year ago I decided to adopt a dog. I thought having a dog would help me to 1) get out of bed every morning because I have always been better at taking care of others than myself, and 2) improve my mental health by giving me purpose and emotional support. Having her this past year has been really amazing in a lot of ways, but I was interested to find that it has also been incredibly triggering at times. When I'm having trouble with her or when I'm feeling so exhausted, I feel 11 years old again - alone and helpless as I try to care for my younger siblings while my parents work long hours. There are times when I have scared myself with my capacity to feel hatred for my dog during those moments of overwhelm - frightening to me because it reminds me of the contempt my mother sometimes showed for me. These moments are very rare and brief, but they give me a glimpse into how my mother might have come to treat me so abusively. When I feel that anger and resentment toward my dog, I wonder if I would be an abusive parent and it makes me feel like a monster.

With the help of my therapist, those moments with my dog are more and more rare and I feel like I'm finally learning how to love and be loved in an unconditional way. These days I love spending time with her so much and she has so much trust in me and no fear. I feel like I am unlearning all of these abusive patterns of behavior and unlocking this other way of being and it's so encouraging to think I might not become a monster after all. And I know that dogs and people are different, but as I was walking her this weekend I had an epiphany - my mother never experienced unconditional love. And she never got to practice it, because she was a single mother making minimum wage with multiple children by the time she was in her early 20s. She had (and still has) untreated PTSD from her own lengthy trauma history. And as her first born, I took the brunt of that lack of experience in showing love. As a child I either felt like my mother was my best friend or my biggest bully - never my parent. I really believe things would have been different if she had known unconditional love, and if she had been given the opportunities to treat her PTSD like I have. Her life would have been different if she did not have to be responsible for so many living things before she was ready. I am one of 11 siblings - I can only imagine how triggered she felt every waking moment of her life. I am grateful for this new understanding of her experience.

Anyway, just some things I've been thinking about.

[sanmagic7]

glad for your newfound understanding, p & w, and even more glad that the caring, loving side of you is coming out now.  our animals can be amazing experiences for us in so many ways.  i can relate to this with my daughters, being able to find that part of me that had been neglected and denied by my own parents, who had no chance to uncover it while parenting, either.  it's difficult work, but so very satisfying to break that generational cycle.  well done, and a lovely, caring hug to you.

[Slackjaw99]

As mammals, humans and dogs share the same limbic structures in the brain. Because of this, dogs can mirror our emotions and help provide us emotional stability and regulation (assuming the dog is also not traumatized). They can do this in an unconditional way that our primary care givers could not, thus the value of emotional support animals is far understated and backed by neuroscience.

Another neat feature of dogs is that they have no fear of their emotions. People with cPTSD, on the other hand, all have one thing in common. At some point along the way, either because of an abusive or neglectful primary caregiver we had to learn to suppress and subsequently fear our emotions as a matter of survival. The only problem is that emotional expression is the ONLY way humans are able to release or discharge trauma- something to learn from man's best friend.