Messages

Welcome to the forum, Trius, I´m glad you found us. It´s a really amazing place to start connecting to people because of the anonymity that protects us and all the wonderful people who went through similar experiences. I´m sorry that you suffered so much, but I´m glad you found a way to start healing. Trauma takes away so much from us and forms us in ways that we end up not liking about ourselves, but I believe that it´s possible to heal, even if it´s a life-long journey. So welcome again. 

Nothing is upsetting in what you wrote, in fact, I´m grateful for the hug and the support you are sending with your comment. The hardest thing for me right now is that I feel very alone with my feelings and very isolated, so the fact that you can relate to and understand me helps a lot. So as a thank you I´m sending a hug back. 

Asdis, I can very much relate to your words. It´s not easy to untangle the web and I know from my own experience that it can feel very hopeless sometimes. It´s so frustrating for me that I don´t have the exact memories, just the emotions and the reactions to things, as you mentioned. Especially when there´s no one you could ask these things because it´s a taboo and asking would lead to being accused of blaming someone, as in my case. I´m trying very hard and oftentimes I feel like my head is going to explode from so much thinking, but I´m starting to realize it´s not the way I can recollect those memories. I don´t have the answers myself, but I hope that you´ll find yours eventually. 

I wasn´t felling well today morning at work. I was reading something when I got triggered by it and suddenly started to feel very anxious and I was about to cry. Some terrible feelings and emotions started to strangle me, so painful and strange that it´s very hard to describe with words, but it was some kind of regret, for not being "normal", for not having the chance that others had, for not getting fair and equal basis as others who grew up in a more normal, less hostile environment than me. I was mourning the happiness I never experienced and all the losses, too many to count. As I was crying, I started to talk to myself silently, tell myself the story of my childhood, the early times, when I already knew that I wasn´t going to get unconditional love and acceptance from my mother, so I developed the belief that if I´ll work really hard, I´m going to get that love and caring I needed. So I accepted the role of the parentified child who takes care of everything and the needs of everyone, except from her own. I was working very hard because I was convinced that it´ll eventually lead to happiness. I needed to believe in that or else I couldn´t survive my childhood. For a baby to accept that this world is hostile and they will never get the love and acceptance from their mother (because she´s unable to provide that), would be their death sentence. Because they need the love and caring, it´s literally a question of life and death for them. So it was for my own survival to internalize the belief that hard work can change the way my mother connected/didn´t connect to me emotionally. But there is something I can´t fix, no matter how hard I try. I can´t erase the past, can´t travel back in time and change the way I was raised and change all the impact it had on me. And thirty years later, as an adult, I´m feeling this horrible pain, the heartache, the picture that I put together from other people´s lives that is broken now because I can never fix this one thing: THE PAST. And now I´m scared to death because for the baby me it means death, not being able to fix something with hard work and change the way some thing are, means death. I´m doomed and I can´t do anything about it. It´s one hundred percent real, the fear of death is frightfully real. When I quit talking to myself and crying, I felt that I just discovered something very important. I knew it because I started to feel calmer, the anxiety gradually disappeared and the pressure in my body subsided a little. As if I opened a valve and let some air and pressure out from my system. At the core of all, there was the fear of death of the little baby, the real experience of not being able to do what I believe I need in order to survive.

I´m not feeling very well lately. I spend most of my free time watching TV shows to break away from reality so that I don´t have to think about my life for a while. Because when I look at my life, I only feel deep sorrow. I felt like this before - many, many times. The same thoughts keep coming back -- that I haven´t achieved anything and I´m not happy. I don´t know if it´s a huge flashback, lasting three weeks now, but it doesn´t feel like that. I just simply don´t see it leading anywhere and I feel like I´m not doing anything to change that. I´m not content with the state of affairs and I´m very frustrated because there is so much holding me back. And I feel like there is no one I can talk about it because I don´t have people in my life, with whom I could talk about these kinds of stuff without anxiety. I don´t want to go crazy, that´s why I´m protecting myself by doing things that turn my thoughts and attention away from this. Because if I looked this in the eye, I would only see sorrow and pain, an unfulfilled life and lots of dissatisfaction. It´s too hard to try to take it into pieces and dig down to find answers to some important questions. It´s just too complicated, I don´t know where to start. I tend to compare myself to people I respect and look up to and I see that they used their talent to create a meaningful and happy life. This is all I want, too, but can´t reach it and I feel so alone with these feelings.

Something happened to me a few days ago that made me think about some serious issues in my life and made me realize that I want to concentrate on these issues because they are pivotal on my healing journey. There are two things that affect my life in a huge way and they go hand in hand since I was very little.

I have a great difficulty forming relationships and connecting with people. My childhood was very troubled, with my mom being emotionally and physically abusive and emotionally neglectful. The first thing I learned was that the people closest to me are the most dangerous ones and those will hurt you the most from whom you expected the most caring and unconditional love. Human touch and closeness didn´t mean something joyful and positive to me, it was always bad and scary and hurtful. So my brain started to associate these kinds of interactions with fear and pain, not with joy and happiness, as it should have been. I know that´s why I have trouble being close to people now. I don´t find their closeness calming and positive, I perceive it as something that makes me feel anxious and hypervigilant. So every day, in every situation, I´m choosing being in safety, away from people, instead of risking being hurt. My brain is telling me that it´s better this way, we got burnt too many times and too seriously to take a chance on people again. But I also know that I´m not mentally well. I am hungry for connecting to people on a deeper level, for finding soulmate(s), for being able to be in the presence of people without anxiety and fear. So that´s how I know that in fact I´m not okay with being isolated this much. It´s taking a toll on my well-being in every way. I know I want to change that, but I don´t know how.

My other cross I´m carrying is my low self-esteem which I also "inherited" from my mother. From a very early age, I was being told that I can´t do anything right. Everything I did was wrong, insufficient and not enough. Now it´s more or less clear to me why did she behave like that, but now the most important thing is what did it do to me in a long term. It´s no surprise that I grew up to be a person with absolutely no self-esteem, questioning everything I do and jumping to conclusion that I´m screwing up everything. I am convinced that if people knew me well, they would see how fatally flawed I am. I´m coming with a baggage full of trauma and coping mechanisms and learned helplessness. Who would potentially want to put up with that? My brain is sure that I´m not lovable. How could I be, when even my mom wasn´t able to love me unconditionally? It has to be cause something´s wrong with me fatally. Every good thing that happens to me is surely just temporary and everything I succeed in is just good luck (yes, imposter syndrome joined the chat). This is what I own now, this is what the world taught to my brain that my brain taught to me eventually. I had to survive somehow, and the only way I could make it to this day, was believing that I was at fault, not my mom, not my primary caregiver in whose hands my life was, she couldn´t be wrong, that´s impossible, that would create a very scary world for a very little baby and she couldn´t survive that. It was easier to go with this story of me being just basically bad.

So this is the vicious circle I´m in right now: I don´t feel safe around people, I don´t feel comfortable in their close presence, so I stay away and watch them from the distance, yearning for being able to connect with them; the more I am isolated, the more I´m sure that it´s because there´s something wrong with me; the more I´m convinced there´s something wrong with me, the more I fear being close to them. But it works in the different direction, too: I feel that I´m not lovable and bad, so I stay away from people; the more I stay away, the more I´m isolated and the harder it is for me to reach out. Everything is fatally intertwined.

This is not how I think rationally when my prefrontal cortex is in the charge. I´ve learned so much, I´ve read so much, from many smart people, professionals, who know much about the human psyche and the neurobiology of the brain. Something I was able to internalize and with practice, anchor. But my brain is so deeply programmed to believe that a) people are dangerous and gonna hurt me and that b) I´m worthless, that no amount of cognitive work can ever convince it that the opposite is true. And this is the origo I keep returning to: how can I rewire my brain and create new associations that could be possibly stronger that the old ones? I know that the things I learned in my childhood will possibly stay with me all my life. They will fade and weaken and shrink, but they will always be there. So I´m not gonna try to ignore them or suppress them. I wish there was someone who could tell me the secret recipe of making my brain believe that things changed since my childhood and most of them were never true in the first place. I wish my brain saw the outer world and listened to me. I´d tell him about all the wonderful things I´ve learned and all the good people I´ve learned from.

Welcome, I´m glad you found us. 

I do that very often, too. Your post made me think about the reasons I´m doing it. I think I´m trying to take the edge off the seriousness of the things I´m talking about, a bit to take the attention away from the painful stuff. Some topics are too hard to process in one piece and they are too triggering to relive at once, so I guess I´m trying to water it down a little.

Marcine, the work you´ve done is very inspirational. I wish you all the best on your healing journey. 

Matilda, I´m so sorry for all that happened to you. I wish I could travel back in time as an adult and be there for that little girl you were. I know how hard it is to accept all the things you can´t change and mourn all the losses and let go of everything you can´t be anymore. I often feel that, too. The what ifs and the regret for not having then the mind and brain you have now. When I feel and think these things, I always say to myself: it´s absolutely normal that you feel this way because now you have the capacity to think in a more clear and composed way; but to have this now, you had to go through all the phases. As Blueberry also said, it´s a process. And you´re doing so many things now to help yourself and I hope you can look back and appreciate all the changes you´ve made so far and be proud of yourself. Wishing you all the best. 

It´s a beautiful poem, asdis and so close to home. You just described my childhood, how I was created to be silent and compliant on the outside and suppressed and broken on the inside, yearning for authenticity. Thank you for this piece of your soul.

Thank you for your kind words, dolly. 
Yes, that´s something I´m thinking about very often and it helps me to make sense of everything that happened to me. Child will choose the attachment over authenticity if she has to, and as tragic as it may sound, it ensures her survival, because at that point, it´s a question of life and death. It breaks my heart that I had to choose, but it´s also a reminder that everything that happened inside of me, had a good reason and it was the best I could do at that time. Nothing was my fault an my SELF loves me enough to try to save my life every time it´s necessary. It helps to think about this those days when I see myself as my own worst enemy.

Thank you Desert Flower, your validation means a lot. 

1. I managed to soothe myself after being triggered by something.
2. I felt connected after a longer period of disconnection.
3. I feel genuine love and appreciation for who I am.

Hi beautywithin101, I´m so sorry for what you had to go through with your abusive aunt. It´s so hard when you need help and love and support and you are pushed to "heal faster" or idk. I´ve been in a similar situation and it really hurts. For me, it was like being beaten up while already lying on the floor helpless and vulnerable (sorry for the harsh wording, it´s just a picture that pops up in my mind every time I think about that period of my life). But I´m glad you managed to escape that situation and are now in a safer place, resting. I wish you all the best on your healing journey.