Messages

Thanks for that perspective, ellachimera. Reversing the woundology term is a beautiful counter to the hurt I felt on first encountering it.

It is precisely because we were wounded that we react the way that term seems to be suggesting. While the analysts and experts are free to use any words they like, in the end we're the ones that choose, based on our own experiences, how we play out those reactions whatever they're called.

Another saying that used to make me cringe was along the lines of "oh, you're just too sensitive." Meant as a negative, I'd rather be sensitive (and caring, and compassionate) and in regarding that as a positive quality to find a better way that we the wounded can incorporate into a healing part of who we are.

Yes woodsgnome: " in the end we're the ones that choose, based on our own experiences, how we play out those reactions whatever they're called".

I've had a lifetime of being accused of being too sensitive, too intense, too 'thin skinned', of being told I think too much, I analyse things too much, I'm too suggestible (as I desperately try to figure out how to please an abuser)...and for years I berated myself for these 'faults'.

I'm now choosing to feel proud of being a sensitive, thoughtful, caring and complex woman. I'm feeling proud of having survived years of traumatic assaults and abandonment with such traits intact. I feel the ability to choose to stand up to these accusations and see them for what they are - cruel accusations designed to 'cut me down to size' and thus to deny my human needs. Taunts designed to lessen the internal discomfort of the accusers, who know they themselves fall short on such traits and do not have the internal resources to meet my normal human needs.

I'm very conscious from the above thread of what a wonderfully rich resource OOTS is for those of us who have been wounded - particularly those wounded from birth. For those who have no safe place to which to return;  for those whose lives were shattered at the very start. The consistency of experiences recounted here is, for me, fundamentally comforting - it is a huge validation of my life's struggles. It demonstrates to me that we are all born as human beings with needs that, if not met or if actively thwarted, will inevitably end up struggling with our wounds. 

So those who accuse us with cruel terms such as woundology, as if we can choose to have our sensitivity, thin skins, and other supposed 'faults', deny the fundamental reality of our being human.



 

Ecowarrior888 your drawing is really expressive. The way you've depicted the weight of the world on your shoulders, your legs straining to cope is just wonderful. The fogginess erasing your features. I really appreciate seeing your depictions of these feelings. In my view this has to be the most true and intense reason to draw - to convey feelings. To help manage those feelings. My heart goes out to you for feeling this way but I also thank you for sharing these wonderful drawings. Your drawings allow me to feel less alone with similar feelings. So that's got to be good hasn't it - you are giving to others, despite your pain, through your art.

I'm currently trying to understand and, I hope, bring some change to my sense that the future won't come. I mentioned to a trauma therapist some years ago that I am always surprised when a new year comes around. I don't expect the future to happen and so I don't plan or dream for, or anticipate, having a future.  I was surprised when she told me there's a word for that: 'foreshortening'. It was a help to realise that my experience was not mine alone - that the experience has a name.

This has now become an urgent issue for me as I realise the full extent of the loss involved in a lifetime spent without any sense that the future will come. I wish it could be different and I raised it with my therapist this week to try to understand it. I think it comes from being utterly focused on surviving the present - there's no energy left to imagine a future. I'm not worried about something happening to me, it's that I don't feel there's any forward path of movement in my life; there's just 'managing' now. It sounds as if this would be a good thing.That I am living in the moment mindfully. But it doesn't feel good, it feels sometimes as if I'm alone spinning through space, going no-where with no-one. It is frightening. And it has practical consequences in life.

I would be interested to hear from anyone else who has similar issues with the sense of having a foreshortened future.

I've recently discovered an article written by three philosophers which others may also find interesting. It's a discussion of whether the trauma of being tortured can leave someone with a different relationship to time.  The authors acknowledge that they are discussing a situation where a previously non-traumatised person is tortured and that there are people who have never known any period of non-trauma because of childhood experiences, but the discussion also applies to such people.

I found the article really helpful as a way to analyse my problem. It also helped me to understand that the experiences I had in my FOO (and marriage) fit the definition of torture. For example, this extract from the article:

"What makes interpersonal trauma distinctive is the subversion of interpersonal trust that it involves. The other person recognizes one's vulnerability and responds to it not with care but by deliberately inflicting harm. The aim of torture has been described as the complete psychological destruction of a person: "the torturer attempts to destroy a victim's sense of being grounded in a family and society as a human being with dreams, hopes and aspirations for the future" (Istanbul Protocol, 1999, p. 45). It is a "calculated assault on human dignity," more so than an attempt to extract information (Amnesty International, 1986, p. 172)


See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4166378/

Front Psychol. 2014; 5: 1026.
Published online 2014 Sep 17.
What is a "sense of foreshortened future?" A phenomenological study of trauma, trust, and time
Matthew Ratcliffe, Mark Ruddell and Benedict Smith

Phoebes, I just want to say thank you for writing what you did. My heart is with you. I understand what you say: "I feel like this combination over such a long time is what literally ruined me into not being able to make decisions, get away, feel worthy, express myself." Yes. This was me too. By my early twenties I felt myself to be utterly without substance or a 'voice'.

And thank you to the others for your supportive comments. The cruelty of telling someone to 'let it go', 'just get over it', never ceases to amaze me. The injury is embedded in our mind, body and soul. It's beyond our willpower to 'let it go'. The process of healing is painful and never-ending and jagged. In my experience it is as Blueberry says, "I find after really rough phases in the present, I jump forward in my healing." I too hope this is the case for you Phoebes.

Dear Oscen, may I gently disagree with you? What you write is not at all 'cheesy and on the nose'. It's very effective and has a ring of truth. The metaphor of spiders and a spider web is powerful for me. My husband used to appear in my dreams as a black spider and I have never forgotten the urgency and pain of a nightmare I had decades ago where I was hunched over, bent double, staring at the carpet, immobilised just inside the front door of the home I shared with him, unable to escape out the door, his thick web like iron bars across my back.

I do know that writing like you are doing can bring back the  sensations experienced so long ago and that can be scary. Based on my experience, I would suggest it's probably not laziness keeping you from writing - it's understandable apprehension. However, I'm utterly convinced that creating, writing, drawing is the key to releasing and freeing me from the web I was caught in for so long - and I love your image of pulling webbing from eyes.  So, I would encourage you to keep writing - write anything, let it flow. I echo River Rabbit: 'put your boot on the neck of that inner critic and write anyway'. I'm sure that ultimately your mind, body and soul will be grateful. That anyway is, and has been, my experience.

Putting these words in order... is the first order...

It is a first step in conquering this mountain that looms over me... in this cavern, where the weight of it groans with tension... with apprehension.

It all wants to fall...

And, knowing this certain doom... this inevitable failure is poised above me, like the sword of a cursed king... I take the step anyway.

I take the step to move this mountain... to push it back... to rescue the child trapped in its dark grasp.  I will struggle through prose to shine in some light as I fight.

I am still a long way off, and my feeble fists seem to make no progress against the cold, jagged stone... but I hope he feels some faint echo... some vibration... and know that he is worth it.

Dear RiverRabbit, This poem has left me sitting still, quiet, sad, tears falling. You convey the enormity of the coldness and weight of the damage caused when we are abandoned and abused, when our basic human needs are not met by those we desperately depend on to meet them.  The last words are just lovely - the 'faint echo', 'some vibration'. This is beautifully put. And yes, he is most definitely worth it.

And you've helped me a lot today with your powerful drawings. Thank you Eco.

Dear Johnram, you write: "In many ways, i am glad for my own bravery and change to come to this point, but i am also scared to enter this topic of loneliness as it now feels like one of the most key issues in my story, which makes sense."

I feel for you and I'm glad for your bravery too. I too am hovering on the edge of exploring this topic with my therapist, gathering my courage, because it's so huge and so painful an issue. I'm afraid of opening the floodgates. But I also know it's important to talk it through and allow myself to cry for an entire life of loneliness.

I remember a moment as a small child, walking out of my bedroom, with an urge to find someone, anyone, another child, another human who cared, and feeling loneliness like a painful ache inside my chest. My wish to connect with other humans was freshly acute then. But no one came to our house and inside my house I was surrounded by silent rejection and hostility punctuated by angry outbursts and physical lashing out at me. Now, towards the end of my life, I am so conscious I have walked alone, slept alone, stood alone, eaten alone, been alone in this world without protection for so many years. And I have no expectation that this will ever change. It's a central loss in my life that feels frightening to acknowledge in its entirety.

So, I really feel for you - and for me. I think crying is good. It's not fair what we had to endure. It's a deprivation of a fundamental human need and human right to human connection. I hope it helps you for me to share these thoughts. You are not alone in your struggle and I feel tears, grieving, my tears as I write this even, are essential to coming to terms with that struggle.

RiverRabbit, please keep on writing. The first poem that I wrote over 30 years ago was almost incoherent and started off with the following words, describing how I felt at that moment:

'Rage breaks out of me
tears my skin open...'

I went on from there to write more poetry over several years, fitfully, but grateful to be able to put my words down outside myself. Then for a long period where I had to work hard in the outside world I couldn't write; I had to bury it because I couldn't engage deeply enough with myself - it destabilised me in the everyday world too much. Now, after a recent crisis, I've started writing again and it is your words and those of another forum member that have helped me start again because what you write resonates with me. So thank you. Your words reached me and helped me. So tell that to your inner critic! Please keep writing. I'm sure if we have the impulse to do it that it's good for our souls to do it. I'm now feeling very grateful that I kept the poems I wrote so long ago. I feel they are a valuable expression of who I am, regardless of whatever (if any) literary merit they may have.
bluepalm

Thank you for your response to my poem and for what you have written in your posts RiverRabbit. Your words resonate with me.
bluepalm

Dear Sad,
I would really encourage you to keep trying to find a compatible therapist even though, I know, it's a painful process to put trust in strangers. I have gained so much from working with good therapists. With two different therapists at different times I feel it has been literally life-saving. But I have walked away from another two people over the years - once because I could not bear to hear what he was saying (that I was in a destructive relationship) even though he was correct and once because I felt disrespect and even hostility from the therapist. I'm sorry I walked away the first time because it could have been a turning point towards health but I'm glad I walked away the second time because it led me to search some more and then to finding a much better therapeutic experience. So I guess I've learnt it's worth keeping on trying. I hope your current choice turns out to be a truly healing experience.
bluepalm

Welcome Griflette - I'm new here too and have found the community to be very welcoming. I've also found drawing and painting to be hugely helpful ways I can find release for my feelings and struggles and I just love your tender hearted bear.

The most recent post below has struck a nerve in me. The word rage is what did it. Years ago I wrote a poem that expressed the way I sought to turn my turmoil of confusing feelings into something outside me over which I could feel some control. I found that I could gain some relief by putting into the concise form of a poem my feelings of anger and emptiness, my unmet needs and unfulfilled longings.  The poem I wrote to describe this process of writing a poem has stayed with me to help me through countless times when I sought human connection and failed to find it and I had to retreat to holding myself together once more.

I have recently read a wonderful book by Gregory Orr called 'Poetry as Survival' which I thoroughly recommend to anyone wanting to explore the process of writing poetry in order to survive. I found it a thoughtful, comforting and inspiring book. And now I'm reading his book called 'A Primer for Poets & Readers of Poetry'. I dearly wish I had found Gregory Orr and his writing much earlier in life.

This is what I wrote all those years ago:

Out of rage
my words are wrought
to bind my pain
   in parcels
and hurl it into the void,
and hearing no echoing splash
yet have the courage
   to know
it was real, I am.

Thank you so much for your comment Kizzie - and for moving my post. Your words and action comfort me, allow me to feel acknowledged - which is so healing after so long feeling so isolated. It's such a relief to have found this Forum. You do a wonderful job. Thank you.

A poem Deep Blue wrote really resonated and inspired me to write my own poem. I've had a lifetime of smiling to cover the pain and to placate people and to shield me from attack.  Her poem led me to think of another reason why, now, for myself, in gratitude, and not for other people, I can smile...

I smile
because I've survived them.
I've outlived them.
I've outgrown them.
I smile because
I'm still here.

I'm still here
and still learning,
and now slowly healing,
despite their best efforts
to suffocate my soul.

I've endured all
that pain,
that emptiness,
that malicious destruction,
and yet I can still smile.

I'm so very grateful
I've survived,
I'm here,
I'm alive,
and I can still smile.