Dalloway´s Recovery Journal

[Hope67]

Hi Dalloway,
Thanks for sharing your profound experience, it sounded so lovely. 
 

[dollyvee]

Hi Dalloway,

I just wanted to send support for these profound realizations that you're having 

dolly

[Dalloway]

Thank you everyone for taking the time to write something nice to me and for validating my experience.
I find it very challenging these days to navigate between pleasant and unpleasant emotions. It´s like a roller coaster ride with my eyes covered, so I can´t see what´s coming next - the up or the down. Lately I´ve been involved in different activities with different groups of people that filled me with a lot of energy. For the first time in my life I experienced real human connections and presence in the company of other people. It gave me the impression that I truly exist, that I´m not just an abstract something without borders and contours. This experience was out of this world and left me wanting for more. The more real I start to feel, the more I need to be connected to the reality. I realized that I´ve always had this need, I was born as an expectation for it. So when I started to experience it, it was as if a valve had been opened and now I yearn for more. I know that there´s huge amount of love that I´m capable of giving and receiving and that it´s always been my natural need.

[NarcKiddo]

I am so happy that you experienced real human connection. 

[Marcine]

Feeling capable of giving love and feeling deserving of receiving love... that's the greatest natural humanity... I'm so happy for you that you are directly experiencing connection.
Thank you for sharing this, Dalloway.

[Hope67]

Lately I´ve been involved in different activities with different groups of people that filled me with a lot of energy. For the first time in my life I experienced real human connections and presence in the company of other people. It gave me the impression that I truly exist, that I´m not just an abstract something without borders and contours. This experience was out of this world and left me wanting for more. The more real I start to feel, the more I need to be connected to the reality. I realized that I´ve always had this need, I was born as an expectation for it. So when I started to experience it, it was as if a valve had been opened and now I yearn for more. I know that there´s huge amount of love that I´m capable of giving and receiving and that it´s always been my natural need.

This is lovely - I am also happy to hear you've experienced real human connection 

[Papa Coco]

In a book I'm reading now, the author says that it isn't the abuse/neglect that caused the long-lasing trauma, but the fact that we had to deal with it alone.

I am now of the belief that human connection is the one thing that we all need, and our lack of it is the biggest reason we suffer.

I'm really happy to read that you had such a profound healing through feeling connected with others.

[SenseOrgan]

... Today I had a very profound experience. It was something out of the blue, but it made me very joyous. As if the universe knew that I needed something to keep going. I was lying on the bed, just woke up from a nap, half-asleep, when suddenly my heart filled with immense love. I felt it to my core and it was radiating from inside my body. I started to think of all the people in the world, all the lives on Earth, how far they might be from me in the physical world, and yet how close they are to me, because we are connected. I realized that our lives our interconnected, no matter who we are or what we do. At that moment, the whole world could fit in my heart. And everything I went through and all the things I´m experiencing now and will be in the future, is a part of me, and not just me, but the wider universe. I´m not an island, I´m not alone, I´m part of something lot bigger than my mind can comprehend. It goes through space and time, it started before me and will be here long after I´m gone. I´m not religious, but at that very moment I felt something higher and thought to myself: if there´s some kind of God, it´s nothing but love. I felt so close to nature, I felt that it accepted me, that I could return and be united with it if I wanted to. And the best thing about this experience was that all the love I felt, was radiating from me, from my chest, my whole body, in fact. And that´s when I realized that it´s been inside me all the time, all the love I have in me, it never went away, it was there all along, waiting. And that means that I was never really broken, there is a place inside me that was whole the whole time. That part was never dead and I´m not dead either. I am capable of love, giving and receiving it.

Thank you so much for sharing this Dalloway. I'm so happy for you that you had this experience. It brought tears to my eyes reading it. It resonates deeply with me.

Much love.

[Dalloway]

TW for the whole text - mention of abuse

I get jealous of people who are cared for all the time. The presence of other people in each other´s lives makes me feel my utter loneliness and pain even more. I dream about similar things almost every night: the scenario is always me being around a bunch of people who are getting along very well, but seemingly unaware of the fact that I´m also part of the group. The pain I feel every night is very real because it´s the same pain I feel constantly when I´m awake. So during the day, in those hours of sleepwalking and actively trying to stay sane enough to do the things I´m supposed to as an adult, my whole existence is about profound and omnipresent loneliness. People´s interactions, understanding of each other and connections remind me of my being an outsider, far-far away from the human society. And every missed connection, each skipped conversation, every laughter and chitchat I´m not a part of, is telling me the decades long story that I´ve already memorized when I was a child. "You are not a valuable human being with a shape and form, boundaries and a real existence. You are just a shapeless entity, made to serve other people´s needs and desires. You don´t have your voice, it was all given to you and one day, when you decide to give it back, you´ll have nothing left."

The person I was made into never got to experience what true love is. She never once heard that she´s loved and frankly, that the people around her are really glad that she´s there. She has no qualities that she could give in exchange for love from others. She doesn´t even expect anyone to love her, because she understands that that´s impossible, since she´s unlovable. That´s what she learned with every breath, with every word and every glance from her mother, every time she was yelled at, called names and hit. "You only get what you deserve and deep in your heart you know that´s because you deserve nothing more than that."

It´s a person that was made to suffer. I´m not wondering why. I only know that she doesn´t for a second believe that she deserves the love she´s yearning for. Just like in her dreams - or should I at this point start to call them nightmares - of every night: no one´s there to validate her existence and if someone does, it´s in a so pitiful way that getting nothing feels better than that. "You are a burden to people, can´t you see that?" And she knows that and knows that she was indeed made to suffer. Dreaming or awake, her shadow is following her everywhere. The shadow made of tears, blood and silent cries, cause no one comes to help anyway.

But now this person is a sweetheart, smiling at the terrible world that made her suffer. She doesn´t know better than to smile. Crying is not an option - it´s totally useless and also totally dangerous. If she´s nice all the time, she can maybe get some affection at least. Attention that is faked or illusory, she has no doubt about that. There´s no way people are capable of giving true, unconditional love to her. Her mother didn´t do that, why would they? Everyone wants something in return. Be silent, be a good girl, listen to all the names they are calling you, stay still when they accuse you of things you didn´t do, feel you rage boiling in your chest and then swallow it. Forget the natural instincts you were born with: stay quiet when you want to scream, stay in your place when you want to run away and hide. Freeze, again and again and again.

I need to talk about her in third person sometimes. This person can´t be me. She´s so broken and full of scars, who would like to be her? To think about all the things she went through is scary as *. And yet, it´s me carrying the memories that haunt me in my dreams. I can´t get rid of them, can´t push them away, send them to the end of the world. I have to live with all that happened and continues to happen day by day. It never ended because it lives inside me for the rest of my life.

[HannahOne]

Dalloway, I'm glad you're here on the forum and were able to write about your experience and share it here. We want to hear your voice, what you share is valuable to all of us with CTPSD as we are all trying to understand what cPTSD is and how it shaped us. Writing and speaking is the opposite of staying silent, and it's an instinct you have, to write in a journal, share, an instinct you're trying to follow even though some parts of you think it's pointless.

I really related to this: "You are not a valuable human being with a shape and form, boundaries and a real existence. You are just a shapeless entity, made to serve other people´s needs and desires. You don´t have your voice, it was all given to you and one day, when you decide to give it back, you´ll have nothing left." Your loneliness is familiar to me.

I also related to thinking about your inner child in the third person. I think of my inner children as "parts of me" and I find that helpful. Because that IS me, I am that broken child, and also, that is not aLL of me, I'm also an adult, with power and choices. I'm so sorry for the ways your trauma has shaped you, and impressed at your perseverance and strength to own your pain and work with it.

[SenseOrgan]

I'm so sorry Dalloway. It breaks my heart you are suffering so much. This is torture.

Not all of you has accepted the abusive messages you got in various ways. There's a part of you who wrote this. You are voicing your excruciating experiences here because you care about you. The one who seems to be almost crushed under the weight she carries. I'm rooting for her. I'm rooting for you.
 
It's brave to share the rawness of it like you did. Your deserve other people to acknowledge your suffering. And you deserve to be free from all of it. The part that happens in silence, in utter loneliness, is the heaviest burden to carry. I don't know what it's like to be you. I can only ask you to consider the possibility that I recognize a lot of what you describe. And many others here too. I've spent most of my life there. This is why I feel great compassion for you.

Today I wrote an e-mail to a CPTSD support group I want to join. It's name is called "my voice". In the e-mail I said that to me, everyone with complex trauma is already complete and lovable, and that we need others to be able to experience that and embrace it ourselves. This is also how I see you. Our minds are like a bad neighborhood. We better not go there alone.

Your loneliness is calling you to become the person you already are deep down. Because you know that the shadow of youself you had to become to survive is nowhere near your potential. It hurts, because you care. And you care, because on some level you know you deserve much better than this. You're right.

Gabor opened my eyes to what self love actually means in the video below. I couldn't love myself at the time, but he planted a seed that has taken root.

Much love


Dr Gabor Maté 'value' 2nd Clue

[Chart]

Dalloway, I so wish I could take your inner child in my arms and hug her... she deserves all the love and support and attention and caring... that she never got. It truly breaks my heart. My biological father made one single attempt at contact and that was to try and end my existence. There is no comprehension of this kind of behavior, of our parents and caregivers who did nothing parental nor giving of care... And so we have to hold ourselves, we have to hug ourselves, we have to care for ourselves. I refuse to let my father win. I have promised my inner child that he will have love and care and attention... from me. I see him for what he is. I see him for what he suffered. I know the injustice that nearly crushed out his life. And I've stated clearly and explicitly that all that was wrong. I tell him over and over and over. I hug him over and over and over. I think about him, talk to him, love him. "We" are working together now. It took us a long time, he was scared, he was hurt, he was jealous and confused... But slowly, ever so slowly, he has raised his little head and looked at me, and I felt his trust growing. It was not desperation, it was love through understanding. I understand what my child-self experienced. And now, he understands what I have to tell him. He's getting better. He still doesn't laugh. But he suffers less. He cries more, but now it is tears of release as opposed to anguish. We are holding each other. Nothing in the world could move me to let go of his being, his essence, that which is the best part of me. I love me, and will never stop. Our inner children deserve so much. I'm still learning, but the start is now behind me and I'll never stop. Love will have no end.
 

[Marcine]

 
Dalloway = courageous, determined, forged in fire, honest, hurting, compassionate, beautiful!