dealing with pain

[helliepig]

I've spent a few years fighting this trauma lark and of course I understand that " feeling your pain" is the way through. How many times do you repeat that with your therapist beside you?
It's funny though, how you can relearn something over and over or in a deeper way.
For years I've been doing EMDR tapping and child work for complex PTSD and polyfragmented dissociation, and yes a lot has healed and improved.
But this year I felt such a weariness. Just didn't believe in it anymore. All this work and nothing really seemed to change deep down. I was still on the cycle of finding something exciting to work on ( dressage, keep fit, photography) getting really into it and being successful, then everything crashing at the emptiness behind it.
This year something inside me has kind of known that that is not enough any more I can't keep doing that.
Initially it manifested itself as a sort of depression - hopelessness, with funny stabs of regret tagged onto random things and an urge just to eat sleep and get drunk. I stayed in bed a lot and put weight on. It got rough.
My get up and go had moved out and it just felt, well, mwerrrr.

I carried on seeing my therapist and carried on working on stuff, but kind of getting cross with her too.
So meanwhile, planning a holiday with my son he wanted to spend some time in Wales so he could see some mates from a previous holiday, and I found myself drawn to going back to where I'd lived as a teenager,  near Bristol and "showing" him.

Just before we went I got a verbal lashing from my ex (NPD bully) and instead of turning the other cheek I let myself sink into the rage I felt. Actually allowed myself to decide enough was enough even though it was hard for me to give myself that permission - I have normally kept a distance but tried to be civil "for my son" but also because I was afraid - he was still controlling me in a way I hadn't really understood til that moment.
So this time I sat with it. Hard on the heels of the anger came immense shame, the shame he'd put into me but also the shame from my childhood. From a lifetime of narcissitic and borderline people and bullying
So I sat with it. Squirmed with it. For days.
In the middle of this we went down on holiday and I was hit by how much I'd loved where I'd lived and how happy I'd been as a teenager and how everything since felt trashed and wasted - it was intense. For a few days I imbibed the lovely memories and feelings and then wham, full on grieving, For who I'd been that I'd lost, for all the hardship and rubbish since, and for the way people, notably my ex, had treated me.
I suddenly saw clearly through the release of my shame that he'd been awful to me just after I'd lost my parents and my family home  and how none of it was because I was worthless and weird at all. That it was about his need to destroy me and make himself bigger. He'd yelled at me that I had no one and no one loved me within months of losing my mum

It was odd, my body releasing that grief. I realised I had never grieved properly for anything. I was humbled by that inner wisdom that had drawn me down there and led me to face what I needed to.

A few days later I got a text to say my aunt had died - someone I'd lost contact with when she developed Alzheimers and her daughter had whisked her off to Belgium and refused any interest. And wham, there I was crying and grieving all day all over again.
And afterwards... I felt softer, clearer.

It lasted for a couple of weeks then the magic of what i'd felt on holiday left me, and the "usual *" in my life and my frustrations built up again. Then I walked into a situation with my narcissitic colleague at work.
Instead of shame and self blame and angry emails, I sat with my rage. Boy did I rage to myself for 2 days, not knowing what to do with it and how to let it go - and then through sitting with it I once again I started to see how out of line he was, the pattern that had been going on/ He'd behave badly, no one would back me up and Id retreat in a cycle of shame and embarrassment and confusion. How I always, feeling so inadequate and wrong inside, always blamed myself and got drawn into his arguments as if I was trying to prove him wrong. all the time believing it was me.

And since then I've looked at some of the really horrible stuff I feel at home or with intimacy, places where I often get badly triggered and dissociative. Places where the complex trauma of my early family life and abuse flourish. And instead of being terrified of those feelings I've turned and said "come on then". Sitting with them has been hard... and you dread the descent into madness that you believe will inevitably follow. But instead all I've seen has been a morass of confusion, hurt, rage, terror and fear of being crazy. And a fear that this stuff could just burst out and shame me at any moment as it was not under my control.

I'd tried to think my way through it so many times but got nowhere as it was contradictory and crazy. SO just sitting with it and talking to those parts and letting them rant... it's starting to clear. I've started to feel more connected and softer with people. I've even had the strange experience of noticing that someone seems to like me, seemingly I am enough - usually I think everything I say or do is wrong somehow.

Yes so now there's more grief welling up. At all the horrors I've put up with and the way my world has been so warped. I can't feel it clearly yet. It's in there. I can trust it will find it's way out.

It's early days and  I have to keep reminding myself to listen inside, to try and find what I think, what I want, how I want to act which is hard as I've been so busy performing and hiding the real me.  Trusting that whoever is still in there holding this yukky stuff will trust me and together we can let it go.
It hasn't been as hard as I imagined in some ways ( my therapist says things that terrify a child are not as terrifying to an adult) and in some ways it's been the hardest thing.
Until I'd  said ok, what do those deep down parts, those parts I try and ignore, what do they feel, until I'd done that I couldn't see an of this, Until I'd faced the shame and the grief none of this was accessible
Now I notice I feel bad when I start acting or caring about how I come across instead of being centered and with myself. Noticing when I abandon myself, I suppose.
Living for me feels sad, lonely, empty, pointless and a really odd concept but I believe now that it is the start and it will get better.
There's more to do, I know it, but i'm slowly starting to trust myself and daring to start being with people in a different way - learning who I like and what I like rather than trying to dodge the perennial disapproval and shame I carried internally.

There was a big shift when I allowed myself to say, this isn't working anymore.. Something deep inside is so unhappy.  Going "home" and remembering when I'd felt alive and belonged reminded me of how it can be, that it's MY LIFE Daring to feel what's inside means I can let mood swings happen rather than chasing happiness and defending against the pain. I can be authentic rather than trying to be the best at things, or chasing affection that never fills the holes.

Listening to yourself and daring to live really from yourself is hard but so liberating.

[Sceal]

This was a powerfull read.
You've braved working through some rough feelings, and you know there's more to work on. But it's good to read that you are starting to losen up and get more connected with yourself on various levels.

Keep up the good work!
I hope you will get to feel like you have your life back very soon!

[helliepig]

Hi Sceal,
I hope so too!  Thank you for reading my post and commenting.
It only comes when you're ready doesn't it. You have to put the leg work in on the trauma and the covering stuff, then one day you  are ready to dare to look at the core, and that's where the real change happens.

Fingers crossed.

[helliepig]

I'm noticing something  else today. I realised today in a meeting that I noticed when someone dissembled or got defensive or started posturing.  I could own and trust what i'd noticed. I actually felt clear and confident instead of confused and looking to someone else to tell me what to feel or think.

I think I've always noticed but it would confuse and upset me.

Before, I'd be unable to separate out what I'd seen happen in them from my innate projected sense of badness and shame. In other words, they'd behave weirdly and I'd think they were reacting to me. I could never see the vulnerability in them .

Today I noticed it happening and was detached and secure in myself enough to think "wow he's pretending to know what I'm talking about to cover his feelings of inadequacy" Whereas before I'd think " he's sneering at me and putting me down or competing with me " now I was able to see "he is threatened about what I was talking about and has to pretend to be more than he is". I'd still have picked up the incongruity and the small change in the person but be unable to see it as their thing. always it was about my badness,

Suddenly I myself has been removed from the equation and can see self doubt defences and such behaviour happening in others.
It's always been there, I've always detected it, but I've mislabelled it - picked up the bad vibes and only been able to see one possible cause - ie me.
I realise how acutely tuned I am to any nuance. I spot things in others that most don't see. A lot of the time I've reacted to it or battled against it.
I think my perceptiveness must be quite scary - but it comes from a hypervigilance, reading the smallest nuance for threat.

This is such a wider theme too. How long did it take me to realise that the feelings of "Badness" in me with my ex were actually my insides screaming blue murder at how dangerous he was to me, but because it was such a familiar feeling in my family I had labelled it as "love".  How insane is that really? That toxic combination of those feelings were what  I felt as familiar and mislabelled as home and comfort and attraction drew me inevitably to dangerous narcissists with the calm assurance of a sleep walker.
How long have I felt sinking feelings and interpreted them wrongly - when all I was feeling was an inner part warning me something feels wrong. So disconnected from any true meaning,  those inner gut feelings were never been labelled or supported as feelings or instincts by any loving adult. Never nurture or trusted. I made sense of them in the only way I knew how.

All the time I was told what my feeling and motives were by people who yelled their projection at me. "you're jealous!/insecure/blah blah blah" Those people were projecting onto me as their scapegoat and never stopping to listen to or even care what my thoughts feelings and motives truly were.  So I couldn't trust my judgement couldn't trust myself. I really thought ( and still do) that there was this badness in me that they all saw that I couldn't, even when I wasn't being bad or so I thought. So confusing!!!
They couldn't have cared less anyway. I wasn't a person to them, they didn't care how much I hurt or cried, I was their punchbag.

My sister provides a good example of this. I hadn't spoken to her in 10 years because of a series of awful things she'd done and said to me. We tentatively met for lunch and she started pouring out her troubles  - assuming i'd be back straight into my role of caretaker, carer, punchbag and person without any value other than what I do for her.
She then proceeded to tell me we could get on as long as I didn't talk about my son as it was too painful for her.
Oh and my job too, cos she finds that threatening.
Hey and I won't be interested in your successes as a photographer but come over and do some photos of my friends but hey you have to do it at a special rate, Gee thank. what an attractive offer. (But hey don't forget i'll be watching you like a hawk and will be jealous of everything you do or don't do and will start screaming at you and accusing you of stealing my friends or showing off or something)

So I went home and emailed her and said - in as many words - that my son was my life and who I was and that her assumption that I would give up being me and the things that were important because somehow having a relationship with her (someone not interested in me ) was more important.
That i'd sit and let her slag off the job I do and have worked damn hard on for years, really helping people and making a difference, somehow that was ok, because, come on, we all know she is more important. And we just KNOW I am not allowed to matter.
And that she can use my skills as a cheap entertainment for her friends and I should be pathetically grateful for her meagre interest and attention to my hobby but hey lets remember it's a huge favour to let you do this so you have to do it really cheaply. And don't expect me to be interested in any part of it, not really.
I said i'd had to live with my son not knowing a loving family and the sadness I'd suffered at holiday time knowing they didn't care about either of us, and that i'd had to bring him up alone and that somehow I was supposed to not expect acknowledgement of this hurt much less an apology   - but great idea! Let's just play let's pretend he doesn't even exist.. That's so much freaking neater.

We didn't talk again for months. Now she is more wary of me. And I see no real value in a relationship with her because she is sooooo shut down and emotionally dead and self referencing and empty. She just doesn't get it.
Those are the people I grew up with.

These are the freaking crazies I grew up with. Oh, when the scales fall off your eyes.

Now I need a lot of time learning to be with nice people. Sane people. And reprogram the whole damn thing.