smg's Journal

[smg]

I think that I have some good understanding of my childhood and the effects on me, but my sense is that I've been stalled out in two related areas:
1) experiencing painful emotions as shameful, so that shame overwhelms/masks the initial feeling
2) processing emotions from the past.
A few months back, I started doing the exercises from Toxic Parents by Forward (note: she strongly advocates a confrontation with your parents, so if you're estranged, and that's at all shaky, it might not be the book for you). The most productive exercise for me was to write the story of my abuse as a fairy tale. A rule of the exercise is to finish with a happy ending. That took months. I did not know how to get from here to there. I did an online course in Emotional Processing, and that gave me some ideas of what a happy ending might be, and a rough map for how to get there.
So here we go.

[smg]

Fairy Tale, Part 1 Possible TW: invalidation and unwanted touching

Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose mother, the Queen, was very frightened. The Queen had learned that she was only safe and valued for the heroic quests she completed. Without great deeds, the Queen believed that a curse of fear would overtake her. To keep from feeling so frightened that she would be destroyed, the Queen needed her doings to be constantly praised, and every day she looked for new dragons to slay.

One day when the Queen had nearly run out of places to look for dragons, she looked at her little daughter, who was small, new in the world, and had yet to meet a dragon, let alone slay one. The Queen's vision blurred and she could no longer see her daughter. Instead, she saw her frightened self, overlaying the image of her daughter, the two of them shrinking with fear. The Queen cried out in panic, then clapped a hand over her mouth and looked around to be sure no one had heard her unheroic outburst. When next she spoke, her voice was calm.

"You are too small and frightened, my daughter. You have done no heroic deeds for us to proclaim, and are clearly cursed. Your weakness and fear make you a problem and a burden. It will require a long and difficult quest to remove your curse. You are lucky that your own mother is a great hero, because only maternal love would prompt anyone to try to save you, and only my own greatness that could succeed with you."

The little girl felt cold and frozen. She knew that her weakness and fear would be her undoing.  When the little girl accompanied the Queen around the castle, she heard the Queen whisper, "You wouldn't be able to handle it." The Queen spoke of her daughter to the staff, and soon the words seemed to echo all round the castle: "too weak," "too frightened," "not able." From then on, the little girl compared herself to burly knights, sturdy kitchen maids, tireless stable hands, and judged herself unworthy. While she watched them work, she told herself that she was too weak to do those jobs well herself.The little girl felt ever more frightened and helpless.

The Queen did not like it when her small daughter cried, "No." She shushed the girl. She explained to her what she should want. If her small daughter did not agree, she would explain how wrong and selfish the girl was. The Queen would not allow the incident to end, and her daughter to escape, until the little girl confessed she was wrong to have ever had her own opinion. The little girl had to submit utterly to end any confrontation, and it was better to have never known what she wanted in the first place.

The little girl lost herself. She lost her preferences, her needs. She lost what exactly frightened her until it seemed the whole world was scary. She didn't know if she was angry. The little girl longed to feel "home." She didn't yet know that she longed for acceptance. Alone was not what she wanted, and, most of the time, alone was the only way to be safe.

The little girl thought the Queen loved her, afterall, the Queen described herself as an excellent, supportive mother, but she felt sad, afraid and alone. The little girl wanted her mother to think well of her, to enjoy her, to see her, to like her, but she didn't know how to make this happen, to make herself the right person. The little girl believed that bad situations only got worse, after all, whenever the Queen found out about any problem in the little girl's life, she would carefully explain how there was no problem, except for the little girl herself.

The little girl sometimes slipped and expressed her preferences to others in the castle. Once, she asked her father to stop. The Queen heard of this and came to quietly watch her daughter and the girl's father. Afterward, she spoke to her daughter. "There is nothing inappropriate in the way your father is touching you. You don't know what inappropriate is." The little girl came to believe that she didn't get to choose not to like something. She believed that it was wrong for her not to like what she was given. The little girl felt afraid of her father. She remembered every time that he seemed to notice her body, and she made sure to stay out of arm's reach when they were alone together. She knew that once she let anyone close, she could not stop them.

The little girl chose not to take risks or explore new things because, once engaged, she could not object and get out of a situation. She knew that she was more vulnerable than others, and she saw that as proof she was too weak and frightened. The little girl thought she needed to keep her self and her life tightly bounded and controlled to remain as safe as possible. She felt afraid in many circumstances and ashamed of herself. At the first twinge of uncertainty or adrenaline the little girl decided she wasn't "handling it" and felt ashamed. The little girl could not succeed at a challenge when the fact of it being challenging was shameful.

One day, the Queen realized that her daughter was of an age to venture out of the castle and meet the people. As her daughter was about to leave the castle for her first visit, the Queen caught a glimpse of the people waiting outside. The Queen imagined their reactions to her small daughter and thought, "she's not enough." Once more, her vision blurred and she saw their combined selves nearing destruction.

"My daughter," the Queen cried out, "remember that you are too weak and frightened. We must compensate for your defects. After your brother, I wanted a second child, but not one such as you. If you'd been our first, we never would have had a second. You are a burden and I have worked hard to support you, but you refuse to be different. So I have to remind you to hide the truth from outsiders by always holding your head high."

The little girl cowered away from the door and the judgement that she expected to find beyond it. She knew that only maternal obligation let the Queen love her at all, and that when outsiders saw her as fully as the Queen did, their disgust would not be tempered by a family bond. The Queen spoke of love to her daughter, but the little girl did not feel loved. The little girl knew that she was grateful to the Queen, because she was often told what a burden she imposed on the Queen, but she did not feel grateful. The little girl knew there had to be many things wrong with her to make sense of the Queen's rejection. She hoped that if she could be someone else, she could earn the Queen's love.

The little girl knew that she should act unafraid, but she was so alone that she felt nothing but fear and shame. She felt trapped. The little girl learned to distrust help, to believe an offer of help was a sign her curse had been seen. She pretended confidence, until she couldn't. The little girl felt exhausted. She had nothing left with which to dream.

[smg]

Fairy Tale, Part 2
The little girl grew older and her life naturally began to take her away from the Queen's castle. She felt small and frightened most of the time. On her own for the first time, the girl gradually sought charms for happiness and confidence, but whatever she tried, she still felt weak and afraid. Worse, charms that were supposed to help her, just emphasized how problematic and shameful her usual state  was. Eventually, the girl noticed that they made her feel worse, she discarded the remaining charms, and stopped visiting the friends and healers who had sold them to her.

The girl had a true friend who listened to everything she had to say, and who eventually stopped assuming that the girl could fix it all by simply communicating clearly with the Queen. The true friend believed that something was wrong, and it wasn't the girl. She admired and loved the girl, no matter what the girl told her. The girl saw herself reflected in her true friend's eyes, and wondered if her friend's vision was true. She felt afraid and ashamed during each moment of hope, but she kept coming back to her friend. The true friend longed for the girl to be shielded from the buffeting of storms. The girl slowly noticed the difference between her friend's longing for her to have a life with less fear and pain, and the Queen's desire for the girl to ignore all fear and pain and to always stand up straight as though they weren't there. The girl sought out her true friend whenever she felt sad or frightened or ashamed, and her true friend would listen, but one day her friend died.

The girl found a true healer who also listened. The healer cried to hear the girl's story and she offered the girl true compassion and comfort. The healer taught the girl what an apology is and how it can repair things that have gone wrong. She learned that painful emotions could be useful signals prompting her to change something in her life. The girl slowly noticed that she could resolve many painful emotions by noticing, accepting and exploring them. She worked hard to process painful emotions from her past in the Queen's castle. The girl worked to notice and give up old beliefs that made it harder to live a good life. The girl saw herself reflected in her friend's and her healer's eyes, and started to really wonder if maybe she was okay.

The girl often fell back into the habit of thinking she was wrong and weak for feeling painful emotions, but the girl knew that eventually she could and would gently redirect those thoughts. She reminded herself that this was different from the pretending that she'd done as a little girl, because now she acknowledged the feeling and worked to change reality.

The girl had known pain as a permanent thing that was never resolved, but, at best, actively pushed away. She practised at processing painful emotions, adding more experiences of pain leaving. Knowing that pain could go away with the right attention, the girl started to believe that she could successfully protect herself because she got out of situations with less pain and she recovered from that pain. The girl learned to think of herself as safe in many more circumstances. She learned to rely less on avoidance and escape as her means to safety.

Now that she felt safer and competent to protect herself, the girl learned to ask herself what was important to her. She learned to value honesty, empathy, team work, fairness and simplicity through her choices and actions. She felt purposeful and fulfilled every time she took little actions that brought her closer to these values. And she felt a little hope in knowing she has a path to follow.

In this way, the girl built a good life for herself around her own safe and beautiful home, satisfying work, good people to talk and play with, and less need to hide. She makes the best decisions she can about how she wants to live her life, taking small steps every day.

*******
Now I'm off to dig in the garden. I may wait a day or more before I look at the forum again.
My next entry may be to list all the beliefs about myself that I can discern. (I know they're a tangled, contradictory mess.)

[paul72]

hi smg
I just wanted to thank you for sharing your story in this format.
i really like the happy ending you created!!

[smg]

Thank you Phil,
It took months of not having a clue before I could conceive of a path forward. It felt/feels like a big deal to have a bit of a road map.
smg

[sanmagic7]

smg, i'd agree that's a big deal.  to even think in terms of a happy ending is beyond me.  this is a unique perspective for delving into the past.  thanks for sharing.  many good wishes for your continuing recovery. sending a gentle hug, if that's ok.

[Chaos rains]

smg, this is just lovely. Absolutely lovely and it resonates. Thank you for sharing.

[rainydiary]

smg, I appreciated this approach to expressing your experience.

[Hope67]

Hi Smg,
I would also like to thank you for sharing what you've written.  I also want to congratulate you on what you've achieved in writing your story in such a way, and the happy ending, that is special and precious.  I believe so.

Hope 

[smg]

Thank you everyone for your lovely expressions of appreciation.
I am having an interesting response to expressing myself publicly. I'm noticing my perspective collapse completely in the presence of any one else's opinion, including agreement, including my predictions of what a response might be. I want to clarify, define terms, point out the bits that are imagined, make sure you all know that it's just an idea I've had, cite the sources from which I've pieced my thinking together -- basically, I'm Fawning all over the place because I'm experiencing expressing opinions as dangerous.
I can tell where this came from. I think I'm betting that it's easier to undermine myself, than to be invalidated by someone else and to show no visible response to that invalidation and to agree that I was wrong to have had my opinion.
I'm intellectualizing to distance myself a bit. The distance is helpful, as in "I am me, and these are things that happened and beliefs that I have." BUT, I know that I also need to lean in to the feeling of having to submit my autonomy to my mother. The fear of that feeling is still looming like a bogey man. If I feel it as a painful thing from the past and comfort myself after, then I should be less motivated to continually hurt myself with the self-undermining thing that I'm doing....

Please note, none of your replies were bad or made me undermine myself.

[rainydiary]

I'm noticing my perspective collapse completely in the presence of any one else's opinion

I appreciate how you phrased this and it really resonated.  I hope that noticing this in yourself brings opportunities to respond in ways you would like to.