I Have Something To Say

Trauma survivors seem to worry more than most that they are being 'lazy' when they aren't 100% productive. Let's expose that lie, shall we? The traumatized brain is anything but lazy. In fact, it is over-worked, over-stimulated, over-active, and over-stressed. Trauma survivors have an enlarged amygdala, which triggers the fight-or-flight response. In a survivor, this response goes haywire. It cannot perceive between something that happened in the past with what's in the present. The brain remembers trauma in the form of flashbacks that constantly re-create the experience. A traumatized brain is always on alert. Hypervigilance is constantly running in the background, assessing the situation and trying to report back to the rational brain what it finds. In order to keep up with everyday situations, it often must work hotter and harder than a brain without trauma. Say a non-traumatized person wants to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. No sweat, right? I...

A couple years ago, I hit a serious wall.  I was emotionally and physically exhausted, but didn't understand why. Sure, I was a mom, wife, graduate student, and ran a business, but this exhaustion went much deeper than my chronic state of busyness and hypervigilance. Sure, I knew I had a rough childhood and had gone no contact with my parents ten years prior. I got on with my life. I made many positive and deliberate changes so I didn't repeat their patterns, but I hadn't fully unpacked just how vast that black hole of childhood trauma was. For me, awakening to the impact of my childhood trauma has happened over many years, with thousands of tiny steps toward recovery. But one day, the truth of it hit me so hard, I had to drop everything to process it. I had no choice because my body and brain simply gave out. I had to grow or succumb. I chose to grow. I threw myself headlong into the task of really looking at my issues. You could say I was hypervigilant about trauma ...

Abuse survivors are usually wary of new relationships for extremely good reasons that are not their fault. Almost always, the cycle of abuse starts out as something that appears wonderful. The new guy or gal is interested in them. Not only interested, but infatuated. They too-quickly claim they are "the one." They study their target, quick to note all their likes and dislikes, which feels like manna from heaven for someone who has been emotionally neglected. They are quick to become intimate, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Abusers hook their victims fast, always under some romantic guise of "fate" or "true love." Just when the victim believes it's real, the trouble starts. This initial stage of love bombing is how an abuser manipulates their prey into a false attachment. Everyone needs to be seen, heard, loved, and cared for, and this is the ammunition an abuser uses to target their victims. When someone feels loved, they relax. They bond...

Healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse is a lifelong unraveling. One has to scrape through many layers of gunk made up from the minimization of abuse and misplaced, mis-formed thoughts about one's self and the world they live in. In many ways, I consider myself extremely fortunate and privileged to have escaped my abusers and be in a place where my soul can finally ask two all-important questions: Who am I, and what do I want? These are difficult questions for anyone seeking to live an authentic life, but for abuse survivors, they are especially elusive. When I was a child, at a time when I was supposed to be developing a sense of self, I wasn't allowed to have an identity separate from my abusers. I existed tin order to serve whatever their ego wanted. That was it. As I naturally fought against this role, I was labeled "rebellious," "ungrateful," and "bad" for trying to seek a separate identity. Even though I distanced myself as much a...

Those who have survived abusive childhoods at some time or another have run into someone (or many people) making banal excuses to explain away their experience. "Parents aren't perfect." "They were doing their best." "Just wait until you're a mom or dad." While it's true that no one is perfect and most people don't intend to hurt their children, these excuses wound children of narcissistic parents at their core. These sorts of trite phrases are often used by narcissistic parents to manipulate and dupe others into believing their child is the unreasonable one. It is not possible to ever reason or win an argument with a narcissist. In order for the child of narcissistic parents to have any identity at all, they must get far away.  While it is considered "normal" for most families have some form of dysfunction, narcissistic homes are especially toxic. The following are some common differences between "normal" parents a...

Healing can be a long process, especially from complex trauma. There is an entire lifetime of coping mechanisms that survivors must unravel before they can decide what to keep and what to toss out. The process of becoming who you really are is tough for anyone, but for those who survived childhood abuse, it means learning fundamental aspects of development that were previously denied. When a baby learns that their caretaker is unreliable, it is extremely difficult to expect others to be reliable throughout their whole life. This deficit creates a whole host of coping mechanisms in survivors. Some become combative and antisocial. Others go to the opposite end of the spectrum. I am the kind of survivor who learned to cope by being extremely self-sufficient. I hid behind the masks of "I'm fine" and "That's okay." I never required much from my relationships because it was reinforced enough times for me to know on a visceral level that I would be let down. I...