I Have Something To Say

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 ...

Before EMDR therapy, I previously did not consider myself a fearful person. If I felt threatened, I would quickly push those thoughts out of my mind and focus on more practical, productive things. I learned to do this as a very young child who had no other option for coping with a cruel, punishing father, and an emotionally neglectful mother. While pushing impulses away can be a decent coping strategy short term, the long term effect of shutting down feelings of fear for me has meant lifelong chronic migraines and toxic stress. For much of my childhood and young adulthood, I didn't feel much fear, but it turns out, the bulk of my terror was repressed. I detached so much from what had initially been bothering me that I no longer saw the rather obvious connection between repressed trauma and chronic pain.  Today, in order to heal, I am committed to the oh-so-fun task of feeling my feelings, especially the ones that were previously off limits. Today, my entire body is on high ale...

You were lied to on the playground.  "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Neuroscientists and psychologists have proven in spades that words hurt most of all. But first, let's establish that abuse of any kind is horrible, heinous, and deserving of attention and care. The impact of physical trauma ought never be minimized in order to shine a light on psychological trauma. Not only is all trauma valid, all perceptions of trauma are valid. Two people can experience the same event and have drastically different outcomes. One's experience isn't more or less valid than another. If it hurts, seek help. Physical trauma is visceral. There is hard, objective evidence of abuse. Most people don't question its validity. It's cut and dry. "If he hits you, you should leave." If you are beaten or shot in a senseless crime, no one will try to convince you it didn't really happen. Children who are physically abused are ...

I consider myself to be fairly self-aware and introspective. I've always been willing to look at my life and my life choices from every angle and make adjustments when necessary. And yet, there was this one area of my life that I felt, instinctively, was too big, too dark, too scary for me to face head on. I knew my parents weren't "normal" and that my childhood was lacking certain things, like, say, love. I knew enough about the dysfunction to go no contact over ten years ago. There was quite a bit I had already figured out and gained perspective on. And yet, there was this compartmentalized part of me that lurked in the shadows. I found myself thinking, fearing,  someday , I'll have to deal with that. Someday came. It came in the form of chronic illness, exhaustion, and collapse. It came in the form of feeling empty in spite of success. It came in the form of feeling responsible for burdens that weren't mine. It came in the form of nightmares. It came i...

I went no contact with my abusers many years ago, and in the years following, I spent much of the time putting the whole ordeal behind me. I escaped, and I went on to live a fairly successful and happy life. Or so I thought. A couple years ago, I hit the wall with several physical health problems, which forced me to take a step back and reevaluate everything. At first, I couldn't figure out why my body had collapsed in exhaustion. I tried all I could to manage the physical symptoms, and when nothing worked, I moved on the to emotional. What I rediscovered was that I was experiencing complex trauma from the long term effects of childhood sexual, emotional, spiritual and psychological abuse. Oh, right. That. Complex PTSD explained my anxiety, nightmares, migraines and digestive problems, all of which I previously thought weren't connected. It explained my exaggerated startle response and high blood pressure. It explained why I felt too responsible, and why I felt like my ac...

As a survivor of abuse, I've always known I have an over developed sense of responsibility. My narcissistic parents made sure they were never at fault for their actions, and that I was somehow required to carry that burden for them. A sense of responsibility and independence carried me through adolescence, and ended up being a positive characteristic that allowed me to accomplish quite a bit. However, this over-developed sense of responsibility also eats at me. I become anxious and hypervigilant because it's hard to shake the feeling, even being aware of where it comes from. I continue to struggle with internalizing things that aren't my fault. I am realizing just how much effort I've exerted over the years to make sure I could not be blamed for something going wrong. It stems from an experience of being blamed for everything anyway. Even if it's not my job, I will make sure it gets done. If someone is unhappy, I will make sure I do everything in my power to plea...

When I started this blog a few months back, I only intended to write maybe two or three times a week. Instead, I've kept a steady stream of posts going every weekday. I've found it's been a necessary and helpful outlet to express my thoughts, and also for me to observe how things are shifting and changing as I process the effects of abuse in my life. I am a professional writer and I am accustomed to the discipline of writing every day, but I never intended for this blog to become something I do with my professional hat on. I wanted it and needed it to be something I do for me, without rules, or a feeling of obligation of daily maintenance. As a writer, I know the trap of feeling guilty about not writing. Yesterday, I was feeling particularly fried. Emotional flashbacks are particularly intense for me around holidays, and Mother's Day and Father's day are some of the most difficult days of the year. Father's Day reminds me that I never really had a father....

"It wasn't that bad." "What happened to me is nothing compared to what you're going through." "Well, at least... {insert positive thought here}" "Others have had it so much worse." "It was a long time ago." "Well, there's nothing I can do about it now." Our brains and bodies are experts at self-protection, and minimization is one way we shield ourselves from the reality of abuse. Survivors of trauma can become so good at minimizing their experience, their own self-deception becomes a core identity. Minimization leads to denial and dissociation. Dissociation can lead to split personality disorders and other forms of psychosis. There is another word for minimization. Lying. As I have confronted and come to terms with the real, long term effects of psychological and child sexual abuse in my life, I am shocked how much I minimized the impact over the years. I lied to myself that I was fine. I lied to ever...

My entire childhood was formed around the interests of my father. My mother worked very hard to make him happy, and to ensure that my brother and I fell in line to please him. Like so many toxic parents, they worked together to abuse their children in a classic codependent pattern. My father was angry and aggressive, solely focused on who wasn't giving him the right kind of attention and reverence at any given moment. He viewed the world through a lens in which everyone and every thing was created to please him. He drank through the weekends in search of some escape from himself which never seemed to come. I tried to escape him, too, but I did it through making myself as invisible as possible. The only attention in my family was negative attention. It was much less stressful to be ignored. When I did catch his attention, often it was because of something wrong that he perceived (read: made up) that I did or did not do. On trash day, he'd rage about the trash not taken out ...

How the mind works fascinates me. I'm not a scientist, but I've studied quite a bit about it over the years. There are some fascinating new discoveries (that support ancient truths) about the way the brain stores information and how our physical and emotional health are all connected. Part of my process as I sort through my thoughts and feelings on abuse, is to re-examine all my core beliefs and attitudes that brought me to this point. EMDR therapy is instrumental for me in uncovering and repairing these thoughts. EMDR stands for  Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and it is a process in which the patient recalls a traumatic event and the negative belief about oneself that goes with it. It uses bilateral stimulation, which can be a sound, physical sensation, or a movement the eye follows back forth to ignite both sides of the brain. The process includes a form of exposure therapy to conjure up old traumas and then through the bilateral stimulation, reprogram t...