It's a big challenge when pulling apart one's history, especially early childhood challenges. Part of this challenge is having our adult mind finally see the things that frightened us as children that we "hid" from and genuinely did not have the capacity to understand.

One of the things I finally recognized about my own history is in that being the youngest child a lot of the dysfunction taking place in my family tended to be taken out on me in some way. What I saw was how my older sister and older brother "hated" each other and then I also saw the dysfunction taking place between my parents where my father constantly criticized my mother. It just seemed that no matter how much my mother tried to look nice, or cook a nice meal, my father NEVER just thanked her but instead always found something about how she looked or cooked or anything she did he could criticize.

This created a deep disturbance in me where I always hated the "X vs Y" and how much that contributed to me not feeling safe to the point where I suffered from developing stress hormones that would challenge me all of my life. However, the one thing I often faced is how others would tell me that I did not deserve to place value in whatever I did manage to accomplish and love. What I tended to experience for as long as I can remember is how others around me in my life tended to take their problems and anger and issues out on me.

When I was in therapy one day and talking and talking about so many things that I experienced and my therapist gently stopped me because at the same time I was crying and the tears were running down my cheeks, he taught me how without realizing it, I had learned how to run from my feelings.

For a long time the one person that kept triggering me was my older sister. I would get flashbacks, and I did not realize that my sister was the trigger. Recently she called me and her tone towards me was so mean and she would not allow me to say anything in my own defense, especially not about how I felt. She also said, "I don't have time for your drama", and what that really meant was that she NEVER had the time to see whatever I was feeling, and that what she really always wanted is things to be about "her" and "her" feelings.

On a very deep level, I worried about how much she contributed to my imprinting. I think we can "fear" being anything like the person who hurt us or was toxic. She was four years older than me and when we are very young we all tend to emulate an older sibling, especially if that older sibling is given any kind of authority over us.

It took me a long time to see that I am really "not" like her, but that I had given her too much power, and that is something that is VERY toxic for me in the now. When I say I gave her too much power, what I really mean by that is she had too much power over my self esteem. What I am seeing more now than ever before is how "she" always had to be the boss and the one in control and she made it clear how she was not happy if that was challenged.

I have come to recognize how that contributed to my struggling whenever I take on a leadership role. There has always been a deep seeded sense or stress hormone trigger that I will be punished for it if I do.

However, even though she made it clear to me what I can and cannot do or have, I did do things "I" wanted to do when she was not around to punish me. Part of what I did do is when I played with other children, even when I played with my older brother whom my sister NEVER wanted me to do or even be nice to him, was I made it a point to not be like my sister and instead allowed others to be leaders and feel they could do what they wanted.

I always had this feeling that something was over my shoulder standing in judgement or would punish me in some way. I never knew what it was and FINALLY saw what it was just recently after all these years, "it was and always has been my older sister". Truth is, I never saw it because it was always there from the very beginning of my life when I was a baby and she was four years old.

Also, whatever she wanted or had was something I was not supposed to have. For example, I loved the color blue but because SHE wanted to have it and that was the color her room got to be, I had to pick something else. I would never do that with children, I would never set it up where the oldest gets to have her way like that but instead allow the children to be able to enjoy what they like. I was so glad when I got my own place and could finally have what "I" wanted.

There are things going on now in my life where my older sister is triggering me badly.
It's taken me a long time to "slowly" figure it out because sometimes her behaviors leave me with being severely triggered for several days and not even knowing "why".

There were things I experienced in my childhood that most definitely traumatized me and severely affected my sense of safety and because of that I developed stress hormones that I thought were normal but were "not".

It definitely takes time to slowly figure out the things that "hurt/stressed" us in our past and sometimes we can have "fears" that whatever it is will be something that is bad or that others will not understand. I think that what each person tries to do unknowingly is find ways to "overcome" whatever it was that stressed/hurt/confused them when they were too young to understand whatever it was that contributed to them not feeling "safe".

However, it's important to remember that this is actually how we are designed to be as human beings in that whatever we see as a threat becomes something we develop a desire to somehow "fix".