|
Guest
|
Jul 25, 2020 at 12:39 PM
Your questions are thoughtful and directly on point for taking next steps to emerging from the initial hell storm of memories.
1) When I began to accumulate at least a dozen memories or outside verification of severe neglect (first year of life), of literal death threats, and of life risking assaults, it still took me months to unreservedly call my own mother's actions abuse. I thought: Good grief, whose own mother does these things? What kind of unlovable freak am I? How am I even here, and how did I get here not knowing? Surely these nightmares and flashbacks will turn out to mean something other than I lived through a Cybil movie.
When I look back now, I see this period of numb disbelief as protective. Again, it's all about survival, all the time, past, present, future. And so I'm putting an answer to your last question next.
3) My view of myself as a survivor has grown in layers of complexity with therapy. But I never saw my dissociation (withdrawing mentally from agony that would be so intolerable as to threaten my sanity and ability to function in between assaults) as somehow taking away from my resilience. As my current therapist says, you developed ingenious ways to not die either from physical abuse or even die of despair. One creative way to survive is to mentally check out until you can breathe again. There are many other ways to get to a space where you are no longer being abused. However, there is a clinical definition of PTSD, with symptoms that are measurable, and that is not value laden, just helpful for direction of treatment and healing.
Remember, we were CHILDREN. We were at primary stages of mental and psychological development. No child can be expected to make sense of their caregiver behaving in ways that can be lethal to that child either physically or psychologically or spiritually. Most of us carry debilitating shame from just having been nearby to such atrocity. A child has "omnipotence" as in the feeling that everything that happens is because of something they did. So I am being abused because I am bad, a burden, a mistake, a loathsome presence.
To me, there is absolutely no difference in resilience or survivorship whether one remembers concurrently or later. None. We all made it out. And I don't judge how we made it out either, unless we abused others. Addictions and acting out and self harm and overachieving and athletics and codependency--just different ways to survive. Some can lead to more life pain than others. (The reason I dissociated is likely an intricate interaction of my sex and my cognitive and personality styles and my SES and my family makeup and the qualities and abusive style of my abuser. Too complicated to make judgments about, so I don't question. It just is.)
And true healing and actual thriving does not involve harming self or others, but if you made it alive to now, you are a survivor in good standing.
2) Allotting time is brilliant. I used that. Keep the damn intrusions cooped up as much as possible.
--Friends and my sister that I could trust (and yes, I don't trust well because Erickson's first stage of trust/distrust was utterly blown up for me) were crucial. I had 2 same sex friends who understood something about psychology and trauma. (My ex spouse was of no help.) I had permission to call them anytime, day or night, and talk about the new memory or talk about a tv show, just talk to a human who intended me no harm and conveyed no impatience. (Sometimes I called hotlines to give friends a break.) Sometimes I was doing my breathing and self talk and grounding exercises out loud to them on the phone.
--(These tools are also critical.)
--I had 2 precious children to not just live but be healthy for. Thank God they are both loving humans who showed great compassion for me when they were old enough for me to share just a fraction of my past with them.
--I read everything about recovery, including psychological texts on treatment. Knowing why and what and how made me feel empowered.
--I kept an updated vision of my future, healed, successful, confident self always before me.
--I had a relentless determination to win this battle and not allow the evil that was my mother to defeat me.
--I drained myself of adrenaline with physical exercise.
--I had the BEST therapists, a woman who got me through the first and worst, and then a man she referred me to after she moved out of state. Worth their weight in gold. Not a single penny wasted for someone who is capable of accompanying me in ways that directly lead to my truly traumatic wounds being healed. Saved my life.
--For me personally, I have a faith that sustains me. The fact that I'm maintained a belief in a God who intended far better for me is testimony to that God's love for me, even though I screamed at God in agony and fury many times throughout. God never flinched.
I cannot express to you how much I respect your courage and your integrity and your iron will to soldier  through. This is not a battle for the faint of heart. You are doing God's work for your own God-beloved self.
Those of us who know what it takes salute you. 
|
|
|
 Reply With Quote
|