Hello there
This week, one of the people in my increasingly small circle, had a medical emergency which turned out thankfully to be benign.
Once the good news came through, she was recuperating at home, and I was trying to call her to check in. We kept on missing each other, eg she tells me she was busy, had family visitors over, etc
What I subsequently noticed in me, is that inner voice which says she doesn't want to speak to you....you just being a nuisance...she's with her REAL family, who are you to intrude....
I noticed myself slowly withdrawing, expressed by my ceasing to call, rather texting only once she texted me first. My texts to her also became brief. Over time it came into my awareness how much I was not saying.
Today, in meditation it all came to me. I sensed the something in me that carries the years of hurt of being (mostly emotionally) abandoned by my mother. The very young part that feels unwanted and a burden. The part that carries the knowledge that my mother preferred by brother, and turned away from me. And EXPECTS that everyone will do the same.
What I now see is that the CORE wound for me is (emotional) ABANDONMENT. To me as a layperson, ATTACHMENT or rather the lack of healthy attachment is the opposite side of the same coin.
I also see how this is the inter-generational family wound, especially on my maternal side.
Further I see how this childhood experience plays out destructively as a pattern UNCONSCIOUSLY in my adult life.
I see that this traumatizing experience created different selves or parts, each carrying different emotional energies.
But they all just represent different parts of the same core wound, which are:
1. UNWORTHINESS...I'm UNLOVABLE...unwanted...deserve punishment and mistreatment.
2. TOXIC SHAME..I'm disgusting, bad, defective..something wrong with me...I'm too much for people..I'm a burden...My own mother doesn't like or love me, so why would anyone else want to be close to me.
3. FEAR..DREAD. PANIC ..SCARED.. UNSAFE.. SURVIVAL...How am I going to survive...what's going to happen to me???
Fear of rejection and ABANDONMENT happening again...fear of trusting people....fear of needing people/love....fear of getting close to people..fear of closeness..fear of showing I need love and people and connection..fear of being hurt and annihilated by the abandonment again...fear of being overwhelmed by need for love and dependence.. Fear of SHOWING true emotions..fear of pushing people away or BURDENING people with my neediness...FEAR that I'll always have to be alone, because nobody wants me.
4. RAGE...it's so cruel..how could you to do this..how could you hurt me like this..it's your job as my mother to love me..you betrayed me...rage at God..I try so hard to be a good person how can this happen to me, an innocent child..it;s not fair...rage at father for betraying me and not protecting me from mother
6. LONELINESS...isolated..alienated..I don't belong anywhere. Always the outsider looking in.
7. HUNGER for someone...desperate. Starving for love and connection, to sincerely matter to someone
8. HURT..PAIN..SUFFERING...of never feeling loved..of not having normal needs fulfilled
9. GRIEF ..MOURNING....for loss and pain suffered
Of course for a long time, these parts or responses in me were unconscious, outside my awareness, but still driving my pattern of choices and behaviors, often self-sabotaging my external relationships and interactions with people.
The other insight is how different parts are often in opposition with each other, or have opposing agendas, which may not be on the surface be rational or make sense.
Mapping it like this, and connecting it to my interaction with my friend this week somehow makes me feel a little bit of relief. And maybe gratitude.
Will see what unfolds next. There's likely more that I'm not currently able to see.