The seemingly simple questions that throw you in T?

Today my T asked "when did you first learn that your emotions were not ok, that you had to keep quiet if you cried". This has put me into quite a spin. Some things surfaced that I can't explain yet.

I have been all over the place, all week anyway, and this....has added to it. Driving home in the dark with my boy in the car from my sisters place, I suddenly found myself thinking and feeling from a time in the past and I had tears start. I had to gather myself so my boy didn't see.

Do you find this happens also? A seemingly simple question brings a deep and scary response? The past becomes present? Ugh!

Yes ((Jane)), a simple question like that can bring on a deep challenge. It's just meant to help you figure out where the root of your challenge is so you can put together a story of how you were hurt that you had to learn how to work around.

For myself, for a little over a month now I have been dealing with something that has brought on so many triggers that I have been going through hell, even during the night I wake up with the shivers. This goes all the way back to when I was a baby, can you believe that? I have flashbacks of being a baby "cold, wet, shivering, stomach hurting from being hungry", and I must have not been heard for a while for me to remember that. I do know my mother had my brother and sister and my brother was such a handful and my mother had no help.

So, what I learned about myself also from being the youngest, and the chaos in my home because of my older brother is I struggled to be "heard" and I did have some big challenges. That has been an ongoing theme in my life where I needed help and could not find help or went "unheard". Often I was stuck/trapped with someone who had a challenge and was not right that I did not know how to get away from or how to get help for either. Keep in mind that when I broke down in spite of my efforts to ask for help, I was misdiagnosed and did "not" get the help I needed. My family was extremely unsupportive too, it was horrible. Then I was trapped with that lawyer who was mentally declining and I tried to get help over and over and no one would help me, it had to get blatently obvious before "finally" I got away from him.

Right now I have asked "how long" and "no answer" and I can't say enough how triggering that has been, crippling triggering.

So, Jane, I understand how something that might seem small can turn into a big trigger.
When I read about your challenges, I do see your theme too. I am sorry you have these challenges, you need to work through them as they come and be "patient", eventually you will see how your unmet needs have challenged you many times. Jane, it was never "your fault" either, you deserve to grieve it and finally "heal" and in time you will.

((Caring Gently Hugs))
OE

Yes, of course, it can be very simple things, not just words, that trigger all kinds of memories for me.

I can see how that comment would be really significant for you. You fight so hard against the programming you received as a young girl to not show emotion. It's fighting so hard to come out, and then the old message starts up that it's wrong for it to come out.

I say let it all out. At every opportunity. I can see the need to protect your son from the stress of it, but as far as others in your life, like your sister, I would just let them see what they see, and not feel a bit of shame or guilt about it. The rest of your family is probably repressed emotionally as well, I'm guessing.

Just do what you have to do to take care of yourself. The rest of the world be damned.