I put my armor on when I was still a baby or a toddler and never again took it off at home.
Maybe I first put it on when I was left to cry it out as a baby or when I was spanked for crying after they woke me up from naps as a one-year-old. Maybe when I was spanked for expressing my desires or feelings, so I'd know I couldn't always get what I wanted. Or when I was thrown all alone into a closed room to cry until I passed out when I dared to cry as a toddler.
These may have been things that I felt. Things that made me cry and hurt my feelings back when my parents were still able to make me cry and hurt my feelings.
But I don't remember these events. I only learned about them from things my father said.
And after that, all my memories of my parents are emotional blanks, save for some anger, frustration, and fear.
They made me angry, but they never made me cry, not that I remember. I'm a warrior, not a wimp.
Where can I start? What can I go back to? Where can I dig, when feelings are so far into the past, before I even started remembering?
Anger was the first emotion that my counselor tapped into. He worked at getting me angry. Took him quite a while to succeed. Then he taught me that other emotions we hidden behind the emotion usually hurt, fear, and frustration. He never worked at getting me to feel the sunnier emotions. I thought about that. I realized that when he taught me to feel the anger and the emotions that went with it then the joy and happiness came on their own. I still remember one day sitting in rush hour traffic with my car moving very slowly and just feeling so happy that I almost cried. I felt filled with it. However, there was a lot of anger and hurt to process first. I also found that art helped me get past the time when I had no words. Drawing, photography, painting, clay, wood working, all allowed expressions of emotion to come to the surface. I still don't cry much but I feel a whole gamut of feelings. This from a woman that wouldn't get angry when I started counseling. No tears, no anger, no feelings, no joy....It takes time...There will be pain...in my opinion it is worth it.
ReplyDeleteI can really relate... have started feeling all but "hurt" - anger, frustration, sadness, and also joy and happiness.
DeleteBut the idea of being or having been "hurt" by my parents... almost unbelievable.
Took me a long time to wrap my mind around how much my parents hurt me. I still feel sad sometimes when I think that perhaps I didn't do much better. My children however are quick to assure me that I did allow them to feel their feelings. I couldn't help them process what they felt but I did encourage them to feel what they felt.
DeleteYou've MORE than "started," PA: It seems you're right in the thick of it at this time. Anger, frustration and fear are POWERFUL emotions and they didn't arise out of the ether either. My earliest feelings very much mirror yours: Fear/Terror and Helplessness. My memories however, go back to the crib-literally.
ReplyDelete"...the idea of having been hurt by my parents..." Yes, it IS "almost unbelievable." Especially when we have our own kids and would take a bullet for them, hurt when they're hurting...Ex: When they're getting those "shots" which I now note some are given as a nasal mist. (Unlike those nasty reusable needles which felt like nail guns in our little butts or arms.) The concept that kids are "fun" to torment, abuse, ignore, rage at, devalue etc. meant the "Monsters Under The Bed" or "In the Closet" were REAL; they didn't have to hide or wait until it got dark to make their presence known. I only had one "Repeat Nightmare" as a child and I had it for years, long beyond the typical "Night Terror" stage. It involved a hand annihilating me, killing me. Guess who "delivered" me to this over-sized, "Humongous" stylized hand in that nightmare? Psychob. And she was smiling as she pushed me into it's palm and laughed as the "fingers" were closing over me. The "Hand" represented her, but was separate entity from her in the dream: Even our dreams "realize" how much would be too much for a child to acknowledge.
I agree with Ruth: It took me a long, long time to acknowledge what happened, to grieve (I do believe grief work is the hardest "stuff" I've done in my lifetime) and honor my feelings and their importance. Sounds like this is what you're doing. Please know you're not alone, Little One. We're walking next to you even if you can't see us, we're there. As well as "here."
TW