the child within the child within me
I experienced a trigger yesterday.
As I thought about my reaction to it while it was happening and after, I gained some insight.
My work in therapy has centered largely on acknowledging the pain that the child that I was still feels.
I have made progress to the point that I am often consciously aware of my reactions to triggers as they occur and sometimes able to focus on the feelings I am experiencing (rather than the thinking about the trigger in terms of images, etc.) and where they come from.
I have been frustrated because I often cannot locate the deepest origin of the feelings I experiencebetrayal and helplessness.
I have also been struck by the image of myself that often pops into my mind when he is feeling pain. I view him from some distance. I see that he is about 7 years old. His stands still on a grassy hillside (which is familiar to me) at what seems to be dusk. There are no other people around. It is very still. His face is empty of expression.
I wrote in my journal about needing to anticipate every possible question and coming up with an answer to it in order to avoid scrutiny and embarrassment, to make myself less vulnerable and more invisible. I wrote about feeling shame and guilt and wondered about where that came from. It seemed that the anticipating, as intense as it was/is, was/is merely on the surface.
I asked myself what lay at the core of the pain, what was its nature, what was its origin?
I realized then that there are no words to answer those questions, absolutely no words, only feelings, because the child that I was when I first experienced abuse did not comprehend what was happening at the time in any way like I comprehend things now and especially not in words.
If he heard words then, he did not comprehend them. If he saw anything it was not comprehended in much of any context of experience. Instead, the abuse and its effects were the context in which he began to perceive life and understand it as he grew older. Withdrawal from confrontation didnt even have that word to describe it; disassociation to various degrees was just a way of being in the world, seeing the world.
Panic is the constant common denominator in his (my) interaction with other people, no matter how long he has known them, no matter how clearly and often they express their love for him.
Underlying everything is the conviction that they (everyone he interacts with) will, one way or another, eventually, hurt him.
Learning new ways of being in the world and seeing the world is extraordinarily difficult. I am aware that this is not fair but then, its what I have to deal with it, and I finally am dealing with it, little by little.
Within me is that 7 year old boy and within him an infant all 3 mes deserve release into a happy, loving world.
As I thought about my reaction to it while it was happening and after, I gained some insight.
My work in therapy has centered largely on acknowledging the pain that the child that I was still feels.
I have made progress to the point that I am often consciously aware of my reactions to triggers as they occur and sometimes able to focus on the feelings I am experiencing (rather than the thinking about the trigger in terms of images, etc.) and where they come from.
I have been frustrated because I often cannot locate the deepest origin of the feelings I experiencebetrayal and helplessness.
I have also been struck by the image of myself that often pops into my mind when he is feeling pain. I view him from some distance. I see that he is about 7 years old. His stands still on a grassy hillside (which is familiar to me) at what seems to be dusk. There are no other people around. It is very still. His face is empty of expression.
I wrote in my journal about needing to anticipate every possible question and coming up with an answer to it in order to avoid scrutiny and embarrassment, to make myself less vulnerable and more invisible. I wrote about feeling shame and guilt and wondered about where that came from. It seemed that the anticipating, as intense as it was/is, was/is merely on the surface.
I asked myself what lay at the core of the pain, what was its nature, what was its origin?
I realized then that there are no words to answer those questions, absolutely no words, only feelings, because the child that I was when I first experienced abuse did not comprehend what was happening at the time in any way like I comprehend things now and especially not in words.
If he heard words then, he did not comprehend them. If he saw anything it was not comprehended in much of any context of experience. Instead, the abuse and its effects were the context in which he began to perceive life and understand it as he grew older. Withdrawal from confrontation didnt even have that word to describe it; disassociation to various degrees was just a way of being in the world, seeing the world.
Panic is the constant common denominator in his (my) interaction with other people, no matter how long he has known them, no matter how clearly and often they express their love for him.
Underlying everything is the conviction that they (everyone he interacts with) will, one way or another, eventually, hurt him.
Learning new ways of being in the world and seeing the world is extraordinarily difficult. I am aware that this is not fair but then, its what I have to deal with it, and I finally am dealing with it, little by little.
Within me is that 7 year old boy and within him an infant all 3 mes deserve release into a happy, loving world.
