Tag: #traumasurvivor

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Magnolias and Scripts

Love my smoothies by the water and the magnolia trees in bloom right now. Simple pleasures when life is so complicated.

My boundaries suck. I fancy myself to be someone who strives to be impeccable with my word and yet my trauma threatens to undermine me in this area all the time. I resent my codependency. Do I really deserve to suffer like this the rest of my life? Like a trap I can’t get out of. See the codependent victim right there.

Telling everyone else what they should do with their life, when I’m not getting paid for it 😉 No Christina. Here’s what I’m responsible for my boundaries, how I feel, and sharing that clearly and concisely after I have sorted it, and the most important part following through and sticking too. That’s my fucking job right now.

The stakes on my recovery are too important so I shall continue to be transparent about my struggles and leave other people to theirs, unless I’m getting paid for it.

How much can I actually modify about this rabid out of bounds “fixing”. That’s frustrating. Lately when I’m quiet it’s because I don’t trust what will come out of my mouth. That I won’t go on and on in my process until I stick my foot in my mouth, or burden others with responsibility for my emotions by sheer panic of it all. 🙁 ugh! Charlie Brown! I’m a block head.

Say what you mean and mean what you say and take time to think about it before you say it are words I’m living by right now. And follow through. I can preach it but I find when I’m most frustrated it is because I’m not in fact practicing it. Humbling.

A comfort I can find right now is I’ve finally become strong enough to sit in these realizations without excusing them, etc. if I stay in them, stay acknowledging, then shifts are being made. Shifts are being made and it’s exciting. But it requires me to keep leaving behind things I once loved because it doesn’t work. And previously I would have just tried harder and fought and now I’m forced to let go if we don’t meet up naturally with where we are in our work.

That sucks !

I’m grumpy today. This overly heavy period with an impending medical procedure to remedy it, doesn’t help. I’m anxious that at any second I’ll be in a very uncomfortable situation, and I’m exhausted as a result.

I’ve been doing administrative work today and that never puts me in a good mood. It’s that itself that may shift me in a different direction career wise at least with how I structure my operation. I do not want to be beholden to anyone and I want to create my own way of doing what I do. I’m not sure yet whether this will require RE branding or what I will need to do to figure it out. But the winds of change are blowing.

I already have my own way of doing what I do but I don’t have any structure into explaining what that is. I don’t know if I need to, but it’s probably delicately intertwined with my writing and the next direction of my life.

I’m worried about my health insurance, worried about all the up in the airs right now. I have literally no idea about a lot of these things and I have lots of steps to take for right now. Financial advising, because there are lots of answers I don’t have with regard to what I have and where I need to put it to be secure. What I can allocate to where. I’d say this is a good problem to have considering the scarcity I’ve been in most of my life made that not even something to worry about because there weren’t those choices or options.

The paradox of choice… the more we have the more overwhelmed we are. And overwhelmed and I are not good bed fellows. No one likes it but for me being overwhelmed on an already overtaxed nervous system puts me over the edge so easy. I resent that. More grouchy.

Recently in my own therapy a topic is how to share with my kids some of what my life was like in a constructive way. My therapist has suggested I rehearse the following until I can say it without becoming emotional. I resent being asked not to become emotional about such things, but she knows I don’t want to dump my emotions all over my children so they feel they have to carry them.

So I am to recite the details clearly and concisely like this. My mother was mentally ill, my father was a little in and out until he wasn’t (with no explanation just a lot of speculation), I was Dcf involved and removed, I was put into the care of my grandparents who didn’t want to be raising anymore children, and was frequently reminded of this fact. I spent the rest of my life trying to find somewhere I could belong and be safe and that process was not easy.

As a mother I’m still trying to figure this out and my role. What I have done and been committed to is providing for you as best as I could while figuring this out and having only good people around you. Those were my primary focuses while I’m trying to find out where I belong and who I am in all of this.

Well when you put it like that.

Say that without feeling any emotions or going into the details to try and recover my feelings. Sure. Easy peasy. I’ll get right on that Rose.

Well if my mood was going to be helped it would not be from that, but I’ll keep reciting it and doing the work and looking for glimmers. The little things that shine through that show the work is working.

Work work work work….

Trying to not feel shamed or a victim for the things I chose to focus on to survive.

It’s not easy…..

Nothing good ever is….

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There’s no place like home

It kills me how your mind can make you feel so worthless, so before you go…..

Before You Go…..

The girl who tried to figure out her life from the movies. Who tried to learn about healthy versus unhealthy. I’ve been teased my whole life about a variety of things. I’ve often wondered what has made me such a target for that. Do I wear a sign?

“The music you listen to is always so sad.” Teased about my romantic comedies or watching movies, listening to songs, on repeat.

The truth is those were my friends. That’s how pathologically lonely I was. Those were the closest things I had to connection. Just another 80’s kid raised by the boob tube. That was my most innocuous “parent”.

So this morning I’m thinking of how certain movies shaped periods of time in my life and how they represented what I wanted most and many aspects of who I was, that I didn’t yet know. Like an archaeologist trying to discover myself and create myself.

And with the movies came the music, Pink, Lewis Capaldi, Andy Grammar, Calum Scott, XX Ambassadors (I can’t tell how many times I’ve listened to Unsteady) Kelly Clarkson Piece by Piece and so many more…..

2016 was characterized by a few main movies. Stuck in Love. The Vow. Julie and Julia. The Holiday. And Me Before you. These movies represented what I wanted that I didn’t feel I had, and who I was that I didn’t know as well. Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci, graceful in their love through thick and thin. I wanted to have that and I wanted to be it.

“We don’t talk to each other like that”, the Vow. So much in there… a woman who left her family for its toxicity and found healing in love and then tragedy hits them anyway, and can they find their way back to each other. After a traumatic brain injury she forgets why she left her family and that’s of course what she seeks comfort in, what she goes back to, and why she left and her love with her husband is lost with the accident. Will she find her way back? He has to watch her knowing why she left in the first place and his only choice is to watch her have to figure it out herself, as he stands there having lost everything.

Stuck in love, a young writer feels everything so much. He’s sensitive and different and falls in love for the first time with an addict and the pain that is involved in that. While his writer father and sister navigate their own stuff.

Me Before You. Can a person with a special spirit and zest for living even while having very little, help a quadriplegic who never wanted for anything reclaim his will to live when he can’t live the way he used to. Can he help convince her there is more to life outside her little bubble. Live bravely Clark.

The Holiday. Cameron Diaz tries to be able to cry (this was me at one point) to be anything but a workaholic, while across the world Rose McGowan travels the perils of unrequited love and her brother tries to navigate being a single dad and feeling if anyone could ever love all of them as a package. They cross paths and learn and try for love amidst the wreckage. People finding themselves.

So much pain inherent in the human experience.

I watched from the outside, nose pressed to the glass of the proverbial fish tank. The screen of a television. Are the answers in there somewhere? How could the answers for my life be in someone else’s? But where else was I supposed to learn from.

So considering I patched together an identity loosely from anything I could get my hands on. Tv, watching people, my thoughts, but never anything consistent. There was never anything consistent except fear. Anxiety was my other companion. Movies, television, and anxiety. And I watched everyone and everything to try to crack some code. How to survive?

Looking back I did it well I think. But in it, in it I was always wrong or bad. Always running from the bad inside me that must have been to not have connections like other people did. Why did they have them and I didn’t? I was bad by default. I begged to be seen and loved, and then the world came along and asked me why I tried so hard. And told me I was too intense, too this, too sensitive. Too little of this and too much of that. I was always wrong.

Always trying to prove I was good, I wasn’t a burden, I was worth loving. God it hurts and then shamed on top for every behavior I ever used to survive. I think that’s the worst part.

So my movies of 2020 (the end of 2020 most of it I didn’t watch anything). Five Feet Apart. The Greatest Showman. The Secret Life of Pets. Silver Linings Playbook. Mermaids. And Life Itself.

The 2016 movies were what I wanted to create for myself, what I longed for. What I tried to make. And when that all fell apart without my own solid identity, the 2020 movies were part what I needed…

Touch, to believe in what I was capable of accomplishing, to accept myself the way I am as is (“can you say the same fucker, can you love all your dirty parts”), to be adopted to belong, and that when life brings you to your knees, when you’re lower than you think you can ever go, if you stand back up, you’ll always find love.

I needed to find mine. Because I was just existing to be useful, and I was never going to create my own destiny or write my story unless I could be connected to myself.

I didn’t even know anything about that. But the world expected me to. It’s a given right? It wasn’t for me, and rarely does anyone truly see that about me.

And when you try to figure out your life from the movies that feels insane and bad and wrong. I was supposed to have my own identity and since I didn’t I must be fucked up right ? Missing some important thing that other people just seemed to have. So much shame.

How could I do that to myself for the things I developed to make it out alive.

Also when you try to figure out your life from the movies as it turns out you can act like you’re in one and live in short snippets characterized by dramatic changes and never realize the full impact.

I figured that out this past year. I figured out a lot of things besides just how to not chew spearmint gum while wearing a mask and sunglasses, and how to survive the apocalypse. After my life it’s going to take a lot more to do me in.

I’ve been searching my whole life for consistency in connection outside myself, when it was there with me all along. This blog post is probably incredibly disjointed just like my mind. When I think it it’s beautiful and organized and poetic, when it comes out through my shattered parts, you’ll have to make a mosaic…. just like I have.

Click your heels three times Christina, there’s no place like home.

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Victims and Perpetrators

“There are three sides to every story”, makes me want to throw up.

https://medium.com/the-ascent/in-an-abusive-relationship-there-are-not-two-sides-to-the-story-dc833dbc3af5

Who would’ve thought that taking responsibility for your own joy and happiness could be so difficult.

Who knew that it’s much easier to place it in the hands of others. (I think of Iyanla and myself before I came across her saying a relationship with others is only a reflection of our relationship with ourselves, ok good so a pervasive lack of self trust and some major attachment shit? Fun) Easier in the moment and more difficult in the long run.

Story of the ultimate human battle: discipline over satiation. Long term satisfaction over immediate. Well when you don’t think you’ll even live to see the next day now it all makes sense.

The legacy of the trauma survivor in so many ways is being sentenced to only live life in the current moment, and at times inside their own imagination because that is the only safe route.

Momentary safety overrides all other mental processes.

I’m thinking a lot about roles and boundaries lately. This makes sense as I am parenting teenagers, or as I like to call it herding cats 😉 Pema would say trying to get all the frogs in a bowl, and nobody likes a bowl of dead frogs lol. Fail, fail again, fail better she says.

Am I failing better these days or sentenced to life without parole inside my pattern? Stay tuned. I am failing better, but the fall is no less hard. I am angry at the fault lines inside of me laid down without my consent. Angry!

It’s lonely right now and yet it’s not. It’s lonely in a new way. A secure loneliness perhaps is taking over a desperate one, and maybe that will make all the difference in the world.

My thoughts are ahead of their time and I’m always ahead of myself. That’s a lot to come to terms with.

The proverbial cart is always before the damn horse. “How did you get the beans above the frank”, I’ve turned silly now. There’s Something About Mary reference and I suppose no better metaphor for the situations I get myself in could be had, no less painful.

There is no greater pain than to not be able to trust oneself and reality. This is a suffering I wouldn’t wish on anyone. In a matrix of my own making. I guess when you lived alone with only your imagination and your initiative this makes sense. And frantically looking for answers outside, rather than anyone helping. And worse being used and manipulated. It’s worse than I thought….

The benefit of childhood wounds directly at the surface is the opportunity to RE parent and become steadfast and solid. Not the same thing as boring and stagnant but they can often be confused for the other.

No black and white and there isn’t 50 Shades of Anything. A ridiculous fantasy. There’s just one foot in front of the other and I intend to taste and be the damn rainbow. Whatever that means. Like I said stay tuned.

The chronology of me…. another potential book title. Throw it in the pile with the rest as my attention threatens to betray me at every turn.

Just when you don’t think you can’t handle any more betrayal ….

I betrayed myself. And there’s nothing worse than that.

It’s a long way home…

And then she danced….

That’s been the longest running book title.

It and I are a work in progress that currently resembles a pile of raw meat. Shredded. Pulverized. The perpetrator and the victim and there is no reprieve.

Pema would say lean into the raw vulnerability. And I would cry out I’m exhausted of that, and some other voice from far away would say, hush Christina, you are just beginning, not ending. Why won’t you see it. You’re the only one who doesn’t.

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If I had it to do over

If I had it to do over… an open letter about the effects of my trauma on my children.

Lately so many things are clear and it’s left a lot of truth that’s difficult to sit in. College planning meetings for my Junior twin daughters is illuminating certain things.

I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for my whole life and lately I’ve been letting it out, cautiously.

I never realized how much anxiety I had and how much of my life was governed by trauma. I thought I was the boss of me. I was but as it turns out not such a nice one. When you are your own parent, for me I made a harsh one to keep me out of what I came from. That’s the best I could do.

My own parent and then their parent has me exhausted in ways that someone never should be, and all of that has impacted them. For better and for worse.

I wake up and realize my children all took honors classes and did well. They have all earned the ability to go to college and the privilege of spending some years just discovering who they are. My heart hurts at my own pain of this line, and also the pain I’ve caused.

I am humbled and I’ve been forced to stop shaming myself because ultimately it’s not productive and not the only way to get myself into action.

The song From Now On from the Greatest Showman, has been my go to lately. One right step in front of the other. Full presence with myself and my children, and the rest will figure itself out.

I cry a lot lately. There’s a lot of grief in here.

The piano tuner, a friend of my teacher, will be here at 9 am. I’m excited about that. Maybe it will get me to practice. And I’m going to have lunch with my son.

What has emerged once I finally stopped scrambling wildly in panic is someone who does want to be present and focused on her kids. I always did. Just the best I could do at the time was supporting them in all the other ways, emotionally I wasn’t available to myself. So afraid of being a refrigerator mother or doing something awful like mine I stayed frozen, away from their love too and joy even.

Over the years I’ve been thawing. If you pull someone too quickly from the ice they brought down through they will die. You have to let them adjust slowly.

My thaw has been excruciating. I’ve been living in this pain all of this time and still functioning and I’ve hurt people along the way, especially myself. And I’ve done a lot of good too. My heart is always in the right place but my god I make mistakes.

And right on cue Andy Grammer comes on singing I will fight for you. Watching Five Feet Apart resonates lately because I too have been fighting for my life, to get my spirit and soul back and connected to my body. To feel safe. But it wasn’t visible. So painful.

So I can really take in how beautiful my children are and this life is. What even is that to be privileged to see life this way? To think calmly. My eyes well up as I write this.

All I can do is show up. That’s what I’m doing right now. Not talking about it doing it, because it’s the right thing for me, because I feel it. I had to show up for me first, not the act of selfishness it can appear. It was something else. Something hard to explain or understand but real nevertheless.

Showing up, one interaction at a time with presence, support, warmth, attachment, encouragement. This is what the reduction in panic has given way to.

I am here and I’ll love you fiercely. I had to claim me first and I had to figure out how to do that.

I will be here the rest of your lives cheering you on and watching you.

I am your biggest fan…..

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Becoming a Goddess of Love

And when you react intensely and immediately to each happening it clouds judgment and vision. Sigh. An example of a Goddess of love is Pema Chodron.

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one. – Bruce Lee

My clinical work for today is thinking about what things “narcissists” (deeply entrenched patterns of behavior) and trauma survivors have in common. My legacy was always being afraid I was or could become the destruction I came from. So I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to sort this. But I couldn’t do it with only my head. I had to journey through to get my heart open first. A hero’s quest.

If you saw my human mistakes you would smirk at the idea I’m any kind of hero.

Knowing my heart how could I have so many behaviors that showed a lack of empathy when I in fact have so much?

Well as I untangle I realize my wires were crossed/ my narrative was confused.

The problems I have are primarily regulation which deeply impacts my decision making systems.

Decision making systems and belief systems are both deeply ingrained. My coping mechanism became act quickly because the second I Doubted myself in my situations at home and got too much empathy for my family members it was like a bright shock of pain.

I got so tired of that white hot pain that I developed a cut off mechanism and fast forward movement. It was deeply ingrained. The problem was there was no data for best practices. When to use this and when not to. So that led to a whole heap of trouble in my life.

I can shame myself for it or figure it out, or better yet use understanding to adapt a better trait. This last example requires resources and a sense of security though.

A sense of security. Something I’ve lived most of my entire life without. I might as well have been deprived of oxygen and have an only partially functioning brain. But since what I got was an over functioning brain, in over drive. The only conclusion was shame.

I was smart enough and strong enough, but having not ever been safe enough, even once I was I couldn’t perceive it. And perception is everything that we intend to operate from. What can actually happen however is we can and do operate subconsciously. Unless the effort has been made to bring into awareness our operators. And bringing into our awareness is exactly what a trauma survivor can’t access.

I won’t even say avoids because that’s too much responsibility for what we have been through. However once you know you know and then have the option to use accountability to change.

You need a motivator, a desire, a will, and also discipline. Try to get a once abused child to accept more discipline even from themselves and you’ll see a tantrum that could rival a child being plucked from an amusement park against their will.

Arrested developments and over developments have plagued my days most of my life. Trying to manage this could be a full time job without any others and no one is going to come along and understand that. You’ll be sized up and judged by the standardized operations of society, and more shame will become internalized.

Shame is an ocean I swim across. But no longer will I become my own jailer. At one point during my course of therapy I was told that I kept myself in my own cage type of deal. The child in me rebelled against that painful notion because all she heard was it’s your fault. But really what my therapist was saying is that you have the power.

I heard it’s my fault about everything, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d find a place where I could believe it’s within my power. My capabilities. My awesomeness.

I am reading Diana Herself by Martha Beck. The whimsical tale of how a dumpster baby who was unwanted realizes she is…. actually I won’t spoil it…. someone wanting their ego to know the ending versus having the experience would probably figure it out much faster than me.

Ironically enough I’m less interested in figuring it out than I am learning from the journey.

So my conclusion about myself on this gorgeous Sunday is that I correct my mistakes. Once I know and can connect to how it feels the impact I have on people I change those things even when the tank has been bone dry for years. This line triggered a memory from Paulo Coehlo …. the thing that’s magical about a desert is that somewhere it contains a well.

I submit for you another Andy Grammer song for today. I came across this for the first time today and what a title. I wish you pain isn’t this everything we try to avoid as a human?

This is the cornerstone of Buddhist teaching and why it resonates with me so much. The double bind of a trauma survivor is that they quite literally cannot handle any more pain. So even if they were born with a spirit for journeys and legends they become hijacked by an override, and the resulting pain at being held behind the gate when they have so much living to do.

See how I slipped out of first person there? It’s a trauma survivor habit. A subtle way to dissociate is to begin to generalize. This and many more behaviors, mechanisms are the beginnings of narcissism.

To undo narcissism you need to get the story straight, feel the burn, and use behaviors and language that use accountability but don’t spill over into shame. It’s a tight rope walk for sure, but it’s not impossible.

You can no longer use a story to comfort yourself and that will feel like dying over and over again until you come back to life with an open heart.

That has been my pilgrimage. The road I have been walking without even knowing it because I was clouded by the conventions of society and a thick swamp of toxic fucking shame.

Shame is the root of all horrible behavior and as I see it the only thing to be ashamed of is if you know better and keep doing it anyway. Then you deserve any shame that you have regardless of what has happened in your life.

We do have a choice. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a choice. For me the choice is to hold myself accountable enough to be responsible in the lives of others, to walk gently with my fellow humans. And gentle is not something I had ever been taught much about.

Nature and loving people who stay are who taught me about being gentle. I tried to be ever so gentle with others, but vicious to myself and that didn’t work either. I had to start all the way back at the beginning as a baby. Wobbly legs and learn to walk gently.

I only knew how to run. Today I kiss my tiny hand and begin to practice grace. That I know will be a whole other journey, it is not the destination.

So what do trauma survivors and narcissists have in common? Impulsivity and the ability to disconnect from their actions and the consequences.

Where do they differ which is perhaps the more important question. The differ in their choices to take accountability for their own healing. A trauma survivor has a genuine desire to better themselves, a narcissist has a genuine desire for things to be better and they will do so at all costs.

Self reflection is the primary key to all healing, but it isn’t enough, it must lead to actionable changes so that the shift can be embodied.

Most people will never do this work it’s far too painful. They would rather ping pong back and forth inside their own story with their own narrative and act from that place. A place of fear.

Not all bravery is good and not all shame is bad. That all depends on the story.

Getting the story straight when you have been scrambled a thousand times over is nothing short of a miracle.

It’s a good thing I’ve always believed in miracles …..

How does one become a Goddess of Love? Suffering through the painful realizations of their own shortcomings and story and using that to become better.

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I will fight for you

I talked the talk but I had never walked the walk. I was a walking talking coping mechanism. A projection of an idea of how to do life. Ahead in my thinking, behind in my development, the chronology of me is a many scattered thing.

It’s Sunday. Glorious Sunday. And I’ve had some lessons as of late. I thought it would never happen, that I would never be on the other side of the immense painful losses I’ve been wading in. Now don’t get me wrong I’m no where near finished with this journey, we shall say I’ve turned a corner.

What has broken through is not being able to keep the habits of thinking that have been deeply embedded. The sheer terror my mind goes to at the first sight of anything, and how I try to find myself wrong or bad as a means to force the humanity out of myself, so I can be a good little soldier.

My eyes are welling as I write that and of course that makes me nervous that I’ll have another migraine. Yesterday was the first day I’ve been migraine free this month. It’s interesting to be full circle on truly realizing and not just theorizing the toll that trauma wreaks on a body.

All my old anxiety symptoms resurfaced. The last time I was feeling like this I was in a relationship that wasn’t meant for me, but was again so good for my kids that the only conclusion was I had fucked it up. I can look back and see that wouldn’t have been a good situation and I did the right thing but all I’ve done as I’ve attempted to carry my trauma flawlessly all these years is internalize more shame due to its impact. Wow I really just said that out loud.

After a year of intensive therapy two times a week including emdr and energy healing as well, and music therapy.

I now have a clearer picture of the impact on me, and not just the impact of me on others.

The toxic shame is finally lifting if even a little so some light can come in. Not a distraction or addiction but some actual light.

As it turns out staying a course consistently does do what they say. The mystical they. There is something other than just darkness and fear on the other side.

What’s on the other side? Compassion and the ability to value myself. Holy shit! That can’t be a real. Ok now I actually am crying.

It’s surreal.

I can be embarrassed at the way I’ve operated, ashamed, self flagellate. Or I can in the words of Elizabeth Gilbert kiss my tiny hand and forgive myself.

Elizabeth Gilbert who told an intimate story at the international women’s summit two years ago of how she was to take care of her partner Rayya as she was dying. And she in her overwhelm wasn’t removing the sticky film on her pain patches so her partner was in excruciating pain for days before they figured out why. The moment they figured it out she looked over at Rayya who looked her with compassion, knowing she would feel terrible. And Elizabeth was unable to receive that, as she was being so hard on herself.

So the story she told was that so ashamed was she that she took herself into the bathroom and cried and rocked. She then thought of a friend who had turned her back on her toddler for a second and the child got into an accident in the home and died. And she thought if she could be able to forgive herself for that that she must. So she kissed her tiny hand and emerged.

She of course told the story much better. She hugged me that week after a luncheon, after reading some of my words. I’ve had encounters with her before but was too scared to bother or approach her. This time with a little help I was able to have the courage.

She didn’t let go first. She hugged me. Not like a fan that she had to hug it was genuine and it was life changing. I went back to the room and sobbed and literally couldn’t focus on the rest of the workshop. Elizabeth Gilbert via Eat Pray Love was the first person who ever gave me permission to be a messy human and still love myself.

So it makes sense she also taught me one of the best lessons on mercy, which was a theme of the conference. On what it truly means to live.

So as I sit and find mercy and compassion for myself from this last year of my life and reflect on the work I’ve done and how that is revealing the quality in my life…. I am in awe.

I never thought it would get better. And here we are the kids are thriving and it’s not the worst thing in the world. It has felt like it, and that resulting attitude and behavior was the bad part. Once I dropped into my heart everything began to shift, and I couldn’t have done it without my children (my greatest teachers), my friends, my therapist, my energy healer who is amazing by the way, my piano teacher, and my clients.

My clients being brave is often the thing that inspires me most.

It’s humbling to realize I thought I could fix my past just by being a counselor. I hadn’t even scratched the surface on my own work yet. I had myself convinced I had. And that was part of a carefully crafted defense mechanism made by my childhood. I came with a lot of those, that operated completely outside my consciousness. I wanted to believe otherwise. Denial is a powerful powerful seductress.

So if you want a realistic account at least from one persons journey of deep healing work. How it really works is so slowly you can barely notice. Unnoticeable shifts…. so slow that sometimes you fall into despair because you feel it will never be better, and sometimes epiphanies are like a fireworks show big and bright and exciting.

Staying the course of having my own back, and getting out of toxic shame. If you’re going to live a courageous life you will make mistakes. I believe it’s what you do with them. I believe in more of an embodied way now because I lived it. It’s not just some theory about behavior spewed forth. It became a journey.

I never had pieced together all of my health symptoms to my trauma. I was too hard on myself and too determined to make it my fault or something else. I couldn’t even be in public without severe anxiety. That’s how bad it was. Without flushing episodes and bizarre symptoms. It was allergic reactions. It was anxiety. I’ve carried crippling anxiety and my entire trauma history with me into everything I’ve ever tried to do. And instead of realizing it I made myself defective and tried to hide. I was ashamed of my own symptoms. They were inconvenient and I thought no one would love me with them. So I tried to will them away. Tried to hide away.

But life kept throwing things at me that made me face all the pain I’ve been carrying with me. My past has been living in my body. Ravaging it from the inside out.

It was time to let go of these stories I had about myself and find new coping mechanisms and a new way of life.

I am hopeful now someday that trauma won’t run my life. That I won’t keep running with my mind or my feet and I’ll allow myself to live. Which is simply as I see it to be present.

For a trauma survivor to be present is a privilege. Our entire bodies hijack this away from us. When being present was too painful our bodies create a system to manage. I’ve been living with a system override that has made living so painful for me.

Coming to terms with that is life altering at best.

Be still and at peace Christina. You’ve worked so hard. Now feel what security feels like without wanting to crawl out of you skin.

This has been my song to me as of late: Don’t give up on me…. my 2020-2021 theme song

Always,

C

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Girls that Run with Foxes

“Don’t take any shit”

For as long as I can remember I have been teased for feeling things deeply or appreciating things that make you feel things. It’s like it makes the rest of the world feel bad that their disinterested sarcasm or repression of all their wants and desires is not the only way.

Corny they call it. Cheesy.

Because when we connect to our feelings it creates power.

I have always known knowledge is power.

What I didn’t know is the power I would have when I connected the force of my heart with the knowledge. I still won’t see the full effects of that because that journey is in progress. It is just beginning in some ways, and has been underway for years in others.

I remember that I loved the movie Foxfire. I minimized this to it indulging my gay tendencies that I didn’t know I even had when first I saw it, but today I realize it was so much more.

The movie is about women standing up against abuse and being mistreated. The struggles that causes with addiction, and many other aspects.

It is no wonder that my first tattoo would be a variation of the flame they each tattooed on one another’s breasts. Again I minimized this to a shallow interest, when it never was. I shamed myself for my corny first tattoo, and this interest as well as many others.

People tease me that my music is always sad. Why do people tease instead of wonder ? Are we that uncomfortable with feeling something ? Maybe it is me who had it figured out, and they didn’t ? What if that was true?

I connect to art where I can feel what the person was trying to say. Where I can feel their experience. If it doesn’t make me feel what was required of them to get it into the world it’s a waste of my time. Don’t waste my time with inauthentic art. Talent without passion and integrity.

I am interested in the brave and the courageous and their stories.

Lately shame is public enemy number one. I will make myself wrong for anything if it helps me to do the right thing when I had no model. And lately I think there has to be a less exhausting way to exist. And lately I know there is.

I would rather leave no man behind than abandon the hope that they too can do the things I have with my healing. I want to make what’s already in my life work rather than trust in life itself.

How could one trust in something that keeps leaving them in situations that are harmful? (I created the situations so I could heal my trauma) My only choice is to believe everything happens for a reason and trust the process and more importantly myself because being a victim is boring, even when one is actually a victim and not creating a story to comfort themselves.

Either way it does not lead to a courageous and full life. Something I have always been determined about.

Now can I appreciate how I am capable of loving and stop running any outdated narrative about that?

Can I claim my power and rights ? Enjoy some of what I have created without latching on to sources that wish to take rather than to give.

Can I walk the walk, not just talk the talk?

Can I choose that when it means giving up all that once felt comforting to me.

Comfort hasn’t been comforting in a long time Christina. It was an idea.

Now that it doesn’t it’s excruciating this place between selves. I can’t go back, and I was resisting going forward as well. Being loyal to an idea of something that never materialized and letting go seemed more painful than hanging on.

An intricately designed web.

That makes me think of No Doubt and their song Spiderweb. The song lyrics are actually very appropriate. Walking into spider webs

Abuse recovery is no joke ladies and gentleman. The way it RE-wires you. Changes connection forever. You’ll always look over your shoulder. You’ll never trust the darkness, the light, or anything you can’t see. Until you’re ready to face reality and your own healing work.

Unhealed draws in unhealed. A valuable lesson from 2020.

20/20 vision, no more rose colored glasses, or little white gloves.

Only survivors

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Shame is an Ocean I’m Battling

Sometimes the only thing I have is my voice (my writing). Things have been so hard lately. For a lot of it I haven’t even been able to get glimpses it will ever be better. No glimmers in sight.

I also have music, Pink in particular, my barber, my therapist, my work that I love immensely, my friends, my kids, my health though that’s sometimes questionable but for the most part, and food and shelter.

The way I survived my childhood was to get away from it, and the way I did that was through my connections with people, and my tenacity and ability to get a job in five minutes or less of being in an establishment.

I made a family naively, quickly. I will never regret that. My sadness is that I didn’t have a situation that cultivated any safety or investment for me to know who I was and what I wanted beyond survival.

I wanted to be a mother because I didn’t have one. I needed a father not a husband at nineteen years old.

Why didn’t anyone see that? Why didn’t I? I was just expected to function like anyone else did, and damnit if I wasn’t going to try.

I was like a giant enthusiastic puppy about life. They couldn’t take that. But it got translated into a single focus, belonging anywhere and loving as hard as I could so I could feel safe. So my nervous system could calm down. I didn’t even know why it wasn’t.

I didn’t know what complex PTSD was, hyper vigilance, etc. I remember my ex husband would get upset with me or tease me that I couldn’t remember how to get somewhere. I couldn’t focus. Even when I started going to college I’d read the same line over and over and walked around in a blur. My friend Abby as I mentioned, she was kind to me anyway.

She was never unkind. Not mocking or teasing. That energy. Backhanded compliments, or criticism. I pick up on them at the most subtle levels. And now when I look back…. at what I endured on a daily basis and no one put it together.

I dedicate my life to connecting the dots for others. It’s what I do.

My whole life changed when I began taking foster parent classes last October or so, and that was just one of the many changes that occurred. I realized at that moment when I watched the graphic videos of kids in abusive situations that I was watching my my life. Wanting to be the foster parent, I ended up the child. I felt sweaty and like I would vomit, and I knew during those classes that I had held this at bay my whole life.

I rushed into relationships because that was the only place it all stopped. The way I felt safe (er). My nervous system was calmed by safe people to be around. And that was love to me.

Safety was love, and love was safety.

Until it wasn’t……

Demi Lovato. Warrior (Music always talks to me while I’m writing, this just came on)

It took one of the safest relationships I had ever had to unlock enough of my security to get into my next abusive one. Why?! There really is some kind of sense that if we have struggled we deserve this or that. And based on my experience it doesn’t work that way.

If you are self-love deficient (see the work of Ross Rosenberg and the Human Magnet Syndrome), then you can avoid pathological loneliness by attracting unconsciously the very type of situation that feels most like home.

I am struggling with shame. I’m a mental health counselor. How could I end up in an abusive relationship? Someone abusing the unconditional regard I gave them. A shared experience leading me to believe we would be one another’s safe space when it was anything but.

The effects are immense. My childhood trauma in my face with a vengeance while doing EMDR, and trying to hold it all together.

Now I am a mess of trust triggers and health symptoms and my children bare the brunt.

I was always going to need to heal these things if I was ever going to move forward on my path. One of the most devastating parts is the acceptance of the story as I actually experienced it. I was perfect for also wanting it to be a certain way, and creating that in my mind over trusting myself and actual reality.

The good news is that will never happen again. The bad news is the trauma I am wading through every day. And whatever toll it is taking on my body that already has Crohns Disease.

https://www.healthline.com/health/chronic-illness/childhood-trauma-connected-chronic-illness

I tried to hold my trauma at bay by feeling this alone pairing up with another person with a good heart. I tried to keep myself safe, and I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. It’s conscious now because I can see the blind spots. It wasn’t before.

I have complex PTSD and I intend to speak about it as I move forward. As all of this happened and layers of shamed piled on while very few actually knew what I was experiencing. I hardly knew.

There is always so much beneath the surface. Look! That’s all I can say is look. Ask! Educate yourself and be brave enough to understand. If you see the light in someone’s eyes go out, you have no idea how instrumental you could be if you’re kind and you don’t make assumptions or judge.

I’m in so much pain right now. A shadow of myself. The misunderstandings almost killed me. The shame. An ocean of shame I’ve been drowning in. I look forward to this.

For those that have seen me and loved me in small ways and big this past year, who believe more in me than the things society defines us by. The ones who see my heart and always have. You have saved my life so many more times than you know.

You have stitched together a patch work quilt I huddle under right now for warmth. All those that reach out, the people who see me.

Thank you….

Resources

Complex PTSD

Pete Walker From Surviving to Thriving

The Body Keeps the Score

The Human Magnet Syndrome

Alice Walker The Drama of the Gifted Child

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Trauma and shame

It’s Sunday! And as you know Sundays are for blogging.

My daughters are seventeen, seventeen?! Where did those years go? They are beautiful beyond my wildest imagination and lately I’ve been able to travel back through my memories. Prior to this I never could really. I was traveling forward at the speed of light. Now I am glimpsing, staring out over the horizon.

We went to The Melting Pot yesterday. My little family plus a boyfriend (not mine obviously) and a friend. Each girl had a plus one. It was such a lovely time. I was present and the kids were happy, and that in and of itself is amazing. It felt good. They enjoyed everything so much. Just pure joy.

There was as always a couple of empty seats at the table, that should have been filled. Holes in my heart. I thought about it a lot as I always do, how the little one would delight in playing at dinner. But it didn’t steal my presence any longer. Nothing is worth that, no amount of pleasure or pain, to lose yourself and your luster for life. Not an option.

This morning I read a post on the complex ptsd group on Facebook. Someone wrote about how they shiver and shake in social situations and wondered if anyone else gets like this. I was so strong and resilient I had no idea what I was experiencing all of those years was complex ptsd. All of those physical ailments, intrusive thoughts, fear of dying, and complete terror ridden thoughts nearly constantly. Feeling like I didn’t belong, wasn’t good enough, and then betrayed by my own body. And not one single person put that together. The link.

Truly the world was just fine with letting me be strong and captivating as long as I could maintain it but god forbid I struggled. I got teased and truly just internalized that I had a problem. Absolutely brutal. All the while gratefully helping anyone I came across because I was just thankful to be alive and safe-er than I had been.

No one saw. I was such a good little soldier. And now I am going to spend some time honoring my journey and my story. I’m not sure what that will look like, but I know as the chaos calms I am organizing my thoughts better (at all) and so that helps me to know I’m on the right path.

There was something going on with me that I didn’t have the language for.

The only language I had was shame. Some people deal with this in ways that make them look even more efficient and attractive, but underneath the surface something very different exists. As I let myself be congruent with what I was feeling I lost a lot. Anyone who would judge me or take it personally, and everyone who couldn’t see the pain that was inside.

I think now and wonder how no one ever bothered to connect the dots before.

You think I’m just this island and doing fine? You think my physical symptoms, my sweating, racing heart, tingling limbs, trips to the emergency room, being spaced out and not able to focus that those were on purpose. Why didn’t anyone see? It always became my fault. Always judged for it. What’s wrong with YOU. And I better get this under control I thought or no one will ever love me.

If I couldn’t concentrate on what you were saying or even driving somewhere didn’t you ever wonder why? Beyond I didn’t care?!

Why can’t you focus, why can’t you remember how to drive places you’ve been there many times, why can’t you just be more quiet and need less attention, why can’t you suck it up, why must you have so much pain that you packaged away as to not bother the world with it?! Why do you need so much attention, any attention. Can’t you just manage that. As it turns out I could for most of my life.

Well I’m about to get loud.

It’s never been productive trying to have to shout to someone to get them to understand, to stay, to see. I always wanted to stay, but you were always going to need to see me too, and act like it by showing up.

And you…..I don’t want your promises of grandeur when you know damn well you won’t even answer my call unless you’re out of the house. Disgusting. I never deserved that.

I never deserved a lot of things. One being a paranoid delusional mother who was volatile and selfish and empty in her eyes. Or a cold womanizing father, predatory, who was only willing to have a relationship with me later in life if I had no questions and no emotions. Neither ever became a parent to me. They could have. They had a choice.

Everything is always a choice.

I never deserved that the safest place to land was with a martyr victim quietly co-dependent grandmother, and a harsh authoritarian grandfather, that at least was a little less dangerous and cruel with me. The real danger was his daughters jealousy at that. I was not supposed to receive anything they never did, after all I was not supposed to be born.

They would be nice when lonely or wanting something from me, while simultaneously telling me all their woes about everything and how much better I had it. Then when angry they would lash out say horrible things to me, physically chase me, or ignore and stonewall me. Getting any kind of attention that was pleasant was like a game of chess. I became the perfect player. My wits needed to be sharp to get the most out of that life, and I sure as hell tried.

He could even be warm sometimes. There were moments they both had genuine affection for me, and while completely burdened with the mentally ill children they created, those good church farers pulled themselves up by their boot straps and raised this granddaughter. Raised seems a generous term.

What I didn’t know was after getting out

alive how scattered my brain would be. How confusing it would be to be able to determine what was safe and what wasn’t. There was nothing about knowing who I was or my dreams. It was a game of survival.

A hunger games without the flashy costumes and weapons. It was mind war fare. It makes me skin crawl talking or thinking about it, that’s why I rarely do.

When I finally did go to college I was plagued by anxiety, and I didn’t even know it was that. That too more evidence I wasn’t normal and I was bad and wrong. Never once all that time did I realize I had illness I never asked for. That I was a victim not acting like one.

No one put it together. No one. No one except me now.

So you saw me functioning right ?! Trying to make a life with everything I ever studied to try and make that happen. But do you know most of my life I felt pain and fear and gave out love anyway. I gave it anyway so no one would have to feel like I was.

I have tried my best with what I was given. I’ve tried to keep the damage I was inflicted with off of anyone who comes into contact with me, and at bay. But I never knew I was allowed to claim my whole story and heal. And by god I fucking will.

I’ve had to crawl out of more shame than you can ever imagine and just talking about it is almost impossible. I took the responsibility for my whole healing on all by myself and I was trying to keep anyone from having to be uncomfortable. I wanted to make all the discomfort around me stop. I comforted all of them. I rubbed my moms back, listened to her pain constantly, even as she lashed out on me constantly. I spent time with my aunt I tried to be good and when I couldn’t I shamed myself. I was bad and wrong and not enough. And I carried all of this into the next steps of my life, all the while looking enthusiastic.

A pretty….. lost….. person.

So when you see me staring out in space maybe just maybe I am dealing with these memories. Not lacking presence or wanting to be connected. I wanted those things more than you can ever imagine.

To have them and to be them…..

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Feral children Feral Parents

Have I really operated like a scared animal most of my life, much less felt like one. Wow. I sit here and think about that. What it feels like to be scared. Like really think about it, the sensations, and what your mind tells you. The toll it takes on your body.

I am listening to Esther Perel podcasts of actual couples therapy sessions Esther Perel relationship podcast

And it’s making me think. What stood out to me in this one is how she made the couple aware they each operated from their own internal worlds for 20 years deeply affecting the quality of their marriage. Imagine misunderstanding someone for 20 years! They each operated from their own world view, fears, etc, but they did not deeply listen to the other.

Both feeling rejected and shameful from things that weren’t actually what the other meant. When they felt unworthy the ended up making the other feel that way from frustration of not knowing what they wanted or needed, or not allowing themselves that.

I have been thinking about what I’m meant to share. It always seems like it’s all been done, and everyone does is better. Imposter syndrome at its finest. That’s what happens every time. Usually when I listen to another therapist work I hear everything I must be doing wrong, or polar opposite I think wow I’d do that differently. My ego is often in full protective mode and that blocks out learning and trying for something. I like to think of myself as not like this, that’s probably why I’m so good at pointing it out in others.

My own arrogance disgusts me sometimes and facing it down in the mirror is not easy. Particularly when it comes to connecting with my children. With their experiences rather than my parent ego blocking being able to see life how they do. We are doing therapy together and it’s unbelievable. To see myself, the therapist gently confront, to feel that burning shame after when I realize how wrong I am doing things. God it hurts.

Trying to redirect to if you’re willing and trying you are ahead of the game, it’s those who avoid that that create harm for generations. So I sit in the burn.

I sit in the shame of how hard I clamp down and hold on tightly to the only thing I have ever been able to, my resolve. My strength. It’s the only home I’ve ever known.

I realize this morning what an unrealistic view of love I have and how painted by my trauma that portrait is and I am humbled. Unrealistic expectations of others, myself, and my children. I keep trying to get them to understand my experience, when I am not understanding theirs. Because it’s too scary in there. I could be my mom. It’s terror. Terror. And so I shut down completely and the only thing they are able to translate that as, is that I must not love them.

Which couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a line in the movie Riding in Cars With Boys that always stopped me in my tracks. A young selfish mom, makes sense right 😉 who’s sons very existence seems to vex her and he knows it. The kids are playing and Drew Barrymore says to Britney Murphy, “we love our kids but like do we really love them or do we just have to love them.” And Britney responds that “she thinks sometimes we love them so much that if we felt it all at once it would kill us”, so we don’t always realize or can’t always be in that feeling.

Like how do you switch from protecting and providing to loving and nurturing. I clamped tightly to a role and held on for dear life I think. Nothing fluid or gentle, because my life was not those things.

I got very intense at one point last session with them, feeling attacked for everything and why don’t they trust me, I’m mom , don’t they know how hard I’ve worked, and the clinician gently said something along the lines of maybe it’s because of something like this. And I burned with shame and pain. And then later the hot wet tears of release and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

And all the other people who have called me intense. All the fucking shame, the finger pointing, and so few have ever been curious and interested enough to stay to know why I get like that. I want people to know. And I don’t want people to know, and I’m locked in here.

It’s a cage.

Feeling like some kind of reject that doesn’t know which emotional response to choose out of the jukebox at which time. I turn my head in shame, and the tears come down.

Hurt people hurt people and I don’t want to hurt anymore or hurt them. Burning pathological loneliness. How do I make them understand I don’t know how? That I freeze. And when they don’t know how I just push them forward because that’s all I’ve ever done in my life.

Frozen and thawing. Frozen and thawing. The seasons of my life. This perhaps the most difficult which means the most fruitful.

I cried a lot while writing this, and I thought of her, how similar our wounds are and how they separate us from receiving any relief, and how does it have to be that way…. too much relief and you don’t grow, too little and you don’t either. There has to be something in between numbing and ecstasy. A grey area. Realistic and one step at a time.

For now I’m just practicing this with myself…..

Always