Compassion For Self And Vulnerability

[Friday]

So you're saying for you, shame is a positive thing? How so? I'd like to understand this better.[/Q...

I'm not sure where you got anything about guilt/shame being positive out of what I wrote?

 

[Dana1010]

I think there can be. Like you say, using it as a tool which you then put away.

All I can say is, God bless you if you can pull that off.

 

[Chava]

Yes "powerlessness" is a very powerful way to understand current mixed up states!

I had people tell me for years that it was obvious just from observing me that there was serious trauma, but because I couldn't remember it, it was easy to brush that off

I have some memories, but they don't fit more than short moments or images. They don't complete stories. In my mind, they don't add up to much. But it does help to recognize what is happening in the exaggerated triggers and powerless states. I could say concretely that some physical and sexual abuse was probably traumatic. But less concrete would be this sense that I am dying, the world can't meet my needs or I am undeserving or an imposter who should have dissolved or died to this universe, etc. I don't have perfect evidence of how those feelings/triggers tie to what I know or remember (Age 4 and onward). But those worst and deepest feelings do likely relate to earliest sensations of not having needs met and being punished for basic needs...whether physically punished or neglected (which matches with later memories. It helps me quite a bit to know that the implicit memories and sensations are quite "real" within us. We can gain awareness and acceptance of them, and challenge them, even if we cannot remember the details.

 

[sun seeker]

Nope. That's exactly the kind of guilt I'm talking about.

This was where I got that you felt shame was positive. I responded before you added the rest of the post.

 

[sun seeker]

But less concrete would be this sense that I am dying, the world can't meet my needs or I am undeserving or an imposter who should have dissolved or died to this universe, etc.

Sounds like very early trauma, perhaps infancy or even gestational? I have some of the same. Not sure if I'll ever have clear memories of where it comes from, and I feel it affects me more deeply than some later events that are clearer in my mind. This raises something else for me to think about: I've been working on compassion in situations I can remember. What about compassion for self in situations we have a sense of but are not in conscious awareness? Hmm. That's the next level I guess. You've given me a new project. :-)

 

[sun seeker]

God bless you if you can pull that off

I really hope I can. I have no delusions about it being an easy thing to do.

The thing is, none of this is really cognitive. It's energetic. You can talk about it, think about it, read all the right books, but it's just words... and then somehow a piece of it clicks into place and you know what seemed impossible before, and look back and wonder how you got there.

 

[Chava]

Sounds like very early trauma

I know for fact that my mom was molested and a raging crazy bitch. It was an insult to her if you even ducked when she started throwing things. But I also think my trauma goes beyond what I can remember. I am super f*cking logical (why I hit dead end after dead end in cognitive-focused therapy). What I do know, based on fact, but not logical narrative-type memory, is that my mom had CSA trauma, possibly a few partners and my siblings might not even be full siblings. When she was pregnant with me she was under a lot of stress, fired from her position, and also I was her first girl (her only girl before me was aborted). I also have a couple congenital abnormalities which might be contributing to my pain. These would have resulted from problems in utero. I was born too early, not breathing, and I have no reason to assume my mom had a good connection to me. The positive feelings I get from sounds often feel connected to very mechanistic or basic life-promoting or pulsing sounds: being in the womb or being connected to life support. These sounds help me self-regulate and realize that I am okay NOW. I was in NICU for a few weeks. Later I went back to the hospital because my lungs collapsed.

I doubt we can ever create a narrative for earliest trauma. But I have no doubt this shapes the structure and capacity of our central nervous system (developmental trauma research validates this, particularly looking at the work of Laurence Heller and Sebern Fisher). The body memories are vague and illogical, but important (I am very logical and high-functioning within my career, but carry a persistent feeling of helplessnesss, isolation, and immobilization). I was socialized to be polite. I think of some of the young people I work with, and really relate to. I was never labeled/diagnosed as a special education EBD (emotional behavioral disorder) because of the fear and socialization towards politeness. Instead I started bashing my own bones with heavy hammers or rocks, and cutting myself.

I'm winding off track here, so....sorry. In high school a counselor asked my mom about my early childhood, wise to question that, but my mom had nothing to mention beyond medical crisis (bad enough, I suppose). But I wonder if it had felt safe enough to talk about my family.....without feeling like I had to simultaneously betray them..... it's so so so f*cking hard. The trauma history is generational. I could blame all my shit on my parents. But I could also blame all my gifts on them too....so I more focus on finding adequate treatment. Not excusing anyone (!!!!), but more focusing on my life, my gaps. Personally, I have to forgive my parents....yet also wish someone would have safely helped me make the connection earlier.

(sorry if I'm not making sense...feeling I'm wandering off on tangents a bit)

 

[sun seeker]

The positive feelings I get from sounds often feel connected to very mechanistic or basic life-promoting or pulsing sounds: being in the womb or being connected to life support. These sounds help me self-regulate and realize that I am okay NOW.

That's something I've never thought of, and it makes a lot of sense. Hmm. I'm just starting to work on attachment issues in therapy, and the resource we came up with to come back to when it gets too intense is to imagine being held and feeling another person's heart beating. So for me it's sound and touch both. It totally makes sense that, especially if you were in the NICU, you would have missed the contact a newborn needs to learn what it means to be in a body and for the nervous system to develop. I don't have that history but sure seem to have all the signs of not having been held very much. Sometimes when I start feeling anxious and tune in to where the anxiety is coming from, I can feel a newborn baby crying. I have to trust that there is a reason.

 

[Chava]

So for me it's sound and touch both.

I can't say much more tonight. But.. yes. I have soft-toned green tiles and machine sounds. Sounds and steady vibrations mean you are ALIVE. Even if a machine is doing it for you. Newborns can't see much at all. So color memories are negligent. But the pattern of ceramic tiles have always been comforting...in psych units, whatever. Hmm. f*cky f*ck up. I won't give up.

 

[Suzetig]

Are you working with a trauma therapist ...

I am, yes she has about 20 years experience of working with trauma. We've been working together for nearly 2 years and it's been slowly, slowly at my pace. We've kept coming up against my self blame and harshness to myself time and again and looking at the purpose it serves in my life. Something happened recently that's made me need to re look at my self opinion and I'm getting a clearer sense of how much self blame and anger is letting me avoid the feelings that are attached to my trauma.

Yes it may be worth it to look at all of those feelings but very scary. I think what struck me about your post is that I too have always had a "head knowledge" that I'm not to blame but what you seem to be describing is a more visceral knowledge that I know I need but haven't got to yet. This discussion is so helpful for me just now.

 

[sun seeker]

I think what struck me about your post is that I too have always had a "head knowledge" that I'm not to blame but what you seem to be describing is a more visceral knowledge that I know I need but haven't got to yet.

Yes, that's just it. And I don't know how helpful any of what I'm saying will be to anyone because what I can convey are just words, head knowledge as you say. What I am feeling is more of an energetic sense, and the cognition came later.

 

[sun seeker]

Okay, I'm documenting what's going on in my head as I go, in case it is helpful to anyone. Writing helps me sort out my thoughts.

I need to work on letting go of magical thinking. Never thought to call it that until... maybe yesterday? It causes me so much distress, saps my energy, raises my anxiety to painful levels. It goes something like this: A thought crosses my mind about harm coming to another person. Instead of just moving on to another thought, I immediately start to panic, worrying that my thoughts might cause it to really happen. I work hard to think an opposite good thought twice as hard. Then until I am sure that the person I thought about is actually fine, my level of anxiety stays high, time passes slowly, and I'm generally agonizing over it. Sound ridiculous? It is. But it happens to me way too often. Same thing with worry that I've said the wrong thing, down to tiny nuances, that I've attracted bad luck by mentioning the possibility of something bad happening, or that I've caused someone physical harm by being careless (a big one). When all this gets extreme, it looks a lot like OCD, but I don't have it all the time, it comes and goes.

Right now I'm looking at the thought process and where it comes from. Besides generally being raised in a shame-based family, there is a very clear memory that arose recently that explains so well why I have this sense that I contaminate everything and cause harm just by existing.

I want to stop doing this, it's so painful. It's the thinking of a traumatized child, and it makes total sense given my history, but it isn't reality. I don't make bad things happen just by thinking about them, or any of the other things mentioned above. I am not an evil person. Funny how hard it is for me to write that. But I'm not. This is a four or five year old child frantically trying to keep terrible things from happening by trying to control the only things she can control. She could not stop bad things from happening. She tried so hard. I have compassion for her. For myself.