Grieving Losses In Childhood

[Phoenix_Rising]

The grief that has been dissociated, from way back, doesn't feel like grief. It feels nightmarish and unsurvivable.

The void was back there too, I remember it. Feeling jittery and scared because of the void tinged with dread and darkness round the edges.

This is EXACTLY where I am right now, "feeling jittery and scared because of the void tinged with dread and darkness around the edges."

That is a perfect description of how I feel... As though I am hanging around the periphery, and I am afraid of falling in.

 

[Helliepig]

Yeah anger is tricky. I think sometimes even when you're rightly and reasonably angry it feels like it's OTT and out of control..... even setting boundaries sometimes and saying no to people to protect yourself can feel aggressive for me, i had such an episode today and backed off from being "rude" or "aggressive" and ended up feeling violated and sick to my stomach. A little thing... on top of all those other times.

I yelled at my son tonight....maybe instead?????

Playing with boundaries/anger/protecting yourself is really important (for abuse survivors in particular) but for all of us .... without it you are tiger meat.... perhaps learning to protect yourself comes as part of self love developing.... maybe if you can see it as a vital part of your healing it can make it easier to risk doing it?

 

[Helliepig]

This is EXACTLY where I am right now, "feeling jittery and scared because of the void tinged with dread and darkness around the edges."

That is a perfect description of how I feel... As though I am hanging around the periphery, and I am afraid of falling in.

I am beginning to realise falling in is what we avoid and dread but the very thing - with the right support- that we need to do. It will be different - because we are no longer a lonely traumatised child - but in any case, it holds the bits that need to heal and GO because they are the bits that are stifling your soul.

I am there too Phoenix, sitting in that place and expecting to feel lost in hell like I did as a child. so far it hasn't happened.....Perhaps just by sitting with it you are allowing bits of processing to occur... the thing is to make it different this time, do something different, get a different outcome, don't just keep saying the same things to yourself, doing the same things, deepening the beliefs that are out of date. Time to show some fresh light and new ideas in there...

 

[maddog]

Another thing I realized--only last night, before I went to bed--is I'm really afraid of being angry because I don't know how to cope with my anger and I don't want to be like my father. I feel like by being angry I will be him. He is my strongest association with anger (rage). And my mother--she just doesn't deal with hers.

Yes Phoenix, this is exactly, exactly one of my greatest most deeply-buried, yet constantly simmering fears. I am terrified of my anger, whatever and wherever it is, like the landmine so very close to my foot, and every time i move my foot I wonder if this will be the moment of explosion, yet still the world is silent, deceptively seemingly safe, but at any moment that could change.

I have always been irrationally terrified of my anger. Even irritation and moodiness fill me with insane conviction that my father is about to bubble up from within me and unleash hell on the world. I can never rid myself of the clammy smothering sensation that I am him and he is me, that his evil lives within me...

I know that somewhere out there is the time and place and need for my anger to live its life and to see the light of day. I know inherently that I will not move on until or unless I can make that happen. But griefand memory and all other facets of the past don't even touch the surface of the fear I have of my anger, and I can't imagine how I will ever make that change.

Maddog

 

[shell]

One of the hardest things I find is to deal with the hurt, and the losses of never having a childhood. When I started getting all these memories back at 45, I was really angry that she was destroying my life again.

Now I realize that I never really escaped, the hurt was always simmering away in the background, but I wasn't ready to deal with it. I'm terrified of my anger, I'm scared I'll be like her, I still haven't dealt with my anger at her, I don't feel it directed at her, I direct it at myself for being weak and letting her win.

I've just started to grieve and really acknowledge that my parents never loved me, something that's really hard to accept, but needed to be done to allow me to move on, and accept the hurt and let it go.

 

[maddog]

Wow, I hear you Shell, I think you have touched on one of the deepest, most terminal, most devastating questions that a sufferer could ever have to face. "How do I learn to live with the fact that nobody has ever loved me?"

I asked T that just a couple of days ago, and God, I cannot even think about it without being overcome by grief right now.

I know, rationally, that acknowledging and mourning the losses of childhood abuse and abandonment is a critical and, presumably, a healthy step along the path to recovery. It feels anything but healthy right now, and feels anything other than temporary, as it is also alleged to be.

I suppose we just have to hang on to hope and belief that as with any form of grief, some day the worst of this pain will pass.

I really empathise with where you're at. Wishing there were words to make the task a little easier.

Maddog