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Littlebird
USA
391 Posts |
 Posted - 05/14/2007 : 23:19:46
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Micah, this statement, "I will never be able to connect with him on a deeper level because of his own rejection of his own feelings," brought instant tears. What a profound insight that is. It explains why I feel disconnected from so many people in my family. Thank you for sharing that thought.
Corey |
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miehnesor
USA
430 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 09:46:51
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Corey- Thx for the validation. When I read your comment it kicked off the tears for me as well.
As you know from the "in the name of love" thread i'm going through hell with my folks right now. I got one horrible letter from my mom. After much thought I sent them a letter apologising for some things and asking for what we want in our relationship with them. Last week I got another equally horrible letter from them. It's like they didn't even read and understand what I was saying in the letter. I just don't think they are capable of relating to us(myself and my wife) in a constructive manner.
I see more and more just how damaged my parents are emotionally. The really sad thing is that they never made an honest effort to heal their own wounds.
Thx for the support! |
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armchairlinguist
USA
1397 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 11:25:25
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Seeing some of this I really get some appreciation for the effort that my parents have gone through, more recently, to do work on healing their own wounds. Although I find it really frustrating that it took them so long (after a recent therapy session I wrote in my journal "It is just too goddamn late! Why couldn't they have done it earlier!") it's never totally too late. At least I will have some years of more positive experiences with them as an adult, which is valuable in a different way.
miehsnor, thanks. I have noticed that things can be really subtle. I think it's one reason it can be so hard to recover some of the pain. Because looking back later we just don't see that what happened was painful, since it seems pretty reasonable objectively.
There are some other pretty subtle things I have been uncovering too. I remembered one time when my parents decided to take out all the rosebushes we had. One of them was mine in particular and I loved it, although I didn't take care of it specifically. No amount of pleading from me would change their minds, not even my offer to learn to take care of the roses. I love roses and really wanted to keep them. As in the case of the candy bar, it's not so much what they did that was wrong but how they did it. They simply did not care that I loved the roses, they had decided and that was it.
There was no acknowledgment that my attachment to the roses was meaningful or important, and that's a theme that runs throughout all the incidents that are beginning to come back to me: that my feelings did not matter, were not important or meaningful, and would be ignored; they would certainly not help me understand or cope with my feelings and what they meant in the situation. I was to do what they wanted, period. This became a big deal with my younger brother, who knew (as siblings do) how to push my buttons. I love him, and I loved him a ton then, but man, he drove me NUTS when he was little. And the reaction was always: Don't let him get to you, don't get angry, and don't hit him, we don't hit people, and he's smaller, you should be nice to him. And I really wanted to be nice to him and to be a good sister, and have fun with him. But I never got any help in dealing with my feelings, and dealing with him, and them actually following through to help us improve our interaction. It was all on me to figure out how to cope, which I couldn't, so the whole pattern continued until I eventually learned to repress my anger (and promptly got TMS in the form of knee pain during exercise, sigh).
Each memory, each incident, may be a small thing, but they add up to something very large over time. Everyone has times when their parents ignored their feelings; parents are human beings and trying hard, not perfect. It's the overall pattern that is so painful.
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Wherever you go, there you are. |
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jrnythpst
USA
134 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 14:36:37
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ACL,
I am soooo glad you said tearing up rose bushes...it helped bring about another memory from when I was a child. I had been told my grandmother (who died 4 years before I was born) was quite the green thumb and I wanted to try my hand at it. She had these beautiful rose bushes and where the had lived still had them so I was given permission by the neighbors to take a clipping. I brought it home and planted it and took care of it. Well my mom accidentally hoed it up so I replanted, my dad accidentally weed eated so I replanted what was left again, then he accidentally mowed it (I do believe it was accidental...there were no buds and did kind of look like it didn't belong though even though on some level they knew it was there and what it was) after bringing it back from the near dead 3 or 4 times it grew quite wild and out of control (I never learned to prune) but I go so fed up with it that I gave up. All I had wanted was to raise a rose bush that had been part of the rose bushes my grandmother so loved and nurished. OK yeah that hit a chord almost got tears going but at work so can't right now. Thanks for the reminder even though you had no way of knowing it was the right thing to say in the thread I started.
Hugs,
Ali Cat |
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carbar
USA
227 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2007 : 21:27:39
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Hey, thanks for everyone posting about inner child stuff. I really appreciate it. I've been feeling kind of stuck with this right now. I recently uncovered some feelings about being blamed for causing "bad" feelings and situations. I realized I've felt so much guilt that was just incorrect.
Like when my family adopted an older puppy when I was 11 and it was hard for me to train it coz we had this other dog who was much older and got really jealous whenever I'd try to take the puppy outside to train it and would bark and bark, which disturbed the neighbors. So, I didn't take it out to do training exercises as often as one should.
After that, anytime the puppy did something bad my mom made a big deal about how it was "my fault" that "I" didn't train "my dog." The only feeling I felt was guilt. So there's my mom not dealing with her own anger or responsibilty and making an 11 year old kid feel like ****.
GOd, this hurt my feelings so bad at the time, but I definitely did not feel it. I really didn't know how to respond, so I sure did repress it.
Thanks for the encouragement to look at WHY I learned to repress. |
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jrnythpst
USA
134 Posts |
Posted - 05/16/2007 : 08:44:31
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Carbar I had tons of guilt growing up too and I think most of it was self imposed. I had a tendency to blame myself for most everything. I even went through a phase where I would hit myself hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to leave marks. Looking back 1. that was stupid to start with and 2. what I got so upset about in hindsight was so not worth any emotion let alone what I let it get too. Sadly sometimes to this day when I get really upset I had to mentally reframe from wanting to hit myself but that is something is very rare and far between but not yet totally gone. I am working on this as I know it's not a productive way to handle things. I think I may have gone from physically causing myself pain to mentally causing it from the inside. The hitting was in middle school and some in high school.
I still have feelings of guilt for many things as child the two that most come to mind are 1. how I treated my mentally handicapped younger sister (I loved to torture her because I was jealous of the attention she was receiving instead of me) and 2. a small kitten (my favorite at the time) that I accidnetally killed when my bicycle fall on its neck when I got off to try and pick it up. I cried for weeks and sometimes the guilt still pings me but it was a total accident.
anywa I hope you keep responding to this thread (not just carbar but anyone/everyone) I think it's helping some...helping me think/work through things. Thanks.
Hugs,
Ali Cat |
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armchairlinguist
USA
1397 Posts |
Posted - 05/16/2007 : 13:32:13
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quote:
2. what I got so upset about in hindsight was so not worth any emotion let alone what I let it get too.
But the pain is real pain of your child self and (if guilt) most likely given to you by shaming parents, inappropriately. Acknowledging and grieving the harm it did to you to be made to believe that things were your fault may be helpful...and having compassion for yourself for things that you did that you were not helped to deal better with (as your relationship with your sister) where you should have had help.
I've also had issues with self-injury. There's a few theories about it, but it basically is thought to be a way of making emotional pain visible/tangible for people who have a hard time feeling and dealing with emotional pain, which pretty much lines up with TMS. I tend to remind myself if the urge ever comes up that the urge "means" that I am feeling emotional pain and I need to 'think psychological' as it were.
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Wherever you go, there you are. |
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Suggestions on emotional release
