When there is not as much going on in my life I want to share information from Tian Dayton’s book Emotional Sobriety on the effects of relational trauma, that is the damage that happens to us when we are affected by early childhood abuse, trauma or lack of mirroring and empathy. However today one of the key symptoms that is capturing my attention is distorted reasoning. Tian writes :
Many people experience trauma within their family unit, rather than from an external source When one’s family unit is spinning out of control, people are prone to adapt all methods of coping mechanisms – whatever they have to do to maintain feelings of connection. Distorted reasoning – which may take the form of rationalizing and justifying bizarre or unusual forms of behavior and relations – can be immature and can also produce core beliefs about life upon which even more distorted reasoning is based. For example “he is only hitting me because he loves me.”
I am thinking of this today as my Mum lies so ill and pumped full of chemicals in hospital. I am thinking of how with no father she had to suffer aloneness and then be pushed to clean and clean. Down on her kness in the bathroom she was told to ‘polish that floor until it shines’ and then she was hit or forced into domestic service. With all this unprocessed trauma was it any wonder it was passed on to us all in different ways. My older sister worked and worked and then drank and drank until the cerebral bleed took her down, my brother in law who eventually abandoned her was the evil one, but he too was scrambling to survive. Amidst all of the following trauma I was scrambling to make sense of it, seeing my sister in a mythological light or struggling to understand the truth, caught up but not able to see clearly, carrying terror of abandonment into all subsequent relationships.
Lats night as I sat by my mother’s bedside and held her hand in the darkened room, an ocean of peace opened up between us. I wept to the depths of my being as she told me she loved me. She is very heavily drugged at the moment and chock full of toxins. She also knows she hurt me and that we struggled at times, but what I really felt so deeply last night was the love that she tried to express in the only way she knew how. Her own mother never once tole her she loved her, in later years she would push my mother out of the way in her desire to see my father, who she adored. I know at times as a patriarchial Dad, my father frustrated all three of his daughers and there were a lot of times he could not give my mother the understanding she needed. I see how my Mum was as a young person so focused on survival that emotions had to take a back seat. Now its so sad to witness the years of trauma she has lived through as the result of her earlier emotional neglect richocheting over three generations. My nephew made a lightening visit to see her yesterday morning driving four hours and weeping so intensely. My heart goes out to him really, he has been through so much in past weeks all in an effort to fill the gaping mother wound in his heart (Saturn in Cancer). He is carrying pain of many generations, that much is clear to me, as the very sensitive one.
Two other symptoms of early relational trauma are also somatic disturbances as well as memory disturbances and dissociation. The continuity of time is warped in trauma, we don’t remember key events but they are held deep in somatic memory, however they are obscured and disjointed and may make so sense. Due to dissociation we experience reactions to events that mirror earlier ones that may seem out of control or order. We are then judged or judge ourselves for suffering, not fully understanding the extent of our suffering. Re-enactment patterns and relationship issues are also a result of relational trauma in early life. We will try in any way to make the the unconscious conscious in order to feel and heal it, but so often that involves experiencing more pain in order to connect to the original cause that my lay deeply obscured within us. Maybe triggering traumatic events and disturbances in later relationships are ‘wake up calls’ trying to draw us towards understanding, healing and feeling. It major work and we need so much help along the way. We cannot do it alone and we need positive connections to heal but making them is hard when we are often attracted to what is bad for us.
With Mercury planet of mind and communications moving backward through the meaning making sign of Sagittarius this month and back towards a confusing square (or crisis aspect) with the planet of distorting Neptune, issues of mental confusion may be highlighted but the unconscious which Neptune also rules may be trying to get our attention in all kinds of ways. Who can we trust for validation when our thinking and ability to make sense of our experience may be essentially wounded or thwarted and distorted in some way by past relational trauma or lack of mirroring? It is so important that we find the right avenues to deepen in understanding and heal our minds as well as our hearts, souls and bodies.
Mars the planet of self assertion is moving into trine Neptune over the next two weeks or so, so a flow of healing may open up in many of our lives, a push to move forward in love and compassion in order to find freedom from past hurt, its what I am feeling very deeply this morning. We cannot avoid the mental distortions that are a part of trauma but we can, in later life work for more clarity and insight. Information on how trauma can discombobulate us is essential for our emotional recovery.
Emerging From The Dark Night 