I happened upon an excellent blog for trauma survivors today. I have linked to a post from it in my previous blog post, but the following with resonate for trauma survivors like me who have struggle in their relationships. I identified with most of this comprehensive post.
Category: Trauma
The soul in silence : reflections on solitude, trauma, wounding and healing
All the beautiful responses to my recent post/poem Trust in Silence have really got me thinking today of how important silence is to being able to be with and connected to depths of our soul. When we are struggling or suffering often we can be abused by being told we need to ‘get out of our own heads’, “get off our pity pot!’, (yes readers I have heard this one many times in 12 step meetings) or that we are ‘isolating’ and at times there can be some truth to that, sometimes when we need the loving touch or support of others or look for the gifts or message in a painful experience, but in world that find it hard to stomach or fathom certain truths, is it any wonder we learn to turn more and more towards the silence if we can, deep in that silence, find an inner source of soothing, calm and healing?
I know for myself the healing to be found in the warm of the sun, in sitting in a shady spot with doors open, Jasper at my feet just feeling the sense of connection with the moment that is awesome, magical, healing and mysterious and beyond words to fully describe (though I make stumbling attempts in poems). Then there are the times when the silence is more like a deep dark indigo ocean that almost squashes me, I feel myself subsumed or I feel the cresting of a wave of anger or grief or sorrow that wants to rise up and sweep through me, possibly even sweep away some debris from inside, memories or feelings I buried long ago, and if I just allow myself to surrender than I can expand rather than contract in response to that and feel the beauty of having touched base with my soul.
And lets face it, for many of us who have endured depths of loss and trauma others do not, have not and could never know the depths of we are not going to find that recognition or acceptance and allowing of our process from most people and my personal feeling is that therapists also don’t always know the territory themselves. I was told by astrologer Melanie Reinhardt 13 years ago after my last major accident which was a repeat of my near death one at age 17 that most therapists would not be able to fully understand the deeper spiritual dimensions of the wound of nearly losing my life as well as all the deeply Plutonian experiences that followed over the next 30 or so years for me. She directed me towards the work of Buddhist Nun Pema Chodron and said a soulful meditative practice would be the best therapy for me. Sadly I got into another relationship two years later with someone who saw my need for solitude as pathological. According to him I had agrophobia!!!! Anyway don’t really want to go back into the relationship today, it was a learning curve for me and I got some good things out of it and deeper understanding due to all the pain we both acted out on each other.
Lately I am learning to accept and validate more my need for soulful solitude. It is where I create from. It is where my deepest healing happens. I don’t feel that level of connection in may relationships in the world, in some I do. I feel it here because I feel here other trauma survivors and people in recovery are on the same page. Just connecting with you brings me SO MUCH HEALING. I was blown away yesterday by the love shown to me on a really tough day, coming out of a painful and challenging week.
I wanted actually to post another Thank You blog too as I was so grateful yesterday and today to open my page and see all the comments and love on here. As well as responses to other comments of mine where I am trying to support others going through trauma and meeting misunderstanding and woefully inadequate response to their Complex Trauma. I really see my life purpose to be as a Wounded Healer and it is what Melanie Reinhardt teaches about in her work on Chiron. Its really only us who have navigated the depths of trauma that fully understand and since all traumas are also different in some ways we wont understand everything as we all have our own unique journeys, but in time I want to set up some kind of site to offer help. If my journey and suffering and losses and gains can be used to help others that is what really makes me happy, it gives me a peace and feeling of wholeness that really lays so far beyond words.
But as I read this back I am mindful too that the healing for all of us lies both in connections with others, but more paramountly through the healing that comes from connection to our deepest soul. I feel collectively we are trying too, to heal a deep split from nature and instinct and the divine feminine. It is hard to articulate this in a post but there is a source of power that to me is Goddess like, I don’t find the concept of a male God as personally healing in my own journey unless I think of the Frank Lloyd Wright quote in which he says he believes in God but his God is nature. We are part of this mystery and so is our deepest soul and many of us are on a journey now to connect more to that source both within and without in order to find peace and love after years of separation, fear or trauma. And to recognise more deeply our essential kinship with all living beings as well as the deep silence.
A safe calm space
As a trauma survivor also raised in a high anxiety home its important for me to find and relax into safe calm spaces where and when I can find them. I find there is a moment of decision in which I must take the opportunity just to ‘be’, to let myself and my awareness keep a focus on sounds and then quietly on my breath. At times my body chemicals over-ride this, particularly at the time of my two major physical traumas at others like today on my walk with Jasper this didnt happen. We had a lovely moment sitting under the shedding acorn trees in the child’s play part where I was just in the peace of the present moment.
It’s unseasonally hot here today, but under the tree it was cool and while sitting there and enjoying the surrounds I also focused on closing my eyes and hearing the layering of sounds around us which included birds singing, a dog barking, the low hum of traffic as well as the soft sound and feel of the breeze. I was aware of my body but for a miraculous moment there was no pain in my body and I was able to breathe a full breath which seems impossible when a trauma cascade hits me as it can up to two or three times a day. It was so beautiful just to revel in the pleasant sounds and sensations around me, to be aware of the absence of thought apart from the soothing one. “this feels lovely” and to feel myself let go and expand in to it.
This experience of peace had come just after reading and replying to some comments on my last post about trauma, addressing where we put our focus, the experience of being in and out of it and sharing some of what I understand from trauma specialist, Peter Levine’s work on trauma about pendulation in working with traumatic events.
It also came after a period of doubt about my current therapy which is extremely affirming but at times brings up very very painful sensation when I have to re share traumatic events or experiences and reactions from the past or the past week. For a while a while ago I was seeing a body harmony therapist who was very quick to pull me out of my thoughts about sensations especially when they were in triggering parts of my body that have undergone trauma. Due to the numerous physical traumas there are not a lot of parts of my body that trauma has not touched but Robyn during our sessions would try to keep me entering then leaving and then shifting the focus on to something pleasant in the room or by getting me to look into her eyes when I was in overwhelm or flashback which is what Peter Levine encourages his own clients to do. And often an outpouring of grief would occur at these times which she would mirror and affirm.
This work is not easy because trauma can be so very magnetic and as I understand it there is also something called the trauma vortex, which I experience in my spine as a kind of spinning sensation and it can spin at times clockwise and at other times counter clockwise, hard to explain here but I sense this spin at different times of the day and when awakening at night which is accompanied by the sensation of cells in my body being fluid or silted or inundated with fluid. (In my original near death trauma my lungs were punctured by a broken rip and the fluid poured in through the pierced pleura.) At times it is so hard to get my attention pulled away from this magentic focus which is also telling me something deeper not always accessible in words.
Today I also had the awareness of how my own reactivity contributed to the second trauma which was a bike accident triggered after doing a cranio sacral session on the original crash around the first anniversary of my husband leaving me. I would not have had that second accident if I was not on the run from family and I would not have had it if I had not retriggered the trauma of the earlier crash in that session. The most important insight I came away from that session with was seeing my accident from outside and how it had traumatised my father at the time who was not, like my Mum called to the scene of the crash and I think had to see me cut out of the car after a long period of being trapped.
Writing all of this today is actually retriggering me too. My family heard about my second crash but no one bothered to come over to be with me and so I was pretty much alone and then in trouble with the family I boarded with for making their lives harder by having had it. And so I took myself away on retreat to Glastonbury to an ashram and was not able to really get all the help and support I needed despite the fact I had made a good friend from my Dad’s home town in Holland when I was in the UK and ready to come out of hospital. I ran from her too as I felt my trauma was really not understandable and if I think about it I also feared abandonment, so I ran back to family. That is a hell of a lot of running. And yet I did the best I could at the time.
All of this is behind me now, but the thought lives on when I think of connecting with my sister over Easter on the fourth anniversary of our older sister’s death. Should I really be blaming her for a lack of empathy shown after my ex husband left and she accused me of being a selfish little girl? What of the fact she has undergone her own trauma since and is kinder now? What of the times she did try to help me but was not really sure how to? How much contact to have and how come I still feel so responsible for her and long so much to connect? Yet even as I read this back, of course I long for this sister’s love but she never treated me as kindly as my older sister did. And even that relationship had toxic elements.
I know this is a lot of questions and I dont know all the answers. I imagine readers getting impatient with me. But then I think of a comment from a follower last night which said to try and see the situation from outside myself and to consider how I would treat this person (me) who had been through so much? Wouldnt I just advise her to take care of herself first, no matter how ‘selfish’ that makes me seem and keep limited contact?
What I am understanding today though is, how much that is good is really around me at the moment when I take those steps to find that safe calm space in the day in the present moment away from past trauma triggers and residues. Trauma lies in my past, not my present and yet at times it seems to dominate my present. I get those mixed up thoughts of love for my sister and mother while seeing things they did that also hurt me. I think of how my sister is now very alone and isolated in her own life but I am aware too of the fact that she too is responsible for herself and maybe she finds her own quiet calm space better being on her own, than around me. And I know a lot of the time being around my sister quiet frankly triggers me and makes me feel more anxious as memories of that horrible time at the coast where she asked my mother to choose her favourite person to be with out of her and me ended with Mum saying she would rather be with my sister who was happy not sad. Part of me feels betrayed but part of me understands, but then I was always left alone in my grief anyway just as I was left alone as a child and the end of my marriage in 2004 just opened up all of those other losses starting with my father’s death in 1985. Those losses too are all in the past and yet they have marked me. They have, at times, led to faulty beliefs that I didn’t deserve any better or somehow caused it all. In the calm quiet space I can just observe these thoughts come and go.
Today I am grateful for that lovely moment I had earlier in the day. I am grateful for the lovely lunch of quiche and home made salad I just ate while writing this, I am glad for my therapist Kat and I am glad for the ability to be able to write about all of this and to be heard, read, reached out to by others and understood. That’s a hell of a lot to be grateful for and heading into easter, although it will always be tinged with the trauma of losing my older sister in 2014 after 34 years of witnessing her also go through trauma and abandonment I am aware that out of the crucifixion of all of our most painful experiences does come a time of entombment and then resurrection. We go into the fire in trauma, part of us get burned up as we walk across ‘the burning ground’ but we also emerge in time, transformed in some way, deepened in some way, enriched in some way and also made more full of compassion in some way. It’s a painful territory but one that also makes us aware of blessings as well as the depth of love which is always present in grief and in our longing and which we should pray never to fully forsake due to the pain and agony of trauma.
A wall of fire
Walking through trauma and waking up inside a nightmare that has formerly been repressed is so so hard. I do not think anyone truly understands trauma unless they have lived trauma. That said some therapists try and have sufficient insight, others don’t in my experience. I often get stymied trying to explain my complex body symptoms to my psychoanalyst, Kat. She does not know how my nights are, the struggle I go through daily and nightly as I feel I am drowning and get fixed on past imprints. I survive as best I can by putting structure in my day and a daily connection with nature is essential to me.
That said reading of how others are also struggling to express to those they love who can sadly not understand brings back key incidents from my own struggle for recognition. My husband got very jealous of my therapy and sided with my Mum in trying to pull me back in line, that said I know he cared for me and didnt want me to be struggling but as a trauma survivor I was and lack of empathy ended up triggering me to take flight again and smash up on the other side of the world all alone. My by then ex husband came to the hospital but gave me no support, told me I needed to go home and he would give me no help with residency (which I eventually got alone) even though I supported him with Australian residency when we met as well as setting up his business. He wanted back “the happy girl I married”, what was the message in that, please put all this sadness behind you if you want us to survive. Its the same message I got in the next relationship I sadly went into 3 years after my ex husband and I separated.
To be dumped when you are already foundering is killing. I honestly dont know how I survived. After the accident overseas I did come home and ended up living alone at the coast for years, no therapy and that was a big mistake but by then my trust was shattered. Luckily I have now been back in therapy for just over 4 years but only really found my last best therapist 3 years ago.
Walking through trauma is like walking through a wall of fire, it is that painful. Along the way you will be told all kinds of shit by others who have not a clue of what you live through on a daily basis. For me a lot of the way I coped was to pretend I was okay and put on as good a front as I could to be accepted but when I finally crashed and burned after coming home I started to get honest and yes, even scream at times, which lost me ‘friends’ but not the people who truly understood and cared. Being deluged with trauma visions as stuff starts to uncover is fucking hard and you need support, sadly there is no way out but through it and sadly until recently truths about trauma and the body were not fully understood, apart from in shamanic cultures and disciplines and those reactions were only understood to be ‘irrational’ but they are not really irrational when you know what a soul has endured but all a part of a valid response to PTSD or Complex PTSD. I have said it before in this blog and I will say it again. You are not abnormal for having a normal response to the overwhelm of trauma. By its very nature trauma overwhelms us and learning to contain that charge takes a lot of time and has to be done slowly over time with those who can help us to hold it and release it little by little by little, a lot like letting air out of a balloon. Wounds to the soul, as D H Lawrence reminded us cannot be cured over night and they will always leave us different, marked in ways that others who have not endured trauma can and will never fully understand.
The meaning we make of things : reflections on trauma, choice, recovery and inner power
The meaning we make of things has a huge influence and power over us and then there are the meanings other influences may project or teach, such as the belief in some spiritual, new age philosophies that we ‘chose’ to be here and experience all we are experiencing for some ‘higher purpose”. I am not as big a fan of this point of view these days although I do believe we are all being presented with evolutionary challenges all the time and that the attitude we take to our trials and tribulations does make huge difference, but this is different to being told we ‘chose’ something painful as a way to learn. I just don’t believe that any more.
I have had the thought a lot lately that I did not choose to be born. My parents conceived me as an unplanned child later in life and I didnt chose to be born into a much older family where a lot was already going down before I arrived on the scene. Later in my life and through much inner exploration I have been able to be more objective about what was happening subjectively, internally and implicitly for me as a young baby and child born into this much older business oriented family. I was listening to an excellent programme on Tuesday on the difference between trauma memory and other memoires. Trauma that happens to us before age of 2 is not consciously remembered as our hippocampus has not been formed yet so is encoded implicitly and is only available through sensation not as thought. It is known too that trauma that occurs after the hippocampus is formed affects the size and influence of this part of our brain on us.
I am only minimally educated in my understanding but I remember reading in Peter Levine’s books Waking The Tiger and In An Unspoken Voice how inaccesible to thought such trauma is and how sensation focused therapy which helps us to bear with and relate to pscyho-biological symptoms (which can be both intense and frightening) is the best kind of therapy to help us with healing, integrating, self soothing and containment of trauma. Also since trauma creates fractures in sensation and experience once such body memories are made conscious they can then be integrated into a narrative which helps us to make sense.
The other thing much on my mind this morning was how much self blame is a part of having undergone trauma. And to be told we ‘chose’ something gives us the illusion of some kind of power or control when really we had neither at the time and often found ourselves totally overwhelmed and disempowered. This is why Complex PTSD therapist Pete Walker and trauma specialist Judith Herman remind us how important it is that we who have been traumatised deal with the inner and external criticism and blame that can be heaped on us and how important it is that we develop good boundaries and the ability to fight back if part of the way we responded to trauma was to collapse, dissociate or go numb, or fall into a pararlysis (playing dead so as to escape the threat). Writing the last reation reminds me of how a wounded animal naturally retreats after a wound to try and heal itself by licking the wound, this kind of ‘licking’ for humans may involve repetitive thoughts or rumination which we play over and over again but if too internalised may keep us trapped. And then to be told we ‘chose” it, just adds insult to injury.
At the same time there is something we trauma survivors do have power and control over, that is the choices me make as to how to respond to being instinct injured or damaged emotionally. It may take a lot of time to find any form of power or control or free choice if we remain identified as victims. The truth is we WERE victims at the time of trauma but we do not have to keep allowing ourselves to be revictimised over and over again by telling ourselves things like “I chose it”, or “I deserve it”, or “this was all for my higher good”. In time as Peter Levine explains trauma does give us a gift of recognising how important the spiritual dimension of experience is. If we loose touch with the power of our spirit for life, light, joy and hope, we are disempowered, once we gain access to this power we may find an inner strength and wisdom that was lacking before. Then we can say that trauma had a purpose but not one we chose, still one the world so sorely needs to learn about and from. We trauma victims who have in some way recovered can then become voices for what lies unspoken in our cells and biology and may even, in some way, been inherited from our ancestors who passed it on when they chose or happened to give birth to us.
The link to the programme on trauma and memory can be found here :
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/trauma,-memory,-and-health/9547446
Coals
This loss will burn inside me like a fever
When the knowing that you are
Torn from me
Taken away from life
Awakens here
I feel as though I am a sleepwalker in a dream
Only thing is
This dream is a night mare
I will not awaken from
How do we keep loving
When forces of darkness
Threaten to steal from us
All that is good noble and pure
Will our souls be marked with hatred too
For acts of such meaningless vengeance
Can we keep breathing through this loss
So much like drowning
As lungs fill with unshed tears
And a silent scream of pain
Too intense to ever be
Fully expressed
We can only hope for love
To win through
As we walk across these coals of fire
That lead us across
A seemingly unfathomable
Abyss of loss
(This poem is inspired by the story of Antoine Leiris who lost his wife Helene in the Parisian terrorist attacks. You can read his journey in his memoire You Will Not Have My Hate, let us remember to cherish those around us who can so easily and quickly be taken and remember how little of love can live within vengeance and hate.)
Pierced
Trauma
Is something you don’t want
Entering you
Blindsiding you
Taking you down
Holding you
Under a wall of water
Or
Making you disappear
Behind a plane of glass
Made opaque
Reality is obscured
On the other side of trauma
The terror you feel
Can be seen by no one
So they question
How real it is
Meanwhile
You cannot see anything
That happened after
Because trauma has completely
Eclipsed your vision
Casting dark shadows on everything
Now
It is impossible for you
To make known a terrible truth
That is piercing you
With a pain
They could never fathom
And so you bleed
From invisible shards
Lodged deep inside
Until some angel appears
Who understands
And helps you to believe
This trauma and its painful aftermath
Truly is real
Not just a symptom
Of a wild imagination
Or a mistaken reality
Under the weight of sin
Under the weight of sin
Burdens I carried
Which were not mine
Crushed me
I left my body
Bleeding on the side of the road
Full metal pierced me
And I was nearly gone from this world
I cannot see you through the fog
Your face is blurred
It was never easy to see who you really were
There was just that space in your soul
I wanted to climb inside
And hide
In order to draw comfort
But the way was barred
And all other exits closed
Oh how I hungered
With a frenzied appetite
Nothing could satiate
Now as the skeins all unravel
And once again I loosening from my mooring
Who knows what old patterns from the past
Will come calling
Is this another underworld journey
Into yet another heart of darkness
I will never escape from
Or is it the beginning of a new birth
The breaking open of a shell
That can no longer contain me any more
The mental confusion of early childhood trauma
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.
Some thoughts on disconnection and connection.
Well back here we are my sister, Mum and me, alone again after all the trauma with little Lyra hit, worrying and wondering and feeling how it is to have no loving family apart from each other close. I called my nephew this morning he only texted back everyone is excited and elated, Lyra is now smiling and out of sedation, call you later the text said. I breathed such a huge sigh of relief but today all three of us are feeling the trauma and the void more deeply than ever. I am sure he has a lot going on as his wife’s extended family were flying in to join them all this morning. I am glad Lyra and Gerrard have all of that loving support. But it does drive home how isolated we can be at times.
I do believe separations are a part of life. With Mercury planet of communications very close the astrological heavy weight Saturn (planet of being alone and separate) now with Mercury moving backwards its driving home to me how deeply Saturnian our family is. Those who managed to break away have close bonds, my nephews all have loving partners and families. My brother has a very close bonded family. The rest of us, well our relationships dissolved for one reason and another.
As I look back I see how hard it was for me to understand emotional connection and closeness growing up. Trauma has the affect of fragmenting us anyway and relational trauma is the worst. If you have a trauma and those around you pull close to you and surround you with love you do a lot better. The loved ones may not understand the deeply traumatised person but they may try. In the case of my older sister and I (and my dead sister, too) when trauma hit us and emotions were challenging there was not one partner who stayed around. I hate to say I am a little envious of Lyra being surrounded by all of that love, but I am. With my Saturn Moon I have to carry that burden of solitude and aloneness and realise I will only connect for a time to anyone. Trauma from my own past made my hypervigilant and gun shy, very fearful of being betrayed and abandoned again in any relationship. I see how I have held back due to fear and then became a lone wolf but hungering for love never the less. All the love I give to my own inner child and inner self is important but it doesnt always make up for a hug from others.
Today I am worried for my mother who is alone now after witnessing that trauma with Lyra the other day. Having people close who then go through trauma or leave has been a constant in our family which seems to have been dogged by separations, leavings, emotional absence and loss. I need to find a way to bear all of this with good grace.
I don’t feel disconnected from myself today and I am thankfully not inside that trauma space. I am so very grateful to the caring souls on WordPress who yesterday reached out to me with so much love, thank you Laina, Grizzly Man, 1 Wise Woman, Alexis, and Twinkle Toes. You made getting through yesterday just the little bit easier for me. I am so lucky to have a connection with you and value your support a lot. I was telling my sister today how much being able to write about what is going on and be connected to here and through my blog helps me. I hope to do the same with others, for there are all times we need a hand to hold in the midst of difficulites.
Relational trauma interrupts the bonds that connect us to others, to our heart and to our feelings as well as to ourselves. Trauma creates a schism that can keep us so alone. Trauma fractures our identity and if we are not held it feels as though we are falling through space.
Last night I googled ‘Trauma Vortex’ as its something Peter Levine talks about in his book Waking The Tiger . I found an excellent article by someone who works with the body in trauma. I will post the link to it below.
http://owenmarcus.com/deep-change/insights-on-healing-the-trauma-body/
If we never experience being held in love or connected to when we are in trauma it’s enough to tear our hearts so deeply apart that we may not even survive. I was also thinking today that those of us who are born with fine radar and are highly sensitive are far more likely to struggle in this life. We become more vulnerable to energies around us, we pick up a lot and we may struggle or suffer if we do not recognise this. I could not help but think a lot about this a lot last night as it affected my grand niece. I think it was far too big a trip for her for four days, she was not eating the same as she may have at home. We were at cafes for lunch on several days. Her tummy was a little sore on Sunday night due to this. Little children need us to stay connected to and in tune with them. On Friday I was careful to take her away and spend some time playing and exploring when it got all a bit too boring with the adults sitting around and discussing adult things. I noticed the frown on her face when she didnt like some of the food and was told to eat it up. At that age its so important that our tastes are respected and I know kids need boundaries but they need to be fair ones. I remember being taken out to dinners with Mum and Dad a being fed alcohol when I was only still very young and then wishing I could go home and go to bed but having to wait around. We learn a lot about about how to care for our bodies and souls in childhood by the way others treat us and knowing that we have a right to what we like and need is so important.
Today I am in a much better place than I was yesterday, the sadness at feeling disconnected is very strong anyway as we head towards Christmas, I know its a very common sadness for so many of us. At this time if we don’t come from a happy family its hard to watch those who do, having times together and being connected, however at this time of year no matter how disconnected we do feel we can always reach out to others for connection, to know that someone cares and is there for us is so important. We are relational beings. Even if we are empathic introverts we still have a need to be connected in ways that are not compromising or overpowering for us. Feeling invaded in the past may make us feel gun shy, but there are those out there who will love and respect who we are. Pain of the past can make us self absorbed, especially if we feel others would not understand us. But in the end, at times we have to let it begin with us, when it comes to reaching out. Those of us who can end up faring better than those who can’t.
