On psychological invasion and validation

As a sensitive, intuitive person I can easily be overwhelmed by people with big energy.  I am noticing lately how I almost feel as if I am being barraged with the intensity of other’s energy. It could be that presently I am feeling very vulnerable and raw, facing as I am the prospect of breast surgery in six days. At the moment I am aware that I am longing for peace and quiet, a place to be away from other people and their endless chitter chatter which goes on at what seems to be like a head level divorced from heart.

As  write those last words another part of me arks up, it knows those people aren’t doing anything wrong the problem is in me.  At the moment I am feeling such mixed emotions after a life time of taking upon my self the trauma around me, having a difficult time separating from other people’s issues and pain that I am now loosing tolerance for even having to listen to other’s stories of woe and trouble.  And the truth is, at present I probably need all of my own energy for healing.

Yesterday morning I awoke feeling so overwhelmed. I felt like I was undergoing a breakdown of sorts.  Just looking around the house at everything that needed to be done, seeing all the things neglected and burnt off after an intensely hot period in the garden, feeling a mixture of sadness and anger that my body would have to be invaded again by surgery, it all felt too much.  I literally felt like I was going to explode.

I managed to eat a little and get Jasper and myself to the park.  It was far too much to talk to anyone, I felt so dissociated, as if I was existing in a far off impenetrable place that no one could understand.  And then the tears began to fall, silently, wordlessly as I felt the agony and torment of so much, the years of trauma, rupture and aloneness so hard to articulate, contrasted with the happy talk of those around me who had had loving time with family.  No one reached out to comfort me, which on some level, I guess was fine, although a part of me longed for it, but it felt good nevertheless just to be able to have my feelings and not be blocked from expressing.

I dropped Jasper back home and went to my local coffee place where I sat reading my book more tears falling.  I was glad just to be able to cry.  I went about the other chores I had to do and then drove to my therapy appointment.  Thank God for therapy.  Thank God for the loving empathetic eyes of my therapist.  Thank God for her deep understanding of my pain, of how my PTSD is being triggered so much for me due to the prospect of surgery.  Thank God for a place just to be able to be and to feel.  I left feeling so much better although a part of me wanted to just be able to stay there with her, safe, comforted and at home.

Today I felt better.  I still had the spins last night, as I usually do but there was a different character to the spin this time, it felt like it was working its way out.  I did have a very disturbing dream though.  In the dream somehow I had made a meal out of my dog Jasper, it was as though I had done this in a highly dissociated state as I looked down at his body to find his heart still beating, his ribs exposed with some flesh on.  I was horrified.  How had I allowed this to happen to my puppy which I loved with all of my heart?  At the end of the dream I had the feeling he would survive although he had undergone such damage.  It made me cry in horror this morning as I stroked his soft fur and gazed into his beautiful soulful spaniel eyes.

In contemplating that profound dream image the conversations we had in therapy shed so much light on what the image reflected.  Katina was talking to me of the torture my body had undergone over years.  This includes childhood traumas of having my arm pulled out of my socket by my mother violently yanking me,  third degree burns on my foot from a cleaning frenzy of my mothers’ gone wrong on vacation, a fish hook skewered through the webbing of my foot after Dad carelessly left it lying around in the sea grass matting on holiday and my arm which was cut open by banging on a window which I could not open after being locked out as a latch key child because the key had not been returned to its usual place.  I nearly severed the tendons in my wrist on this occasion and needed thirty stiches to repair the torn flesh that peeled back like a tin lid.  Then there have been the major accidents, terminations and other wounds sustained during my addiction. A split lip, a cut foot.

Contemplating this is it any wonder that at times I feel overwhelmed?  That I am wary of getting close to others?  That I often fear being either psychologically or physically invaded or overpowered.

Today my chiropractor, Rebecca and I were discussing healthy psychological boundaries.  I am becoming aware that it is only lately that I even beginning to understand what these are and how much I have felt unsafe around others and fear being damaged by them.

I also know that due to my own trauma I naturally attract others who have been traumatised,  although I can relate to their trauma I am beginning to see that for my own health and sanity there are times I need to move away from identifying too strongly with their trauma as there is a process that can happen for me where I begin to loose my own boundaries and absorb other’s pain.  It happened to me at the dog park yesterday with a woman who smelled very much like a heavy drinker to me.  When I was crying she latched onto my energy and started giving me  advice and loading me with her trauma.  My instinctive need was to back away, to keep a healthy distance whilst I still felt compassion.  I am coming to see that I no longer want to have to live endlessly in my trauma or other people’s trauma.

When we are empathetic I do believe it is a gift. But I do think at times it can turn into a curse if we begin to absorb what is not ours, for then we loose our own boundary and begin to feel overwhelmed.  And the truth is that the burden of unresolved trauma which exists on a non verbal level can at times feel overwhelming for us.  This was explained to me by my therapist yesterday.

That is why it is so important for us to take care of ourselves when our trauma history is being retriggered in the present.  That step of self care for me often involves some kind of movement.  Indeed I lived many, many years in a state of trauma freeze in which I was going to the wrong people trying to express my trauma, having it reactivated and invalidated, which kept driving it deeper and deeper into my own body.  Those kind of difficulties wound make me retreat and freeze again.  I could still be living in the freeze state if I did not keep seeking to find the right help and begin to trust my instincts about what did not feel right and what I needed to take action to move away from.

I also sought out therapists who did not have the capacity to contain big emotions and in this way I was re-traumatised in trying to address my own trauma.  I see it has taken me 17 years to find the right kind of help and understanding.  Thank God I now have this as I face my immanent cancer surgery.

I would encourage anyone out there trying to address trauma who finds themselves with a therapist who makes you feel worse to keep looking for the right help.  When we have been psychologically invalidated or invaded we end up losing connection to our deeper instincts.  Writer and psychotherapist Clarissa Pinkola Estes refers to this as “injured instincts” and it leads us on a quest which often goes though the path of compulsion and addiction.

We need to learn how we were invalidated, how we can be shamed for trying to express our truth and liberate and release our pain at times.  We need to keep fighting until we find someone who “gets” it and us. When we find this person we may feel pain and discomfort for a time as old feelings of anger, shame and sadness rise up but a short while later we will find ourselves feeling lighter, because we have been allowed to release our truth and it has led to us being psychologically validated.  We will then begin to feel empowered.  We will be able to recognise others trauma but not take it on as our own.  We will have developed adequate boundaries which enable us to practice self care.