Swallowing my feeling, swallowing my energy, swallowing my voice : some reflections on Alexithymia and childhood emotional neglect.

These bursts of anger energy I am getting around midday lately in the wake of the inheritance and Scott money lending issues seem to contain a necessary life energy that I really need to express and externalise right now in order to escape any of the self flagellation, self pity and death energy around me at the moment… When I shared with Katina about the amount of tears that fell in the meeting on Friday, today in therapy she said its only natural I am feeling the full brunt of it all as she feels I am some kind of container for my family emotions of those who are living and those who are dead.. Its true : I get drawn to the buried life energy trapped in the Underworld often and the poem I wrote on this yesterday Death Knell explains how closely I live to the collective unconscious.. In fact in my first serious therapy attempt back in 1999 – 2001 when I asked my therapist Wendy if I was a borderline patient, she just looked and me and said “No, Deborah you are someone who lives very close to the borderline of the collective unconscious.” This goes along with my strong Neptune signature.

It has taken me some years to begin to understand this, that my sad or even angry outbursts so often demonised by family had meaning and were valid, that I was acting out pain that found no container and was even thrown aside or found difficult to deal with by certain therapists… I was strong enough never to be pushed down a medication pathway and I know it works for some in combination with other therapies but for me, well I use food as my medicine, Chinese herbs, Schleussler’s tissue salts and vitamins too.. I use stretching and movement and even vocalising and sounding at times.. At times a good scream far away from others will help me break through some of the trapped emotional energy it as never easy for me to have with safety inside my family of origin and getting active is very important when I feel the anxiety of feelings too long supressed struggling to be set free or find a voice. Today a burst of anger towards my sister in the wake of the last head injury I suffered just came out in the quiet of my on home…. I wanted to pick up the phone to her and say assertively all the things I have not been able to say about how her actions in the wake of Jonathan leaving me affected me.. Instead before I see her, I often get panic attacks.

Emotional understanding, empathy and good containment is as essential to me as it is to other sufferers of complex grief, emotional neglect, childhood abuse and trauma as well as invalidation abuse.. I read a very good book a while back that showed how cortisol is raised by certain triggers and how excitement or upset is soothed by being shown soothing and empathy…even the power of touch, at the right time has helped me to have emotional breakthroughs, and I am realising how much anger and sadness and other emotions I have either had to deny or over ride due to them not feeling safe..

In a way it was good that I could front up to the meeting about Mum’s estate on Friday and have my emotions, even though it seems to me that at that meeting I was not only having my own emotions, but those of others as well..Maybe its a part of high empathy or emotional intelligence or sensitivity, I just don’t know but I do know I relate best to others capable of empathy and sensitivity.. I have been having a few long chats with a lovely older man I met in AA a few years back lately and its obvious to me when we speak we are on similar wavelengths as far as being tuned in is concerned… I do not want to imply that there are those I cannot love who don’t understand me but it does make the connecting all that more hard… Some people, like my brother for example, just decide to remain trapped in rationalisation and freeze up around emotional expression, that said on the inside behind the masks they wear a lot more is probably going on emotionally speaking.. My brother once told me he knows he wears blinkers emotionally.

The issue of masks came up while talking to Jeff yesterday.. he said he has a lovely poem he is going to share with me when social distancing ends which asks “can you hear all the things I cannot say?” some of us just struggle to find the right words, some of us get freaked out by or have a poor grasp on emotions, some of us express another emotion or reaction in place of the real one.. showing tenderness and empathy to ourselves is hard enough going in the face of all of this…

Having a kind nature also means you can so often be easily pulled into the dramas or problems of others. It is something I have struggled with all of my life, lacking your own holding or support you try to give it to others by proxy….if you appear strong others just lap it up forgetting that you too have needs.. seeing our own need and true feelings is very hard for survivors of Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN), there is even a name given to this symptom : Alexithymia..

In her book on the subject therapist Jonice Webb talks of this symptom and of how many CEN sufferers are often irritable tending to snap at others due to their incapacity to tolerate emotions easily. ccording to Webb : “emotions that are not acknowledged or expressed tend to jumble together and emerge as anger.. (erupting) as small (or large) spurts of irritability that hurt others.” When I read that particular paragraph I cannot help but think of my mother as well as myself at times..

Alexithymia makes it harder for those of us suffering CEN to have workable relationships with others at times, for a healthy intimate relationship relies most powerfully upon the healthy, assertive, loving expression of our feelings and emotions as well as our needs..as well as upon our ability to sense them in others…when instead emotions get bottled up coming out sideways our relationships and self esteem suffers and we end up feeling lonelier than before…

After re-reading sections of Webb’s book Running on Empty this afternoon I have a greater understanding of how such a meeting as that one on Friday would have triggered complex emotions for me and probably for my siblings too, however I am in not as secure a financial position lately due to having lent a lot of my savings out of kindness. This has left me feeling vulnerable and afraid sometimes.. All things considered its a massive achievement I made it there on Friday, today as I sat crying in the car during the final part of therapy it was out of sadness of how mean I have been to myself at times as a sufferer of neglect..and at how much I have swallowed my own valid feelings at times.. journaling, blogging, posting helps me to share some of that struggle and externalise it, finding at least some kind of channel for all the things that are so difficult at times to say.