It made a lot of sense re-reading through Jonice Webb’s book on emotional neglect yesterday when she said that coming to feel that your feelings and needs don’t matter is one of the major results. I honestly don’t remember a time during my childhood where my wants and feelings and needs were okay.. I remember often being dragged alone on outings or activities I didn’t enjoy like going on the boat fishing when I would rather surf at the beach or being taken skiing which I hated and sucked at. I also remember being forced to be involved in adult activities that were not suited to a child of my age.. I understand it more now as neither of my parents got to be children and have a happy relaxed childhood, both lost parents as kids and both went through poverty, depression and war.. I know more about how much my Mum was subjected to now that I trust the energies and truths that live in my body.. I am also learning to really trust what doesn’t feel good at the hands of others and speak up when it happens.
This evening I got told my someone I should not have been affected by something that affected me deeply.. to be honest I didn’t even argue, I just shut down the phone and walked away from the conversation… I am also at the limit of any help I am going to give to try to get someone out of something they should be taking care of, I nearly buckled again this weekend due to loneliness but when I sat with it over the past 24 hours I knew to keep helping is going to hurt me and if it means I will be alone then so be it, after all I am an adult now and can take care of myself and if I don’t get what I want or need I no longer have to hang around and suck it up as I did in the past.. Wow does it ever feel liberating to say that because even as I type it I know there are some truths I don’t allow myself to actually feel as sensations in my body and allow to register as real and act on.. This is interesting as on the scale of the four modalities thinking and sensation are opposites.. those who are high on thinking and intellectualising sometimes don’t adapt to or register sensations as a second default… for me I think and then feel but the feelings are mixed up a lot of the time and when a sensation happens I can over ride it.. That is why now I believe the biggest schism I have to heal in myself is the one that cuts my off from allowing the full experience of my embodied instinctual life…and perfectionism is the thing that cuts us off from it most.
In her book on emotional neglect Jonice asks us to ask ourselves to find out what the things we most enjoy to do are and then to do more of them…equally important is knowing the things that hurt us and we don’t want around us…My Catholic education often taught me to over ride these hurts but in the long run it just hurts too much to keep sucking it up. And sad to say is that lately I realise I don’t feel that happy around certain people.. they just don’t make me feel good when I am around them…
I wish as a younger person and even a middle aged adult I had trusted my gut feelings more and had the courage to walk away from things that hurt, but emotional neglect kept me bonded in those places, I didn’t have, in those past years, enough of an adult self to show up for my inner child.. now I am getting better at holding that childhood part.. I can recognise the hurts I underwent in my life were deep and painful and real, I no longer need to dismiss, invalidate them or over ride them. At key points I was so utterly alone in my life and very far from home and was not shown true empathy, at other times those who reached out to me offering what I truly needed were rejected…this journey of coming to know myself better and see how my rejected instinctual life became that way has taken some time, but lately I feel myself to be making more progress…and I pray things continue to improve as I continue to work slowly on building an inner foundation of more inner strength, grounded self esteem, self love and trust.
Emerging From The Dark Night 