Being overpowered a lot in childhood leaves a lasting legacy of helplessness inside of us.. Any kind of abuse ruptures our boundaries and sense of self or can prevent it forming to the extent we can feel large and ‘adult’ enough to ward off attack.. In the novel I am currently reading, Postscript the lead character, Holly is knocked off her bike, she comes to in her parent’s house after the accident nd sees her father smiling at her from the doorway, he speaks to her about ‘playing possum’ how when animals are hurt or threatened they contract into a ‘freeze’ state. it is something Peter Levine explores a lot in his work on trauma.. Holly’s Dad explains how playing dead or freezing by animals is used to ward off attack.. It can also be what happens to us when we are immobilised or overpowered in childhood by parents or siblings or by surgical procedures.. If we cannot run Peter Levine has shown running or escape movements remain stored up as vibrational charge, we may also be sitting on a power keg of rage.
Today while vacuuming (which often triggers me.. I was actually in a lot anger about my brother while doing it) it occurred to me how many intolerable feelings my Mum was left with as a child.. my body/anxiety experience has shown me over past years of introspection and therapy, how she passed those down. Often they came out in one of her cleaning frenzies which exploring Mars in a post yesterday and saying she had it in Pisces shows that oceanic confusion of the overwhelmed child, left alone, judged by the Nuns – even used by them to clean the chapel as punishment for when she did not do her homework as she had no father or mother there to oversee her work as a child. I think how in our house Mum was the one allowed to storm around and express all of this anger (and of what a tight reign of perfectionism and control she used to manage the cleanliness of the environment) while each of us suckd it up in different ways..Also you could never get angry with Mum she just could not cope with anger or boundaries being set..
In the midst of this Dad would laugh at Mum. Dad would also tell us we were not hurt or would not stop for us to go to the toilet on long trips, he also would tickle me to the point it hurt and would not stop when I asked, it felt so intolerable and its only last year I read something about this kind of tickling abuse (funny as it sounds!!) It used to ovewhelm me so much, not to mention all the other injuries due to his carelessness and self preoccupation.. Around this time I used to have a lot of dreams of flying to escape from an attacker and I started to wet the bed but I think my overwhelming feelings then were most often ones of powerlessness and helplessness.
It is stated that such a pattern turns for many of us into what Complex PTSD specialist Pete Walker calls the ‘fawn’ response to trauma.. We freeze, or roll over, get trapped like a deer in headlights or begin to check out of ‘reality’ through reading or television watching (something I used to do a lot of when left alone as a child and ignored by Dad after work). I also used to lose myself in music, in fact I think I saved my soul in some small way as a child doing this because the emotions expressed in my two favourite albums of the time. A Song for You by the Carpenters, and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John were ones I could very much relate to and in some form gave voice to inner experiences even if deeply clouded… Music is still such a great healer and releaser of feeling for me.
In the novel I am reading, Holly equates her accident and the feeling of being overpowered and paralysed with what happens when we suffer a loved ones, grief, death or loss. It was not lost on me that I chose this book having had a bicycle accident myself as all of that grief I had supressed over the 8 years of active addiction that followed my father’s death began to emerge around 9 years of sobriety.. My family wouldn’t comfort me only told me I was a nuisance and ‘no fun’, (as did my ex husband’s family).. he told me he wanted “happy Debs back” and the family I was lodging with after he left me and my other sister abused me and drove me away to England didn’t want me around due to me reminding their daughter of the friend she had lost to addiction a short while before.. Luckily in the ashram and later at the B and B (where I went in September 2005 to seek refuge) I met those who held me as I cried and made an effort to understand the lost young woman who was so so alone driven so very far from any kind of human empathy or care,
At the moment I am really angry with my brother.. I poured out my heart to him at this time in a letter, he obviously did not know how to cope holding me at arms length and telling me to pull myself together when I later returned to Australia in 2006. He also made sure his daughter never saw me alone or had much to do with any of his sisters.. She didnt even come to my older sister or mother’s funerals in 2014 and 2017.
I see now what a doomsday project it was expecting any empathy from him…and even now he refused to help Scott and I and even believe he was real back in 2019, there is plenty of money there he could easily release to both my sister and I but he is labouring under this illusion we are not up to handling it, my sister even got demonised for ordering some chairs from Italy which she later cancelled…. What the Fuck she has a perfect entitlement to spend money if she wishes in any way she wishes!!!.. I saw similar shit happen to my sister in the home who was withheld from and how her family were cut out of the inheritance because she was the family scapegoat. (sent into the emotional desert carrying all of the repressed family pain). It riles me and when I spoke up about it my brother tried to paint me as a ‘loose cannon” Fucker!!
I was having a good chat to Jesus about all of this earlier today.. These Joan Meyer sermons I listen to talk all about us not staying trapped in the black pit of depressive freeze.. We are not meant to see ourselves as broken for having suffered abuse neglect or damage.. We are meant to rise and fight…We have to find a voice.. For so long I let others say I was ‘crazy’ for feeling and expressing my feelings. As a woman I was so often on the receiving end of this kind of shit from men (and I do apologize sincerelly to those men out there who are not like this as I know its not all of you) but I am sick of women being put down for emotionality and by God we are not going to let you overpower us any more by telling us we are crazy for feeling emotions..
When my second oldest sister was hospitalised again for depression in 2019 4 months after Mum died my brother tried to tell me how she was not acting ‘rationally’ he got upset about it when I tried to say its not easy to be rational after not only having undergone the loss of your second parent but all the other abuse my sister went through as a result of being in a bit of a frenzy at one point in her life.. But if my brother does not want to hear something, I know now he will just switch off.. nothing will open his ears.. Because a long time ago he learned to shut the door on his own feelings.. That said I have seen him cry, both at my older sister and Mum’s funerals and I need to remember he was born in 1944 so it can be harder for men of that generation to feel safe showing emotion or any other kind of vulnerability.. That is why I do not want to attack him over maintaining so much distance from the sorting out of this inheritance issue but at the same time I wish he would front up.. So sometimes I just stay silent too. This is when I turn to Jesus.. this is when I pray.. For Jesus was scapegoated too… so he knows how spiritually sick and blind humans can be.
Luckily though, these days I am not ‘freezing’ and ‘fawning’ as much.. It is still scary for me to express my feelings at times, since I still have those deep fears of being demonised, or ‘crucified’ for it by the unfeeling….but at least lately my inner critic is not turning against me as much and keeping me as paralysed as I used to be, completely overwhelmed by my bodily entrapment symptoms of that deeply entrenched Complex PTSD freeze state.
Emerging From The Dark Night 