I just read some very raw posts from someone doing very powerful work of uncoiling their abuse, the abuse was very painful and happened at the hands of someone in power who should have been caring but instead ended up violating the person. The level of internalized self blame was painful to read but never the less deeply echoed for me, she had no place to tell of it and so where could the pain and all of the mixed up feelings go.
Another post spoke of how the person had to shut down a child’s need. It bought to mind the many times I have hurt Jasper due to his exhuberance. I have not hit him but I have tried to hold him down or tried to apologize that he is not ‘better trained” while at the same time another part of me always feels happiest when he is off lead and free to roam. That said this is best done in open spaces where he is not some kind of ‘threat’ to others such as children who might be scared by a dog running up or jumping around trying to engage them in play or barking to get attention.
Just writing this makes me realize how bound up both my parents were and especially calls to mind my living sister who has been so shut down in past years by psychiatric treatment.. I just listened to a woman being interviewed who went through the psychiatric system and was damaged by the intense lack of consistent help and deep attunement on behalf of the various psychiatrists who ‘handled’ her.. It made me feel, yet again, deep fear for what may be happening to my sister right now, since it over two months since we had any kind of connection or contact.
I wish there had bern a place for exuberance and joy in our family as well as expression of a broader range of feeling, not so much anxiety and anger. I feel sad both my parents had to grow up so fast they were robbed of a childhood in which natural dependency needs were met and emotional as well as physical support given to play and experience their emotions. My mother especially carried so much of the repressed emotional energy of her ancestral lineage with so much loss and fear of survival in it.
Donald Winnicott devotes much of his psychological understanding to the need for play, letting go into and allowing. For me, I feared if I relaxed I may be killed, and I actually got badly burned when drawing one day as I stepped down into a bucket of scalding water on a caravaning holiday as Mum frenetically cleaned.
From my wide reading and understanding, it is a sad fact of addictive systems and families that joy was frowned upon or demonised and that the need for suppression and control masks so much buried on the emotional spectrum epigenetically. Then the addiction or compulsion is the only place you get to live out suppressed impulses to be wild, natural, self expressive and free or lift the lid for a while on all of that repression. How sad! It’s all work work work and then exhaustion.
Admittedly I may be projecting here out if my own family history. Who knows? Still allowing myself to be young at times, and play.. To be disorganized and most especially to relax and kick back just to read a book for an hour or create in other ways is so important lately, the allowing, loving adult in me is slowly replacing the super critical tyrant. I just wish it had been so different for my two sisters. And I constantly apologise to Jasper too for carrying that and then shutting him down in the ways I had and was shut down myself.
Emerging From The Dark Night 