I believe we are loved unconditionally by life, the Universe and God. I believe that it is only humans who shame and judge. I believe that past false beliefs about our unlovability are meant to be faced and weeded out. I also believe we have the need to show others empathy and respect even in their wounded places. There is a great difference between staying around and allowing yourself to be shamed and judged or hurt by another human being, and recognising that some people are not going to be able to show you tolerance or empathy simply due to their past. And so it is we cannot expect fair or just treatment from everyone the world being as it is, but we do have the right to set boundaries. We can only set boundaries though if we feel we are lovable enough and that our being is not dependent upon others approval, and also if we know that in fact we do deserve kind and fair treatment even if we cannot always expect it from everyone. We can respect that others are different to us, only when we mature and we can respect (even if we do not like it ) that others choose not to heal and remain abusive.
One of the difficult things about facing childhood trauma is that we often will learn to accept unacceptable behavior, we may allow others to shame or judge us, we may often also judge and shame ourselves due to our past. Moving through shame and the anger at having our true needs and feelings not accounted for or taken seriously takes time and it involves facing HOW WE EXPERIENCED WHAT HAPPENED TO US NOT WHAT ANOTHER TRIES TO TELL US WE EXPERIENCED. Particularly for those of us gaslighted or invalidated in childhood this may be difficult. We may even need to be told over and over that it did have the negative impact that it did upon us, but really when it comes to being hurt we must trust our own inner knowing.
Our body knows what feels good to it. Often having boundaries overrun in childhood means that our own limits of pain or discomfort were not tolerated and so we may be urge to over run ourselves or carry deep inside our body and soul a sense of having been overwhelmed, or over powered in a way that felt traumatic. Another form of abuse that affects our body/mind and soul deeply is suppression abuse, this may have involved being foreceably restrained or having procedures done to us that overwhelmed or hurt us. This kind of trauma leaves us feeling incredibly disempowered as well as endlessly besieged, often by lingering inner symptoms or sensations that later in life we may find it so difficult to make sense of. Panic attacks often come when a trigger hits, but at times there may not seem to be a trigger, or it may be something that seems insignificant but to us is actually not. For example, for me, waking up each morning is a powerful trigger for coming too after two difficult accidents in which I was immobilized. On any day it usually takes me about 2 hours from waking to actually become upright and at those times I will always be undergoing an intense anxiety trauma cascade. An elevated heart rate may trigger many of us who went through overwhelm, for example and launch us into flashbacks.
It is important that we recognize that valid responses to trauma are natural, they are part of what makes us human. As I mentioned in a previous post we need help with managing them. For myself things that work best lately seem to be yoga, tapping for anxiety and making a good effort to bring myself into present time and ground when a flashback hits me. Grounding in the moment for me involves directing my attention away from symptoms and into action of some sort. Walking is always a good thing for me, but I so often feel resistant to walking, that said the moment I defy the pull back of trauma which wants to keep me both immobilized and isolated and get out and moving into fresh air, the better I feel. Anxiety often wants to paralyse us, over thinking, which often generates even more anxiety for us, in AA circles is called analysis paralysis can keep us spinning the wheels, judging, criticizing, shaming and even blaming ourselves or others. Such a trauma paralysis keeps us out of life and most especially disconnected from a sense of love in our bodies and well as a sense of life, heart, vitality, vibrancy and joy.
Fixation upon our hurt, however, in my experience tends to linger when we don’t make attempts to process all of the feelings and externalize and make both sense and meaning of them. Resentment may be related to that and often occurs when we have not been able to set good enough boundaries with others due to not feeling we have the power to do so. For many of us who never got the right to say NO to certain things, the ability to set boundaries only comes with time and huge load of resentment.
As trauma specialist Peter Levine notes, externalization of intense action movements or anger will help us to make a break out of the endless repetitive fixation or paralysis. Especially if a lot of our trauma relates to repression or being held down or prevented from expression, we must find ways to move and make sense of all we underwent through trauma. Re-empowerment in many ways involves calling our spirit back into a body that we may have felt in some way betrayed us by feeling so much we could not control when young that may linger and haunt us well into adulthood.
Emerging From The Dark Night 