We want them to see us, but are we really holding and addressing our own pain in a healthy way?

I just read back on a pretty intense post that I wrote about 8 years ago after a major conflict with my mum (still then living) and my second sister about a year following my older sister’s death in 2014.

On Being Scapegoated when you try to address pain

I remember the argument we had at the time where I tried to raise hurtful things done to me by both of them and my mother I clearly recalled asking me “Do you even have a clue about my pain?” and “Do you really want to be a part of this family?” which stung so much but made sense of how I felt being born so much later in both her and my father’s life (she was 36 at the time and Dad was 41 in 1962 the year I was born) At that stage my far older family of an older sister and brother and another sister aged 8 was so well established and geared around several businesses so they had little time to really be with a little child at that point. And as I think back to my 8 years older sister and the way she often shuts down like a steel trap (Saturn in Scorpio is very fearful of humiliation and vulnerability and will often sting back, so as not to be stung even by the sharp point of self insight) it makes sense to me of her own struggles and recent spat of bodily injuries relating back to her own self repression (see the second video below.)

As far as having a clue about my mother’s pain I was by then in therapy and had been for over 11 years off and on and was most certainly beginning to learn about how her own mother had treated her and how much she struggled with no father around from the age of 7 to protect her. This comment also angered me so much as in 2003 I put my life on hold choosing to stay here in Australia instead of accompanying my husband back to the UK where so much I loved lay for me.. (his Mars in Leo is smack back on my North Node in Leo). A choice I now see was my responsibility as was the pain of the years that followed when he eventually decided to leave me on 4th August in 2004 of the following year. I find in the approach to that time of year the old pain and questions over this experience in my soul journey is always strongly with me.

It was empathy for Mum after a fall and empathy for my older sister still very unwell and in care that bound me here, but then had forced me into isolation for 2 years after the head injury that followed in June 20076 a year later from him leaving when I made a third attempt to go back to the UK and to separate emotionally (which is something my therapist told me yesterday I cannot blame myself for not being quite ready to do at that time.)

It is also interesting to me that Mum could have spent time with me after school as I was growing up but chose not to and I had a pretty serious accident as a consequence as being a latch key child if I did not put the key back on the hook in the shed there would be no way into the house. When this happened one day I broke a window in anger and frustration and got a very deep gash across my left wrist that required over 30 stitches. On that day I ran down to the neighbor’s place bleeding and in a lot of shock and pain to get help.

So being left alone left me with real wounds and it is not something I want to hold onto today I can only be with that child in me these days who went through so much and give her comfort as if I try to get the empathy from family it is just not there and they actually see me bringing it up as a stress that is too much and this is something I do understand with my only living sister now who has been very repressed emotionally herself. Sadly yesterday during our heated dispute I accused her of not caring, now seeing she does in her own way but lacks, as my parents did, the capacity to attune to me and my inner child of the past emotionally or ever really show true empathy. She has never sadly chosen to engage in any kind of therapy as its my understanding now many psychiatrists only rely on meds and not therapy when really both are needed for us to come to a deeper understanding of wounds.

It is interesting to me that in the lovely video below by Lisa Romaro that I listen to last night on the inner child she speaks of the IC being the source of all of our memory (Cancer and the Moon relate to memories) and the greatest source of pain for my sister is that most of her memories of the time after her hysterectomy in 2003 and then the years of psychiatric internments which followed from 2011 onward are erased and this erasing occurred when her son decided she must go back to the psyche ward where her anxiety on the brink of yet another session of Electo Convulsive Therapy grew in 2020 which upset me so much all I could do was pull back from them all for over a year :

I also listened last night to yet another video from the Crappy Childhood Fairy on self repression which made a lot of sense of how fearful and repressed I am so often as is my older sister. In this talk she shares with us that isolation and criticism, as well as turning away from our good and inner vibrancy are often used as a defense mechanisms by those of us with significant childhood trauma and Complex PTSD and how realising that may be the start of turning around those repressive patterns.

It was clear to me watching this video that fear of being ‘too big for our boots’ is a major issue for those of us not lovingly attuned to in childhood or actively shamed or critcized in fact a nun once told me I was so bad for being as bold as brass when I dared to take a new box of tissues our of a classroom cupboard for use, something that a very close friend of mine from that time clearly remembers. Nuns at Catholic school were big on repression and often scary as all hell, but are we aware of how our traumatizing caregivers were themselves in such fear so much of the time and lacked the capacity to be both truly loving of us, as well as nurturing of our true potential?

It is true that hurt people hurt people and it is not our fault we were hurt. We only have power or control over how we deal with that hurt and often looking to those who will not give it is another way our sense of not being good enough or having a realistic grounded assessment of who is safe and unsafe for us to be around might indeed work against us. In this regard I see Neptune stationing retrograde in the sign of deeply buried emotions and inter-relational connection, Pisces, last Friday as a signal it is time for many of us to lift the lid upon faulty programmings of idealization or self deprication established as a critical defense against both self repression and active shaming we were subjected to by others who could never truly validate us.

The point I am making here is how validation and feeling good enough now is really all up to us having a realistic assessment of as well as a growing in depth understanding of our inner child and his or her particular vulnerabilities, patterns, negative self scripts, strengths and weaknesses while also seeing how those we turned too who will not give us this, especially members of our wounded families who themselves have had to cover over so much are also really struggling. And in the midst of writing this post after stopping for some lunch I came across the following note written on a piece of paper in my book I use to copy down meaningful (to me) quotes :

We meet ourselves with curiosity and compassion rather than turning away.

In other words, in the face of harsh treatment from others we need not explode in anger (a lot of what I was doing and how I was feeling on the 24th of July when I wrote the post shared again here today) but can instead become curious about why they may feel the need to shut down or close up like a trap draw, or alternatively scuttle away like an anxious crab running sideways with his soft centre protected hard shell (Cancer ruled by the moon and emotions) when on the receiving end of shaming or other forms of abuse.

Emotional inter-relationships are indeed complex as can be our own particular styles of self repression. In addition our inner child can look to those who are not healthy due to the fact we also do not know how to be truly self supporting of the true self. And when we cannot support the true self that is far more powerful than our inner wounding, then we can most definately find ourselves in all sorts of trouble.