Terror and Trauma and Hope

[Calsun]

Now that I am an adult, I feel so unmanly to admit that I still feel terror.  And I can give the facts of what my B mother did, the abuse, the rage, the violence, the humiliation.  And I can get really clinical about it.  Yes, she has BPD, I'm sure of it and is a narcissist.  But the clinical definition  and the insight and the tools to start to deal with it as an adult do not change the fact that my body has held so much terror inside.  This clinically defined person was violent, abusive, abandoning, rageful, shaming, and I felt a chronic threat to my person.  The sound of her screaming and cursing at me still sound in my ears, the names, the laughing at me, the beatings.  I went through this chronically throughout my childhood.  As I come back into my body more fully, I can experience the terror of having a B mother who made it unsafe to be a person, continually made it unsafe to be a fully bodied being in the world.

I have recently had an illness that has made it feel unsafe to be in my body, again, and I realize that it is very similar to what I experienced as a child, that threat of annihilation. And how I needed to feel some sense of control over what was going to happen to me.  Like a hunted animal, I needed to numb myself physically in order to ease the pain of an inevitable attack from a predator. As a child, I had no way to fight and no where to flee.  All I could do was what many people who suffer from trauma have done, I numbed myself and tried to do to myself psychologically what I knew my mother would inevitably do to me.  I needed to stop feeling embodied or the pain would be too great.  And when you stop feeling in your body, you stop being able to fully live. 

And what was just as frightening and terrifying was the reality that for all of the things she did to me, all of the pain she inflicted, she was unable to give me what I needed, which was love.  And so I was constantly abandoned and felt alone in the world, sort of like that candle in the wind feeling.  I have some good friends in my life, and yet I can still feel what I felt as a child, that I am all alone, that there is no one really there who will step up for me, that feeling the my being evokes abandonment.  And that as with my mother, I will be abandoned and rejected.  That my needs will be too great for what a B mother could ever give or that human connection can give.  And that true bonds of intimacy and togetherness are not possible.

The more embodied I become in my healing, the more I come in touch with the terror of having experienced what I did from my borderline mother. And the more sorrow and emptiness I feel that there was never really a mother there to love me.  That abandonment is beyond painful.

I am very new to this community, but I've already felt helped by being able to share and to benefit from what others have shared.  People who have more stable childhoods don't get it.  But I think when you have had B parent, the childhood needs for love and acceptance for who you really are that were never met, the abuse and abandonment that was offered where love should have been, the B's thinking that she what she was offering was really love when it was abuse and abandonment, they can leave a gaping hole in your heart that is so difficult to heal from.  Still hopeful though that my heart can continue to be healed and that I can truly experience life in all its fullness!

Calsun

[GeekyGirl]

The more embodied I become in my healing, the more I come in touch with the terror of having experienced what I did from my borderline mother. And the more sorrow and emptiness I feel that there was never really a mother there to love me.  That abandonment is beyond painful.

It can feel like you've been orphaned. Many of us have grieved or are grieving, because coming to the realization that you didn't have the nurturing parent you thought you had can be very painful--it's a loss that's hard to explain to people who didn't grow up with BPD parents. You're not alone, Calsun. As you can see in the Survivor's Guide on the right -------> mourning is a big part of the healing process.

I have recently had an illness that has made it feel unsafe to be in my body, again, and I realize that it is very similar to what I experienced as a child, that threat of annihilation. And how I needed to feel some sense of control over what was going to happen to me.  Like a hunted animal, I needed to numb myself physically in order to ease the pain of an inevitable attack from a predator.

How are you doing now? It's understandable that you'd want some control over what would happen to you--being sick can certainly leave you feeling vulnerable. What did you do to feel like you did have some control and numb yourself? I hope you're on the mend now!

[Kwamina]

Welcome Calsun  

Thanks for sharing your story. The sense of leaving your body and coming back after all those difficult years is something I can really relate to. I understand how hard it must be for you to fully experience all the things your mother did to you. I've experienced this too, it sometimes actually feels like the more I heal, the more I hurt. Before I was completely out of touch with my feelings, in many ways out of touch with reality but now it's like I'm connecting with parts of me that had been burried for a very long time. The pain can truly be overwhelming but at least now you're able to feel the pain and try to heal it, before we were powerless and the only thing our mind could do to survive was indeed to become numb and (try to) not feel anything. Now we have new options. I also hope you'll continue your process of healing and will be able to enjoy life more fully! Take care  

[hoping4hope]

Maybe this will help. I was told by a therapist that we now feel the pain or anquish as we did at the age it happened.  So, if we are terrfied of our parent at age 5, we now feel that feeling as we did at age 5.  It can be overwhelming to go back there. This helped me understand the abused children I worked with and also my own family issues.  So adult  if you can pull back and recognize that it is the pain of that 5 year old, you can kind of comfort that part of you. 

In short that pain comes out of you the way it went in.

And that kind of makes sense.

(I am NOT a therapist.)