It’s impossible to ever know where you might sit on the ‘amount of trauma’ spectrum, as you only know your experience from the inside, and actually, would it ever be helpful to know unless you wanted to enter a ‘competition of victimhood’? All that seems clear to me is we leave childhood with a lot to work out. This, of course, includes me.
Here I describe my personal journey and the ‘healing’ that finally got me to a significantly better place. I share it to perhaps give hope to anyone any of this resonates with – even partially – and to deliver the message that everyone is capable of change, if you, as my counsellor friends say, ‘do the work!’
I think my childhood experiences probably share similarities with many people brought up by my parents’ generation. I often hear friend’s describing their parents’ patterns of behaviour that sound extremely familiar to me. I believe my parents and their peers were loaded with (war) ‘trauma’ – so much so – they buried it deeply into a place of blissful unawareness (or perhaps were simply never enabled to reflect upon themselves). And a complete lack of self-awareness, tends to come out as some difficult behaviours – sometimes aimed at others and sometimes towards ourselves.
My dad could be really kind. He could be attentive, interested and playful. I think what little self-worth I left childhood with, was probably down to him (although my brother would struggle to say that). He was, however, also prone to extremely angry outbursts. His random volatility meant that what we did on one day passed without incident, the next day got us a beating. That’s because it was never really a reflection of what we did, it was always initiated by his frame of mind. He could be extremely aggressive sometimes. I remember him hitting my brother round the head with a block of wood once for picking an apple off a tree. I remember him becoming angry once, because brother had been giggling, but because he couldn’t reach my brother he hit me instead. That’s how ‘out of control’ his anger was. Early in my life, some of my friends were so scared of him, they refused to come round to play if he was in. Because of how my dad was, we spent much of our childhood treading on eggshells.
As our parents’ behaviour is so normal to us in the main, I always assumed that it was my dad’s poorly expressed anger that had the most negative impact as such illogical, unpredictable and aggressive outbursts seemed obviously wrong, even to a child. It was only later, when I started on a journey of self-reflection that I realised it was my mother’s behaviour that was actually more challenging. I want to make it clear that I now no longer feel anger towards her for this. How I see it is, that whatever drove her to treat me as she did, she was not in control of. She had to carry ‘how she was’ with her throughout her life as she seemed totally incapable of taking a realistic look at herself – such was her denial via oppressive shame.
Also significant to my childhood was that my mum was desperate for me to be a boy. She’d already had a girl when I came along. My older sister told my brother that she remembers (aged 3 and 7 months old) a negative change in atmosphere happening overnight when I arrived. Also, at my first feed immediately after birth, a fight broke out between my mum, dad and the midwife over ‘breast or bottle’ which my dad always insisted made me the ‘difficult eater’ I was throughout childhood! I think it probably just inhibited my ability to process cortisol somewhat!
My parents’ marriage seemed to steadily deteriorate over the years from this point onwards – although it had been based on very rocky foundations already. My mum was so desperate for another child (in the hope of a boy) and my dad so insistent that the family was fine as it was, my mum eventually took me and my sister and left home for six months. I have a very vague memory (aged about 2 and a half) of being in strange homes. It was only when my dad agreed to try for another child that we returned, but the harm was done and the resentment had been well and truly planted in their marriage.
From as early as I can remember, my parents regularly shouted at each other. Towards the end (many years later), this was every time their paths crossed. The pattern went: mum said something to ‘attack’ dad (he was obviously never good enough), dad became angry, dad would calm down and then mum’s continued festering went on long enough to trigger him again. Over and over. There are many stories of their hostilities towards each other but it would take along time to include them all here.
So which of my mum’s behaviours left me feeling fearful, unloved and utterly confused? To the outside world, we looked OK. Our mum put food on the table, did our washing, always sent us into school correctly equipped, bought us Christmas and birthday presents, helped us learn our times tables and spellings (no mean feat!) but these acts of service were definitely my mum going through the motions of what ‘should’ be done and she definitely felt tied to duties she did not always happily undertake. I think she resented us having needs. That was almost understandable – I am sure we were a lot of work.
What was not so understandable, and certainly not to a child, was the projection of her self-loathing onto me (and my sister). It wasn’t always; it was only when the ‘nasty switch’ went. This might have been because she was tired, something else was bothering her or we had triggered her to feel out of control etc. Who knows? It was unpredictable from where I stood.
From an age much younger than I could articulate the following, as I can now …
I remember regular, persistent and vindictive comparisons (why can’t you be like X, she can Y, Y and Y), harsh judgements and criticisms (I was never good enough) and regular announcements of how disappointed she was in me. There were cold rejections when upset, belittling when I took something seriously or showed any aspirations, accusations of being too sensitive and I was often persistently goaded until I became upset. I remember regularly as a very young child being told I had an ‘inferiority complex’, with an explanation of what one was and then mocked for it. (She actually bought me a bag for school with a picture of the ugly duckling and the words ‘Nobody loves me’ on it. I remember a boy on the way to school reading it and saying, ‘It’s not surprising – look at you!’) When I needed glasses and patches for a lazy eye, at aged 2 1/2, I remember being made to feel like I had really let her down. I remember that from the push chair.
Her communication was bizarre. She’d feedback strange manipulations and distortions of what I had said to her, which would leave me utterly confused, feeling totally misunderstood and unable to defend myself. She was a master of a strawman’s argument. I was obviously always ‘wrong’ and her, ‘right’. She simply could not deal with the shame of being wrong. She could also fluctuate from ‘attacker’ to ‘victim’ within the same sentence to remain ‘right’ and defend herself from having to admit to or justify anything.
My mum’s incredibly rigid ability to hold on to her side of the story – not allowing empathy for anyone else’s experience – was oppressive. Later in life I realised she had actually re-written chunks of our personal history and made it far rosier than it was. (She insisted dad never hit us for example.) I also realised this wasn’t at all conscious – like most of her behaviour. She was also extremely tenacious when the ‘nasty’ switch went. ‘Attacks’ seemed to often go on and on.
She also didn’t have capacity for comfort, reassurance, interest in what I said or praise for something well done – even when the nasty switch wasn’t ‘on’. This was my, and I am sure similar to many-others-of-my-generations’, ‘normal’.
So with that as my start, how did my journey unfold? It’s only at this point in my life that I can be really honest without crumpling with shame!
In early childhood I was ‘naughty’ and my sister was ‘good’. We’d clearly developed different strategies for navigating this regime. I was often told off for things that sound bizarre now: covering the back garden in polystyrene to make it look like snow, locking another child in our shed as my prisoner and then forgetting about him, playing cricket with a violin bat, persuading the children on my school dinner table to push the table into the dinner queue bit by bit, calling a child with a skin condition, ‘tomato head’, refusing to do any work in music lessons for three weeks, getting muddy shoes by running around on the playing field when we were meant to stay on the playground. I also did much, much trespassing (including building sites and railway tracks), stealing things I liked and climbing on roofs. Those were only the things I got caught doing of course.
As a young child I remember pondering whether it was better to be a ‘good’ person or ‘bad’ person – possibly based on which got more attention! That’s how awry my goalpost were.
My teenage years were not great, but whose were really? I was a social misfit, totally not in the ‘in’ crowd or with the slightest awareness of how to get even close to whatever they were busy doing. I wasn’t brimming with confidence either but fortunately, I was reasonably self-motivated to do things and achieve (although I would keep them to myself mostly for fear of being mocked). Another saving grace was that after a very slow start (I couldn’t really read until I was 10), my academic abilities kicked in and I managed to apply myself to school work. It turned out I wasn’t as dim as I had been led to believe and I was even getting little nods of approval for my academic successes from my dad.
I left home at 18 to go to university. I wasn’t aware of how much of a mess I was. In some ways I flew, no longer feeling the oppression of home but in other ways I was wielding around damaging behaviours I had no awareness of and certainly no understanding of how unhelpful and destructive they were …
I really can’t know which of these behaviours and traits came from nature and which from nurture but here goes! I drank too much and too often, as the numbing effect felt great. (I have drinking down to a ginger wine at Christmas now!) I was emotionally hypervigilant, super-sensitive and my fear and shame were readily triggered, and therefore I was easily knocked off my metaphorical feet to defensiveness and/or withdrawing from situations. I had emotional outbursts, that I would be confused by, but only with those closest to me. Stress and overwhelm were easily triggered and I very quickly felt out of my depth but busily pretending I wasn’t. I would then obsess over whatever triggered me until I felt better and more in control.
I had an enormous fear of rejection and at the same time an expectation of it, which could make me demanding and fearful at the same time (this was intense and confusing to me let alone others)! I wasn’t overly empathetic towards others unless I was concentrating on being so. I could also behave outrageously (some stories need to be saved for the autobiography! )
I developed narcissistic traits probably as a way of covering up how I truly felt about myself. I had a need to present myself as someone who could be admired and really struggled if people saw the parts of me I felt shameful about. I was quick to blame others as crippling shame meant I could not take responsibility for ‘mess ups’ or being wrong. I also had a warped sense of entitlement in some situations which was the opposite of what I had in childhood. Maybe this was some sort of maladaptive response to the complicated ways my needs were met as a child; possibly because if I didn’t demand to protect my needs, who would? Or maybe I had a strong need to believe I was ‘special’ and deserved to be prioritised, to counteract all the times I had been told I wasn’t and I didn’t.
I had no sense of boundaries having been afforded zero respect for the idea I deserved any myself and I was sometimes confused by (and then dismissive of) what upset others. I can still cringe now at some of the breach of boundaries my mum engaged in.
I wanted to please but at the same time, didn’t really know how to and often got things wrong or was ‘too much’. I also didn’t let people too close for fear of them seeing the real me – which of course I assumed they would not like. I was chaotic, with poor impulse control, except for when things were too out-of-control or unexpected for me and then I might become controlling. I also realised retrospectively too, that I tended to anticipate not being heard and/or being misunderstood and this caused a lot of unnecessary agitation. I was surprised when people responded in ways that straightforwardly showed understanding – or even believed me.
I repeated some of the things my mother had demonstrated frequently to me – the manipulation into position of victim and possibly using ‘u’ turns in any argument to maximise emotional impact although I am sure I could never do this quite as well as my mother could. I generally found it hard to trust others, often assumed a more negative agenda from them than was likely and could be a little too ready to ‘write some people off’. But I could also I idolise people – which I later realised is equally as unhealthy, because if you set someone up unrealistically on a pedestal, it’s painful when they turn out to be just as fallible as everyone else. This kind of black and white thinking is never helpful. If you’d have told me back then how I behaved, I would have denied it as I would not have been able to see it, let alone accept it. Yes, I was truly a mess without the first clue about any of it.
Despite all of the above, I was liked by some people but in a ‘either I am your cup of tea or not’ way. I definitely divided the crowd: those that loved me, loved me but others were definitely wary.
Also on the plus side, I was generally optimistic and cheerful. I had an enduring sense of humour and was readily playful. I could be determined and hyper-focus on anything that interested me. (I realise this was a tad intense for some!) I was incessantly curious, questioning and enthusiastic about many things and somehow unusually creative when it came to ideas (I didn’t realise this until I was about 30). I could be incredibly persuasive – maybe a ‘talent’ that develops when we don’t feel heard! I could also often see the ‘big picture’ in ways others couldn’t. I remember once, early on in my teaching career, being confused in a staff meeting by the coverage of a lot of unnecessary details when trying to solve a problem. Eventually when my confidence and frustration built enough, I made a declaration of how the problem could be solved. I remember someone turning to me and saying, ‘How did you work that out?’
I was non-conforming in outlook which some might see as a fault, others a blessing. I have thought about this trait in recent years. I suspect if the key adults in your childhood didn’t behave in a way that instilled trust and a sense of security, you’re unlikely to be automatic in deferring to any ‘authority’ and likely to challenge viewpoints others might adopt automatically.
I also managed to hide much of what was going on emotionally behind the scenes, enough to function in the working world reasonably well. As a teacher, I really, really cared about the children – having a sense for how tender childhood could be. My playfulness, humour and creativity were also appealing to children and I could relate to the ‘naughty’ ones too, of course.
I see my 20s as a time when I just thrashed life on an emotional roller-coaster with absolutely no grounding in self-understanding and certainly no ability to feel secure. It’s a cliché, but I’d love to go back and start from there again with the self-awareness, understanding, ability to reflect and emotional intelligence I have now. I would love to be able to apologise to those I upset, in my presumably tumultuous wake.
I guess when we launch into life and encounter others who behave like the significant adults in our childhoods (or maybe even the false anticipation and expectation of these behaviours in others) the coping strategies and defences we had that guarded against any of their more ‘testing’ behaviours , can readily be triggered again if we don’t learn to free ourselves from these responses. These strategies might include avoidance, submission, hiding away, aggression, pleasing (then resenting), distracting, creating drama, pushing people away, triggering others, perfectionism etc. – they will be different for each of us. Sadly it can take some time to realise what unhelpful behaviours we have, more time to learn these behaviours don’t all continue to serve us well and even more time to unlearn them.
The changes in me didn’t happen overnight. They weren’t linear either – more jolts, fits and starts and two steps forward and one step back. Also like anyone, there were situations that enabled my best bits to shine, and other more challenging times when the less helpful behaviours were triggered – but none of this was conscious of course.
In order to change, I definitely needed to start with an awareness of the unhelpful things I did. Unfortunately in early adulthood, shame worked incredibly hard to make me blind to my own behaviour. It was more comfortable to deny and distort things than take responsibility for them. Eventually, some years later, I could witness the impact of the behaviours enough to start understanding how detrimental they were. This definitely involved enduring shame – which turns out to be more fear-inducing in anticipation than in reality. Sitting and breathing through shame, helps you realise how you can feel it for far more than is actually warranted! Finally, I developed greater awareness of the present moment, to eventually give myself the flexibility to escape the automatic responses of previous times!
In my late 20s I had my first dabbling in finding something close to pointing me in the direction of self-help/discovery/healing! I read the book, ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ by Louise L. Hay, I read ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle and I had a few sessions with a reflexologist with exceptional insights who told me I didn’t have to play victim like my mum – or continue any of the other lessons she’d ‘taught’ me – as I sat there amongst projectile tears and snot! It was the first time I had felt truly ‘seen’. The insights I gained here mostly had the impact of helping me realise I had issues- so blind had I been to myself.
I also met my husband at 28. I don’t think I would have allowed someone so kind into my life before this point – as prior to meeting him, my outlook and behaviour tended to scupper good possibilities in intimate relationships. I think it was a reflection of my initial attempts of self-discovery that shifted me enough to allow some positivity in! Joni Mitchel once said something like, ‘if you want things to stay the same, change partners throughout your life; if you want things to change, stay with the same person.’ She’s right, of course. Shorter relationships allow you to be on repeat and let the same lack of development and patterns of behaviour disrupt things. Stay with the same person and you have to grow, to get through the difficult times. I think my husband and I have grown together.
My thirties were dedicated to raising young children although my husband was the main carer while I was busy teaching other children. Of course, I’d be a better parent if I could send what I know and feel now back to who I was then. But we muddled through and I am now honest about my shortcomings with my children.
My interest in psychology gained momentum around now with a keen interest in Carl Jung’s unconscious and conscious psychology – and a long obsession with Myers Briggs Personality profiling! (Ah I see why I am a social misfit now!) It’s in retrospect that I see this keen interest was a desperate search for answers that might help me.
My 40s brought some significant shifts in self-awareness. I learned EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) which I practiced for about a year. Whether it worked or not was a tad beside the point. What it did do was make me aware of my emotional responses as they happened, which made me less reactive and more introspective. I became incredibly curious about my emotional reactions and their triggers. I hadn’t realised at the time but this helped me endure (and not try to avoid) uncomfortable emotions and accelerated my emotional intelligence and self-awareness no end.
I gained a diploma in hypnotherapy and NLP too which gave me some insights to behaviour, the way we mentally retain ‘trauma’ and emotional recollections (often with unhelpful distortions!) but it didn’t seem to go ‘deep’ enough. It seemed like a ‘patch it up’ approach and afterwards, I still felt I was carrying the raw pain of self-hatred that I just could not shift. My ‘teacher’ did a regression on me but it only seemed to scratch the surface – although it was very kind of her to try!
I had some sessions of ‘family constellations’ (which sounds more woo woo than it is) with an incredibly intuitive therapist. Together we explored my relationship with my mother and it definitely helped – but the shift still hadn’t brought anything close to harmony in my mum’s and my relationship.
I also learned to meditate in my early 40s. Oh my did this help! I continue to do so and say more about that here. But I also believe that there is a danger of what some call ‘spiritual by-pass’ with meditation, where you can transcend the effects of your emotional discomfort for relief from it, but if you haven’t dealt with your hard-wired patterns, they are easily triggered to return: much like drugs dealing with the symptoms but not the underlying cause. However, I also experienced how meditation helps the healing journey accelerate, as it gives the gift of enough detachment from the whirlwind of your thoughts and emotions that you can more honestly see, and accept, yourself.
A few years later, I completed a certificate in person-centred approaches. I didn’t suspect it at the start, but this turned out to be to a significant wringing out of the ‘trauma pain’ (or whatever it was) within me that I was craving. Part of the training was an ‘encounter group’. This was where all participants sat in a circle for an entire weekend (breaks only for food, coffee and sleep) sharing only what came up for them emotionally in any moment. In effect it’s a continuous chain of one person triggering the next! That sounds intense (and I guess it was) but because you are ‘held’ so well by the facilitators and you are so accepted by the whole group whatever comes up for you, it can be like one jolt of re-programming when it comes to letting go of thought-patterns and emotions still torturing you from the past.
I hadn’t realised it, but I had suppressed my resentment towards my mum because of guilt. ‘You’re not meant to be angry towards your mum’ and this had sort of left it stuck! My anger was confused and I felt I had no right to feel (or express) it. I might also have had a block about showing vulnerability as that was also fair game for my mum. A true expression of how I felt, held in this group of people, cleared it dramatically, and suddenly. I now refer to that weekend as the weekend of the exorcism. (I am joking!)
Another significant thing this course taught me was, when using myself as a case study for Carl Roger’s personality theory as we were challengingly asked to do, I realised that his personality development model: where children adapt their behaviour to get their parents’/significant adults’ approval, didn’t seem to quite be the full story for me. I couldn’t remember any approval other than a little from my dad when I started to blossom academically. It suddenly dawned on me that my pain wasn’t from the disapproval I received (that was small fry!) so much as that I was left with the feeling that I didn’t have the right to exist. This made sense as I was such an unwelcome baby.
The Monday after the ‘exorcism’ weekend, I happened to be going down to visit my, now quite ill, mother in hospital. The shift in me meant that she could carry on with the same selection of behaviours as usual: attacks, denials, distortions, judgements, criticisms, comparisons, manipulation into position of victim, back to attack again, complete changes in what she said she had said etc. but now, they didn’t touch the sides. I just felt love for the poor woman who had worked so little out in her lifetime. It felt incredible and I suspect she sensed a shift in me too as we sort of ‘got along’ much better than usual.
(I just need to add here, I started playing what I called ‘mum-game bingo’ in my head to consciously acknowledge each of her ‘manoeuvres’. It was a way of keeping me mentally occupied which helped further to prevent any kind of reaction from me. Some of you might relate to some of these. It feels a bit mean positing this here but this game did help me – so might help someone else!)
There was a sadness that I hadn’t managed to reach this release and subsequent acceptance earlier than I did. A bit late in the day, I realised she was never going to be capable of change and she would never have been able to ‘see’ her behaviour. She was incredibly stuck. It’s also not really a child’s job to ‘heal’ their parent. I think in the case of my mum I was never going to be able to help her ‘see’ what she did, so any improvement in our relationship was only ever going to be my responsibility. Still – it really was better late than never.
My father had an unpleasant death in 2008 and my mother a not-so-unpleasant one, last May. I’m and orphan now! I was so pleased that I had eventually found peace (and even some humour) with my mum’s ‘ways’. Getting to the point where my mother no longer triggered me, was a massive indication that I had really ‘let it go’. From this side, it just feels foolish that it took me so long! It meant she died with me managing to find some real love for her (although I won’t pretend, I always skipped along to see her)! It also meant I could see she did love me. She really loved me in her own complicated way. The other stuff, she just couldn’t help.
***
My journey obviously continues. Like everyone, I can stumble across interactions, life events and incidents that test me but I am able to feel the emotions they trigger with far fewer complications.
Now:
- I have less desperate need to be ‘heard’, acknowledged or validated – which is liberating (although I still talk a lot!),
- I am far more straightforwardly accepting of all emotions and far more in control of my responses.
- I have a much better ability to ‘let things go’ (other than curiosity about why something might have happened so I can delve deep and learn from it),
- I really mind far less what others think of me. This doesn’t mean I deliberately go around irresponsibly upsetting others. (I don’t think I am a psychopath!) It’s more that if someone doesn’t like me, well that’s their business. I have no need to get involved with their dislike of me.
- I communicate more authentically, directly and assertively,
- I feel far more congruent: I have no need to hide parts of myself I used to deem shameful and my self-worth is so much better for this.
- My perspective has greater clarity,
- I can more clearly see and readily accept responsibility for my part in things.
- Life feels so much more like an extremely interesting adventure – whatever I am doing!
I guess for those who remain ever curious, this kind of recovery eventually moves on to become an embellished growth because of the understanding and wisdom our journey gave us. And many of us are fortunate enough to continue to grow until our dying day – unlike my poor mum.
***
