I’ve started reading a book about healing the inner child – I think that very much goes hand-in-hand with healing childhood trauma, don’t you think? One ‘symptom’ of ingrained childhood trauma is difficulty maintaining relationships. Now, I’ve never considered myself someone who can’t make friends or maintain friendships or relationships. In fact, I make friends very easily and usually very pro-active in trying to maintain stable friendships.
However, it dawned on me like a ton of bricks a few days ago that throughout my life, I think I’ve been making friends out of pure survival mode, not thriving mode. It explains why I have hardly any close friends and why I don’t have any long standing friends from school or from spells of various work life (and why friends have exited my life for no reason). There is a lot of toxic shame in not having many friends, like you’re a contagious leper, unpopular and unwanted and by virtue of the fact, not nice to be around (which is untrue).
Not having any family, (literally it’s me and my mum) friends become precious and higher in the pecking that for most others who have a partner and family. In my head when I find friends that I like and click with, they unwittingly slip into roles of surrogate sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and mothers. I don’t keep them in the ‘friend’ category. And perhaps I’m over compensating with these friends, doing more than I should do, perhaps being more needy with them than normal. And maybe I bring people too close too quickly. For me, friend connections are very precious to be kept close; for the friends in question, perhaps I’m probably just an outer extension to their life that is probably not as meaningful.
All I’ve ever craved is family; it’s something I value so much that I’ve only ever experienced dysfunctionally. My aunts did show up briefly in my early-mid 30’s and then around 40, when decades had passed and in their head, I was still that 12 year old child they abandoned and fed to the wolves (overnight). Each time they showed up, I was like a kiddy in a sweet shop dreaming that everything was going to resolved itself and we’d have family birthdays, Diwali and Christmas’s together. That was in my 30s and 40s and each time I would get my hopes up, I would just as quickly come crashing down with a loud thud from cloud cuckoo land, back to earth. It was painful.
I know I’ve got my mum, but there’s a mother wound also that needs healing. Of course, I don’t make these surrogacy roles known to new friends, it’s just in my head to make me feel secure that I’m not totally alone in this world and that someone would care enough to look for me if I disappeared overnight or dropped down dead. I’ve tried to ‘find’ new friends over the course of my life, and tried to fit into friend groups, but somehow felt like an outsider. I’ve always felt awkward in groups and never felt like I fit in, like a bit of an outsider. I prefer 1:1s much better. But friends have come and gone, evaporating like steam into thin air.
However, I think I need to change this pattern of needing friends and I’m going to let it be from now on. Meaning, if someone doesn’t get in touch with me, I’m not going to be proactive and get in touch them. I’m going to focus on the relationship I have with myself, heal the inner child longing for love, family, friends, support and connection. I think if I heal that, then the outside will begin to change….
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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