Yes I’ve been silent for a month or so (again) and yes I know, I’m not keeping the promises to myself to document this healing journey as often as I should. Should is a heavy word. But at the same time, I can’t and won’t pressure myself. This is my journey of healing and it’s not a straight line, neither is it neat, tidy and orderly, fresh off an editorial calendar, on-time every week. Healing is not neat and tidy and orderly. It’s like a big, fact pencil scribble on a piece of paper that has no beginning and no end. It’s scatty. And it’s messy. Hence my sporadic writing reflects the big, fat, messy scribble. The “Mr Man” “Mr Messy” comes to mind: a pink, walking squiggle with arms and legs. Isn’t that what it feels like to be the walking wounded? I wonder if Mr Messy needed healing? Anyway I’m going to write when the feeling and mood takes me (like right now) plus when I feel like I have something to say. Goes without saying the ‘happy holiday’ season which included my lack lustre 49th birthday plus the usual life crap (with what feels like a 101 things on my mind simultaneously) and not wanting to feel glued to my laptop added to my period of silence. Incidentally I’d spent my 48th birthday in December ‘23 with The Narc who made me feel like a princess on a pedstal, showered me with surprises topping the day off with a stay at an exclusive hotel, only to come crashing down from my very high pedestal with an almighty thud just 48 hours later, gaslighted for being an unattentive, uninterested and uncaring girlfriend who only thinks about and talks about herself. I recall that fall vividly and how aghast I was at the acrid accusations. Three weeks later I left him for good. So I’m sorry I’m not great at keeping up with the posts and being a crap blogger. Although I’m not sorry either. Am I apologising to you or myself is the real question? I think I know the answer to that one.
Anyway, I have news: I serendipitously found another therapist last November and I finally feel like I could really be on the winding road to recovery. If you’re wondering what kind of therapy, it’s equine therapy with an IFS therapist – internal family systems – you may have heard of it? And yes, that’s therapy with horses, although I don’t get to ride them, just be with them. The horses are sensitive and intelligent souls, there to teach you about your energy and help you hold space. The IFS bit was also serendipitous: I’d only just purchased books on the topic a few weeks prior to me finding her (although I don’t think reading books alone can heal you, not for me anyway). It turns out she is a strong proponent of IFS as a modality of her therapy. Was I looking for equine therapy in particular? Not at all. The thought came literally out of nowhere last November (after a spate of searching too avidly for a therapist last April and consequently wasting money on not so effective ones. The notion of equine therapy just landed on me as these things do, totally unprompted (although there is always an invisible thread that binds our lives). It’s true what they say when you stop looking, you find. After just two enquiries luckily for me I found a local woman who had an opening. So I had my first session on 9 December 2024 and I’m about five sessions in. I cannot express how glad I am that I’ve found someone who actually cares, understands, listens and can give me the support I really need. I know she’s good for me. It’s what I’ve need for a very, very long time and I’m soaking it up as I percolate the effects of it. I’m starting to feel a bit better.
Let me tell you about what I’ve learned so far…
There’s different parts within us all, I can only surmise that its fragmented parts of the psyche and personality. I guess if you get too traumatised that’s where multiple personality disorder can occur where each part takes over without the other knowing. We say it to ourselves don’t we: “part of me wants this and part of me wants something else”. It’s like you’re one whole person but at the same time, a jigsaw puzzle: there’s all these other parts that should work together as a unit. Like a family. Yes, I know, families don’t always agree but can work it out if they are honest and work together (if they are functioning correctly). Honest being the operative word.
What’s come to light recently is my parts have been at war, my internal world echoing the dysfunction of my external family which I’ll tell you about in my next post. I had become fragmented as a child and what has taken over all these years is the extremely emotionally wounded child in a lot of pain that suffered in silence, alone, without support and has continued to suffer all alone in my psyche, unhealed and crying out for attention; these child parts have never fully been seen, heard, consoled or most importantly, validated all these years (which my therapist has made me realise). This child part wanted to be shown love, support, guidance, compassion and connection. But instead, wounded by racial abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical abuse, abandonment, bullying and victimisation, occurring concurrently and systematically, transmuted into a burning ball of rage, running amok trying to protect me, the adult me, constantly in defence and fight mode (my modus operandi).
The rage is the unexpressed pain body which is a very real thing. And at the same time it’s a very fragile part that gets hurt very easily. There is a fragility about me – most people with childhood trauma are fragile I think but most people would also call that ‘highly strung’ because “you can’t take a joke” and take things personally. It’s not highly strung. It’s living in a highly traumatised body with a nervous system that been shot to pieces as a child, hence the disability to co-regulate yourself and getting dysregulated by seemingly minor things (and taking things to heart). So yes, if you’re reading this and you’ve survived childhood trauma, you have a hidden disability. I’ve always been fragile and hyper sensitive I now know as a result of living in a traumatised body and invariably with CPTSD.
I know what my triggers are: the rageful child part takes over when I’m triggered, namely by betrayal, injustice, lies, deceit and hubris – in whatever form it manifests, even if it doesn’t involved me – but these are all things which the child endured. Unfortunately, the calm, centred self doesn’t get a look in because the wounded child needs to express what she could never express during those painful and pain-filled years, constantly on the war path, trying to right the wrongs that were inflicted on her, even dreaming up imaginary conflicts in various scenarios (that might or could never happen) which I’ve realised is a trauma survival response (pre-empting imaginary scenarios). What this ‘part’ has been been trying to do is remove this the thick tar-like rage that burns is borne of betrayal, bullying, deceit and injustice that has been living in her all these years. But all she really wanted and needed all these years is love, nurturing, support, guidance, someone to take her under their wing and let her have a stab at that this thing call life.
And here’s how the internal war wages on. Parts of me hate and get angry at other parts: I hate myself when I get so uncontrollably rageful at minor things, I hate it when I want validation from men, I hate that I can’t love my body, I hate myself for not living the life that I should have or could have live, I hate it that I didn’t get the childhood that I should have had – there’s parts of me that have contempt and disdain towards other parts. But what the wounded parts need are not hate towards them but love, tenderness and compassion to be seen and heard by each other to co-regulate and co-exist.
There is a battlefield within me and I feel it, a feeling of unrest, that’s unsettled and unstable, an anxious feeling that can’t rest or relax, that’s ready to pounce at any given moment. My internal family is at war pushing other parts of me away. This pushing parts away and fragmentation mirrors my external life – friends floating in and out of my life, the inability to forge a meaningful career with an ADHD personality, boundaries like a tea bag allowing too much to seep in, a sense of not knowing who I truly am, trying to impersonate who I should be, what I really want and who I really am, narcissists floating in and out of my life wreaking havoc, having no sense of stability and part of no meaningful community, never thriving and staying comfortable in my uncomfortable survival mode. All I’ve ever wanted is a surrogate family and closeness. I haven’t found it (so far). The casualty of my internal war has been exiling the real me into such a deep, tangled wilderness that it’s difficult to excavate. I’m so used to being the way I am that I can’t see how I’m going to change. My internal ‘parts’ being at war all these years, disjointed and dysfunctional, with my wounded child parts taking my true self hostage, have not allowed real me to surface in fear of losing control and history repeating itself. If I’m scary, then whose gonna mess with me?
The pain body and trauma needs a voice; the most important thing it needs is to be seen, heard and validated and then transformed (which I’m in the early days of doing). You can’t just shove it to one side and carry on, minimising your pain because the new age movement tells you to ‘just get on with it’, rewire your brain and manifest your future. Validation of the pain body is huge. Recognising it. Having compassion and sympathy for it. I think only then can you move forward once you’ve said, yes, this happened. Yes it was bad. Yes it was wrong. No child should have gone through what you did. No, you’re not a victim for feeling this way. No you’re not living in the past. And yes, I care about you pain body. I think only then can you get on the road to alchemising the pain…
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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