3/12/2023 0 Comments Entwined with you online free![]() ![]() I don’t mean to take it out and analyze every detail. I’ve also learned that you can grab a Nugget of Trauma and pull it into the light, metaphorically. But you aren’t that child anymore you’re older, your mind is more mature, and you’re better equipped to deal with those experiences now.īe gentle with yourself, but also have faith that you will come out the other side if you have to come face to face with a horrible memory, or what I have dubbed a Nugget of Trauma. If you’re like me, your mind protected you when you were too young to process what was happening to you. I have been, but I also came through it, and the memories I was so afraid of, while painful, aren’t as scary now. I’m not going to say that I haven’t been triggered by writing. Trust me, I know so well how scary it can be to put things down on paper and suddenly find yourself looking at something that your brain put away a long time ago to protect you. That might be wishful thinking, but this is one example of why it is so important to write things down and keep track of what is going on in your head, especially in dark times. To find out I’d been going in circles was devastating.Īfter doing some independent research on the neurological damage caused by early childhood trauma, I have begun to wonder if my brain was cycling just so I could have those moments of relief as a way to feel something positive and hopeful. I may never have recognized it if a friend hadn’t pointed it out to me. A deep dive back into depression where the realization is forgotten.Cue the tsunami of relief and giddy hopefulness and a false belief that I was getting better.Then the realization of how a specific past experience was affecting me.Leading to anger at being depressed and feeling “sick of living with this”.It took me years to recognize I was cycling through the Wheel of Trauma: And, unfortunately, the clinical view that I was making progress with those realizations, or “breakthroughs,” was false.įor many of us, having a “breakthrough” doesn’t even mean that in two years we’ll remember it, and we may go through the same cycles of dealing with the abuse all over again. It took me a long time to learn that having a realization about a certain event and learning how it’s affecting me in the present doesn’t mean the problems associated with it go away. I didn’t know all this when I was in my twenties, and I barely understood the concept of talk therapy, which was: You talk about something that happened to you, and then the therapist tells you about the side effects of that experience to help you understand your feelings and behavior. Sound familiar? For many of us, the manipulation of how we think about the abuse and ourselves is the most painful and long-lasting trauma, but going into detail about this in therapy is exhausting, mentally and physically, and can cause a spiral into deeper depression. All of my abuse and the abuse of my brothers was, according to my father, my fault because I wasn’t good enough. I was ashamed that I could not protect my brothers and that, each time I was raped, it was because of something I had done that required punishment, like not wringing out a wash rag tightly enough. I had a lot to pick from: beatings, torture, rape, sodomy, abduction, neglect, and the big pulsing mass of guilt and shame. So, thinking that they must know more than me about how to deal with the chaos in my mind, I would focus on one aspect of my childhood to try an work through it with them. I started with talk therapy, and it seemed like the one recurring question being asked of me was, “What’s the issue or event that you are struggling with?” When I was in my early twenties my memories became a deluge, flooding into my mind all at once. For many of us abused as children, trauma encompassed our entire childhood and adolescent life. The problem with long-term childhood trauma is that there was not just one Nugget, or one moment that we were left reeling from. We are often told in therapy that we need to dig deep and explore our feelings until we find the root of our problem, as though we’ll finally have peace and relief just because we’ve found the “Nugget of Trauma.” It takes everything you’ve got.” ~Unknown ![]() TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.
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