Original Trauma And The Mental Health Legacy

Firstly hello it's been a while! I have taken some time out from the website to focus on writing my first book, which is fictional, occasionally fantastical, but also very much deals with themes around mental health, family and healing from trauma.

I felt compelled to write a new blog post as I recently have dropped alot of the things that I have used to defend against feelings of unworthiness and low self esteem. This is a big change for me, the book project and the website are for the first time, things I am doing completely on my own terms, for myself, and not because I feel compelled to so that I can mask, feel 'normal', sacrifice myself to others, or 'fit in' with social convention (although old beliefs and behaviours can sometimes still sneak in). I am working on accepting myself and my current limitations due to health, past trauma and giving space to coming to terms with an autism diagnosis.

However, I am still healing and this blog post reflects the cyclical processes I go through in coping with my childhood trauma and current anxiety issues. For this reason I include a

*Possible Trigger Warning *

That feeling of shame and the torturous wait to be punished first came from my parents.

I always felt like something bad was about to happen, and that I had to hide and keep small, or I would be caught.

The fact that my dad was the offender didn’t matter, nor did the fact that my mum enabled him in every aspect of the control he held over the family. Even though I have logically come to terms with the fact that she was also a victim, I still feel rage when I think of all the times she passively allowed him to get away with it so that she could have an easier life.

I see flashes of what happened, but the memories have clearly occupied my body and troubled my mind since I was very small.

Terror and shame, wanting to tell my mum, needing help; anger and disgust. Fear that that I would be blamed for tearing the family apart.

Not that at that young age I even had the words to begin with, or a narrative. I shut down, closed my eyes, refusing to participate and resisting in the only way that would keep me safe.

The funny thing about memory, is that when something is never talked about, or recollection is unclear and indistinct, it can cease to exist.

When it’s something you reject, that you can’t handle and need to forget, it is even easier for the story to be erased. It’s like that word that’s on the tip of your tongue, or the sense that you’ve forgotten something important.

My body regularly told me something was wrong as I grew up. I had intense feelings of disgust when I saw my body. I know something happened after I had eaten because at that point when my stomach is still full after a meal, to this day I get a horrible sensation of being touched which creeps around my waist, making me feel dirty and ashamed. Then there’s the old settee it happened on, which I had stopped sitting on as a child. I had to sit on the carpet when my dad laid out on it, I could not stand being near him.

Going on holidays or days away was like an outing with a hostage taker, with all time spent appeasing a kidnapper. People ask victims: Why didn’t you run away or ask for help? Because you’re brainwashed into believing that the alternative is worse than the familiar horror and you feel like nothing will help and no one will ever believe you.

I remember playing a board game with my mum and my brother, aged around six or seven. I wanted to tell her something… that my dad had done something to me… but I don’t know what exactly it was. Just the feeling that it was bad, and I had to carry the secret, and I didn’t want to hold it all anymore. But I knew it would upset her, I felt guilty, because it was like I was his mistress, and I was betraying her. So I didn’t say anything because I was to blame, and I would split up the family, or just as bad, she would do nothing. I would be blamed either way. She had made it clear over and over again that she would choose him and what she called, ‘keeping the peace’, over my welfare.

Whenever I had complained about my dad previously she had told me I, ‘shouldn’t upset him.’ No wonder I said nothing.

I kept it all inside and I consciously forgot that anything had ever happened. In fact for a number of years I repressed everything. I was given the diagnosis of anxiety and agoraphobia. The fact was that a lot of my anxiety was around feelings of shame and fearing being a bad person. I was also triggered when I saw any young girl that resembled myself at the age I was abused, sending me into spiralling episodes of horrific OCD.

It took a lot of time before I could see that I was actually having quite a reasonable reaction to what I had ‘forgotten’. I don’t know if my father was conscious of his intent to destroy my potential, and trample my spirit.

What I do know is that he was a narcissist, and he treated me as though I didn’t have the right to exist. While my mother expected me to sacrifice myself, including my identity, self-respect, future, mental and emotional health; all so that they could both be looked after by a powerless little parentified girl who only wanted to be loved and give the space to live.

Recently I haven’t been doing the things that would usually prop my self-esteem up, to fight back at the critical attacks I carry internally from my parents. I am not working (in the conventional sense); I am not studying and my social life fell of a cliff a while ago.

I find that I still feel as though I shouldn’t be allowed out in the world and need to be doing things to earn my existence.

It’s even more hard when the intrusive thoughts of doom and gloom constantly push me back when I try to go further away from home.

I wonder what is it that I am so scared of? When I’m already feeling anxious, repetitive, warning thoughts about how far I am from home push me towards panic attacks. For me the outside world is unpredictable, dangerous; a sensory nightmare for a hyper-sensitive autistic with CPTSD. As a cyclist living in a busy city, the environment feels aggressive, uncontrollable and seems to be populated by domineering types that want ‘weaker’ people like me out of their way.

I realise that I am probably mapping my father onto my perception of the entire world, while my mother’s modelling of passivity as safety means that I must remain small, silent and compliant, ignoring my own needs.

Every time I feel a panic attack coming on, I am terrified of being vulnerable, my mind and body doing things I don’t want it to. I feel like I’m being ordered back home, shamefully running away so I can hide and squash the painful feelings. I want to avoid this feeling of helplessness because it feels like death.

I worry that something bad will happen if I stay and I don’t give in, I think I will be punished. It will come from the inside, the part that hates myself. The part that worries I’m a bad person, who might do bad things. It’s part me and part him. His part doesn’t want me to live my life or be happy, and my part worries that I’m not good enough to live my life and that I don’t deserve happiness. This means worrying that I will never get home again, that the anxiety won’t stop and my fear of sudden blindness tops it all off.

Of course this is all magical thinking, from a very young part of myself. Maybe the blindness fear is really about closing my eyes, both wanting to and being scared of being forced to submissively shut them, and leaving my self-unprotected, undefended - Almost saying that the bad thing happening is okay…

I was only little though. I have to forgive myself for being unable to protect little me. I did my best to get through an impossible situation on my own.

I don’t want to run away anymore, or give in to something that feels more forceful, feeding off my fear.

I was taught that avoidance makes uncomfortable realities go away.

It doesn’t, it is projected elsewhere, it grows in secrets and silence; it builds anxiety while you wait for the next thing to happen. You survive again and the relief is short lived.

The reality is that I suffered abuse, and the consequences are that living is sometimes very challenging and difficult. I don’t know who else needs to hear this right now, but you might be carrying the internalised abuser in you too, and they are mean and they are lying to you. They want us to carry on where they left off, passing on their crap so we have to deal with it instead of them.

It feels real, the self-punishment you accept seems justified. The fearful thoughts seem to be protective, but what caring person would want you to suffer and be miserable and trapped?

They handed over their own justifications of abuse and neglect to us and we believed them because we were worn down and tired, because it was all we have heard since we were born.

My intrusive thoughts tell me to get out of the way of everyone and that I am not worthy because I have anxiety and am therefore 'defective'. They say give in, go home and give up. Avoid being there just like before, or something uncontrollable will happen to you.

A panic attack isn’t the abuse though. It does feel like an assault on my body and my senses, but it’s not abuse. It is not the abuse. I need to tell myself this over and over.

I don't have to submit and fawn in terror to the world around me. My mum told me to allow it and not fight for myself, and to be scared of being independent, standing up to him, making myself visible. She said that was 'trouble', because she was scared he would leave her again. I wish I had been more 'trouble'. I wish she had known she would be better without him too.

Panic attacks are unwanted, in a sense I am over-protected. If they were renamed it might help; System Surges, Protective Glitches, Alarm Bursts, are all much less triggering than saying you are being attacked by fear afterall.

My mental health has been influenced by the abuse, but it is not a continuation of it, it is not a punishment. It is a reaction from a defensive place which is no longer my reality.

Say it again: It is over. It is over. It's over.