Chapter 50. Early trauma repair

“The people who can really f*** you up? – your parents.

And no one can fix you except for you.”

– Kathy, Rebekah’s CGE employer in Nica

In early 2011 Gregg and I enter back into therapy. 

I’m feeling dismissed again – primarily around the choices Gregg made in spending immoderate amounts of hours with his best guy friend, who was a closeted gay man messing around with another closeted gay guy who also a close family friend, and who was talking trash about me.  I am mad.  

Again it becomes apparent that I'm madder than I first thought: about not being listened to, about doing more "work" in the relationship than I think Gregg does, about feeling dissed. It feels too much like the affair, and I’m aware that without active internal work I’ll stay mad and resentful.

Turns out much of my emotional core has shame at the root. Some of the fruit of that shame bleeds into communicating with Gregg in a demeaning way. 

Adeline Marie & Diane Marie, late 1957

When Maureen asks me "What do you need to let go of to be able to consistently relate empathetically?" I identify that I need to let go of my "need" to be on top (not uncommon for someone who comes from a shame-based system). I feel hot with embarrassment and grief over how I've hurt Gregg.

I guess it feels better to put the other down a notch, to feel better about self? Rarely does anyone live up to my expectations, nor do I live up to my subconscious unrealistic wishes for self. Thus I am often NOT affirming - to myself or others. And a guy like Gregg (enneagram 2, people pleaser, perceptive and sensitive heart) craves encouragement and an empathetic ear. On Valentine's Day 2017 my enneathought says, 

"On Valentines Day, ask yourself "Where is a challenge of real love for me? Does it have to do with accepting others exactly as they are?"

Spot on. I know Gregg will appreciate me continuing to work on accepting exactly as he is and I am.

As a youngster, though I never felt the end of the spoon or got my hair pulled as discipline measures, my mom used the phrase “shame on you” a great plenty in those formative years. I went to great lengths to avoid getting in trouble. Tried hard to be a good girl.

Still I got a message that I didn’t measure up.

Maureen offers an “early trauma protocol” using EMDR with me: I visualize time from my earliest beginnings (from 10 days old in the womb until birth) through 2 years old. At each stage, I also visualize a “repair”: what those moments would be if they were ‘perfect’ for me, what they would look like if I was loved extremely well, if I had what I’ve longed for.

May and June of 2011 bring me to record scripts and strengths as a result of looking at those early days and months.

Musings after considering from PRECONCEPTION to BIRTH (time of prayer May 29, 2011)

Scripts: (the messages I perceived and deeply internalized)

·         I am an inconvenience, a nuisance – so I curl up, get small, resign, sleep, apologize (core of lack of expressiveness?)

·         I am not a delight (but sense God’s delight in all), so I feel conflicted, confused, get resentful, angry, sad

·         I am a problem or I do it wrong and it’s kinda my fault, so I try hard to make it all better: I have to ‘fix’ my parents to get what I need, ‘fix’ Gregg to get a good life

·         I am not loved well (am I worth it? Do I deserve love?), so I aim to please that I might be loveable, have a need to perform, assume I’m doing something wrong if I am not loved

·         Life includes plenty of constriction/containment – so I experience angst, squirm, am dissatisfied

·         I am not noticed and appreciated, so I do what it takes to be noticed (try to accomplish, to be a good girl)

·         I need to nurture myself (or at least try to), so I control my environment, find a “good guy” to love me

·         I don’t connect well, so I feel inadequate and awkward since we’re made to connect

Strengths:

·         I have an awareness of how the world “ought” to be – God’s wonder-full ways/world (I am life)

·         I cope – figure out how to manage, get my needs met, get noticed (Here I am, ready or not)

·         I am a tenacious problem solver (I ‘parent’ my parents), manage to be happy as a toddler

·         I have a deep desire for caring – to give and receive nurture and care, feel the innate worthiness of all

Musings after considering INFANCY to TWO YEARS (time of prayer/musing mostly June 5, 2011)

Scripts:

·         There is scant emotional connection around me (am I worth being deeply engaged with?) so I attempt to be engaging (smile, coo, laugh) to please the other or to extract from the other anything positive (no matter what the cost is to self?) and feel dejected/rejected when I don’t get to attunement [a version of “I don’t connect well” and “I need to nurture myself”]

·         I am at best satisfactory (that’s when I’m not being a nuisance), I’m not exceptional or amazing, so I aim to make myself more than merely okay (work hard, achieve to prove myself to others and to myself) and feel disappointed/ sad/depressed in not being cherished as special [a version of “I am not a delight” and “I am not noticed and appreciated”]

·         I am a worry [a version of “I am a problem”], so I try to avoid doing worrisome stuff (by being a good girl, make good choices)

·         I feel penned in (by people and circumstances: restricted from being my true explorative self), so I feel resentment, and when I taste freedom I sometimes overuse/abuse and go beyond healthy boundaries

Strengths:

·         I am persistent in my attempts to engage/relate to my world (if people aren’t available, then objects or information are sought out, will have to do) [a version of “I cope”]

·         I am naturally curious and appreciative of goodness (though I have a more difficult time seeing the good in me, there is still an innate sense of it: a deep sense of magnificence, dignity, goodness in self, other, creation)

·         I am a mover, l like to do stuff.

To aid in rewriting emotional circuits, Maureen has me visualize what is opposite of shame, what is a “good pride.” This is not easy for me: ingrained by my mother is the idea that we are not to think well or first of ourselves (refer also to the Law of Jante, that will be mentioned in a few chapters). 

One’s priorities, as absorbed by my young self, are to follow the acronym

JOY

Jesus

Others

Yourself

In mid-adulthood I wondered if I may have fabricated this thinking. I was assured I had not when I saw a framed "JOY" - exactly as above - on the wall of the country church at my grandmother’s funeral; a reinforcement that “put yourself last” was in fact an early message.

I heard “shame on you” a great plenty growing up. I shamed myself hugely – in a “bigly” way, to say it in a 2017 Trumpian way – by getting pregnant before marriage. I felt ashamed of me when my husband strayed: seems I must have screwed-up as wife!

In therapy I let myself picture positive pride and the part of me that senses the good.

I am light, radiance, I am white with light – I encounter others – I’m walking – there’s movement toward the source – a big white dazzlingly warm and bright sun fire ball – I’m hugging the sun – being engulfed, inside, lost in the fire, not lost as in consumed but as in at-one-with – I am dialoguing with the light/fire, realizing I am to go back out (into the world) don’t know if I want to – but know that I will – I’m preparing, turning around – as I turn to go out and step into the ‘world’ (other than the big sun) I am bright still, but want morec– I see/am aware of the big God/Sun/bright light energy being schlepped into/given into me, condensed energy absorbed into me (like a genie into a lamp) – Light/God will go with me – WE are light source – I am being a light source in the person that is me, me and God.

I’m not recalling who said it, but this quote resonates in my later 50s.

“Once we have the courage and sufficient tools and support to face this early mother wound, we can feel safe enough to allow ourselves to fully feel the pain and grief that was unsafe for us to feel as children: the profound and primordial grief from early moments of abandonment by our mothers…

Giving up the impossible dream is what makes it possible to truly create the life of your dreams, rather than grasping at things in reaction to the mother wound…

the waiting is over, that even though her actual mother wasn’t capable of meeting her needs, her adult self IS willing and capable of giving her all the love and nurturing that she needs.”

I am willing and capable of loving and nurturing myself.

I know some of my parenting has harmed my kids. Gregg and I repeat to our adult kids that we’ll pay for their therapy as they address how we’ve damaged them; we say it with a chuckle wishing it weren’t so, but we are serious about covering those costs! 

I want my dear offspring to identify their mother wounds and find the nurturing they need.