Hi friends. Lots of awareness going on around here about parental narcissistic abuse, endangerment, neglect, abandonment, exploitation, parentification, toxic shaming, scapegoating and gaslighting. So that's a big lot of jargon but what it boils down to for me is finally seeing and admitting the unbearable pain I've been living in since forever.
If it sounds like I bandy these words around as psycho-babble, don't worry, I think that too, thanks to gaslighting memory voices in my head ("you're showing off" "you're too sensitive" "you're making this up"). Truth is, it just helps to finally have words for the crappy feelings and the crap that happened. Using the correct terms realizes, validates and authenticates it for me.
For the longest time, I've believed I was exaggerating, imagining and making it up. As if!! I knew, on some level that it had happened but that it was normal and okay. That the nightmares were just products of my vivid imagination. But you can't make that up.
All my life, I've believed that other people suffered trauma, had real pain and problems, needed help and that I was my duty to help and fix. Any time I expressed pain, which became less and less often, I was ignored, dismissed and even told to stop feeling sorry for myself. Consequently, I believed that I should ignore and dismiss my feelings and pour myself into fixing other peoples' (namely my parents, their spouses and kids) real problems.
This makes me miserable. I can't fix others which causes epic toxic shame. I can't acknowledge my pain because that's selfish. So it just gets more infected and swollen. I fake and fake and fake. Thank God I finally saw this for what it was because I couldn't keep on this way.
So what's different? Well, not a lot yet. But it's coming slowly. I'm starting to look at my weird dreams, thoughts, feelings and behavior as not weird but logical consequences of abuse, shaming, family scapegoating, parentification, exploitation and manipulation, neglect, endangerment, abandonment and gaslighting.
I'm starting to recognize triggers (things that happen that remind me or feel like, past trauma). I'm starting to allow myself to feel pain and source it. I'm not focusing on blaming, just correctly identifying what I'm feeling and why. I'm letting little me feel and own her feelings instead of gaslighting her. I'm giving permission to feel angry, sad, scared and hurt. That it's not just about others. I was also hurt, that my parents didn't care and that it was wrong.
I'm finally getting, or trying to get that I don't owe the world this massive, unpayable debt. I do owe myself love, compassion and support.
No comments:
Post a Comment