Hi Peter

Thank you for sharing! As Anita said, beautifully written. There are no other words to describe it. ❤️

Some additional thoughts. I think that sometimes experiences shape our very being. Fear can become a state of being.

It seems to me that awareness is the antidote to this. Seeing it clearly can soften it a little, leading up to question if there is a better way? Giving us the strength and space to breathe deeply and allow it to pass. Perhaps coming back to things with a clear mind? All we can really do is try. ❤️

I’m fascinated with emotional contagion. It takes mirroring from theory to a practical reality. Human nature. Chicken or the egg? 🐓 🥚

Hi Tee

I saw that you got the results back and your disc herniated worse this time. I hope that recovery will not be as difficult too. 🙏 I can empathise with the knee issue making things harder. ❤️

My friend who has the herniated disc swears by his chiropractor. He found a really good one. Not every chiropractor is good though. It’s definitely worth asking around if you’re curious about trying it. Whatever you route you choose, I hope it brings you relief. I hope I’m not intruding or stressing you out. ❤️

Sadly, it wasn’t courage. I was just desensitised to being threatened with a knife and being hit. I wasn’t even scared because of what I’d been through with my mother.

Thanks, yeah I surprised myself and I was a little nervous because it was years since I had tried that exercise. It really does help though!

Ah well, we were all members of the same cult. That’s how we met. Members were encouraged to only spend time with other members, that’s how we became friends. Social worker was just really shoddy back then. They were looking to skip paperwork, cost of providing childcare, legal fees and protocol with informal adoption. Because they were family friends I was literally dropped off and social work never even bothered to get back in touch again.

I am thankful that I wasn’t alone. I didn’t feel able to cope on my own at the time.

Yes, it was easy to protect myself with my adopted family in comparison.

Honestly, it is okay. I don’t mind questions or misunderstandings. My life has been complicated. ❤️

Yes, that and I feel like I’m a bit impatient and get a bit anxious and frustrated waiting for the right time to discuss things. I prefer it when people are easy to talk to. ❤️

I think being a bit skittish around negative feelings just makes it feel like I’m not being accepted. But I realised recently that I’m not accepting the other person when I’m being resistant like that. ❤️

Hi Anita

Fair enough. I’m glad you found your own way of doing things. ❤️

The purpose of the exercise Tee previously recommended is to help with flashbacks. So with practice when you have one you can take control of it and make it less painful by rewriting the memory and protecting yourself.

I’ve come to understand that PTSD is kind of a dysfunction of imagination.

❤️

Hi Anita

I’m glad to hear that you are having better days. ❤️

I hope I’m not intruding? I just wanted to share what my therapist recommended about the confronting exercises. She was very accepting of emotion. She was okay with shouting and swearing when the situation calls for it. So it is okay to confront with anger. The key is to imagine an adult you with a little you. The focus being on protecting little Anita. Confronting the mother is secondary. Because you wouldn’t want to fight in front of a child, that would be scary for a child. The goal is entirely to focus on what you would do to protect your child self. If that makes sense? You could pick a less stressful memory to start with. You definitely don’t want to start with a very difficult memory. ❤️

Hi Tee

Thanks for listening and taking the time to understand. It is interesting breaking all of this down a bit more. ❤️

I think it’s a few things not just anger that I avoid. Rejection or even just not being listened to. Sometimes it is certain, sometimes it’s not. It is like you said, it feels pointless sharing if the person isn’t going to be receptive.

I wouldn’t say that I withdraw from the relationship. I tend to just retreat from conflict, manage my feelings and carry on as normal outside of conflict. I self-regulate pretty quickly as long as I don’t force myself to stay in the conflict. I don’t believe in stonewalling or anything because I wasn’t treat like that a lot as a kid. As long as other people are calm I’m quite happy to be around them.

I think the thing was these behaviours for me weren’t necessarily directly directed at parents. I was always the oldest child. It was always me looking after siblings with very little interaction from parents.

I learned to ignore parents and just focus on taking care of the house and siblings. I hoped that if I took care of things that there would be less interaction with parents. My siblings always had behavioural issues because of the abuse received from parents. My brother was violent. He was beaten very badly by our mother. I would try my best to protect him when he wanted me to.

❤️

I guess I would say that I just prioritise my boundaries in the moment and not try and talk things through. I try to talk things through later on. It’s just sometimes that talking isn’t immediately successful and that can hurt.

Hmm I just looked up guilt tripping and there’s quite a lot there. I hadn’t really thought about it. I would say that people do these things but it doesn’t really work on me. I’m quite impossible to budge. The more people try, the more I tend to dig in. It can be quite frustrating I imagine. I don’t really believe in harbouring feelings of guilt because I really struggled with that in the past. I feel like the best way is trying to act in ways that I’m proud of.

I feel like people depend on me being too understanding and over managing my emotional regulation to keep things off their plate which isn’t healthy. At the same time, I recently learned that retreating from conflict is a bit reactive. I’m trying to work on validating the emotion, not the action and being a bit more present.

It’s been nice talking Tee! I appreciate you. ❤️

I have been learning more recently. I think I keep too much inside and I’m afraid of negativity because of my trauma. I want to be more comfortable with people expressing their emotions and I should share mine more even if it makes people feel uncomfortable sometimes. I guess it is about finding a balance.

I do still crave acceptance, but in a different way. I guess it is just the keeping things inside. I wish that other people didn’t feel so much pain and could see me.

Yeah, I tend to hide most of my feelings from my son. But I was doing some research and it said that they can pick it up anyway. It’s called emotional contagion and it can happen just looking in someone’s eyes, or touching them. Fascinating stuff.

Part 2 ❤️

Hi Anita

I’m glad to hear the storm is over and you have power back. Well done on your inner child work. It sounds like you’re making a lot of headway. ❤️