I have been posting a lot on Instagram about the start of this journey. Recently, I came across some really personal struggles and truths which stopped me from posting more. I still am not convinced I should continue posting, but I feel I can write about it in my blog. Few people read this still so chances are slim that I offend or hurt people. The last thing I want is trigger other people's traumatic pasts.
For the record, I went no contact with my family, now 2.5 years ago. In that regard it is fairly easy for me to deal with the echoes of the past, since they are physically a long distance away from me. Yet, reading "Will I ever be enough?" by Dr. Karyl McBride, I need to add that the mental separation is far from established. With my new therapist, I was working on that, through EMDR, but then covid-19 happened, and my therapy sessions were cancelled. The one video consult that we did, never had the power a real session has, and my therapist refuses to try on EMDR that way. It means that I am a bit left to my own devices, trying to keep my head above the dark deep of anxiety, where the mother monsters lurk.
Lately, triggers reviving the trauma have been everywhere, popping up like daisies, buttercups, and clovers in an early Summer meadow. Instead of the careful responses which I had been practising while in therapy, I now find myself trauma responding: with fear, with blaming myself, with guilt, with shame, and a lot of self-destructive thoughts ("I'm not good enough", "I am not living up to expectations", "I am unlovable"). I often feel as if walking on quicksand, desperately trying to keep up life's pace - even in these corona times - and pretend I got everything under control, if only for the sake of my son. Trauma responding also means I am very purposefully shutting down, out of fear I am being a burden, keeping away from social media as much as possible, because I think no one wants me there anyway, and only staying in touch with a chosen few I have learned to trust. This, in short, is not good.
One very striking passage in Dr. Karyl McBride's healing guide Will I ever be good enough? is:
Most damaging is that a narcissistic mother never approves of her daughter simply for being herself, which the daughter desperately needs in order to grow into a confident woman. A daughter who doesn’t receive validation from her earliest relationship with her mother learns that she has no significance in the world and her efforts have no effect. She tries her hardest to make a genuine connection with Mom, but fails, and thinks that the problem of rarely being able to please her mother lies within herself. This teaches the daughter that she is unworthy of love. The daughter’s notion of mother-daughter love is warped; she feels she must “earn” a close connection by seeing to Mom’s needs and constantly doing what it takes to please her. Clearly, this isn’t the same as feeling loved. Daughters of narcissistic mothers sense that their picture of love is distorted, but they don’t know what the real picture would look like. This early, learned equation of love—pleasing another with no return for herself—has far-reaching, negative effects on a daughter’s future romantic relationships
Because in these words I recognised my entire life, up to when I shut her out, and more, I recognised the same destructive pattern - the validation seeking, the forcing a connection, the desire to be part of someone's life - in all of my earlier friendships. Earlier as in 'before I came to realise the long-lasting impact of my mother's narcissism on every aspect of my life'. Needless to say I only could save a few of those friends, thanks to their understanding and patience, and - dare I say it? - love for me. Therapy now is helping me stripping all emotion off single traumatic events, and I complement that therapy with my own research on narcissistic mothers - such as the book by Dr. McBride, and also Mothers who can't love, by Dr. Susan Forward - and I listen to Tara Brach's podcasts on healing in presence, to investigate what is really alive in my heart. Both the reading and the podcasts are confronting me with unwanted flashbacks from the past, situations I really do not want to relive - and some come back to me in my dreams - but I apparently need to accept, to sit with, to finally release them as part of what has been, in order to move on.
This afternoon I noted in my diary that the mere idea of someone missing me actually is completely idiotic. And this is what I need to un-learn. I need to finally accept there ARE people missing me, or sad that I am no longer in their lives. There ARE people happy to get a text message from me. And I am able - I AM ABLE - to make other people happy. And there actually are people who love me, for me. Which means that I am lovable, regardless of what she stated for all my life.
But it will be a long journey ere I will allow myself to truly believe that. From what I now know, this journey to healing will take many years, with quite the amount of setbacks and an unexpected amount of intensely joyous moments. Yet, when I reach that point, that milestone in my healing, I believe I will finally see myself for who I am. The one that was supposed to be destroyed but survived against the odds.
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