1992

I was 35 years old in 1992 when everything in my life came to a head and I began to really face my past. My therapist provided me with the first safe environment in which to grow. I’m grateful for the people who have helped me heal. It is interesting for me to remember “what it used to be like.”

This is a passage from my 1992 journal:

For a long time, I haven’t realized how much I am learning from Thomas (Therapist). Nor have I understood the power of what Alice Miller calls an “enlightened witness.”

I’ve told Thomas many horrifying things from my childhood. Most of the pieces are well organized in my head. However, I have walked around with them forever and the information hasn’t done me any good because I haven’t been able to feel it. I’m not learning facts in therapy – I’ve already known most of them. It’s easy to learn what is tangible. It is a slower process to learn what you can’t see.

When I hear the details of someone else being abused, my stomach tightens and I feel overwhelming empathy for their pain. But, for so long, if I take the same facts and I apply them to my own life – I have felt absolutely nothing.

I was punished for trying to share my feelings with my family for so long that my feelings haven’t existed anymore.

I told Thomas a story today:

“A hungry mouse runs through a maze in search of much needed food. She comes to a crossroad. The passage to the left has visible cheese. The passage to the right has no food. She goes to the left and receives an electrical shock that sends her flying back. She turns around and goes to the right.

The mouse comes to the next crossroad. Again - cheese to the left - nothing to the right. She goes for the cheese, gets shocked and heads right again.

In time, Miss Mouse chooses the path to the right every time. She knows there is cheese to the left, but after a while, she doesn’t even realize she is hungry. She keeps running through the maze, starving herself to death. She recognized other mice need to eat cheese, but not herself.”

When I see Thomas, I know the facts, but I have been terrified of the feelings. After rattling off story, after story, Thomas has made a single comment, or sometimes he will pose a simple question that validates the feelings that the years have erased. Often I am uncomfortable with his questions and comments. Not because they are untrue for me, but because I am glad that he said it and not me. If he said it, I am free to feel it without fear of “the electrical shock.”

I’m beginning to not only say and hear what happened, but I’m starting to feel it as well.

Rewiring My Brain / Viewing Life Through a New Lens

When my children were little, we had a large cedar tree in the back yard that became caught in a wire fence. After removing the deeply embedded wire from the cedar, the tree continued to grow. Once the tree became large enough that it threatened our house, we cut it down in segments. While examining each section, we could see the perfectly round growth rings in the portion from the base of the trunk; however, the section caught in the fence had a disturbing pattern of contorted growth rings.

In time, the tree re-grew normally above the area where we removed the fence. That odd shaped pattern in the tree remained a part of its wiring, but it did heal. Of course, the longer the fence stayed in the tree, the longer it wired itself “wrong” and the harder it was for it to set itself “right” again. The same was true for me.

Research affirms that when we are children, our developing minds are programmed both psychologically and physically.

According to Martin Teicher, M.D, Ph.D., director of the Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Program at Mclean, “A child’s interactions with the outside environment causes connections to form between brain cells. Then these connections are pruned during puberty and adulthood. So whatever a child experiences, for good or bad, helps determine how his brain is wired.”

In other words, because my psyche was constructed in large part by my abuse, I often viewed my life through the lens of my mistreatment. In the early part of my recovery, I responded to the world the way I learned in childhood. For the better part of the last two decades, I have endeavored to rewire my psyche and to create a new lens through which to view my life.

For instance, because as an abused child my perceptions were often blatantly denied, I needed to learn to stand firmly in my own reality, without permission from anyone else.

Although I argued as a child that it wasn’t “right” to burn my tender hands, to rub my brother’s nose in spilled milk on the floor, or to otherwise beat and betray us, everyone I knew told me that my perceptions were wrong. Therefore, I constantly sought validation, trying to develop a frame of reference from others as to what was “right” and what was “wrong.” Consequently, I had difficulty as an adult identifying what was and was not acceptable behavior. If I felt betrayed, and the “offender” defended himself or herself, although I argued that it wasn’t “right” to betray me, deep down I questioned whether something was wrong with me and I worried that it was indeed okay to betray me. I desperately searched for validation that I had a right to the way I felt.

Un-doing a life long mechanism is very difficult to do. Needing permission to “feel” was so deeply ingrained in me, that even if I accidentally smashed my thumb with a hammer, I needed consent to accept my pain. In other words, if I was with someone who said, “Oh, it’s no big deal,” I’d either try to “power” through the pain, or I’d argue that the injury was indeed painful, focusing on the other person’s perceptions of my experience rather than my own.

Rewiring a strong internal parent was necessary to assure my inner child that I had a right to my hurt, anger, sadness, and fear, without arguing for that right.

I have been determined to replace the negative messages I received about myself as a child with positive messages, feelings and responses.

I have been placing new wiring on top of the old. Sometimes it still seems natural to go back to the “old” wiring. Then I remind myself to strengthen new healthy messages, feelings, and responses.

The world feels safer since learning to view myself differently than my mother taught me to view myself. I can view life through a new lens!

What? I Can Feel This?

Not being able to feel is a common malady for abuse survivors. When I first delved into my recovery, I was frustrated with my inability to feel. Denial was one of my survival tactics. I pushed my anger, and grief down so deep, I was numb to my own pain. One of the first things I remember feeling was sadness that I couldn’t feel.

As I started healing, I began feeling. Slowly, I created safe environments to honor my pain and little by little, I stopped dissociating. My feelings didn’t turn on like a light switch one day. It was more like a dimmer switch over a period of many years.

I had conflicting emotions about learning to stay present with my pain. Pain isn’t fun. I was definitely out of my comfort zone while dealing with the agonizing emotions that I had always kept at bay. At first I wondered, “Can this be good?” Yet, it became apparent to me that it was good. Authentically honoring my pain eventually put much of the past to rest.

Pain has a purpose. It’s a warning that something isn’t right and we need to pay attention. For the last few years, I have felt empowered by letting my emotions guide me. Contrary to the past where I “powered” through each hurtful situation - which only served to allow more harm - I began using my pain as a useful tool to protect myself from injury.

For me, the up side to being able to cut off my emotions was that I always prided myself at being great in a crisis. Whether it was my five-year old daughter who fell off of her bike and broke her nose, my ex-husband who cut through his thumb with a skill-saw, a fire, or a car accident - while other’s around me panicked and became frozen with fear - I dissociated from my feelings and went into logical action mode. I didn’t feel the event at the time or afterwards. I just “powered” through.

All good things must come to an end. Okay, I realize that dissociation isn’t a good thing - but sometimes things that aren’t good - seem good.

In spite of all my work at staying present with the pain of past or current mistreatment, I still kept my emotional reaction to crisis turned off until the crisis was over. Rather than not feeling the crisis at all - I began feeling the crisis - after the fact.

Yesterday, for the first time, I felt the crisis while it was happening. Okay, I know this is more progress, but – Yuck!

One of my employees had an accident yesterday (I’ll call him Jessie). He unintentionally stuck his hand into a food processing machine while it was operating. Everyone was in a panic, and as usual, I went into crisis mode. Jessie was in agony. He was light-headed, chalk white, and sweat poured from his face. He needed immediate care. Rather than waiting for an ambulance and then waiting in a hospital emergency room, I drove him to the Occupational Emergency Service's about a mile from the plant.

We wrapped his hand in a towel and loaded him into my car. In route, I called ahead to warn them of our impeding arrival. Blood oozed everywhere as Jessie peeked at his hand underneath the towel and whimpered, “Will I lose it? Please help me, Nancy.”

I have him a reassuring glance and said, "We'll get you some help. Don't look at it, and breath deep."

Then it happened. My emotions started creeping in right in the middle of a crisis! What? I can feel this? I fought to control my emotions.

As soon as we arrived at Occupational Services, they whisked Jessie past everyone in the waiting room straight back to a room full of doctors and nurses who worked efficiently and compassionately. At one point while the doctors worked on his mangled hand, they told Jessie to look away and breathe deep. I fought to ignore my stress and my feelings of empathy for Jessie. I breathed with him while he squeezed my hand to cope with the pain. For the first time in my life, I became light-headed. I was completely taken by surprise! With my free hand, I reached for a chair, feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable that my emotions had gotten the better of me. Then I realized – this is okay. It’s just new to be fully present in the midst of a crisis.

All those years of not feeling gave me the facade of being tough. Yet, in reality, it was being tough enough to deal with the demons of my past that allowed me to feel this crisis.

I know I can still keep my head in an emergency. But I feel it now too. I did see Jessie through X-Ray, pre-op and surgery and fortunately, his prognosis is very good. I left exhausted, but feeling more whole than ever before.