I am working to change learned & damaging behaviors and reactions for which I am always apologizing. The work part means healing my wounds, which requires intentional examination, understanding them(with professional help), learning from them and then parsing out the parts of my experience which are true and real, from a perscribed narrative designed to characterize (diminish and dehumanize(make it ok to demean me)) me–my patent unlovability.
The most impactful myth to have shaped me and darkened my days- — is that I am unworthy of kindness,protection, & belonging- as well as responsible for the abusive and damaging words and deeds of others….AND that the things which I think, say, feel, need, do— simultaneously do not matter one bit- and yet are tagged as the cause for the dysfunctional family patterns (which exist entirely in my delusions).
In working with a therapist, I have learned that I don’t suffer from PTSD as I had believed, but C-PTSD: Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The difference between C-PTSD and PTSD is that PTSD usually occurs after a single traumatic event, while C-PTSD is associated with repeated trauma.
For those lucky enough to not know: Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel a full range of emotions and experiences. Important to note, that what might register as trauma for one person is not necessarily trauma for another.
I am grasping how my mother’s inability to connect with me(or silence me- because her inability to connect was judged harshly- as failure by at least one of us) caused her anger. Both her brother and mother, seem to have wanted to protect her from that by labelling the problem: “the wrongness of Magda” and then punishing me accordingly, typically with shame and alienation. My older female sibling was rewarded handsomely for being eagerly on board.
I continue working through the grief over what was said, done, allowed, expected, and required for inclusion in their family. For as long as my mother could not relate to or accept me, I remained in the crosshairs, right up until her death and beyond. I hope that in time and with healing, I will experience or practice that elusive thing called forgiveness…. and also adopt more rational calm and deliberate responses to things which I experience as harmful and scary.
How much more time shall be wasted as I ponder which I find more disturbing, the full-grown adult, who did not learn that acts of malice are wrong OR the individual who recognizes spite and vengeance (over feeling slighted, angered, mistreated…. )are wrong and then righteously employs them anyway? In our family, we are strongly divided into two groups, those who can do no wrong, and the rest of us. The rest of us are in therapy getting the help we need– while the entitled and never wrong– concern themselves exclusively with getting their way, never self reflecting, never adjusting–AND always seeking people (or as my boys father likes to refer to them: opportunities) who can be useful and make them feel in some way elevated. Catherine G Whitney Randy Dean Ross Maggie Ghoneim
I will continue probing difficult and painful truths- about myself, those I counted on, those to whom I was unkind or unfair, those who were good to me.
