The patterns I still carry, the ways old experiences can show up in the present, and my effort to sort out what I am remembering from what is actually happening now. Recovery, pattern recognition, regulation, and slowly gathering new evidence.
“Conflict is not the enemy of connection. Avoidance is.”
When we learn to engage with honesty instead of disappearing into silence, we give relationships a chance to grow. #emotionalintimacy #traumahealing #communication
Stonewalling breaks me. Stonewalling breaks me. I don’t bounce back from it. But I’ve repeatedly and predictably returned for more. Hopefully, for the last time. The silent treatment and banishment were the standard responses to any need, limit, boundary, preference, or discomfort I directly expressed—first in my family, then in nearly all of my relationships. To request consideration was labeled and dismissed as being difficult. Who tf did I think I was? The consequence was silence. Banishment. But I do…
Stonewalling feels like abandonment masked as calm—a silent disconnection that wounds deeply.
Drawn to the Closed Door I’ve come to understand something about myself, and it’s both painful and clarifying: I gravitate toward people who use silence as a weapon. Stonewalling—cold, controlled, absolute silence—is a dynamic I know intimately. It’s the language of withdrawal I’ve been trained to translate as love. Even now, with every resource and insight and therapy under my belt, the discard silence doesn’t hurt any less. I know it’s not love. Not the wholesome, sustaining, and sustainable safe…
When “Are You Okay?” Is a Warning, a Call-Out, Not Care Historically, my sister would frequently corner me and ask, “Are you okay?” But it wasn’t because she cared. It was because she was ready to go to battle—ready to dispute whatever was concerning me. She was scanning, trying to see if I was remembering. What could I say? What did she need to do to preempt and manage the narrative to maintain her posture of elevation? If I asked…
A stark truth rendered in words—how narcissistic abuse isolates the scapegoat child.
The Cycle Wins~ It has been deeply painful to not only have been judged from my earliest days, for my senstivity, my overwhelm, my limits, and that my existence has been regarded as a thing to be extinguished— invalidated, diminished, dehumanized. As if my very being has been designated as problematic and punishable. In the eyes of my sons, they've made it clear: my struggle is self-imposed — the result of nothing but my own poor choices, as they see…
