My brother told me recently, that when our parents fought, I would become hysterical and then collapse into a heap on the floor. He would pick me up and carry me to his room where we would spend the night huddled together as my parents fighting echoed through the hallways of our house. I don’t have an actual memory of this but my body remembers. I remember their fighting but my capacity to connect the memories in my mind to what happened in my body was completely overwhelmed. The memory in my mind stayed somewhat accessible but the physiological response receded into the shadows of my psyche. I understand this now as a trauma or survival response.
I became a helper and a people pleaser at a very young age. I put other people’s needs ahead of my own. I took care of my little brothers and fawned over my big brothers. Please love me. Please keep me safe. Taking care of others provided some insulation from the intensity of my inner world. As long as I was nurturing someone I was ok. I had a purpose. I mattered. There was hope for me. I nurtured everything and everyone. I still struggle with having a sense of personal agency. My orientation was towards the well being of everyone else for so long that it sometimes still feels strange and vulnerable to care for myself.
This trauma response repeated itself over and over again in my life. Because of this and many other experiences in my childhood I had no embodied sense of safety. I relied on others to keep me safe even when they were anything but safe. I couldn’t tolerate loud noises, outbursts of anger, being alone or any form of rejection. I was easily overwhelmed, anxious, shy and overly dependent. I formed attachments to friends and partners that mirrored the environment I grew up in. Cruelty, violence, abuse, rejection and lack of genuine kindness followed me wherever I went. I was stuck on repeat for most of my life. The imprint of childhood trauma is devastating.
I was also a devoted spiritual seeker and constantly “working” on myself. I was trying to put the pieces back together and push the intensity of my inner world into the shadows until finally I couldn’t.
The collapse of this vulnerable structure I had worked so hard to keep together didn’t happen all at once but when it happened it was catastrophic. I often use the analogy of a house of cards to describe what happened. It was as if someone pulled out the final card that was holding it all together and it all fell apart. I had no more cards up my sleeve. I didn’t know that a human being could break so completely. I’ve since discovered that there are many of us. Beautiful sensitive heartfelt human beings that have been trying desperately to keep it all together without a proper structure of support.
For the last decade I have been creating spaces that are safe enough; soft enough and slow enough to hold the traumatized physiology of humans that are doing the very brave healing work of restoration. This work of restoration is a bottoms up approach to healing trauma and bringing regulation to the nervous system. In a sense we are restoring the original conditions that were not in place as our system was developing. We are giving our system the qualities that were absent at the time of traumatization. Some examples are listening, presence, holding, safety, recognition, slowness, feeling, coregulation, acceptance, respect and dignity.
I’m so grateful that I found a path of healing that brought me full circle back to myself. It was hard. It’s still hard at times. But I knew that the moment I turned towards myself and my brokenness I was heading in the right direction. I have no desire to be anything or anyone other than who I am right now even when it gets really messy. It’s messy being a human being. If this speaks to you in some way you are welcome to check out my upcoming 6 week online course: Awakening into Restful Presence
I would love to connect with you.
Love,
Candace
All of Candace’s services are Trauma, PTSD, Complex Grief, Chronic Illness and Benzo withdrawal symptom sensitive.