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Bad panic attack yesterday
Yesterday I came across a little photo of me when I was 3 hanging onto my kitten Benji. I was wearing a little white dress. It was the same dress my mom told me I was wearing when she watched me running down the street with black and blue marks from my dads belt up and down my legs. I stared at the photo for a few moments….stuck inside the reality that this trauma memory and all the other abuse I somehow endured growing up still triggers me 65 years later. Yesterday was a bad one. I’m wondering how to Integrate it all so my heart doesn’t beat out of my chest and at the same time I shut down when this happens. I’m studying Buddhism and also meditating on self forgiveness but some of these memories are like the boogey man knocking very loudly at my door.
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@eway60: Thank you for your heart-felt post on the scars of childhood.
I too have found Buddha’s path and it is helping me understand why I react to life differently than some others… because of the scars of just being a small child. I was encouraged to be a quiet little girl and please my parents. There was no room for me to expose my true feelings or expressions of “me”! I am finding confidence in my ability now to socialize successfully as an adult (abilities I should have learned as a youngster, but not given a chance).
Those old photos tell “true feelings” when you peer into their eyes on that paper (windows to the soul).
We can accept our true selves now, share laughs and conversations with “no fear of rebuke”! Relax with this new side of your very special personality and muster a little pride in how far you have come from those pictures of yesteryear.
Our lives have all been different and I applaud your determination to deal with past negativities by choosing new influences and goals to make every day better than the last!
Hugs to you Ewan. Life is good!
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2 Reactionseway and dbamos
Hi. Would wake up in the morning with my pj s stuck to my leg wounds from the belt 65 years ago. Brother beaten too. He'd yell "I'm gonna make you for a cripple ... within an inch of your life." Mom cowered (coward?) downstairs. Trauma still here + triggers. No one wants to hear about it. Don't blame them. The unbeaten don't understand.
We have to live with it, thinking and being different because someone scrambled our brains. *
They are not at fault. Someone (WW2, The Depression Persecution) scrambled THEIR brains.
Keep on keepin' onđź‘Ť
* meanwhile, God has given me many wonderful blessings
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3 Reactions@shmerdloff
note: the old man did the yelling, not the brother.
@shmerdloff thank you for replying. After I wrote my little story I thought….is that TMI? Can people even understand and/or handle these scary messed up moments I shared. I’m so sorry you went thru hell as a child. I’m beginning to think these trauma wounds and memories never go away. How could they? It scares me to think I’ve been alive this long and still, tears come to my eyes when I think of myself and other small, helpless and innocent children being abused. I just need strength to keep going forward. Your words helped me today, and again, I’m so sorry you went thru that.
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3 Reactions@dbamos1945 I’m glad you have evolved into being able to socialize, etc. after the estrangement from my son I have become completely isolated. I function well at work but i just don’t let anyone in anymore.
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2 Reactions@eway60
Oddly enough, while still sustaining the wounds not fully scarred over, I have accepted what was then spare rod/spoil child (stoopid) after Freud but before Spock (Ben, not Leonard Nimoy). Thank goodness we have evolved to respect children, even still not conceived (my boy bill will be as tall and as strong as a tree).
The household of my youth was abusive and chaotic, but Dad always provided for us at his own suffering. Education was paramount. We went to the beach, amusement parks, and restaurants alot.
The beat downs cracked me open, a little too young, to the realities of life. No snowflake-trustfund babies here. Message LIFE IS TOUGH. YOU HAVE TO BE TOUGH. Dedicated, accountable, standards, values, learning, forceful, loving and kind.
I like who I have emerged as, which was always there in my daimon , and if that was a price to pay, so be it. Excelsiorđź’Ą
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