LIFE WAS HORRIBLE AND NOW IT’S NOT

Please note: For what they are worth, these comments represent Debbie’s opinions and perceptions based upon her own experiences and must be understood as such. Thank you.

Here is a beautiful therapy success story that was told to a therapist today:

“I grew up in a bubble of trauma.  It started when I was a child and continued as I became an adult.

“Last week, however, somehow I stepped outside the bubble and was able to turn around and look back at it.  I noticed that all my life I had been aware of the hurts and pains, and I had wanted things to be different.  But they never were. My mother never gave me the love I needed; my husband never understood what would make me happy. I wanted to be nurtured in a way that really met me where I was; but no one ever could do it.  I knew I was wounded, but I never found a way to heal.  I kept expecting my husband to be different than the way he had been in the past, my mom to be different, my son to be different. But they never were.

“Then I stepped out of the bubble of my past. It closed behind me and I was free from those people and those experiences. I was no longer owned by their ideas of me. They were wrong. It was not who I am.   I have nothing to do with how they think of me.  I became aware of the triggers of my trauma. But I knew that it was not about me at all.

“Thus, I busted loose from the bubble. I could hear what was being said about me without the filters of my own wounds.  It felt like a burden dropped from my shoulders. I had been attacked by my own thoughts, not by what they said.  And I was no longer afraid. I didn’t do anything to make the fear go away; it just left by itself.

“Now, when my husband does something inconsiderate, I can say, “That hurt my feelings. It makes me feel unprotected and unloved.”  I give no lecture.  I do not ask why.  I just express how I feel. My attitude is different.  I realize that I can take what he says any way I want to.  I can just laugh at it if I want. I have control.

“I am different now. No more self-pity.  Writing helps with this.  I am now in touch with what I want and what I need.  I can let others be who they are so I can be who I am.  In the past I had always felt that I had to be a part of something or someone else, not an individual me. I had to be a wife, a mother, a friend, a cousin.  Now there is a me that is separate from others.  I have had a change in attitude.  It is ok to walk alone.  It is not ok to have an attitude.  I have changed and now look at the world differently. I am more aware that I am establishing a self.

“In some ways I am sad. My mother lived her whole life and never got the help she needed.  She stayed in her bubble.  I have left the bubble behind.  I can still remember it, of course. But now it affects me differently.  I still have the memories, but without the pain. (I thank EMDR for this!)  And the anger is gone, too.  I did my therapy homework, and it has made the difference.  My husband still raises the triggers, but I do not feel them.  I knock heads with my kids, but now I have a different response. I hope my daughter can get the help she needs and not have to go for years with her untreated trauma.“I am an individual now; I no longer (have to/want to) fix everything.  I just work on fixing me.

“And I feel so powerful! Not just empowered, but, really, self-powered.  I can do anything I want to do now.  Life was horrible and now it’s not.

“I can even forgive myself for not protecting the kids from their father.  I didn’t know that what he was doing was abuse.  I did the best I could at the time.  That was all I could have done back then. Now I know more.

“I am free at last.”

…dhc