I hate the way I act
I hate the way I look
I hate the way I sound
I hate the way I feel
I hate the way I am
I am. I am...
This pain persists...
Even when I do everything right
Even after years of therapy
Even with all I know and all I have learned.
Even if I have people in my life that love me and that I truly care about,
Why do I feel so sad?
Why do I feel so stuck?
Why am I still so tight and shut down?
Why do I still rage at the drop of a hat?
Why do keep screwing up when I am just about to shine?
Why do I double down when I am called out?
Why can't I admit when I fail--
or why do I always take the blame no matter what?
Why can't I stop my compulsions, my addictions, my self-destructive habits?
Why do I still care so much about the opinion of the people I trust the least?
Why can't I get out of my own way?
Why do I yearn for contact, but then I isolate?
Why am I so depressed?
Why am I still so terrified?
Why do I still have those goddamned voices in my head that tell me
...I'm a fuck up.
...I'm an imposter
...that I should just die
There are too many secrets, too many triggers--too many demons.
The pain inside is old. But it is also young. It is encoded in our cells through centuries of the trauma of our ancestors, which has been enacted and reenacted again and again.
But survivors can get stuck in the strategy a child will embody without love or care: we turn on ourselves. Knowing no other way to be, we become oddly but fiercely loyal to the intergenerational program. Since it has not felt safe to trust ourselves, we have learned the shame strategy to prepare for any future risk of damage. It is a tried-and-true survival response not only to trouble but to success.
The adult part will analyze, process, narrate all of this--more words. Even talk therapy alone can keep us stuck, held captive by the story no matter how insightful we are in our heads.
But under the cognitive radar, the younger parts inside are trapped in the time we were harmed or neglected. The child does not have words for this--only a longing in the muscles of the heart to be seen and held--to be safe. So shame becomes the place beneath the words, where fear and rage abide. And it is where the most powerful unspoken memories are stored--in the body.
What would it be like to hold that part of our young self with tenderness and forgiveness--safe and beloved?
We recoil. We may not wish to revisit that place or give that kid a thing. All they ever did was cause us trouble.
Yet, imagine if we could break up the embedded debris of shame, by holding the child parts with the respect they should have always had. In their own way, it is how they imperfectly served and protected us, perhaps even kept us alive. It is a part of the grief and loss that must be honored and felt to move on, an essential element to recovery.
It takes patience and unconditional love to raise a child, even the one inside.
Let us go outside today. Perhaps that beloved child can teach us --afraid yes, crying yes--to love them again, and to risk the joy and wonder of it all.
-Mikele Rauch