I was going to leave this until I had more fully read around the psychology of early childhood trauma and emotional neglect, however I think that is likely to take quite some time. In the meantime, I just want to come back to the reason why I started writing this blog in the first place, since it has evolved from a discussion of the adult issues i have faced that I believe have resulted in large part from emotional neglect during early childhood, to a more general discussion of events that formed part of my developmental years.
To take a step back to my initial posts, I started writing this because I was sick of destroying amazing, loving relationships. The pattern really has been one of sabotage, both of myself as a person and the relationship also. With all the incumbent hurt, emotional pain, loss of trust and security that goes alongside. In examining my actions and patterns of behaviour it became clear that I needed to really deconstruct and evaluate every aspect of my life, my being and in a very real sense my soul. Part of the reason for writing this blog was to give myself some legitimacy and transparency. I guess it seemed a way of ensuring that what came out of my head and was written here, was from my perspective my truth. I believe I have managed to maintain that.
I have found the process of simply sitting down and writing about whatever memories or thoughts from the past that I have deemed relevant to understanding myself to be extremely helpful. There is no structure or plan to the content. But what I have found is if I start to write about a distressing memory, or try to process the reasons for certain dynamics within my family’s functioning when I was younger, then having it out of my brain and on ‘paper’ seems to help. I feel as though I have been able to process and organise my thoughts and distress around those events better for seeing them in words on a page. I think it also validates those events in my mind, since everything I have written is in the public arena for people to read, scrutinise, criticise if they must.
Thinking about the impact of documenting these events, I also feel that I have been able to make peace with some of the deeply engrained emotions and self destructive internal monologue I have constructed over such a long time. A lot of reading around this subject has allowed me to understand that the embedded self loathing, poor self esteem, guilt, shame and self blame are a recognised adult manifestation of early childhood trauma experiences. And I think that has proven a massive help in permitting me to forgive myself a little. It has allowed me to understand that much of that construct has been long standing and had its origin early in childhood. Long before I was old enough to consciously identify it, let alone manage it. The insidious nature of these patterns of functioning, together with other symptoms such as feeling alone, even in the presence of loved ones, of self sabotage and even substance abuse in some cases makes identifying the underlying problem very difficult in my opinion. In my case, it was only once I really stopped and started to ‘scratch at the surface of the iceberg’ that I really started to understand the sort of feelings I carried around inside much of the time.
The role of exercise in managing difficulties with mental health is well established of course. I’m not even sure how I decided to start going to the gym, but it just sort of started when I decided to go on this journey of writing, of trying to understand who I really am, and to be a better person. I have tried going to the gym on numerous occasions in the past, in fits and bursts. It never really worked for me. My workplace has a small gym on site and I have found establishing my own routine to be a genuinely positive experience. I have been pleasantly surprised by losing some ‘dad bod’ belly fat (in fact I have lost 6kg since I started going a few months ago) and have even managed to feel fitter and gained a little muscle. More importantly though, I truly feel like I have a more resilient and calm state of mind whereby I seem better able to process both acute events occurring in my life, as well as those that I have been trying to understand from the past.
One of the things that I haven’t been able to adequately manage however, is sleep. Rumination and intrusive thoughts are a common reason for all of us to have difficulty falling to sleep and staying asleep. I have never really been big on things like mindfulness or meditation. However, over the last six months or so I finally caved in and started listening to guided meditation on YouTube in an attempt to sleep. I found listening to these very helpful in terms of obtaining focus in my mind on breathing and how my body actually felt. It is surprisingly difficult to maintain mental focus and I found the meditation YouTube videos to be helpful. They didn’t always work, but often enough that I managed to at least get a few hours sleep each night. I found an Australian by the name of Jason Stephenson particularly helpful.
Recently, I have found the guided meditation YouTube videos less useful and found myself looking at other avenues for sleep. Searching YouTube for other ideas, I came across Fairy Tales to help with sleep, and this has been my most recent go to. There is a 10.5 hour nonstop YouTube of Fairy Tales as collected by The Brothers Grimm and it is awesome! I have tried other subjects including Boring History to Sleep, Science Facts to Sleep and others, but currently it seems that Fairy Tales works. I suspect in fact it’s the distraction of the monotonous voice, with a topic requiring minimal cognitive engagement that actually makes the difference.
As I said in my first post, take anything you might find useful and throw away the rest.
Finally, I am still far from rebuilt. But I do believe I have a much better understanding of whom I am. I think I have a better grasp of myself. I have learned not to be so hard on myself, even when I do f*&k up. To forgive myself a little, to not hate myself. Some of the time at least. I have many, many regrets but I have found that destroying myself as some form of self imposed retribution only acts to further destroy my sense of self worth and respect. I think I have learned to make peace with myself a little inside, and perhaps with some of the events, memories and experiences that have brought me to where I am today.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
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