Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill1673
Asearcher... I just realized something. Your last paragraph you talked about not confronting those that have hurt you. I don't think I ever have either.
|
Yes, that could then stay as unfinished business in your body. Traumas can do that. For years. It can cause physical symptoms too, but the mind who has coped with the trauma the best it knew how back then does not understand that.
Emotionally in average it can lower you to think it is normal to not be as happy as you were before the trauma. We get used to things, don't talk about it and think it is normal. Waiting for time to do it's bit.
I had a "locked down" trauma that came from a bad relationship. I thought I was fine. I had blocked like 99% of the memories of the relationship. I thought first that was down to me not wanting to remember.
I have unlocked it.
What I faced was the old me, this young woman with a specific feeling, anxiety, that I had not felt in years. I had to do this step by step. Now I am free from it.
I will not (unless it would be accidental or him suddenly wanting to reconnect and finding me) meet the man who did this to me again and it does not matter to me because what ever I would say he would try to dugde the bullets. I have taken back my power. This is how I saw the situation/s, how I felt, my truth. I don't need to prove anything or explain myself to anyone and that feels nice. Before in the past I was afraid, and angry if I was to meet him again. Today I simply don't care. He could be anyone on the street.
There are those (who has created this trauma within us) who will never surrender and give us the power back, we are the ones who at first has given it away, how one feels because of it, and now one has to take it back.
I am saying you can do this without getting revenge and without getting peace with that person. It is not that person or persons that can set you free, only you can set yourself free.
Take back your power in that how you relate to this. Sometimes it can feel as if it is a conversation that has been cut in the middle and you never got to say or do what you wanted (in order to break free, never too got to have the final word) and you are then stuck in time, stuck in that moment, can recall maybe every word that was spoken.
What you can effect is that even if it sounds bad that they are not responsible for how you react to things, you are. That is not to say they are not accountable, but they will feel that once they are "up there", heaven, and there is a life review, then they will feel their opponents feelings in that moment and it will put them to shame. What you have to do in the meanwhile is take back your truth, your power. Work through those difficult emotions.
To me it was as if it was all happening now, once that sleeping young woman with anxiety waiting for his revenge, for him to do more damage, had woken up again. I've been hiding in a way ever since the break up, just in case. I had not felt "her" for years, I had completely forgotten that feeling. I did not know she was sleeping inside me. Each time I was to do something different that I had not done in years to go against one of her rules (as she needed not to trigger him to come after her again) - that was when I felt No, I can't do this! and I got to have this over reaction towards it, not talk about it, just end it. I was like this when my then luv would try to post something of us on social media (as social media had been one of the ex's way to keep track on me, get to know me before he got to know me, besides from using people I knew to get information about me. He was charming and manipulative and people did not see him as dangerous).
Even if I logically knew this had happened in the past and was not repeating itself, I still felt that so bad, that he can come in here and sabotage my life as it is now, even if he wouldn't, but that was how real it felt. I overcame it.
I looked at her with kindness, the old me, at the time she never felt good enough, she was drowning, she had been a very good girlfriend to him but he had treated her like - like I don't know what. I spoke to her almost as if speaking to someone else, in my mind, saying she had done a hell of a good job surviving, with the only mistake that she believed in humanity - she did not know he was a psychopath before. She found that out from a psychiatrist.
If this has gotten to be a trauma for you. And please do not feel embarrassed that it is, when you think about it - of course it is, first you loose your mom and then your brother and being humiliated in the process because of his bad behavior towards you - thus the reality of also loosing another family member. Of course this has created a scar, you would not be human if it didn't.
What I found for me is that at first I thought well what is the use of me going back and dealing with this - again! when I already have. But at the time when all this was going on, in the past, there was so much going on at the same time, I was weaker then emotionally and even physically (when I was to buy new clothes the only size they had that fit me were over at the children's department, I had lost so much weight and not even been aware of it as it had happened over time and my mind was occupied with everything else. I remember this as it was a wake up call. I thought what is he doing to me? At the time we were separated but he refused to say it was over between us even he had been the one to initiative the separation, and I wanted it to carry on to a final split once I had had enough. And I had. I had begun to see him in a different light, and not the good kind. I now know I needed that wake up call.
And because he had actually let me be alone I was able to get some air and some distance but still every single moment it was as if he had invisible ties to me that he could pull at any given time, and I had to be strong enough to not go back. I thought if he can do this - then I can not stay any longer and fight any longer for this terrible relationship that is killing me, emotionally, and physically in a way too, by me loosing all that weight. It was dangerous. It had already gone too far. I was drowning in it and it was ont as if he was going to be the savor and help rescue me, even if he would pretend to do that - he was the one causing all this. He was a psychopath. So there was no solution for us. I can work myself to exhaustion trying to make something work, and in this case I stayed on too long, and did most of the work, and at the end of it - I collapsed. I should have looked out for myself more. He should have to but he didn't and it was always my job to do it first, as I know myself better :) this is a rule I follow these days.
It was really OK - you are dying right now because of this person in your life. You have a choice. You either die, or you live. Had I not been strong enough and it was a close call I wasn't, I would have gone back.
Not because it was out of love, but because it is a natural reaction that victims can have as they have given away their power and the abuser having taken it are then in control of their happiness or their misery. One is so brainwashed at that time, this all happen gradually, that one does not see it, one does not know anything else.
Just to explain what I mean with the word power. At the end of the relationship he was so used to that he was the one calling all the shots, he had "raised" me that way. I was totally whipped. It did not start out like that. So he was used to that when he said something that was the law. And so he said we should have a trial separation. I did not throw a "tantrum", I did not express how I felt - and he did not ask how I felt. That was how the relationship was built. He was an utterly selfish man, so it was 100% about what he felt. I of course went along with it as I did everything he said. Then I so clearly remember the very moment when I thought Oh wait a minute! I don't need his permission for us to break up! If I say so - it is so! I don't need him onboard! To me it was this revelation like you wouldn't believe. I had lived in this very strange reality bubble, completely distorted, I had given away my power without knowing I had! And it was just this beautiful thought If I say so - It is so!
And I remember the look of surprise on his face, and few of the friends, to the point where they could not say anything. Just this silent surprise. And of course he tried to show off what he still thought he was in power off - and so couple of times I had to threaten him with the law, and mind you I was afraid of him, but the law was on my side and he knew it, and finally he budged but made sure he dragged on with it before, and doing his last humiliating remark - that I just did not care about as I knew this was on him, and I was out. So that is an example of taking back your power. You don't wait for the other one to give you their blessing, their understanding, their approval, them to ask you for forgiveness. You do it anyway. You free yourself.
I think it was mind blowing to him that I would no longer follow his orders, as he tried to keep that on for a while, starting out cocky and bossy and unfriendly with me, for no reason, leaving those messages everywhere. I don't know how he managed to get hold of some contacts to me the way he did, suddenly it was just there, one of his messages, letters, what ever. He then changed on his own and got to be more kind, and then begging and then to the extreme mentioning how great his love was for me - even with several years having then passed without contact - he did all of these stages all on his own - I did not reply to anything, I was not participating. I had told him before
I have nothing to say to you. And because I had decided I have nothing to say - I kept that attitude along the way, no matter what he was up to. That is taking back your power.
The little strength and with the wisdom from the psychiatrist and support system of my family, even if I never told them what happened, and my own strength which I have to say was about minimum at first, I got out.
People think well break ups are happening to everyone, but there was this huge difference - when it has been such an abusive relationship. It was not really him that I did not want enlarged, as I was not in love with him and had moved on - I did not want to continue to sit there at the psychiatrist office and talk about some guy I didn't want. And someone who I thought was pathetic - because that was what I thought of him. And that it had been pathetic of me to have ever valued myself so low and had endured what I had endured - until I finally woke up, when enough was enough.
I did not understand then that there was a vital difference. I was still scared from the abuse, that I did not understand. I thought well I don't love him anymore so he can't hurt me anymore and now I am free and I want to enjoy my life, perhaps meet someone else, I don't want to sit here and dwell about the past. So I went before I was finished. Before I was healed. I canceled all future appointments, saying I was fine even when they called me like 1-3 times later on, I said I was fine, they were trying to get me back there, but I wouldn't. Also I was irritated that I would spend my money (did not have much of those, not like him) to go to a psychiatrist because of him, LOL. That if anything he would be the one to pay.
At the time, in all this heat, my mind did it's very best to protect me and to deal with it but along with the hurry, there were some "errors", and these "errors" were the one I had to fix now in the present time, they got obvious when I went to close to lets say social media. I could fix them where I was then in the now in life, there was a significant difference.
Usually people don't want "to go there" as they think they have healed as much as they can the right way, back then, even if they have not. You can do it right. Once you've done it right - this other person won't matter to you at all what it has said and done, you are free from it.
Too you have to think with your brother - the person that he is, if we take aside that he is related to you, what good would he do in your life? Would he be a good influence? Would he be a good support system? Would he be your best friend?
I have people in my life that I have to say I would want to do without, they cause me nothing but misery or well almost all of it misery, and it is always ongoing, it is always the same ol song. They won't change. I suffer because how they are built. THey have no insight on how they work on me as a poison, bring me down. They are utterly selfish people.
I think some people are meant to be with us for life. But some, well, they are not. They are meant to be there for a period til you or that person has learned a lesson, and then you are meant to part. Sometimes the parting is painful, but one can later look on and say good grief, it was good that relationship got terminated when it did because or else I would not be where I am today.
I for one have much better equipped friends in my life than some of those I had while I was in a relationship with the psychopath. Had I stayed there, he or they would have figured out he had succeeided in breaking my spirit and he would finally get an excuse, a reason saying it was me who was unstable, and not he who was a psychopath, he would even make it look as if he was the good guy. There are cases like these all over the world, where the bully, the one who drives the other nuts, has this false image, and it gets to be real difficult if not impossible for the victim to prove itself sane and who is really the bad guy here.
Every now and then I think bad things happen to make us look at some in our lives and realize OK you're made of gold and you - you I can't have on my team. It sounds harsh, but even though it is much pain behind all this - I think we are meant to be pushed forward from the pain and make something good out of it.
I am sorry if I come across as very selfish writing this, but I do it to try to explain where I am coming from, it isn't about me at all, it is just to explain how to get out and get free from old stored trauma in the body and mind and spirit, what has worked for me, that I hope can work for you too :)