Outgrowing your family...

 I guess my parents (My mother is a single parent and we lived with her brothers and their families together in a joint family) agreed to disagree on more situations and were bound by their meanness, ego, control freakiness, bitterness, anger and so on than being kind and forgiving to each other -  they lived ousting love and understanding out the window as if love was just a namesake emotion that they had to put up with in order to continue to remain disagreeing with each other and that too staying together in a joint family...talk about being so disconnected with family values and just being hypocrites and leading us into believing as children that we are safe and secure in such an environment?! 

We kids (now we are in our prime forties and mid fifties, myself and my cousins included in this age group) have moved away from each other and are not as dishonest as our parents and more no-nonsensical in processing how much we can give and maybe expect from one another in whatever stuff that matters and are better self equipped to hand ourselves than living off each other and staying toxically enmeshed and blaming and manipulating each other while staying together under one roof however long that was.

I think the purpose of evolving here is to outgrow such a family and learn to move away from such toxicity in order to embrace the real deal in us -  I guess families do teach a thing or two and that for us is to be better people than what they were. In all honesty they did what they could for our good but what's really for our betterment lies in our awareness and the choices we make in moving on and how we choose to do so while keeping the gratitude for doing what they could for us. I mean it's like a rite of passage going from one messy, confused, dark, twisted spot and coming out the other end kind of self forgiving for staying angry at them for so long, staying so stuck to all the compulsive mind programming that we thought was so right but then learning to unlearn them one day at a time. It's where we come from and also what we do with it that matters. Because we are in fact as individuals responsible for our respective behaviours and though the reason behind being who we are the way we are comes from our past, but how open and less closed we have become to welcome knowing ourselves as individuals and being less burdened by emotional and mental dysfunctionalities from the past at home is a start.

I can't speak for my cousins in saying what I said above but I feel that this is the purpose of a family -  to be oneself despite whatever the family might have been -  it's not that the family was right or wrong but how good and meaningful a relationship I have with myself is all the truth that I can express without justifying anything from the past for who I am or how I am today.

Living in reality

 I made a lot of space for my imaginary conversations with people with whom I have the last say and shut them up and prove them wrong -  these conversations, although they look so real and so much a pseudo release for all the anticipated situations that could come my way and hence this buildup of assertive, sometimes defensive, and proving I am right as against their imaginary verbal attacks, but all these hold me captive in this self talk where I talk, they seem to listen, and yet again I talk and seem to shut them off. 

It's like resurrecting an enemy within me so that I can cope up to live with this imaginary, all consuming distraction of a fantasy which makes me become a participant in it. It's sad that I relate myself or reduce myself to being a participant through my fantasies but do not trust myself enough to respond adequately if things don't turn out as expected. I have desperately wanted my wishful thinking to work for me so much so that I could be more stronger and healthier for my mom but the reality of migraines was way too much unpredictable and uncontrollable that I could bring myself together to accept my reality for what is and just minimizing my pain and the aftermath weakness and exhaustion of pulling myself together mentally and just giving into feeling scattered and floating in some vacuum in my head was simply disorienting to say the least. It's like these fantasies from back then was a way of making me feel secure, undoubtedly strong and assertive as if I am just having the last word and living every bit confidently.

Fantasies even today keep me company and make me self isolate more as if mimicking the concept of comfort zone and self soothing -  because this isn't anything close to that. It's in fact more self agitating and steers me away from staying grounded to my present. 

I have been under so much mental distress all these years and my brain has been trying to help me cope up and I just feel sad at one level but also doubly sad for the awareness of such sadness that had never come up to be expressed before.

People sometimes talk themselves out of their self doubts and negative thinking, but I talk myself through the veil of imaginary deception which I so intensely make believe that I talk my head off being the lead/hero of the show going on in my head -  thinking and talking at the same time makes it preoccupying and not at all being aware of how unmindful this is all becoming towards staying with my present right now is like a version of me that's a self automated popup blocker to my reality -  even my reality can't come in the way of this active imagination and participating in it.

Being in it or being out of it is a matter of choice...being with my present and staying with my reality as is is the baby step that I can take to not go deeper to live in it in my imagination.

Being true to my life one day at a time

 I feel like this month has been a roller coaster. Lots of adapting, lots of patience wrecking procedures to facilitate selling my mother's apartment and a lot of letting go expectations and just going with the flow - it's like the universe wants me to be better connected within myself and with my strengths' which are not dependent on anyone's approval and participate in a world with my mother rather than being away from her and yet staying in hurt for all the things that could have gone well had she been emotionally better aware of my feelings rather than being terrified of her traumas and possible pains. She got used to her brothers apathy and huge egos, control and so on from her childhood until she got married to my father that she assumed that after my father's sudden passing and being placed in a job on compassionate grounds in the government organization that he used to work for would help her feel secure in some way. She just grew up insecure and neglected and intimidated as that was the best way for a family dominated by an angry father and bullying brothers and with hardly any female support as her mother had passed away when my mother was quite young was just her history repeated after coming back home after losing my father but with me born just then and with a job that could give her possibly a lifetime of support and sustenance but not just enough stability personally as she had hoped she had wanted from me and that was a lot to ask for from a kid back then who was in fact dependent on her mother's calm and stable emotional nurturing. 

Try as I might but I could never have been the stable ground even if I had better health and just optimum sensitivity and not high sensitivity because it's not my responsibility to make her feel stable but her wanting to grow up that would have helped her accept me for who I am and the condition that she has always put herself through in as a survivor of an emotionally abusive family and having to live in constant fear and people pleasing -  this truth could have set her free rather than wanting to stay with her brothers in a toxic relationship and trying hard to make her life work alongside me which used to be highly stressful on me. And so her complaining that she has to all of her life without her husband and again getting reactive at me at how my health is so much like my dad's was both confusing and disorienting. My migraines, cardiac issues, and so on were just premises that exacerbated her already existing emotional/mental stability issues. She used to make it all about me but in truth it was she who had unresolved trauma, a lot of grief work that she had to do and not just for who she could have been but not when living with her brothers but also the tragedy of losing her husband quite young and just when they were about to welcome their baby to life.

She is a survivor and like her I too learnt to be one. That was the best way and no other choice if we were to live in this family along with my mother's brothers and their families. And I grieved this choice by my mother, hated her almost for it, if not then but decades later because the amount of mental health damage that it had done on me was something that only I could fully understand. To enable her to carry on with her life normally was supposed to be my only goal but not living with joy and gratitude for just simply having a life and enjoying my space and time in it and discovering my personality, likes, dislikes, and growing which became just tweaked to being good enough for her expectations as if by doing that that would help me move towards participating in my life to the fullest. 

I became a victim for my mother in order to enable her to stay as one and had no clue that my life was at stake and any semblance of owning my life and living it well was out the window. I had locked myself up from inside and kept looking out at others for help, including my mom. Nothing feels more tragic than having a life and not having the power, the will, the awareness of choice and exercising it to build my life muscle so that I cherish and feel happy for my life and walk the miles to make my journey happen no matter how long, how far that could be, but taking the steps, baby steps is what I am doing now. I trust myself but it comes after giving in to lot of doubts, anxiety, and a trauma bonded sense of self. 

I guess trusting myself has been the most vulnerable and yet the most powerful step that I have been taking consistently. Although soaking in my mother's trauma, her emotional instability has been my conditioning and whatever I do feels like I am placating this need of hers to stabilize her, but there's only so much that I can do other than living my life -  this is not my entirety no matter how much trauma baggage and unresolved grief she may be carrying, it's on her finally. I cannot stay off centered from my life at the cost of making her feel stabilized. She needs to help herself no matter how old she thinks she has gotten, it's an opportunity to truly grow that she has missed on and compensating that with money is selling herself short.

My duty is towards my life and live grounded, calm, and at peace with myself more than anything else in the world. That seems doable but would require daily practice and I am trying to keep at it being true to it one day at a time.

Undoing beliefs

 I suffered mentally without there being a need to suffer. It's all owing to feeling like I am the bad one, the one at fault, the one who disappoints people, the one who causes people to be triggered negatively as believed by me since it was projected that way by my mother. And why? Because my body, my physical sensitivity and susceptibility to health issues made her project so and made me feel like it's all my fault. And I seemed so similar in physical and health constitution like my deceased father who had passed when she was pregnant with me and that again somehow is my fault (?) as I unconsciously picked it up as she didn't even come back to apologize for losing her mind and saying such stuff in her anger and helplessness. She just let me believe that she was right all along as I just suffered her mental dysregulation in silence.

Suffering meaninglessly because of this and self avoiding myself into numbness and depression added more share of actual suffering to all this. I didn't know what was real, what was my suffering in all this, and what is just an enmeshed knot of maladaptive beliefs which just kept me away from addressing my real issues deep within. My heart goes out to my inner child and to myself as a whole for having to endure all this in order to survive in a emotionally dysfunctional family. 

To think small, to feel small, to live through the mind of the mob, and to stay fuzzy and emotionally disconnected was who I identified myself to be. This was never for my higher good and only truth as is and the courage to look the truth in the eye has helped me set free many of the knots that had kept me bound to feeling small and insignificant. Feeling alone in all this is an understatement but I have had to deal with being tossed aside in emotional neglect by my family and for being constantly criticized by my mother for the health I had and endured all this for so long that I didn't have anything remaining of my own to go home to because I just went with mob mentality to fit in in the family somewhere that I lost out on discovering myself for who I am truly. 

I believed that I was worthy of all the neglect and criticism I got and had to adapt to being relevant to that at the cost of avoiding my reality and putting that aside as irrelevant. I was not empathetic or selfless hence but had to think more of others and be hypervigilant of their moods and cope up by being pleasing to them so that I could make this belief work on a daily basis. 

It's funny how people just don't own their suffering as their own and expect the world to make sacrifices and suffer in silence so that their voice(the sufferer) can be heard by the world. If one has suffered, the others too shall suffer goes the logic eh?

Did this kind of suffering make me stronger, wiser, or resilient? No, but it just made me more defensive about who I thought I was and that was not even true to who I am in fact as I realize now!

I was simply egoistically defending my image which had endured so much and any sense of changing this pattern (to think I am worthy of all the neglect and criticism) just became a self fulfilling prophecy and a reality by and large as people judged first and then cared to understand my truth later, all thanks to this belief.

Empathy is not one-sided

 Self care is the best medicine for me specially since I was raised by a self serving mother. Expecting that others care for me is a continued sense of betrayal and pain that I was putting myself through and sponged in more and more of my family's emotional neglect as a whole. I'll admit that they suck in that big time and could not be grown up enough for us kids, like, for my cousins besides me.

Besides emotional neglect I had to live back then which I didn't realize was to live in survival mode - live on high alert to make sure that my body, my health does not come in the way of making my mother feel better for that day. My health was in fact perceived as something bad as it let her down, as it made her ruminate on her past tragedy of losing my father, and made her feel frustrated and tired for coping up all alone by herself. She completely overlooked my feelings and that how these statements from her would make me feel. 

Hence, emotional neglect coupled with living on egg shells was the crossroads where trauma meets and kept walking to that and just as quickly as I reached that spot, I withdrew in my shell until I get up to meet myself there. I avoided seeing myself truthfully so much in this process that I preferred living in the dark of my shell rather than coming out and talking about how I truly felt back then. It became more and more disconnecting and a sort of numb spiral that kept regurgitating pain and avoidance without letting them out. I suffered due to my empathy towards my mother and went nowhere close to knowing how to be kind, reach out to myself and care for myself which is the best way out as it seems now.

Empathy comes at a price if you don't know the real value of it yourself - it's like a bite you backwards thing and my patient waiting that I am going to get what I put out just made me feel worse, betrayed, and disillusioned.

And then empathy seemed like a strained cord that you cannot stretch beyond a point no matter how soft and sensitive the giver's feelings maybe inherently. If empathy seems like the coping up that is best done for a self serving parent, then it's better to channelize for self care, clarity of consciousness, and just being present mindfully to oneself one day at a time.

And empathy cannot be one sided; it needs to flow from both ends and meet together at some crossroads sometime for reaping the harvest of the flow. 

What's close to your heart?

 Trauma has been my middle name and so much a part of my unconscious that I am recovering and it's not a treasure trove of a recovery but still all the dust that I need to get myself off so that the real gold in me shines:) 

To think about it, I have attracted relationships to make a point somewhere deep down within me that it's others who need my help but not me! How self contradicting can I be?!

I have been so tuned to self abandonment and obligatory guilt as programmed by my mother and applied on me while she wallowed in her self pity, widowhood, and victimhood, which she made the most of, but just had to feel securely attached to something and which was not her family. I now get it after almost decades that why does she brag so much about her material acquisitions, her intelligence to work with and maintain them, and her wisdom(?) to tolerate the fools in her family just so that she can stick on with being painfully patient with them and make the most of those applicable who can help facilitate for her in support of her achievements (which happens to be me more or less). Any which ways, she gets to be as self serving as possible and just stubborn to make it through what she wants. Overindulging in those who help support her, physically, throwing in ideas wherever possible (which would be me again) to support through her tasks whatever that be, as she keeps her pride and image intact is how I had gotten so enmeshed in toxic attachment with her. 

She is my only parent and I have not seen or spoken or heard how my dad communicates, but shaming, guilt trips, undoing my boundaries, and projecting her passive aggressive anger etcetera are what I have heard from her and no wonder have been in the self fulfilling trauma bond(s) that I had brought upon myself  - minimizing my feelings, my need for her unconditional love, and empathy for the physical ills whenever they happen, nurturing for my high sensitivity, and being held without pestering me with her literally nagging concerns over my health are the real limitations that I had been adapting to. They snowballed into trauma and replaced true expression of  these maladaptive limitations with hardened icicles of inner criticism, numbness, and just swaying from wanting to be intimate, vulnerable, but pulling myself back for lack of trust in others, including my mom.

My mother in essence is trauma in a complicated form. She just needs sustainable means to remain being one. She is fraught with trauma from her childhood maybe for no fault of hers but hasn't gotten off riding the 'high horse' of being a successful survivor and wearing me out for the worse as she had been doing all along. 

I didn't realize all this and thought I was supposed to be her enabler of her emotions, no matter how confusing and beyond my age it had seemed then. In return I had to learn to trust no one but be left with myself to lick myself off all the hurt of my feelings and also silently persevere through migraines, nausea, heart disease and so on. She made me a victim for no fault of mine and I just grew up well into my late 20's feeling stuck depending on her for her broken emotional support and her ever persistent criticisms on my health fluctuations, and didn't realize that it was my depression and her emotional neglect for crying out loud that tried to get my attention to do something about it, but I was too busy avoiding myself.

I had wanted to deny this truth about her given to how much I had unconsciously believed her to be better, stronger, more organized, and perfect in all that she does. But it was self serving at best and I just came in the way of her staying consistent with that since my physical ills from time to time meant that she had to also trauma bond with me and hence her shaming me in the disguise of ruminating over my father's untimely demise from ages ago, and how all that's getting replayed when looking at me so weak and ill, was just a cover for strengthening her sympathy skin and protecting herself as she's comfortable in her core that way. I am not empathizing any of her hiding and throwing wool on others eyes including mine, but seeing her for who she is truly is both a relief and also liberating for undoing all these crap conditionings that just screwed with my mental health.

Not being aware of my real feelings, and not going out there to open up and trust someone that I could talk to and get clear about my emotions, meant that all the explosions happened in the form of fantasies where I could assume the self confident, assertive, no nonsensical person tone in all the role plays that I indulged myself in.

I am responsible for my own mental health and feelings and emotions no matter how free flowing or snowballed they maybe. I am happy that they are free flowing now. 

I am surprised and shocked that how neglectful can a parent be and yet claim that they have made a world of difference in their child's life. Birthing me, my mother did, but growing up, it was all me. She materially provided for me to grow up and instilled certain habits that have got to do with eating food on time, having medicines on time, and when feeling unwell, reach out to the doctors on time - the first two seem to stick with me, but discovering more of my hidden grief, repressions, anger, feelings of betrayal for trust being broken so many times and so on have been really healing. Not that I don't need a doctor, but I am happy to acknowledge that the physical ills that used to disorient me, scare me, and make me feel as if my body is intimidating me have been a part of my life from my past, but I don't feel the need to depend on an emotionally neglectful person to further the persistent state of trauma that I was always living in - there's a way out by simply being true to my emotions and feelings, and by stepping into my reality and accepting myself for who I am, physically or otherwise, and just keep moving on.

I don't need the approval of others to make me feel accepted and normal. It's in fact a painful disrespect to myself that I had put myself into over and over for lack of self actualization and appreciation.

Trauma is who I became in a way I guess and do not wish to leave this planet feeling all traumatized and stuck on unresolved feelings.

I have been emotionally neglected by the other members of my family as a pattern as they assumed that my mother's overindulging and infanticizing me and my needs are enough, and could never sense the growing disconnect within me for my own feelings and deep seated depression as a result. It didn't even appear as emotional neglect to them let alone stepping in to support me way back when I was a child or be a voice to my feelings. All the material comfort that they saw is all that I got and I too assumed that that's enough and never opened up to talk about any lack and felt that I couldn't breach any form of disloyalty to my mother as she had wrapped me up in her finger and had so deftly controlled me in keeping me all ignorant and ill supported for self growth. 

Her support can only be so much and only for so long but living under this impression that everything lasts forever was my biggest ignorance and something that I was painfully unaware until my marriage.

After my marriage and that too an arranged one and a lifetime partnership that got settled in a span of 2 months tops was the major spin off for making me come face to face with the fact that material pampering does not last forever. What was assumingly love for me in my head from my mother was not what I got from my husband and my in-laws. I downsized love to just that unfortunately.

In fact I had attracted a companion who was so loyal to his trauma bond with his parents as his parents made him to believe that that's the kind of loyalty he was supposed to have in order to serve them as they had worked their asses off trying to win their approval and respect from their family which they never received, and also financial support from their fellow siblings which they only sparingly, and all of 'the unconditional support from family for all the sacrifices done earlier' just remained expectations and nothing more. And so I was expected to partner with him in infanticizing his parents needs foremost and making them all inclusive of my life even if my husband and I lived separate from them and yet in close proximity to them so that they could continue to give the impression that they are the most forthcoming parents for all the trauma and troubles that they have themselves gone through and yet want only the best for their only son and his wife and that includes giving us our space. They gave us our 'freedom' and if not for them, we wouldn't have a life together!

Entitled for respect, for food and care as and when they feel like they need which I need to tune into(even if they were and still are in good enough health to take responsibility for themselves) as I am obligated as their daughter-in-law to do so, which is as per their expectations, and allow them to live off our combined generosity, my husband and mine.

My father-in-law had thrown away prioritizing his life and making the most of his work opportunities and just struck losses in whichever job venture he set his mind on, and just tried to live off the generosity of his siblings as he stayed bitter and broken and irresponsible for not just his life but also his wife and the 3 children that he let down. Absent of money and material comforts, food, and a secure sense of living, my mother-in-law has been a broken mess in progress and even if all these be their past, they do not want to let this go and keep guilt tripping, gaslighting others (me in this context) and do so with expectation that they will be taken care of. They do not wish to outgrow their insecurities, even if they have the needed material comforts and health to an extent by their side, but expect that their son and daughter-in-law bend over backwards to fix all their brokenness and assure them from time to time and make things alright. In other words being empathetic to their entitled feelings that they want others to read, reach out, and fulfill is an utterly tiresome job. They brought upon themselves their material poverty and expected bad choices to work for them and just felt betrayed and ridiculed and also robbed off some jewels, which my mother-in-law had lost in the process of being married to my father-in-law, thanks to his not too trustworthy relatives, but  staying angry, bitter, sad, vindictive, covertly narcissistic, emotionally manipulative as a result despite decades of coming out of all these struggles is also her/their choice.  Just ruminating and keeping them alive so that she can get all the sympathy from me, get all the freebies like food and care for them on time whenever they ask for it (since we lived close to them in the neighborhood) and disguise their motives under all the suffering that they had gone through in the past and so have earned the right and the obligation to expect all these and more from her 'daughter' like daughter-in-law for their  own calculated benefits.

I saw through all these layers and was not as stuck and avoidant like my husband who could see his parents intentions from me but was too weak back then mentally to fully support me and my boundary setting and had wanted to avoid conflict of any kind at all costs. So, appeasing his parents while enjoying his new found intimacies with me back then worked out fine for him. But their constant cribbing on why I reduced my visits to their house, why was I not forthcoming to ask if I could be of some help to them, why was I not accompanying them whenever they visited other elderly family members' houses, family gatherings and so on was something he couldn't control for long.

He had minimized his real suffering and trauma of being given food only once a day in his childhood by his parents, of separating him from his 2 younger sisters by placing them each in a family member's house who could take them so that they could have some sense of material security as his parents didn't provide anything close to that to all 3 of them and just broke their childhood, are some of his sad but true horrid tales of utter parental dysfunction, be it emotionally, financially and any other thing possible.

They are too proud to take responsibility for their irresponsibility and want their children to step up and save their face which they have tiringly and thanklessly done so, but are too tired themselves to want to continue to champion their parents as a cause and avoid living their lives as a result which they had been doing all along, and are getting to live whatever bit and however fragmented it seems for them by being away from them -  my husband in his own way with me and his 2 sisters in their own way with their families.

Screwed up people screw up people, that's all. They won't take the deep dive, ask for support for getting better for their own good, and will act all high and mighty and noble, and just continue living their dysfunctional conditionings as their pattern and blame everyone and anyone for who they are today and expect people to feel sorry for them but not ridicule or put them down. My in-laws have not earned respect for themselves the right way and their fragile egos to which they are too strongly bound as if it's their secure attachment and all that they have, while people around them are too busy living their lives and working on building their health, career, material stuff and so on.

They would risk breaking their relations off with people but not allow for their egos to break as it's their nucleus and their home. I didn't belong there, didn't want to, and am alright being a namesake member of their family.

My husband and I are finally able to see the truths about our parents and about ourselves too and so continue to live together to explore more about ourselves now and interesting stuff that we could talk about, watch stuff on tv or the net , and just like being a team and work together through each day as it comes. That's another side of my trauma recovery in progress.

Traumatized people need not traumatize others just to give another a taste of their suffering but find some amount of humanity in themselves still so that they can see the trauma of others as is and be sensitive to them. Entitlement, victimhood, and tall expectations will not take people anywhere, and close to others hearts, never.

 

Trauma release mode on!

 I have lived for most part of my childhood until late 20's in a constant state of worry about migraine attacks and how anxiously did I try to ward off that but in vain. Temperature fluctuations, specially heat rising would spike my migraines as well as gastrointestinal infections sometimes aggravates one, and also stress for not being able to detach myself from this trauma bond with migraine which culminated in irritable bowels syndrome and acidity and a circuitous loop of sorts where getting adapted to trauma of some form or the other, but trauma, was so in manifestation that when there were days when I didn't have any health issues, I would get stressed out.

I lost my self confidence as a result of my mother's criticisms and frustrations and her ill comparisons with my deceased father who might have had similar health patterns but that did not mean that I should feel guilty, but it became an obligatory guilt of sorts for all my material dependency on her - medicines, money, clothes, academic fees and all that I sold myself short over and over and got enmeshed with her trauma and tragic ruminations over losing my father and having to be by herself to face my highly sensitive body which was termed as "too sensitive" and her repeatedly getting irritated and calling in the other family members and gaining sympathy from them but body shaming me in the process just broke my confidence in myself.

And so, trauma became a constant in my life and living outside of that was abnormal for me. All these realizations are the new normal for me and it feels new but I am able to see patches of trauma free reality which I could navigate the clearing through and it feels like I am able to discern the difference between the forest from the trees. The forest was in slow burning fire that I didn't see the smoke for the clear clouds above. It feels freeing as if there could be a reality beyond all this trauma that I believed I needed to live through to sustain, to survive all this. 

Now it feels like sacrificing my time and energy(if needed) for priorities other than mine is not my acquired obligation but a choice that I can work through to facilitate for the benefit of the other but within my set boundaries. My boundaries are my rights and not weaknesses or triggers for guilt tripping. 

Coming home to myself feels so authentic as if this space allows for a beautiful connection to life in totality itself -  I am connected to life and living and hence have discovered this blessing to continue to explore my connect with life from within and reaching all the way out. This is a stark contrast to the earlier pattern where life from outside with all its reactions, judgments, uncertainties, comfortable/uncomfortable physical/geographical environment/temperature and so on was all that I would draw in, and repress my inner world accordingly and suppress any sense of intuitions, instincts, feelings, desires and so on just so that I adapt to the outer world being in a hyper vigilant mode. 

This hyper vigilance mode just stressed me out so much and kept me confused in other people's versions of what they think, believe and so on and could not trust myself enough to put myself out there for fear of being ridiculed, criticized, and devalued. It's how others reacted to my health trauma which didn't just get limited to migraines but spilled over into heart valve issues, one bout of epilepsy, and other issues that seemed like a never ending stretch of my sick personality which didn't feel  healed no matter how many medicines I took or how many doctors I went to. It just broke my spirit and made things worse and I just continued to pretend as if it's something that I can easily just get past with perseverance no matter how many issues that may bombard me. 

Perseverance kept my self avoidance and self trust issues intact as I worked towards enabling the false beliefs that I had gotten tuned to and which was to look towards the outside world for my worth and validation and not trust to look inward.

I have come so far in being open and vulnerable with my feelings and my life experiences with courage, determination, and a growing faith in Lord Muruga. A bit of self compassion and cutting down the voice of the inner critic seems like music to my ears! All this tuning is new to get used to but  going deep within and discovering my true feelings, grieving for some, feeling hurt by some, angry at some more, tearing up bellowing my chest out while feelings of betrayal come out, just being in the moment for some mindful truths and downloads to land, quietly contemplate and journal at times, go on walks, listening to soothing music, release and surrender to God, and so on have been my healing work put together in progress. It's not in a linear order but since I was all by myself whenever I was shamed, guilted, criticized, devalued and so on, this undoing of sorts is also all by myself with a bit of support via listening from my husband sometimes and sometimes sharing with a friend or two at the most, but mostly this inner work has been solitary, sad, deep, crumbling, disorienting, and also worth the time by means of all the validity that it gives to my repressed feelings and also help in my detaching with them from time to time. I cannot forget in other words but neither is there a compulsion to want to get stuck on a loop to relive past wounds so that I continue to live in trauma, even if there be any physical issues or emotional neglect or otherwise.