Addressing the inner child wounds

 Inner child wounds are an all pervasive suppressed emotional pain that grows over time and can remain stubbornly stuck within if the right kind of reparenting is not provided. Why is reparenting required in the first place? Why do parents in most cases continue to pass on their inner traumas and expect resolve through their children? Why can't parents face their own inner child issues, emotional neglect, disappointments, anger issues and so on and focus equally on their emotional regulation and release and not just prioritizing on material acquisition and financial success alone?

I have been such an example of a severely wounded inner child and despite my age still carry deep seated self esteem issues and seek approval from others, dependent on team work rather than work as a sole member who is completely confident in her individual abilities, dissociate often in order to cope up with my dysfunctional emotional regulation which had become my pattern unfortunately, and figuring out how to forgive myself and my parent (single mother) and my caretakers who all practiced neglect, and had difficulty to express themselves and were severely emotionally handicapped owing to their own broken childhood and inner child issues.

Therefore physically growing and aging is all that I did anyway but taking the time to look into my buried inner life and addressing my neglected inner child who could not have a voice of her own and grew up wanting to be joyful, to express enthusiasm freely, and be creative in thriving as an imaginative, artistically oriented, and sensitive child who feels deeply her own emotions as well as others is what I have grieved for a while now. 

To liken inner child wounds to that of a limitation or lack is an insensitive approach but to be kind enough to see this buried heaviness as part of one's past and to be alive to it is a beautiful way of seeing the shadow through the lens of inner guidance and accepting this shadow as an integral aspect of oneself and to care and address it with love is being self inclusive and unconditionally accepting at the best human level possible.

Because unresolved inner child hurts and traumas manifest as emotional pain that block our energy fields from growing and receiving positive energies which help manifest our present and future seamlessly and with a sense of direction, it becomes imperative to heal, release and reparent as needed just to check in with the inner child from time to time. And what we cannot do ourselves, we cannot expect others to do it for us and make the inner conflicts and dense emotional trappings go away. 

What has been done to us is an undoing responsibility within ourselves and once we begin to set ourselves free, then freedom of self expression in a natural sense of joy, innocence, curiosity, enthusiasm becomes the authentic self and is enough by itself without having to seek approval or acceptance from others. 

How we finally respond to our lives is all that matters - I would rather with curiosity, empathy, sensitivity, imagination, and pragmatic problem solving and would need my inner child to be my very own cheerleader to live life to the fullest.

Where there is a Vel, there is a way!

Lord Muruga is the beacon of truth and light on Earth. He wields his mighty Vel to pierce through the mid fog and layers of fear and anxiety enveloping mankind in this kaliyuga.

He is pure compassion that shines as divine light in the galaxies as he helps beings, small, big, and alien to find their way home and to put an end to darkness. 'As above and so below' (An ancient quote) and so is his protection that blankets the cold of several souls who are lost and numb in their darkness within on planet earth and reaches out to them as true light and guidance, one lifetime after another.

Muruga is not just a name, it is the identity of the God within each of us because He is the symbol of good over evil, kindness over cruelty, acceptance over judgement, and truth over fake emotions and feelings. In other words, He is pure love and an all encompassing essence whose smell, feel, and touch is as real and as glorious as the ether of early dawn and the golden dust of dusk.

There is no mountain that's unconquerable for His powerful Vel and no mental, emotional block that can limit or overwhelm a person that is too big a challenge for Muruga's Gnana Vel - the Vel destroys them all and restores our faith back in humanity, hope, and courage in order to live the rough tides of the outer as well as the inner life.

The beautiful Vel is an extension to Lord Muruga and a form of His self expression which becomes symbolic of Muruga's valor, strength, and divine commands as an Army General (Deiva Senapati) of the Devas and Divine Chief of innumerable galaxies and planets, including planet Earth.

The Vel can find its way in when we mere mortals feel distraught that there is no way out, and so the weapon and the Master blend as One to call one's attention to organize life from that of chaos and help restore peace and love in the hearts of one and all in mankind.

The Vel is truly an alchemist of one's heart and mind and a transformative tool to remove the darkness from one's soul. Because its presence to heal one's inner wounds can go as deep and expansive and stand tall despite the intertwined knots of the mind or heart or soul, the resulting calm is proof of the healing work in progress depending on how real, how humble and how unique, the seeker's surrender and love to Lord Muruga and His guiding Vel is.

It's indeed where there is a Vel, there is a way then!!

   

Being true to high sensitivity

I was told I was too weak 

and born with high sensitivity which for my overwhelmed mother just Latin and Greek

I was not certified that I was a HSP, a highly sensitive person, in my infancy

For my mother it was a curse a day and a challenge on another relating to me, as I grew on a lack for feeling joyful life potency

It was all my fault I felt as the sounds, smells, crowd, moods and vibes made me withdraw in deep, unspoken fears

But all these were home to my mother as she grew up with her brothers and after losing my father came back home to them with sadness and tears

She wore victimhood as her attire and hiding behind her saree pallu(edge of the saree) made me one too

And disguised her insecurities by making me the cause of her emotional pain, her biting criticism on my sensitivities coming at me out of the blue

It was my fault and which became my stress to be good enough for her

While gulping down medicines, numbing my feelings and repressing my emotions was just my space and then became a vacuum as it stared back as my daily mirror

She never saw what I saw as she 'settled' into accepting that I cannot be 'fixed'

As I felt increasingly that being born after my father's death posthumously made me unlucky and jinxed.

I kept looking for reassurance outside of me that I was okay and 'normal' despite my high sensitivities

And was afraid to confront my mother for making this unhealthy conditioning which was a block on my creative abilities

She denied even as I confessed how another's unhealthy projections can damage one's mental strength and growth as a person

But she merely said a dismissive sorry to end the talk and I just felt angry and my numbness worsen

End Note/My takeaway: I learnt that my feelings which I had abandoned by not being there for it when it needed attention to be heard and validated needs to be reparented and nurtured and regulated, and not allow for it to become lifeless because we can never bring back people who die as it's the end of their destined time, but feelings can always come back to life if you allow yourself to be alive to it as they speak and share.

Undoing emotional abuse

 Emotional abuse cannot be mentally made sense of; it helps though to understand the pattern of the abuser's thought process and also that of the victim in giving in to the abuse. The mistake that the victim makes is to believe that coping up with emotional abuse and NOT expressing it out aloud and seeking support from others is the way it's meant to be - just be an emotional sponge and take in negative energy of the abuser (whoever it be) and try to be good enough each time and after every time post the traumatic phases of going through with it just so that the victim can fit in in the good books of the abuser. 

The trust as it seems to be so blindly placed in the other than in oneself forms the root of all forms of weakness, be it in the mind or in the body. To render oneself powerless and feel like life is out of one's control is the most damage that the victim can out of ignorance of its long term consequence on one's mental health still continue to participate in until they choose to otherwise.

To become detached from the ruminating memories that keeps the trauma alive in the body in some form or the other makes it then a priority to work on. Detachment by force is not key but letting go slowly and gradually by stepping into the new space of awareness and an authentic new birthing of the person that manifests in the rewiring/reprogramming process is the act of walking towards self love and without guilt, fear, self doubt makes it worth it.

The truth to remember is I have not inherited trauma and not a cause for another's trauma as it's made out to be (Generational trauma) but to step into this knowing. Although some deep seated sadness can be logicalized away and understood better by the labeling and validation of the abuser's back story, but it does not take away from the fact that emotional abuse has indeed happened. My mother has been reactive, narcissistic, cold, entitled and exaggerating and has crowded over all my fears by cornering and isolating me in the process of staging her emotional insecurities by projecting them on me through criticism and lack of reaching out to me over and over as if grappled by selective amnesia and self pity that she can conveniently bring on as protection for her behavior towards me and simply emotionally neglecting me in the process. It's as if my feelings never counted for her and I had to be extremely loyal for all the material things she bought and gave me and the umpteen times that she reminded me of my father's passing and months later my being born under difficult labor circumstances. It's just a numbing reiteration from her end that I owe her everything about me and that she made my creation unique and the way it was.

It's all about her and I was all about her and that's my emotional abuse in short. 

To feel like I am a separate person outside of all this feels truly refreshing. And so how to reframe my story of repression, numbing, anxiety, depression and invalidation from a new lens is my growing into this new space now. It will take time but at least I won't feel stuck and expect answers from outside because it's my blessed life and it needs truths and nurturing self care from time to time as it's already work in progress...

From shadow to light

 I am so used to being sad for no reason that whatever reasons I find to snap out of my sadness seems like a distraction and I tell myself that it's only just until I get to numb my feelings, as if numbness is my destination and I just can't get stuck with taking a detour to working on feeling something more than sadness - it's as if I am letting myself be sad and the sad truth is my family has been seeing me this way day in and day out and just accept me as if it's a normal thing with me being all so quiet and introverted but with all my frozen sadness within and which they don't care to see and are hardened by their own veils to bother to look beyond them.

This dead end that I was not able to work past and without anyone's support and believing that I am too weak to support myself in any form or way made it a no way out but to get stuck with this ruminating path that leads nowhere.

I feel more sad having realized the huge hollowness that this numbing has led to and this grieving for being avoidant, dismissive, and insensitive to my feelings as if my life mission for each day is to get past this dead end but keep trying to feel alive to face it every day like a routine. How can I be so self destructive? How can I shut myself off feeling anything but just sadness? My mother made me feel like an extension to her tragedy and frustration, agreed, but do I stay in that as a shadow in order to adapt to this limited interpretation which I believed is who I am all about.

And when coming to the light through this hardened ignorance and thick fog, it feels like I had remained disillusioned in my own make-believe illusion world of living like a shadow to my mother's self absorbed feelings about losing my father and the world is all set against her in some way or the other and that sadness and getting sympathy was her ticket to thriving in a joint family along with her brothers and their wives and their children. What works for her need not work for me and this distinct voice to express what feels like truly me is something I am opening myself to and hearing myself out and trying to be compassionate and unconditionally accepting and give myself some flak for whatever I manage to do or not.

It's very hard to want to thrive in your own space without having to feel like a shadow to another being specially and all the almost realistic imaginary explosion in my head proving that I am this and good enough for that are just ways to cope up for having compromised on my emotional/mental space and for having gotten weakened more and more for carrying a lot of overwhelm, guilt, anger, helplessness, and lack of power and control over claiming what is truly mine.

This staying wrapped up in her shadow has made me doubt my identity, my existence, purpose, direction to take in life, and a yawning wide in coming away from myself as if I need the imaginations in my head to be my shadow for a lack of rebuilding my self from scratch. I am working on it but can't seem to get myself together for my true self seems to be out of grasp similar to a shadow that doesn't know how to survive by itself and needs someone or the other to justify to being one. 

And so all the knowledge, creativity, and problem solving abilities and so on get wasted to being a shadow trail and not wake up fully to my inner light which has been the reason for coming out slowly from being a shadow as I express about it in this writeup.

Clinging to being a shadow as well as wanting myself out of the shadow is like being aware of the obsession but not able to cut off from practicing that obsession which is like a habit.

Freedom of expression

I grew up trained to be in fear and worry about how to be good enough for my mother as she had made a habit of making me feel bad about my body. I feared deep down and was caught up in confusing feelings that the person whom I trusted most made me feel like an outsider to my body by criticizing it so much and quite regularly so that I didn't know if I had to be defensive about it or defend my dead father whom she brought up in every health issue of mine (almost) as he had left us prior to my being born due to a sudden cardiac arrest, and all her broken dreams of a long happily married life with him and their future together with the baby had all gotten shattered. The ensuing anger that she had bottled up kept coming up whenever my health failed to meet her expectations - the point was that she had been through enough already and that my frequent migraines and other not so life threatening issues and maybe one or two serious ones had all been treated by me as dust that need to be suppressed under my life carpet and which I did but not realizing then that this act of suppressing and stifling my feelings in order to look good for her was laying the seeds for being a fake from within. 

When you are not true to yourself and sensitive enough to understand how best to deal with your body, your emotions, and how to process stagnation of your feelings and release them from time to time through some proactive means if possible that could be for your good and more importantly to have someone next to you who cares enough about you to see how far you are going away from yourself is the start to feeling disconnected from your reality - the reality that you create as a response to adapting to someone's mood swings and judgements is the most limiting feeling and that when practiced for a long time becomes your belief that you need to fear to stretch yourself beyond a point physically specially lest it makes you feel weak all over again to seek support and withdraw from giving yourself a chance to come out of that comfort zone. Fear and withdrawal are not healthy means to train your mind to discipline yourself and just rotting in the pent up energy, drive, missed opportunities, and weary enthusiasm is the outcome of lack of self discipline. 

How long to hang on to such dead end habits is the question...Having fought within myself for so long that all the courage to actually face reality seems worn out. I know I will get up not because 'I have to' live but living through it all, pains, suppressions, withdrawals, stagnations,  over thinking, procrastination, lack of clarity in goal setting is something that had made me who I was but to be true to myself in such vulnerable times is who I am now and I am proud of how far I have come despite the emotional abuse from my mother, my long term dormant depression, addiction to stress, self destructive coping up and so on.

I don't doubt myself anymore if I had really gone through so much and just downsize it to make it sound like nothing because it was terribly hard for what it's worth to be your own support system emotionally and mentally and having a huge family like my mother's relatives besides her to live along with makes it all the more harder to release that family makes you biologically and materially nurture you but when they are not with you truly in your times of real need, then it's not worth it to hang on to such memories. 

Families are made and sent to us while we are born and we can't get to choose them but how to navigate through a bunch of people who see you but don't see the depths of despair that makes you believe that you are invisible to them and just cope up with it anyway is the loophole that only unconditional self love can provide. I can't jump through this phase by just suppressing my truths but discovering my true courage by being open to my vulnerabilities and accepting them for what it is is the way to allow myself the freedom of expression.

Narcissist and the real victim

 It's not really clear why someone is a narcissist and why he(Generally speaking and is not gender specific) behaves the way he does.  A dysfunctional family has little hope to become an integrated unit when narcissists rule the scene -  the amount of chaos that they can organically create and be oblivious of their self destructive habits which sadly pulls everyone down as a family, as a unit together is the effect of such a personality disorder. This disorder is inherent within someone as in it can be genetic or it can be a coping behavior or a learned behavior from dysfunctional family environment and from the heads who run such families (with narcissistic tendencies) and so in turn becoming narcissists themselves. But no matter what be the reasons for one's display of  narcissistic qualities, it's fairly common to have a dormant amount of those qualities within each of us like seeking validation of our efforts and the lack of it in the form of emotional neglect that is the primary seed for narcissism, and acceptance of a person and making them feel secure for who they are and a lack of which triggers the narcissist to seek supply outside of him and not within him, and these are relatable as long as the way we let this frustration, this sadness out by means which don't emotionally or physically harm others. Exploring one's hobbies, journaling, talking with people who are not quick to judge you, and most importantly understanding the need to vent in healthy ways as human living is always going to be challenging in some form or the other are part of the parents' growing up stages alongside the kid/kids and mere expectations without practicalizing healthy habits in daily life would just deepen this grief of not being understood. 

It is crucial to understand here that by allowing the emotional wound to stay and which makes the afflicted more and more embittered, angry, reactive and insecure are just symptoms of this disease which when not treated as early as possible or in earlier stages of life like from childhood itself, could spiral down further to become a pain that looks for nurturing and enabling from outside to make the narcissist feel important or special for no particular reason but their inflated sense of self, which is enough reason for them to believe and expect an appropriate treatment or response from others to keep them happy, accepted and secure.

It is alright to have expectations but to project these expectations as universal truths which others surrounding the narcissist need to comply is quite another. Taking accountability for one's behaviour and actions is something that the narcissist seem to conveniently forget and any attempts to remind and bring them to acknowledge their lack of empathy for others feelings is usually a wasted effort (the reactions could be childish, explosive, revengeful and just unpredictable in short) as narcissists when they become hardened more and more by practice of getting things done through performed acts of graciousness and kindness and stage worthy display of love bombing and charm used on their victims to get them to comply through deceit, dishonesty and lack of scruples, are stuck almost forever in their own created whirlpools that they love to go round and round and mentally/physically exhaust others in the process. This whirlpool is a dense and dark place that just sucks the life out of innocent people who could be their near and dear ones, friends, colleagues and so on, who will become weary of the narcissist's intentions sooner or later - the darkness refers to a refusal to come to acknowledge their own truths about themselves and wanting those involved with them to live in the façade that they have built around themselves in so many layers to get what they want. 

This firm refusal to grow up can bend the will power of many a victim as they could walk into the world of a narcissist only to be blinded by all their attention but no true love can be felt from narcissists as they expect others to make them feel self love but do nothing to work on loving themselves by managing their habits, looks, diet and taking responsibility for their actions and so on. Failure to acknowledge this lack of balancing oneself cannot be thrust upon others by being just charming and attentive as long as it suits their needs and blame shifting and gaslighting people to make it seem like the rest of the world are at fault and that they are victims who are on the receiving end when it's quite the opposite.

So it's no coincidence that people who have adapted to living with a narcissist and who are blurred by weak or no boundaries fail to differentiate their own feelings from that of the narcissist as that's what they expertly do - keep the victims trapped in constant state of self doubt about their own state of mind and knowingly play that against them and keep them more and more vulnerable to mind fog and anxiety for not able to fit in with the mood(s) of the narcissist which is in short like learning to walk on egg shells and make their path all inclusive where the narcissist would want to take up all the space as the victim squirms and squeezes in for making more way for the narcissist to walk beside.

Goals are very important in this way as learning to live off the other and through them reach their individual goals is a narcissist's chosen path - no guilt, no shame, no regret for using the others as a ladder to reach to the top as they will glorify in their own sense of victory and sing their own praises for goals big or small - capitalizing on attention at any cost is something they will never let go of till the end. It's sad to see that their life is just what they want others to see and not a true reflection of who they truly are, in mind, in spirit, as they masterfully disguise their true motives under a noble skin.

I have been a victim of my mother's narcissistic emotional abuse and was shocked to grasp the fact that I had been her scapegoat all along in order for her to project her gaslighting of how traumatized she has been for my physical illness (just a migraine and nausea) and made me feel worse by ruminating aloud calling forth the rest of the family members and sharing her grief yet again for the millionth time that how sad she is again to see me mimic my (late) father's health condition in having migraines and that he too had one such migraine attack and nausea, vomiting, a low bp episode had ensued and was quickly admitted to the hospital and within few hours from there on he had passed away while she was pregnant  with me (3 months). She made my misery worse not because I was in physical pain but by making me feel guilty for reminding her about my father whom I had never seen, she just upped her receiving of sympathy from her brothers and their wives with whom we lived together and there was cast a tragic spell by enacting this sadness out in front of her family audience as I was made to be the scapegoat for having just a common migraine headache. But the truth behind the recurrence of repeat headaches is not owing to my father as she had conveniently grief smeared and made me a participant of her confusing emotions which seemed like concern on the superficial side but was just an opportunity for her to showcase her tragedy even after decades after my father's passing and that no amount of medicines and doctors shoved down my unsuspecting mind then could actually silence my chronic emotional stress that ate me up and made me feel completely disconnected from my own body - it was all hers to claim - her difficult pregnant phase bearing me, her difficult time during delivering the child (me), her frustration to see me so physically sensitive (my core sensitive and intuitive nature got blocked, thanks to her smeared beliefs on me), and projecting how concerned and worried a parent she is by sharing my headache episodes the next day at office with her office colleagues. 

My self confidence, feelings of safety in my own body, trusting my mind to make decisions for myself all went for a toss as this chronic emotional stress that I kept absorbing while ignoring my sensitivities to feel my life, my pain, my real experiences whatever they be as wanting to adapt into her nut shell version of her grief seeded in me was what I carried within me as if pregnant even after being born but with a load of emotional pain which I could not process was mine or hers even after ages while being burdened to be empathetic and sensitive for all that she materially did for me, and that her saying that over and over was a way to not make me forget that I owe and should always owe her my every breath not because I organically or deeply feel that I want to but because she expects so and has made her unconscious thoughts my programming for me to blindly follow and which I did painfully being oblivious to my life's unfolding. As my body kept giving me true signals as the body always does and specially under this long term unresolved emotional stress that manifested in the form of migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, menstrual problems, and cardiovascular disease, it has become more and more clear to me in these past few years and which is almost 4 decades neck deep into this kind of narcissistic emotional abuse, that physical pains had indeed kept me alive to feeling my life even if they had caused a lot of discomfort and chaos in my already burdened mind. It was as if a part of me I had willfully suspended just so that I can hang around in some vague vacuum of having a life but not able to get my head and heart around living it as I clearly could not see past the persistent mind fog that I had been wrapped up that just kept blocking my way for so long. And so the digestion issues persisted, heart issues too, till this date, and for wrongly shifting blame on my dead father for no apparent fault of his other than succumbing to a sudden cardiac arrest that he could not survive through, this low level depression that kept clinging to me like vedhal clings to vikram is how it feels to get past all this trauma for surviving a well disguised emotional abuse well scripted by my mother to make herself the martyr of being a widow and a single parent with a 'sick' child who was in fact normal as any other kid but grew in such chaotic emotional family environment that supported such emotional abusers with sympathy and enabled my mother to 'nurture' my sickness while reveling in all the self pity that she liked to be addicted to. This has been slow poison for me as I was way too empathetic and sensitive to absorb all that she said and how she said it and believed myself in this web of stories that she told herself as well as all of us as I had gotten stuck in this toxic relationship which will still live on until she is alive and in some form or the other, but with a bit of boundary setting wherever possible, I try to protect myself and feel safe in my body from within and not seek validation of wellness from doctors outside which is what I was programmed to by my mother.

The effects of her internalizing and passing on her bitterness, frustration and criticism is so real as I am able to see the truth for what she is that it pains me more for having been used by her as a lifeless scapegoat which was made lifeless by her emotional abuse, neglect and gaslighting episodes which affected me both physically and mentally and for the life that I still am left with I hope to let go this dormant sadness, anger, and forgive myself as well as forgive her for being so cold to my emotional conflicts, anxiety, and chronic stress. And I am glad that I am discovering all these layers of truth before her passing as these sharings will not feel dead when done after her departure. These realizations are bringing alive so many emotions that I had coped up with repression and numbing and that I have grieved for as well but human life is anyways consisting of suffering in some form or the other and has given me an important lesson that I don't need to sacrifice myself in order to adapt to suffering and just let go this deeply embedded programming to make way for exploring my life realizing my mind, my true feelings and pains and keep moving forward to liberate myself possibly to the fullest by my life's end.