Gratitude

I wish you all the strength you need to face the illness and trauma in your circle!



I also feel uneasy with the concept of giving and receiving support and its connection to dependence. The feeling is like something heavy is sitting on top of my heart. I have a really hard time asking for support and prefer to use a professional service over burdening my friends. When another offers me support, it touches me deeply and at the same time I feel sad preemptively. I experience something similar when someone sacrifices a lot of effort to give something to a loved one.


This is probably a healthy reaction in an unhealthy situation. If you meet more needy people than average or worse more exploitative people than average, you need the skills to protect you from undue dependence. Deactivation automates thedistancing response, so that people do not have time to pull your heartstrings. Did you get guilt tripped a lot?


I have something similar and dislike it a lot. Almost like a haughtiness around my lack of vulnerability.  I have some judgements around those who take on the victim role or air their dirty laundry in public. My underlying assumption is that someone will weaponize your pain and need if shared with too many people. (I am okay sharing with close, long term friends and respect those who do, but hold judgements around oversharing) This is why I lack the courage to open up more.


❤❤❤

Same here!

Giving you and little Juni a big hug!

My mother also told me that when I was a toddler and feared something, my father would overexpose me to it.

Deep down I believe the world is harsh and the vulnerable will not survive anyway.
What a sad and tragic way of thinking :-(



I need to find my gratitude journal and get back into the practice!

goldilocks , thank you for your empathetic response.

I have made a lot of progress toward emotional availability and vulnerability over the years, even prior to discovering attachment theory.
I have been in 12 step groups for ACOA, codependents , etc- and you know what's funny, i see a lot of that is kind of geared for non-dismissives? or at least, the mentoring i had didn't quite fit in terms of relatability and i see now it was a difference in attachment types most likely!

i digress. Having children changed me a lot. I had never held a baby before i had my first, and i had no desire for children. But once i saw my baby and held her, it opened up a space in my heart i didn't know was there. Little Juni knew  it was there tho. She has a big heart!

Raising my children, i ran up against myself a little bit and struggled with some things, all parents do. My nurturing instinct as a mother is strong, and being tender with my kids is what shone the light on my memories of the nurturing i did not receive. Sheilding my kids from harm made me realize how unprotected, exposed and endangered i was. Responding to their pain in a naturally comforting way made me see the contrast of what little Juni experienced.

I don't remember my toddler years, i have the unfortunate experience of hearing the accounts of relatives, stories that were told over thanksgiving dinner, with an odd insensitivity. It was as an adult i realized that my family isn't strong on empathy. I was the sensitive one, probably the worst candidate for DA attachment i guess if temperament is a factor! My siblings are all very quiet, serious, and removed. And without much empathy. And here i was the little bleeding heart that wasn't allowed to cry so i didn't. I don't think i cried much in my life until the last few years, when i let it all out.

The memories of the violence in my home start around age 5. I know i always went to the ruckus and tried to boss it away, or tried to see what was going on and what i needed to do. I felt horrible when my parents would each be screaming at me conflicting pleas.... My father telling me do this, my mother telling me don't you dare Juni! And me just standing in the doorway not knowing what to do. I didn't say a word. I damn sure didn't cry. because who cared. nobody cared.

I got in fights a lot in second grade, and was always trying to come home from school. I was in the gifted class and i don't remember having friends because they made me go a grade up, and i got in fights on the playground. I just remember hot gravel on the playground and anger and wrestling and getting in trouble. ugh.

I moved to the country at age 9 and became ok. Because of the country.

i lost my friends around age 16, because i started avoiding them. i just stopped associating. i found out later, as an adult when we reconnected at a reunion, that they were sad and hurt and confused and didn't know what happened. I felt ashamed when they told me because i didn't either. I just went inside my head and out into the woods, i guess.

I didn't date, in high school. And after that, the adult nightmare began and i don't need to go into that.

Why am i writing this? i don't know. I guess i am just recounting some things with an attachment lens now. I haven't done that before.

It's been a long road and yes @breakingthespell, the awareness i have i got with a lot of tears. But it's good!
I don't think this horrible legacy continues a whole lot past me. My kids are doing good, i'm doing good. My young adult son just took an attachment test and came out secure. Miracle of miracles. My older daughter, i think maybe a little FA. Their father abandoned young, as an addict and is dying of that now. But we have awareness and emotional health in our family so we can keep healing and working on whatever we need to. Our bonds feel good.

I am able to give and receive support, i have had a lot of intervention type help for the violence and things i encountered as an adult. I have friends that i started asking for support in the last few years. I always have given support and comfort quite comfortably but didn't open up about needing comfort and advice before. That was a nervous time when i started doing that, but i am comfortable with it now. i used to have a hangover from it and literally groan out loud the next day about how stupid i must have seemed to ask for help.  wanted to puke. but it's natural and fine with me now most of the time. not always, i do still hide some but i am getting better all the time. . 

My biggest vulnerability is with my partner now. I mean vulnerability that i am most sensitive about but extremely grateful for. I have never done this or felt this way before in a romantic relationship and sometimes it feels like someone took all my skin off my ribs and my lungs are exposed, when i am laying next to him holding his hand, and I ask myself... "How do people just do this and make it look easy? How are they so brave to open their heart like this with no guarantees? And i just do it anyway because i don't want to miss it even if it hurts to breathe sometimes. don't get me wrong it isn't that i don't like it. it's just that i like it so much it scares me to lose it. i think the other shoe will drop and i'll be left feeling pain i could have averted with a little more self control.

so love like that is an exercise in courage and vulnerability. For years i didn't know it existed and didn't care.

i am not afraid of much else i don't think. not that i'm aware of. i've been through a lot and i sleep like a baby lol.

Is that so bad, that i can't help it that something which should be only joy opens up a sense of raw exposure in me? But i am willing to do it, and i think being brave about it and letting myself be like that will make it less, that i will grow past it. I dont always feel that raw and i don't regret it when i do, it just humbles me and makes me see how brave people who love with confidence are.

Anyway, i have tears in my eyes and i am going to post this and thank you kindly for the space to do this.

and goldilocks, i so appreciate your sharing and relating , i wish i had editing like that on my phone to respond better to your points!

as i think about it, i think saw my parents as wrong and pathetic but scary when they fought like that. it was always such a scene! Always blood from someone's nose. just awful. i saw my dad bleeding and desperate because my mom knew Judo and flipped him and messed him up and pinned him and i felt embarrassed because i thought he was the best thing. he never talked to me, but i wanted him to. the most attention i got from him was when my mom had him pinned or he was ranting about his bloody nose. he is sober now and i have much love and respect for the man he has become , he has taught me many things. but we are somewhat like acquaintances and it has never been other than awkward. but we try.

anyway, i remember a sick feeling about seeing him helpless. it makes me sad, the whole thing.

i guess the two of them shouting different orders to me, against each other, amounts to a guilt trip. i couldn't make anyone happy. i would piss either of them off and possibly endanger one of them if i did what either of them said. I was in an impossible position. and wanted to be loyal and helpful to both.
and i was guilty of letting them both down by just standing there being 5 years old in my pajamas.

But what about me? that's a good question. who let me down? who helped me? who was loyal to me? it's okay that i had my own back, i get it.
And i am proud of little Juni for getting me to where i am now, she's good, she's safe, i have her back too. She's a helluva girl actually and sweet, to boot.

I feel like a lot of people have my back now and my relationship with my parents is reconciled. I am really thankful for all of that and that's something i remember every single day!

You are most welcome.

I haven't really been in programs exactly because they are so oriented toward people who take on the victim role, which is bit of an allergy to me.

I think it stems from a mix of resentment over having to take the protector role at 11 and haughtiness over having been able to take that role. Beneath it all is the need of young Goldi to have a parent with boundaries, a parent who kept disordered people outside of the home instead of funneling them in. I can now also release the standard that everyone who is not a small child has to be able to avoid harm. It is not a realistic standard even though I met it. Just because it can be done, does not mean everyone has to do it. It does not mean that those who could not are weak.

But back from the personal to society at large, I think we have come a long way, yet still have a long way to go. Historically, pre 1850-ish, most families were dysfunctional, had golden children and black sheep and most family gatherings were platforms for emotional abuse. Physical abuse of women and children who did not obey was normal. Marital rape was legal. One in three men wore a uniform to put bread on the table and had to commit violence or be killed. All families have risen up from that muck.

As society became more modern, structures were put in place to help those who were obviously unable to help themselves. Starting with small children and the frail elderly, then women, minorities, the lower classes and the otherwise downthrodden. Then individuals who presented as victims, not because of membership to a victimized group, but rather individually harmed persons. AP and codependent do attract quite a bit of empathy from the general population and are not afraid to look needy and ask for help. They do deserve a helping hand and have objectively been damaged throughout life.

What the general public often neglects is that there are many of us who have been just as damaged, have suffered just as hard but who do not feel comfortable presenting ourselves as needy.

Most of the help out there, especially until recently, is still stuck in the drama triangle. The person asking for help presents as a victim, the person giving help presents as a rescuer and both then cast the ex or parent into a villain role and act as a persecuter towards them. At the most dysfunctional, whatever person or type of person has not met their needs is demonized and actively dehumanized.

A lot of people are not able to let a person go in their personal life without viewing that person as completely beyond cure and therefore not worthy of help, a place in society and sometimes even life itself. This stems from overidentification with the rescuer role. So if the AP identifiyng with rescuer role is seeing a DA as a damaged person worthy of help and with the capacity for healing, he cannot help but feel the compulsion to help without setting limits. Or a codependent who sees a person with NPD as deserving of healing and becomes boundlessly supportive at great cost to himself.
Just because someone is capable of healing, does not mean he can be healed outside of a professional context. Nor does it mean you can heal him is he is not taking charge of his healing process. Nor does it mean it is appropriate to give boundlessly in an attempt to heal another.



I've actually felt some reluctance to have children because of my awareness of what it takes to be a good parent for a child, especially with the epigenetic damage that is in my bloodline.

It is rally beautiful that having children awoke your instincts and helped you see the value of tenderness and protection.

I actually think some of the most naturally sensitive people build the highest walls. We want to protect the keep, so that our inner child can live there.



There seem to have been so many things you had to be when young, that there were so many normal things you could no longer be.
What would you have had and have been, in a peaceful home?



You are doing really well, and all is good. You are brave to walk the path of tears.
It is amazing that you have been a much better parent to your own children than your parents have been. This is a beautiful legacy that you are passing on.
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