An Introduction— Forty Years Of Tears: Complex Childhood Trauma

I began this blog in 2019. Over the years, its purpose has changed several times. I hadn't been able to settle on a specific theme for my writing and content. Recently I haven't been posting articles to my blog simply because its purpose stopped resonating. It no longer felt aligned.

However, recently things changed. I changed, and through this discovered what I need to express— what so many unseen women need to express.

Two months ago, my life changed in a single moment.

I was attending a training at an practice I contract with. We provide somatic and spiritually based psychotherapy. During our trainings, we break off into dyads and practice on one another.

These trainings are often more like a retreat than a professional commitment. Much of it is focused on our own personal growth so that we can provide authentic support to our clients. I went to that training with the intention of resolving pain in my throat and chest chakras. As an intuitive, I knew something was energetically stuck and was disrupting my ability to keep up with the tasks of daily life.

I went into our practice session hopeful and open. The therapy we practice incorporates a kinesthetic approach: muscle testing to communicate with our deepest knowing beyond the conscious mind. If you are a skeptic, I get it. My story may change your perspective.

During the session, we were observed by the founder of the practice, an older, brilliant man with thirty years of experience. As my partner muscle tested exploratory questions to discover the goals for our work, my body indicated that I didn't know what I needed and that I felt confused. It indicated that I thought I knew what our focus should be, but it was not what it needed to be.

I was surprised and interested, yet very tentative. What was going to be revealed that I was unaware of?

After that, the muscle testing became inconsistent— I knew what the problem was.

Vulnerability had always been an issue in both my personal work with therapists and in my relationships. I had some significant trauma in my childhood that seemed to have led to nearly impenetrable walls. However, over the years, I had thought they had loosened.

Yet, the muscle testing clearly indicated my body was not allowing another person to enter its inner world.

My partner switched modalities to Parts work, a practice that explores sensations in the body, guiding the client to discover the sensations' underlying, subconscious meaning.

Through the exploration, my body revealed profound distrust held in my lower abdomen. It felt like a nervous tingling. Through it arrived thoughts about its meaning that had never before surfaced; ideas and images that I had no explanation for.

It expressed fear of people, fear of intimacy, fear of others knowing too much about me. It expressed distrust of my practice partner and the founder; sensations began traveling through my legs, begging me to run away. As I embarked deeply into myself, my level of vulnerability surpassed anything I had allowed before. The intense discomfort in my body was close to unbearable.

This is when my life changed. The founder leaned forward, speaking to me with kind authority, interpreting what my body had revealed. He said to me,

I don't believe you ever had bipolar, I believe you have always been told you were the problem, being diagnosed bipolar was a way to force you to embody 'I am the problem.' The people who forced this on you were the people who abused you. They took their hate and placed it onto you; they took what was the problems within themselves and forced them into you. Since then, you have come to believe you are the problem

Yet, you were never the problem. You have embodied that because of them. You were never the problem.

His words seemed to seep deeply into some place within me that had never been accessed before. I could feel an immediate shift, an opening. I didn't know what it was, I just knew it was was happening.

Over the next couple of days, my body continued to process the session. I could feel energy moving through fibers and cells, strange sensations creeping through my bones. One afternoon I took my usual seat in meditation. As I listened to the beautifully sung mantras of kirtan and settled my mind, my body began to vibrate. It began shaking more and more powerfully. I allowed my arms and legs to follow the urges as I collapsed to the floor. I didn't try to stop the convulsive movements— I don't know that I could have.

It went on for several minutes. As the involuntary movement calmed, a tiredness as I'd never experienced before overwhelmed me. My legs and arms felt too numb to move, my eyes felt too heavy to open.

I knew it had been fundamental release of energy kept within my body. I am very aware that convulsions can occur within deep meditation; I wasn't frightened or concerned of the convulsions themselves. Yet, I felt small in comparison to whatever it was coming out of my body.

After that meditation, my body-mind began to show me traumas that I had not previously remembered, and the incidents I had recalled became more clear, more visceral. Trauma after trauma after trauma emerged.

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I have been crying for forty-five days.

I have come to know I never had bipolar. I have complex post-traumatic stress. I have come to fully understand that I never was the problem. I was made to look like the problem, so other people did not need to look at themselves. I was the scapegoat.

This blog is dedicated to my need for expression and to the parts of me that have been buried for forty years and yearn to be witnessed.

This blog is dedicated to the many women like me— survivors of childhood abuse and neglect. I know what you are going through, and I want my writing to provide support, love, peace, and validation. I want my writing to convey the pain you may not be able to right yet. I want my writing to tell our stories because we all deserve to be heard. The parts of us that have been barely surviving deserve to be living fully and expressively.

We can navigate this journey to healing and we will— but we can't do it alone.

My beautiful sisters, I see you, and I love you. Lets do this together.