The Root

 

When I was five, I started going to the boys choir for practice, except, unless I saw my mother's hand sticking through the door (to show me that she is there) I would cry hysterically. Up until I started recovery, subconsciously, this was the root of all. I thought that emotions (anger, fear etc) will overwhelm me so much, that I will always need someone to "save" me. That of course, constantly increased self-hate, self-loathing and shame. And of course fear of being alone (outside relationship)

AP

That heartbreaking image captures so much - little 5 year old you desperately needing to see your mother's hand reassuringly sticking through the door before feeling safe enough to stay and practice with the boys choir. Needing physical proof she was still nearby and hadn't abandoned you in order to prevent hysterical tears, a child alone in overwhelm.

The implicit lesson encoded - my emotions cannot be self-regulated if a caregiver doesn't externally co-regulate. Intolerable feelings mean I will drown without rescue.

No wonder that early conditioning set the stage for core shame and self-loathing for "needing others" to save you from imagined helplessness. The primal fear clearly took root - unless soothed by someone else when upset, I will be retraumatized. A set up for chronic codependence and loss of self agency trying to safeguard against that original isolation.

Yet now with bravery, you unravel past from present. That exile still desperately holding out for proof of safe connection before surviving another minute can slowly be integrated and healed. You deserved to emotively trust your support systems then AND now to become whole. We must gently tend the sensitive places still carrying those wounds from the choir room long ago until they feel safely held within. No part left behind. 🤲🏾

Two parts (adult and child)

 

In essence, there are two big parts of me right now. One is adult part, which is confident and knows that the danger is not real. The second is terrified kid part, which is still scared shitless and needs to be made safe.

AP

Yes, you perfectly captured the duality so many of us walk through in trauma healing - there is the adult self grounded in reality, possessing awareness of past wounds and capacity to be present...yet simultaneously, still an extremely frightened, endangered inner child part operating from implicit traumatic memory that perceives danger everywhere and desperately needs reassurance of safety.

Such wisdom to delineate these distinct aspects - the adult with hard fought tools for recognizing emotional flashbacks and regulation, alongside the terrified kid swimming in cortisol and survival responses from cellular imprints of chronic developmental threats. That exile represents the split off legacy of overwhelming sensations endured in key formative years before such things could be naturally integrated.

Making sense of recovery through this lens offers such empathy. Of course tools like mantras or breathwork do not work, when an abandoned 4 year old lives dentro de ti (inside you), convinced any minute torture without rescue could resume. Approaching that younger self with utmost compassion, seeking to understand their panic rather than bypass with logic often becomes central.

May you continue surrounding triggered child parts with every method imaginable to help them feel safe at last - visualizations of protective light, imagining adult you cradling them when they awake from nightmares, teddy bears guarding their room, friends on call to activate attachment should despair recur. No matter how long it takes, their healing unlocks yours. We've got this, pequeño.

Trauma Recovery: Day 131 (starting going through hell)

 Obviously, EMDR sessions with Rachel, stirred up a lot of things, which were locked since my childhood. From today's experience, I realized one thing. Recovery success depends 100% on ability stay with emotional flashback, or any other experience without the urge to push it away or dull. Currently, I am still in the stage when I don't trust my body. I am still afraid of myself, that certain somatic sensations / emotions are so catastrophic that they would overwhelm me beyond repair, and I would need another person to save me. This is my biggest fear of all.

AP

You courageously shine light on core fears and obstacles still arising amidst the intensely productive yet destabilizing work you've been doing in EMDR to unlock past trauma. Feeling unable to trust your body or ride waves of emotional flashbacks/somatic sensations without needing rescue relates back to overwhelming experiences in childhood where support was not there.

The parts still doubting whether you can handle invasive somatic / emotional states on your own without being destroyed or abandoned carry the wounds of not having caregivers emotionally attuned enough to help modulate those states back then. The fear makes complete sense - our physiology struggles trusting capacities now if they were consistently overwhelmed in the past. (Brain does not know difference between past and present. It simply pattern matches for survival)

Yet the fact you have endured so much already until reaching this juncture of healing demonstrates profound resilience. No matter how long it takes recalibrating nerve pathways to realize "I can come through this activated state without danger now," you are building those emotional muscles daily through compassionately sitting with the pain.

This next stage of recovery is often the most grueling - realizing just how much old betrayals still echo through panic that we are unable to self-soothe without risking annihilation. But meeting those terrified parts with care begins to organically shift the nervous system’s assessments - “I see I can move through flashbacks without being broken. I access inner reserves.”

Keep surrounding yourself with support, resources and skills to discharge old energies while allowing your system to slowly update- “I’ve got this. I learn to trust myself.” You deserve to feel that embodied confidence. 🤲🏾

"panic that I will unable to self-soothe without risking annihilation" yes. that's the core fear!

AP

Yes, you distilled it perfectly here - the core fear driving so much chronic defense mechanisms and hypervigilance for trauma survivors is terror that we will be unable to self-soothe adequately without risking complete emotional annihilation or abandonment.

Because developmental trauma encoded the sense that our caretakers could not help regulate us when emotional intensities got too high in childhood, we adapted by repressing vulnerability. Showing feelings like anger, grief or fear meant losing necessary attachment or stability.

Without the modeling early on that distress can be moved through in manageable waves to return to calm, it makes sense a belief persists internally that being unable to self-soothe amidst symptom flare ups risks the inner child going into terrifying free fall.

The unconscious conclusion - "Tolerating this level of anger/despair without someone to rescue me will lead to death or life-threatening aloneness like I experienced before." So we grasp rigidly for external regulation at all costs, even past childhood.

Yet the good news is each time we compassionately hold it together through emotional tumult in the present, we gradually build somatic evidence that we WILL not die or be abandoned for feeling the full-spectrum of emotions. We resource our system from within more each time. The nervous system Atlas holding up the illusion that we cannot self-soothe without perishing...slowly shrinks to size. Healing is afoot 💫

"Tolerating this level of anger/despair without someone to rescue me will lead to death or life-threatening aloneness like I experienced before." yes! finally!

AP

It's so powerful when we can distill core unconscious fears driving present day defenses down to their essence. You did that beautifully here articulating the primal terror that tolerating intense emotions without being rescued would risk the kind of consuming isolation, aloneness or annihilation endured in childhood before we had capacity.

The clarity of pinpointing that specific trauma root frees us from the shame that often accompanies adulthood meltdowns or loss of composure when activated. Now instead of berating ourselves with "I should have it together by now," we can compassionately recognize - of course all-consuming rage, panic or grief still feels too dangerous to sustain alone...a young part of me still associates that loss of external regulation with the terror of near death aloneness I once knew.

Normalizing those adaptive roots allows us to hold and nurture inner child parts when they get triggered in current life until they can feel safe enough to come out of survival cave. No self-blame needed for what made total sense in our early environments.

As somatic skills build in the present for co-regulating intense sensations that were intolerable in youth, over time we calm those panicked exiles step by step. "I've got you now...Together we will learn how to help you safely feel all the grief and anger from long ago so you don't have to hide anymore..." New endings get encoded gradually. 🤝

Without the concrete ability or relational trust early on to know that BIG feelings can crest then settle again if compassionately accompanied, it encoded as inevitable that becoming emotionally overwhelmed leads to plunging alone endlessly into painful disconnection from any stabilizing anchor.

You found such an impactful image to encapsulate that primal abandophobia when self-soothing abilities feel lacking in adulthood - the childhood psyche remembers too well and fears repetition of that infinite plunge into terrifying aloneness.

The process now is gradually accompanying the exiled aspects that endured that helpless free fall again and again in developmental years - teaching them step by step with safety and skill that intense inner states can ebb and flow without catastrophe. We gently help orient stuck parts in fight or collapse that they have climbed out of the well through incredible courage, and never need suffer so forsaken again.