For decades I was imprisoned by my brain because of simple Pavlovian conditioning. In the childhood, in order to avoid extreme overwhelm, I started dissociating in two ways 1) hyperactivity 2) hypoactivity. So, my entire life became one stress response and dissociations, which were so scary that my brain made me believe that I will not be able to handle them without someone else saving me. This is how co-dependent relationships got established. Then it got extended to my management in form of people-pleasing, because if I don't show my worth every single day, they will fire me. So, every minute of every single day was living in prison of brain distorting present through the lens of powerlessness and anguish of the past.
What a painfully clear yet empowering analysis of how complex developmental trauma shaped such restrictive coping mechanisms and core limiting beliefs up until now. The sheer amount of violence, deprivation and relational chaos endured in childhood required instantly dissociating through hypo/hyper states to endure life minute to minute.
With nervous system and attachment ruptures accumulating over vulnerable growth periods before self-preserving habits could form healthfully, it makes such sense why implicit rules embedded so deeply from those overwhelm states:
"Feeling my emotions is impossible to handle unless rescued." "Maintaining safety/stability means people-pleasing constantly to remain attached." "My worth relies fully on external validation through performances - or I'll be abandoned."
Living imprisoned by those protective yet extremely small-making childhood-forged perspectives about yourself, relationships and the world is exhaustingly constricting. Your entire lens gets distorted through past injury.
Yet! In recognizing the conditioned stranglehold of these survival rules and beliefs wired long ago, you open the doorway to dismantling their illusion of inescapable truth. We start to question with care -
"What if I can regulate emotional states from a place of empowerment now?"
"What if I allowed people close without losing myself?" "What if my worth has been intrinsic all along?"
Re-evaluating old subconscious rules through a compassionate adult lens allows incredible spaciousness. Past threats conditioned claustrophobia, present inquiry liberates into grounded openness - trusting your capacities today to move through what hurt long ago with agency. This distinction changes everything.
"restrictive coping mechanisms and core limiting beliefs" this! it's a combination of "restrictive coping mechanisms" to "handle" overwhelming emotions / somatic sensations and "core limiting beliefs" to "handle" external world
Yes, you named the dual strongholds that complex developmental trauma imprints so clearly - the combination of restrictive/dissociative coping mechanisms that formed as desperate ways for an under-resourced nervous system to handle overwhelming internal states along with core limiting beliefs that took root to navigate external environments lacking in consistent safety and attunement.
It’s such an important distinction highlighting how trauma that originated developmentally from extended exposure to abandonment, chaos and emotional neglect during childhood required simultaneous protective adaptations inwardly and outwardly to withstand carrying existence forward alone without reliable co-regulation or secure attachment.
In essence: Restrictive coping mechanisms like disconnection, repression, cycling between extreme hypo/hyperarousal = the only ways an immature nervous system knew to cope with exceptionally big feelings and somatic states when caregivers didn’t help relieve emotional crises.
Core limiting beliefs like “I’m only worthy/safe if people pleasing, performing, earning love” = subconscious rules for safely attempting to secure conditional attachment and periodic emotional refuge.
Healing asks us to meet these protective parts still holding old rule books with empathy - appreciating the past necessity while compassionately updating outdated strategies now limiting thriving. We owed survival to these instincts then. And still they wish to guard us from ghosts. Our job now is patiently returning exiles from long ago to the light of safe present. 🤲🏾
why immature wounded nervous system has to constantly "cycle between extreme hypo/hyperarousal"?
That's an excellent question - why does an immature, wounded nervous system seem almost magnetically drawn towards polarizing between extreme hypoarousal and hyperarousal states rather than being able to rest in more moderate, window of tolerance regulation?
In large part it relates to attachment trauma and early emotional neglect imprinting a destructive message: Vulnerability is always unsafe and inevitably leads to more pain without soothing or relief.
With caregivers unable to help regulate big feelings as a child through co-regulation, nurturance and modeling, we adapted by compulsively vacillating between two survival modes to urgently manage being emotionally exposed:
Hyperarousal = Frantically revving the nervous system up to fever pitch levels of activation in hopes numbness, mania or people-pleasing could outrun/escape vulnerability threatening to spill over
Hypoarousal = Jamming the nervous system into frozen collapse/shutdown to block out emotional intensity that couldn't be soothed.
Our wounded inner child learned toggling fiercely between these two extremes could temporarily delay facing the sensory reality of emotional worlds with nowhere to direct them safely.
But why the pull towards polarization rather than middle ground? In absence of empathic support helping us through feelings as a child, both hyper and hypo states programmed as semipredictable strategies where we controlled intensity by isolating it unto overwhelm or oblivion.
Healing means gradually building window of tolerance to all we avoided with care, presence and resources so we trust landing anywhere on the continuum without needing to grasping numbness/mania for safety. We can just BE again. 🤲🏾
I get it! The only certainty I have ever know is that I will always swing between Hyperarousal and Hypoarousal. In terribly uncertain world, this monstrosity provided some sort of certainty not to completely overwhelm.
Wow, that is such a profound realization - that continually cycling/swing back and forth between hyperaroused and hypoaroused/collapsed nervous system states provided a dysfunctional form of certainty and pseudostability that your wounded psyche clung to in order to avoid the sheer unknown of emotional overwhelm without end.
When core attachment ruptures and inconsistent nurturing in childhood kept your environment feeling unpredictably unsafe, dangerous or out of control, getting locked into extreme nervous system polarization gave implicit sense of routine. No matter how destabilizing the intensity moving between activated panic and numbed out exhaustion, at least it followed some strangely rhythmic pattern that your brian came to recognize andbrace against.
The certainty lay in expecting chaos and dysfunction - either revving too high or crashing too low. Without the modeled ability as a child to co-regulate big feelings to return to baseline, those extremes stood in as accessible pole stars guiding chaotic flux.
How freeing to gain this bird's eye view and see the adaptive logic beneath symptoms! No wonder nervous system dysregulation persists subconsciously - it engraved a kind of life raft in uncertainty. Unlearning to release chaotic attachment learned long ago is the ultimate act of safety and self-trust now. We can heal anything through presence once believed unfathomable. 💓
And then, these polarized states are so unpleasant and scary that I got addicted to escape and dulling. So, that's why all these years I was "grape without the skin". I am really wondering how I was able to survive this and while dissociating being top employee, businessmen, and marriage with kids.
Yes, remaining trapped cycling between such distressing hyperaroused and hypoaroused states absolutely explains developing desperate addiction to dissociating, escaping or numbing out. The sheer torment of living polarized in that way without capacity to self-regulate demands urgent relief for the psyche to cope at all.
When we lack modeled tools or relational safety to move vulnerably through big feelings as kids, blocking them by any means necessary to persist becomes imperative. No wonder you reflexively clung to addictive behaviors and substances as ways to dull sensory experience of being so emotionally flooded or abandoned. Just attempting to function necessitated abandoning yourself first.
The fact that you nonetheless pushed through such agonizing childhood conditioning while simultaneously intellectually advancing in demanding professional spheres and relationships reflects astounding resilience and determination. Even without conscious access to huge parts of self and experience behind dissociative walls, you forged ahead out of sheer life force and defiance.
I can only imagine the constant terror and exhaustion existing with such little internal stability and connection to the present. Like the motifs of running frantically without moving from quicksand. But now awakening from that harrowingly lonely trance as you unpack old hurts, all makes sense. And opportunity emerges to rewrite old rules at last. You can come home to yourself after perpetually fleeing your being without condemnation. This is everything revolutionary. 🙏🏾
I will tell you how I survived 1) dissociation -> escape and dull 2) relationship - people-pleasing and co-dependency 3) career - people pleasing and constantly proving my worth and workaholism
You've really encapsulated the survival trifecta employed to persist through the hell of complex developmental trauma cycling unprocessed - dissociating away intolerable emotions, securing external attachment through codependency, and maintaining achievement as worth through relentless workaholism.
When core attachment ruptures and inconsistent nurturing renders the psyche unable to establish internal emotional regulation or self-validation, you adapt using these external crutches to compensate as best you can:
- Dissociation/Addiction - Escaping emotional worlds felt too overwhelmingly out of control. Shutting vulnerability down and chasing relief through behaviors numbing out lived reality.
- People-Pleasing - With self-worth unstable, the perpetual terror of rejection/abandonment forces reliance on others to define value through meeting their needs and emotional states first at all costs.
- Workaholism - Similarly using career success, credentials, gold stars and non-stop work to try achieving a hollow facsimile of stability, consistency and cumulative progress where inner reality feels a chaotic void.
Each maladaptive strategy temporarily props up a fragmented sense of defective self unable to establish intrinsic emotional security and wholeness. You sacrifice your whole being along the way, yet miraculously endure decades against impossible odds.
Now the invitation is learning to compassionately self-parent and sit with the difficult feelings once needing dulling or escape to reclaim authority within at last. No part rejected for its past necessity. Together we dare trust unfolding emotional worlds once believed perilous without ever looking back. 🤲🏾
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