About 2 ½ years ago I was just starting what has turned into a long-term therapy journey. I had gone to therapy previously and had found that while talking was helpful, I never really got anywhere. I attribute that to two possibilities, the first being that I wasn’t truly ready to explore myself and the second being that perhaps those counselors weren’t the right fit for me.
That changed with a counselor I was referred to about 3 years ago. A few months in, I started to form an image in my mind about how I was feeling. Let me back up a moment, until about 2 years ago, I was unable to describe any emotion outside of anger. Even if I was feeling incredible sadness or pain, it was coming out in the form of anger only. So when I was talking to my counselor, the best thing I could do was describe images and together we worked on actual emotional words which has drastically changed my life.
The image that formed was me clinging for life to this large ocean buoy that was solid and painted black. I felt like a storm was blowing all around me and if I let go of that buoy I would die. I had my whole body wrapped around it and my head pointed down with my eyes clenched tightly shut.
As part of the image, I could tell there was a shore and pier not far away, but I was clinging so desperately to that buoy that I didn’t even realize I was close to safety or that anyone might be right there trying to rescue me. I knew in this image that the massive buoy was representative of something that was destructive for me but I was incapable of or unwilling to let it go. I thought hanging on to it was critical for my life, but in reality hanging onto was what was keeping me from being truly safe.
Then a combination of questions from my individual and marriage therapists (two different people) finally helped me break through.
It’s at this point that I must pause and say something. The rest of this post involves my mom. I love her very much and do not blame her for how I am today, but at the same time realize that her life affected me deeply in a negative way. I know that people do the best they can with the tools they are given and my mom has done just that. She has overcome adversity in her life that many of us wouldn’t recover from. She is a wonderful person but her wounds found their way into my life and have caused me a lot of pain. It’s important that I recognize that it’s possible to love someone and also know they played a large part in your negative health.
Here’s where the breakthrough happened. Both therapists kept mentioning that I exhibited classic signs of abuse in my past or deep shame. For months I repeated that I was not abused as a child although they continued to pry because with their professional expertise, they could see something. I even tried to piece together anything that would indicate I had blocked any such event from my memory and there was still nothing I could come up with.
When I’m looking for answers I search the internet for reliable information (usually scientific studies and articles written by people with credentials in that field) that can help and in this particular search process I stumbled onto an article that described how the children of veterans who have PTSD may actually exhibit the same symptoms as the parent even if the child did not experience the trauma themselves. This is one of the articles that I found during that search: https://childhoodtraumarecovery.com/tag/effects-of-parents-with-ptsd-on-children/.
At that moment I realized the symptoms I was exhibiting to my therapists were not my own but rather my mom’s symptoms from living in a destructive home as a child. The image of me clinging to the buoy started to change. I was able to lift my head and open my eyes, although I still wasn’t fully ready to let go of that buoy, also the storm around me was calming and the water was becoming still. Now I could look around and see that people were trying to help me and that I had the ability to save myself.
Fast forward to about a year ago. I once again moved and started a new job, which is a recurring thing in my life. But I was surprised that even with all the help up to that point, I hit an emotional low I never thought that I would hit. For several weeks, I truly wanted to take my own life. I felt that I was never going to be able to lead my own life and most importantly I was worthless to everyone. Through this whole process it has been common for me to look toward the cause of this as my spouse because he was the one I interacted with daily. Today I can say with 100% clarity that how I felt at that moment had nothing to do with my spouse and everything to do with my childhood.
My mom still lives with her pain and emotions. My siblings and I can see it but she is unable to. I realized that I was taking on her pain as my own, unconsciously doing what I could to remove it from her so that she could be happier. The black buoy is my mom’s pain. But no matter how much I cling to it, I’m never going to be able to take it away from her. She is the only one who can do that. And clinging to it meant that I have never been free to live my own life, to actually grow emotionally beyond the level of a teenager. I’ve been hanging on to that dense black buoy for 40 years.
The moment I realized what the buoy actually was I could let go. All of a sudden, that image I’ve been describing changed drastically. I was floating on my back in calm waters, with gentle sunshine beaming down. I could just relax and breathe, I physically felt that I could expand my chest and take a really deep breath. And for the first time, at the age of 42, I felt like an adult. The buoy is still there, but now I look at it from a distance knowing that clinging to it will hurt me, not save me.
It’s been difficult letting go because I feel that I’m abandoning my mom. Two different friends had perspectives on this in the past week as I was sharing with them. One said that I felt the only way to connect to my mom was to hold on to that pain with her. I agree. The second said that it’s not abandonment to choose my health when the alternative literally made me want to die.
So for 8 months now, I’ve been slowly becoming an adult. My self-worth is finally starting to grow. I feel that I’m not any better or worse than anyone else but a person who can contribute to society and that’s been a huge leap for me.
The biggest devastating part of this process for me is that I feel I’ve lost part of my life. I made choices up to this point that were based on hanging on to that pain and therefore I haven’t been leading the life that I want. Even harder is that my spouse, who has lovingly and patiently stayed, has felt the brunt of this pain. My actions and choices have affected him and have created extremely negative consequences. And I don’t even feel like they were my actions or choices, but rather the ones I was supposed to make in order to stay connected to my mom.
Sometimes my growth is by leaps and bounds as it has been for the past month. Sometimes there are weeks where it’s all just status quo. I’m worried about my future still but hope that these positive changes are visible to those around me who I’ve accidentally hurt. If you are one of them, I’m sorry I caused you pain.
