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The importance of keeping the connection with yourself
I’ve been staying at my father’s house for two weeks now. Because he lives in England, we don’t get to spend much time together. In fact, we’ve been living in different parts of the world for the last almost 15 years. However, every year for the last 5 years he’s been coming to visit his childhood home and I’ve been using this opportunity to spend time with him. We’ve been through many stages in our mutual life journey. We’ve certainly had many difficult phases but somehow we’re managing to keep our relationship alive. Furthermore, every single year has been different as I’ve been progressing on my healing path. Still, in…
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The pandemic as an opportunity to continue healing – repairing what was once ruptured
It’s been more than a year since my last post. As the pandemic was taking over the world and thus dominating our concerns and worries, I retrieved into my inner world. At the beginning of it all, I was happy that I could take the time to disconnect from the daily stressors of life. I was wise enough to use the time to truly sink in the experience of continuing my healing journey. Spending the days with my son, who was at home all day, gave us an opportunity for much “repair” to be done. In attachment theory, the “good enough parent” is not a perfect parent. The good-enough parents…
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A turning point on my healing journey – experiencing an emotional flashback and remembering my past
A few days ago I had my most intense emotional flashback. Now, if you don’t know what is an emotional flashback or what it feels like, you’re not alone. For sure, I’ve read about them in my research on childhood trauma and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) but I haven’t experienced one. Or at least I didn’t know at the time. An emotional flashback is an intense emotional reaction, many describe it as a sort of flooding of emotion, usually as a result of a trigger – an event, a situation, it could be something someone says, and how that makes you feel. Triggers could be many and they…
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Letting go (of what no longer serves us) never goes out of fashion
New year, new me? Well, there is no need for a new me every new year if you’re OK with yourself and feel enough as you are. But certainly, there are situations, relationships, even people that need to be let go of. More accurately – it’s the type of relationships I’m having with certain people, or even more accurately – the expectations I have from them. I’m going through an “interesting” process – as I’m healing my childhood trauma more and more, I realise the triggers and traps I fall into more and more. As early childhood trauma is an attachment trauma in its essence, it’s a relational trauma too. That…
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I am the person I am today because of my trauma, not despite it
My biggest battle is accepting my childhood trauma and the effects it has had and continues to have on my life and its overall quality. More accurately, I struggle the most with accepting that because of my posttraumatic stress responses, my role as a mother has been impaired. As a victim of childhood abuse and trauma, I am especially sensitive towards the fact that because of my own “condition” my child is suffering too. I can easily go down the spiral of blaming myself for not being the mother I wish I could be, for the things I have done or haven’t done because I wasn’t well myself. Because I am…
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How my son starting school is helping me heal trauma
For the last more than three months now I’ve been through a whirlwind of a storm. I’ve never thought that my son staring school will bring so much up. More and more I realise how isolated I’ve been and how much I’ve lost contact with the outside world. More accurately, I’ve suspected that but the clash of reentering seems to be taking me much more effort and costing me much more energy than I’ve ever imagined. I know there are many reasons for this – I am and always have been a very sensitive person and being away from work for 8 years now has put me in a very…
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Interview with Shyla Cash: Narcissistic abuse and emotional neglect survivor, and a coach at Grow Heal Change
Shyla Cash is the life coach behind Grow Heal Change Coaching, a coaching practice that helps high-performers and creatives heal mind, body, and spirit. She believes childhood trauma can be a portal to experiencing our full potential. Shyla loves to witness the process of transformation as she guides her clients through the amazing journey into the life they desire. Her own trauma history involved a childhood filled with narcissistic abuse and emotional neglect. Through her own healing, she discovered the amazing ability for humans to transcend the pain of family dysfunction into confidence, personal power, resilience, and responsibility. Shyla just got married to her amazing husband Nathan, she loves to…
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Childhood emotional neglect – the hidden root of my pain
I just had my second EMDR therapy session. In EMDR we focus on a particular memory from our life – usually a traumatic one. I was working with an image of me when I was a child and my mother who was particularly unresponsive to my needs. Just to remind you, at the beginning of therapy my therapist confirmed that I was emotionally deprived/neglected as a child. Since then I read the book Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect by Dr Jonice Webb which further helped me understand my “diagnosis”. The book very well explains what emotional neglect is – it’s not about what happened but about what…
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Interview with Tanya Amidei: Sexual abuse survivor, life coach and a spiritual writer
Tanya is one of the beautiful people I’ve met on Instagram. Her posts are deep and poetic and full of wisdom and truth. Her personal story is truly poignant but her strength, her spirit and her faith have transformed her into the woman she is today. Tanya is a Life Coach and writer who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She is engaged and lives with an invisible illness called Dysautonomia, more specifically Ehler Danlos and POTS. She describes herself as a people person and some have called her a catalyst for human growth because of her innate ability to see people’s potential. She is passionate, a natural leader, values-oriented, intuitive…
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My Pain is My Power
Two weeks ago I started seeing a therapist. During the two times we met, we talked and went over the details of my past. We started with memories from my childhood and moved towards the more recent past. We made a plan – a timeline of particularly traumatic experiences and we’re going to work with each memory and event separately. I haven’t had the opportunity to talk freely about my past and everything that has happened so far. I had a brief experience of therapy back in Ireland right after my sister died but at the time, I had no idea of the magnitude of traumatic stress I was experiencing.…
