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Start of the school year and the nervous system
The start of the school year is pretty much the start of The Year for a parent. And here we are, another school year is beginning for our son in a few days. With all the arrangements and engagements around it, come all the stressors and negative emotions associated with it. Past experiences paint in black what’s to come in the future. It’s how trauma works. Trauma keeps you stuck in the past. Unresolved experiences and emotions from the past prevent you from moving forward and focusing on the here and now. Your nervous system is stuck in a threat response and focused purely on ensuring survival. It’s biologically not…
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The good, the bad, and everything in between – the blessings of another Christmas
So there we have it – Christmas is done and gone, for another year. A magical and somewhat sad time. On the day before Christmas, Sylvie was already stressing that Christmas will be gone soon. It’s hard living and being in the moment, even for an 8-year-old kid. You wait for this special day and before you know it – it’s in the past. But before that, there was the opening of the presents! Who doesn’t love presents?! And not because of the stuff you get, but because of the thoughtfulness of the people who give you the presents. That is a feeling you want to keep with yourself for…
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Oh, how I miss…
I’m back in Sofia. It’s been three weeks since we came back from the country and a seaside holiday. I feel that as soon as I stepped into the city, the wheel started turning at light speed. Each day is filled with work and responsibilities and I barely have any time for myself. I’m sure you’re probably experiencing something similar – I mean, ain’t that life today? Personally, my life changed (differently) since the beginning of the pandemic. Around that time last year, I started working as a freelance translator and my work has been increasing and intensifying ever since. This is something good considering that I hadn’t been working…
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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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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…
