Flashbacks – remembering kissing & hugging everyone goodnight, as a child. Including the paedophile.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/20/living/give-grandma-hug-child/index.html

***Trigger Warning***

This does contain details of child sexual abuse I endured.

 

I read this article, and it triggered a whole lot of vile memories, of being made to ‘kiss and hug’ everyone good night, including all visitors, when I was a child.

This also included the paedophile friend of my parents, whenever he was at our house in the evening, which was frequently.

I was always made to kiss and hug everyone.

I can’t even explain, how disgusting and dirty it felt, to have to kiss him goodnight, all through the time he was also sexually abusing me. I can feel it now, having to kiss him.

I’d forgotten this, until now.

Emotional Flashbacks, are very real & many don’t realise they are occurring.

Pete Walker, has deep insight into complex trauma within childhood.

Emotional flashbacks, are something many don’t realise they are enduring, until they understand what they are, why they are occurring and learn how to identify them.

They are the hardest flashbacks to understand and identify, and many just assume they are feeling emotional. Often they will be described by others, as being over-emotional, or over sensitive.

I am still struggling with mine. But, I am aware, when I feel scared, vulnerable, fearful, lost, completely alone…I am experiencing not just what may have hurt me now, but the issue has triggered emotions from the past too. I know my inner child is suffering.

Insight from Pete Walker – Emotional Flashbacks & Trust.

Click to access emotionalFlashbackManagement.pdf

Emotional Flashbacks

Over the course of a therapy, I often reframe emotional flashbacks as messages from the wounded inner child designed to challenge denial or minimization about childhood trauma. It is as if the inner child is clamoring for validation of past parental abuse and neglect: “See this is how bad it was–how overwhelmed, terrified, ashamed and abandoned I felt so much of the time.” When seen in this light, emotional flashbacks are also signals from the wounded child that many of her developmental needs have not been met. Most important among these are the needs for safety and for Winnicottian ‘good enough’ attachment.

There are no needs more important than those of a parent’s protection and empathy, without which a child cannot own and develop her instincts for self-protection and self-compassion—the cornerstones of a healthy ego. Without awakening to the need for this kind of primal self-advocacy, clients remain stuck in learned self-abandonment and rarely develop effective resistance to internal or external abuse, and seldom gain the motivation to consistently use the 13 tools for managing emotional flashbacks at the end of this article.

On Trust.

I believe this type of dissociation also accounts for the recurring disappearance of previously established trust that commonly occurs with emotional flashbacks. This phenomenon makes it imperative that we psychoeducate clients that flashbacks can cause them to forget that proven allies are in fact still reliable, and that they are flashing back to their childhoods when no one was trustworthy.

Updated my Website, to look more colour friendly & user friendly.

http://www.healingfromcomplextraumaandptsd.com/

As well as updating this blog, my Website continues to develop and expand. I have changed the colours, from a black background, and added my two favourite colours of purple and aqua.

I have spent hours last night and this morning – changing it all, adding features to make it more user friendly and link all the different social media etc and hopefully made it more professional in appearance.

Not bad for a girl who is absolutely crap with techie stuff.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I decided to set my Website up a year ago, and now it is commended and recommended by professionals and is helping many people 🙂

Next stage on my ongoing plan, get a LOGO and changed the header pictures, to all match – Website, this Blog, Facebook, Twitter etc.

I want to also add many pages, including info on therapy types, more insight into re-experiencing symptoms, more book recommendations…and more.

But, one step at a time. The rate I manage to work our techie stuff…it has to be slow! 🙂

I don’t lash out at others, instead I internalise the pain, by lashing out at myself.

I was never ‘allowed’ to be angry, or have any appropriate responses to the vile, painful, disgusting abuse I endured.

I’m still told I am not ‘allowed’ – by society, by church people.

So, I internalize it, into self hate, self shame, depression and suicidal thoughts.

I’ve been told by church people – anger means you are a ‘child of the devil’. Speaking the truth means ‘you are demonic’.

I’ve been told I must not label, or speak badly of my abusers, as that destroys ‘them,’ and that makes ‘me’ bad and instead I should just have compassion and forgiveness, because my feelings, emotions, processing trauma and grieving, don’t matter.

I have endured decades of abuse, and according to others, I am meant to deal with this quickly, for the sake of others, for ‘their’ needs, to make life comfortable and more pleasant, for ‘them’.

To others…

Abuse is far more ‘palatable’ –

If the victims would just ‘get over it’ quicker.