Last night I was able to release just a little bit more grief and pain from how my abusive employers treated me...it is still such a hard, painful part in my life that I can hardly go there even if I don't have to go alone.
Usually first it helps for me to get grounded. So much of the time I don't feel safe and am so much in survival mode that it's hard to even get started. Just noticing my breath. And feeling the firmness of the car seat cushions under me and just letting myself sink into them. Almost like my body is melting into the cushions, fully supported and all my muscles could relax.
As I tried to relax and let go of all the things weighing on me so I could focus, I was told that I'm safe, that all parts of me are safe to which I could feel some disagreement rising up inside of me. I kept following the guidance of my trauma professional's gentle voice. Imaging my future safe space. My own clean kitchen. The clean blue and white colors. Cooking my very first meal in my very own kitchen. Sitting at my table to enjoy it. What would it taste like? Would it be crunchy or soft? Sweet or sour? After I'm done, cleaning it all up nice and neat.
Going to the living room. What would it look like? The colors? The furniture? On to my bedroom with my very own bed. Where I can lay down and rest my so tired body. What colors would the furniture be? The pictures on the wall? The soft rugs on the floor to keep my feet warm from the cold floor.
It seemed so far away. I was told that any feelings that come up are welcome. To let them come up and be felt. It's ok. There's just so much that I'm carrying right now. To just let it all come up and float away while I'm in this safe imagined place, where no one can enter unless I want them to. My very own space. She reminded me of how when a woman is pregnant she prepares for the coming of the life that is growing inside of her. And so I am preparing for the safe space that will one day be my own by imagining what it will be like.
Was I ready to transition into the painful parts that needed to be faced? It was okay if I wasn't ready to just take all the time I needed in my safe space first, but I was ready.
It was suggested that perhaps we could enter that office room where I was scolded for three hours by my former employers who technically were no longer my employers at the time that it happened. (I have written more about it in another blog post.) I was scared. Just scared. Because its just such a painful time of my life. I was reassured that I didn't have to go alone. That she would go with me and my "core adult self would be there with me and I could hold their hands. That I could squeeze tight if it got to be too much or I could just get up and walk which at the time of it happening I didn't know that I had a choice to do so.
Once I was reassured that I could hold the hands of those supporting me and I didn't have to go alone, I was able to go. The moment I found myself in was after J____ started praying for me as though I didn't know Jesus (when he already was my best friend) after all the scolding and being told I didn't believe because of my actions etc; it just broke me to pieces and I started sobbing, not caring who heard. In the moment of the sobbing I found myself. In a way I was back there again, feeling all the fear, confusion, bewilderment, and just the feeling of being totally uprooted in everything I believed and experienced in my relationship with god/Jesus that I didn't know what to believe anymore. In the midst of all those emotions and pain was also a strange sense of a little bit of compassion. I don't know where it came from but it was enough that I noticed it, perhaps because this time I knew I wasn't alone. This time despite all the pain in that moment, I was supported and I had someone on my side that said I wasn't guilty but that my former abusive employers had taken my trauma response, the need to please, and had capitalized on it to suck me dry for their own benefit leaving me feeling chewed up and spit out.
In that moment I was in a way feeling all those painful feelings and crying in pain and my trauma professional said I see Jesus coming into the room. He's scolding them and telling them that this is my precious daughter but you two, I don't know who you are. And he shuts their mouths so they can't say anything more and then he takes me out of that room. Then he gently wipes my tears away. But I said I'm scared of him.
Why am I scared of him?
Because he's a man.
Yes he's a man, but he's different than all the men who have harmed you.
But I'm still scared.
It's ok if you're scared of him.
I was able to stop crying as gentle nurturing words flowed into my wounded soul. I no longer felt like I was back in that room but as though Jesus had brought me out. Away from them. He had shut them up. But I was too scared to let him dry my tears or to look into his eyes. Instead the short experience left me feeling like a rung-out dishrag, limp and exhausted. I could feel in my body that I was able to release some of the pain and grief from what happened in that room not so many years ago.
But there's still a part of me that longs to please my abusive employers. I have been noticing it lately every time I'm at work of how hard I try to please my employers and I realized how much I'm still trying to please J____ and T______ . I was asked what age that part of me is and I said very young because I also tried so hard to please my parents. J____ and T_____ were like the parents I never had in that they gave me what my parents never did. They were the first people I ever trusted as deeply as I did and I have not been able to trust anyone else to that extent since. They took advantage of me trying to please them.
I feel like that part of me is maybe 3 or 4 years old. Very young. Children need to be nurtured. I wasn't. Therefore I felt I needed to try to please my parents in order to get that love, nurturing, and connection that I needed. Therefore, that little girl inside of me has been trying so extremely hard all these 30+ years to try to please those over me in some way to try to earn the nurturing and care she needed but never was given.
Now I'm faced with the task of trying to accept her and care for her in the ways she needs but never received. It's no easy task because I'm just trying to survive in my current situation and don't have a safe place where I can just take care of myself. There are so many ways I want to care for her and all those other parts of me but right now I don't have the energy and safety to be able to care for them like I want.
This morning I can rest assured that I was able to release a little bit more of the pain and grief that I've been carrying in my body and as I am able to I will acknowledge and give space to those parts of me that need care and nurturing. They can help me paint, give me ideas, and talk to me about whatever is on their hearts and minds. Step by step we all be brought together in wholeness and healing.
For those who are new or don't understand what is going on here, this is called IFS therapy (internal family systems). In reality I am just one person, but in this type of work my memories and emotions are treated as separate parts or individual of me which makes it easier for me to extend compassion and acceptance to myself. It makes it easier to go to those painful and traumatic places to heal them when they're seen as an individual apart from my current self. It's hard to explain because it's hard to understand especially when it's new to you. Its almost like you have to do it to grasp it but for me it is the most helpful thing I've yet found to help me heal from all the horrible things I've been through...but...
I'm still alive and every day I try to do one thing to work towards my dreams. I recently did a course that recommended the book Rich Dad Poor Dad which can be found here: https://store.richdad.com/products/rich-dad-poor-dad-what-the-rich-teach-their-kids-about-money-that-the-poor-and-middle-class-do-not
Or you can find the audio version on YouTube for free.
From there I started one of his courses called Choose To Be Rich (found here, you will need to watch the video and then at the end you will be presented with the opportunity to buy the course: https://experts.richdadworld.com/catalog/live/roberts_road_to_riches/rd?utm_source=event_marketing&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=ctbr_webinar&v1=1016&v2=CLASSES&v3=0c06a172d81e4f5791705539fc4b857f&v4=189 and even though I'm only on the second module its changing the trajectory of my life, especially financially. Finances have always been a confusing and out of control part of my life and I've been struggling for years to figure out how to get in control. I've invested in a number of his books and last Wednesday I had the courage to step into the Investing world and buy shares of a royalty trust. That was a huge step for me. Now I'm working on figuring out where I am financially and am working on a financial plan for moving forward. It has given me so much hope and my trauma professional explained how this can give me self-agency (as in I have control over something which is huge to survivors who for so much of their life didn't have control over things that were done or happened to them) and it is empowering me into being able to face all the pain and trauma caused by my abusive employers which has been heretofore been too painful to face. I may not realize how it is empowering me but the two are intertwined: the courage to face and heal those dark painful memories and the self-agency and confidence that comes from feeling in control of an area of my life, which, in this instance is my financial situation.
On top of all the stuff I'm learning about finances, I have started giving myself an allowance every week. This is new for me because I never had an allowance as a child and always before when I tried to take control of my finances I would crunch down and limit the spending I did and it felt like I was killing a part of myself. But deciding to pay myself an allowance has been an amazing experience. I wasn't sure why but my trauma professional explained how that trying to curb my spending was coming from a place of lack whereas in choosing to give myself an allowance was a way of nurturing myself and coming from a place of "enough" instead of lack which is right in line with the Rich Dad Poor Dad book.
It's all about the mindset (in finances)...and when you change your mindset from lack to plenty it makes such a huge difference...it's definitely worth all the hard work it takes to get there...
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