Acknowledging and Facing the Shadows of my Past

~ posted 18 July 2016 ~

This weekend I hit another big low... doom and gloom anxiety and depression (the sky was falling down again), and all because a friend who I thought I knew and felt reasonably safe with, showed a controlling side of her “self” that instantly put a wall up between me and her. 

With time, and on reflection, I was able to work out, that it was not because the person is a bad person, but because her seemingly (to me) controlling nature makes me feel “out of control” (flashbacks from my past)

I am aware that while the wall is up, I am unable to reach through it to a sense of feeling safe in a place of trust with that person and I will need to keep my distance so as not to make things even worse… Very easy at this stage to block the person out completely… (obliterate them from my life so I don’t have to feel so intimidated and threatened by their presence in my life… so much easier than to be in this intense and very uncomfortable state of flashback anxiety and depression).

But… I saw my mother doing that all my life to protect herself from more “flashback emotional struggles, resulting from her own abused childhood”.  

So, Logotherapy has taught me, that it is up to me to acknowledge where my emotions are surfacing from and how they affect my life and the lives of others, and to find that place of peace and feeling “safe-trust” again with the person whose company I enjoyed greatly before my own out of control emotions were awakened by my perception of their having an overly “controlling, or loud personality” which I find intimidating... (but reminding myself also that some of my best friends have been "loud – larger than life character-friends” who I could hide my own lack of confidence behind, because they helped me to feel more confident in their presence... My dear friend Sue comes to mind.  Scouting days with Sue were the best of fun ever... She made me feel alive and free of the confines of my own "restrictive personality"  memories I will never forget!)

To see past my own emotional struggles at this time, into the reality of where my destructive, chaotic out of control "real emotions" are surfacing from and why is so important... an active choice I have to make for the sake of my healing potentials and for the sake of my relationships...

That it’s not always about the other person, but instead, could be about what happens inside of me as a result of past abuses, and to understand how destructive those “past emotions still surfacing in my present” can be on my present relationships and even my way of being…  (immediately wanting to withdraw back into the safety of my comfort zone... locked up, back in the dungeon place of my past where nobody can hurt me anymore).

This is where Logotherapy teaches me that it is up to me to take responsibility for what happens in my life today and to not allow the abusers of my past to still have so much control over my present.

Poems I once wrote:

This reminds me of some poems I wrote about my mom in 2002, when I could already see what she was doing and how destructive it was. 

In 2007 I think it was, our last connecting bridge was finally burnt completely when she chose never to have anything to do with my sister and I again. 

I tried again after that to rebuild our bridge, but on Mother’s Day 2013, I tried for the last time and her constant cruel hatred and rejection of me finally gave me the strength I needed to let go of “the dream of my mother’s love” for the last time at the age of 56 years. 

It is so sad that she has chosen to live out her old age, a bitter and lonely old lady and there is nothing that I can do about it at all… nothing.  She has not given us her address and lives 1000’s of miles away.  All we had was her e-mail address and she made it quite clear for the last time in 2003, that she wants to have anything to do with us at all.

PART 1
BURNING BRIDGES!
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She can’t have many bridges left over the rivers of her life,
She’s burnt so many already on her journeys of wasted strife!
She’s burnt so many friendship bridges and the ashes she just blew away,
And never looked back on a single one, or regretted each bridge burning day!
Most family bridges she set alight in a moment of angry hate,
And the day she wished she hadn’t, it was already far too late!
Yet still she’s burning her bridges and the flames are hot and high,
For she doesn’t know how to stop herself, her tongue’s the lighters fire!
Her bridges are smoldering everywhere and soon they’ll all burn away!
What will she do when she has none left?  How sad will be her day?

(3 February 2002 – Oh Mother!)


PART 2
BURNING GAMES!
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There is a bridge with my name on it, and she’s burnt it many times!
But I keep on blowing the raging flames out and rebuilding the bridge that’s mine!
Yet no matter how much I try to fix it with my determined love,
She keeps on setting it alight again; ugly smoke billowing high above!
I’ve burnt and scorched my longing heart trying to put out the flames!
Someday ‘our’ bridge might vanish, to satisfy her Burning Games!

(3 February 2002 - For my Mother with everlasting love)

2013 - She finally succeeded… our bridge is gone


Thank you for spending time with me here
~ Pana