Healing from witnessing your parent being abused

Last night I watched ‘The Drover’s Wife’ on Netflix. It broke my heart wide open and then I closed it over to cope with the grief, the anger and the pain from domestic violence and alcohol fueled violence that affects so many women and children, myself included.

It is devastating as a child watching your parent be verbally, emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused. It is infuriating that you are too small to save them, to fight back, to stand up to the abuser and tell them to “STOP. Take responsibility for their pain and their life, to be a caring, mature adult and do the right thing”.

The joy of life gets stripped away as you deal with your anger, your resentment, your fear of when it is going to happen next or if it will get worse. You worry about your parent getting seriously hurt or killed and you being left alone with the perpetrator. You worry about when he/she will turn on you. You feel so helpless and hopeless.

You wonder why none of the other adults in your life step in to help. You wonder why your parent stays and allows themselves to be treated so poorly.

You struggle to lift your head up and live. You wonder “What’s the point of trying if it is always going to be like this”. You don’t ever relax fully just in case the fighting breaks out again.

Fun times, parties, are not fun for you as you know once the perpetrator gets drunk the fighting is likely to start. So, you brace yourself ready for what is to come. You hope and pray it doesn’t occur this time. You pray that maybe just once they will pass out before they attack and abuse.

You wonder whether there is any goodness in them at all and how they can live with themselves afterwards, after being so cruel and destructive.

You wonder why life is so hard and why humans can be so cruel. To survive you harden up, you numb yourself to the pain, you become bitter, cynical and angry. You do what you have to do to survive, even if that means isolating yourself from those you love, never letting anyone close because you don’t want to see their pain, face them being hurt anymore.

You close down and retreat into yourself or you leave, run away physically or energetically, no longer being a part of the family system. But energetically, spiritually we are always a part of our family system. They are in our blood, our DNA, the cells of our body. We live because they lived and passed on life to us. We can’t cut ourselves off, that’s like cutting off our own arm.

If we do cut ourselves off fully we will eventually get drained, exhausted, burnt out as we have cut ourselves off from the goodness, the energy supply, the river of life force that flows through our ancestors to our parents to us.

They are a part of us. We are a part of them. Our job as adults is to find our way back to our hearts, to feel our pain and to humbly stand before our parents and speak our truth.

“It hurt so much to see you suffer. I just wanted you to be safe. I wanted to feel your love and play. I wanted to be seen and listened to, to be heard and cared for. I accept you couldn’t give me that, you didn’t have any more energy, love or joy to give to me with what you were facing.

Thank you for giving me what you could. What you couldn’t give me I’ve had to find from elsewhere. It’s taken a long time to find it Mum, but I have found it. I honour you and all you went through.

I thank you for my life and for the closeness we now have. Thank you for finding your way through too. I’m so glad you won’t let anyone treat you that way ever again. I love you so much and I welcome you back into my heart, my life, my love and I look forward to spending more time together actually enjoying life. Thank you Mum, thank you for my life”.

When we can do this, we set them and ourselves free. We get to have peace in our hearts and calm in our bodies and nervous systems. We get to step out of hypervigilance, scanning for danger and isolating for protection.

We get to rejoin life and to see that there is love and goodness out there. There are lots of people who treat each other with love and respect. We start to let ourselves participate in life more fully and receive the love and goodness we have always longed for.

In time we also see that the perpetrator didn’t know how to behave better, how to cope with their hurts and disappointments from their life. As we heal we eventually find compassion for them and their journey. We see that they had deep pain inside which leads to their lashing out and hurting others.

We see that as an adult we can now walk away from that. We don’t have to stay entangled in their pain. We can hand it back and leave it with them. We can bow, honouring their difficult journey and then turn to face our own life, to walk forward into our future, using what we have learned to create as much goodness, love and joy as we can.

May all children and parents who have suffered from domestic violence find peace. May they heal and come back together to honour the love they have for each other and enjoy the rest of their lives as much as they can. Blessed BE.

Here’s a link to my page with free resources to assist with healing from child abuse.

(The healing process I’ve explained above is just my life’s example. A lot of the deep healing occurred through doing Family Constellations sessions where I could feel my feelings and speak my truth to someone standing in as a representative for my Mum and my Stepdad. I didn’t have those conversations with my actual parents. That would have been too confronting with the level of pain I had and they may not have been able to hear it.

Family Constellations creates a safe space for you to speak your truth and heal. Once you have healed and found more peace you might have a truthful conversation with your parents. When you’ve reached a greater level of peace within you, you are less vulnerable, less likely to be reactive or defensive if they can’t hear you or acknowledge what you have been through. Your parents will have seen what occurred very differently to you. If they have not dealt with their pain they may simply deny it or push you away as it is too hard for them to face it.)

How to move through your deepest wounds and fears from childhood patterning?

girl in white long sleeve shirt and black skirt sitting on swing during day time
Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

(I asked this question and received the below answer via automatic writing 26 Nov 2021. Some of it is specific to me, but the guidance on the healing process is relevant to all so I thought I’d share it. I hope you find it useful.)

Your deepest wounds are those core hurts that you experienced as a child, those events and feelings that cut you like a knife and have been bleeding ever since. When wounded this deeply it affects your whole life. Part of you is frozen in pain, terror, rage, and fear. Part of you is stuck, trapped, hidden away and you spend a lot of your life force energy keeping it buried and building self-defence mechanisms to protect yourself from ever being hurt like that again. You live in fear of what could occur and pain from what did occur and there is little room left for joy, fun, friendship, love, trust, surrender and growth.

It takes a lot of courage to dismantle these defences, to open up to love, to live life with an open and unguarded heart, to return to your original state of innocence and joy. The vulnerability involved in risking exposure, connection, the possibility of more hurt, rejection, or loss can feel too much to give in to, to surrender and step into. This is why many people stay stuck their whole lives. They stay frozen internally, numbing their pain and the disconnection from their true self and heart with addictions and other distractions, such as keeping busy, fighting for some cause, working too much or being of service helping others while continuing to neglect their own needs. Sound familiar???

To move past this, to heal and relax and enjoy life there is no magic wand to cure it all. You have to shift it bit by bit, layer by layer, to release out the stuck, stagnant energy, to feel and release the emotions, to comfort and rescue the younger selves who went through it, to show them you have survived, you made it through and you’re doing okay. You have to start taking care of yourself, honouring your needs for rest, play, pleasure, connection with self, others and Earth. You need to make yourself your top priority, to eat well, exercise, have fun, rest and recreate.

You see healing occurs at the rate your body can process and integrate it. If you are pushing yourself too hard, if you are exhausted, empty, collapsing in overwhelm and despair or angry and rageful at feeling so bad despite all you do, if you are in one of these overactivated, exhausted scenarios then your body is not capable of processing and healing your deepest traumas. You simply don’t have the energy or internal strength to face, feel and release it.

So to heal your deepest wounds you really have to stop your overactive, distraction-filled lifestyle and create space and time for going within, connecting to your body, listening to its messages, feeling and breathing through the emotions, connecting with, supporting and nurturing your younger selves.

You know the techniques needed. You know how to guide yourself and others to do this release work. You just have to be patient and take it day by day, week by week, step by step. Your body lets up the residue it feels you are ready to process. It only lets it up when it feels you are capable of handling it. Otherwise, it stays locked in your cells, buried in your body, waiting for when you are ready. If you want to move through your deepest patterns you need to help your body to feel safe, to trust you are ready to handle it, to face it.

Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) helps greatly here as it calms your nervous system out of fight, flight, and freeze back into calm, social engagement. It helps to release the stress, tension and trauma in a gentle way, shaking it out, releasing it so your body can relax, your mind can calm and your breathing can deepen. As you start to feel safer within it is easier to feel the emotions and clear them out as they no longer seem so big or intense.

Yes, it is challenging as deeper layers of conditioning surface and you reach your core wound, the one that hurt the most. Of course, it was this one that was buried the deepest and will be the last to surface before you breakthrough to a more peaceful life no longer affected so much by the past. Of course, it gets harder in some ways the more you heal. But even though the issue arising is harder you have the tools, the knowledge and skills to process it, to breathe through it and to integrate the shifts and changes.

So have faith it will shift. Keep tremoring, using your TRE and doing your embodiment practices, yoga, meditation, time in nature, time with friends, etc. Keep comforting your heart, body and younger selves when triggered. Keep doing what you are doing and face whatever arises knowing it is shifting out, that more and more of your body is clear from the pain, that there is less frozen energy inside, that your body is getting healthier each day as you drop out of fight, flight, freeze (sympathetic) survival mode and into rest, digest, repair (ventral vagal parasympathetic mode).

You are doing what needs to be done. You just need to be patient, to nurture yourself and rest, so your body can integrate the shifts. Stillness, rest is key, connecting with your body, feeling and releasing it all is key. You know what to do, it just takes longer than you would like, that’s all. Trust your process. You had a severe amount of childhood trauma to clear and it does take time and energy to move through it. This is your work for yourself and to assist others. You had to experience it fully, deeply to be able to understand what others go through to be able to help them process their hurts and come back to their authentic selves, their pure hearts, and a state of joy, with connection to self, others and Earth. It is all okay, all happening as it needs to. Trust your body and its wisdom. Keep doing what you are doing and celebrate the freedom and liberation you feel more of the time now. Celebrate the progress rather than be annoyed at the residue. You will clear it out. You will live your life more fully.

If you have suffered extreme wounding as a child healing becomes the major task of your life. It doesn’t matter what you had hoped to do in life. You have to surrender that and work with what is. You have to honour your body and meet its needs. You have to give to yourself what you missed out on so you do feel loved, heard, seen, accepted and cared for. That’s your job. That’s your purpose, to come back to wholeness and peace. The rest of life is superficial by comparison.

So don’t compare yourself to others. You have no choice in the sense that pain from childhood persists. It won’t stay buried. You have to feel and release it. You have to face it eventually. Most do they just need to learn the skills of how to heal, how to process it and shift it out of their bodies. This is where you excel and it is what you will do, teaching others for the rest of your life. You will love it and find it very rewarding. Blessed BE.

How do you heal from emotional abuse?

This short video explores the impacts of emotional abuse and what is required to heal from it. I hope you find it useful. Many blessings, Jodi-Anne

How to let go of disappointment and expect the best?

When a person has suffered many disappointments in life, they learn to switch off from life, from expecting good things or even believing it is possible for their life to work out okay. This is a self defense mechanism aimed to limit the pain received and protect from further disappointments.

But switching off from life, hope, faith is a disasterous thing to do, it is a giving up of life force energy, of joy, of hope, of happiness. It will inevitably lead to judgement, ridicule, low self-esteem, depression and feelings of unworthiness.

If the major traumas occurred when a young child, 0-7 years old, it is highly likely that a pattern of learned helplessness was embedded in the child’s unconscious and as an adult plays out constantly in all aspects of life, leaving the person feeling a victim, feeling unable to change anything and accepting life is always going to be this way.

With such pessimism life becomes drudgery, one boring or scary or threatening and dangerous day after another. It is easy to see why people may self medicate through addictions to avoid the emotional pain and sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

It is a cruel way to exist, it is a numbing out of life, a walking dead scenario, feeling as if there is no point in staying alive or trying to change anything, because it feels like it never works or changes, it never gets better.

This is a very painful place to be in internally, to feel this hurt and broken that you don’t know how to go on, how to survive, how to live. You give up trying and just survive one day at a time. Life is monotonous, bland, boring and suffocating. Sadly this is a common state of being for many people. Gladly, you don’t have to stay stuck in it.

You only feel so helpless because it is younger parts of you that got hurt and disappointed, whose pain is so high, that it is over ruling everything else. If you heal these wounds and help free your inner child or younger selves then that pain will not be your primary emotion or experience of life.

You the adult has every opportunity to make different choices, to have fun, to be positive and enjoy life. It is just hard to do when your vitality, your life force is stuck in the past, playing out a repetitive loop of negativity.

So how do you free yourself of the wounds? There are many ways that help. At this stage it is just important to know you can break free, that you can heal and that life can become better. To let a glimmer of hope exist.

Just because people in your past hurt you or disappointed you, doesn’t mean it has to reoccur over and over. If you heal the wounds you can flourish. You will no longer attract in that treatment as you will no longer be a vibrational match to it. Once you have released the pain, your body can relax, come out of fight or flight and shut down zombie mode. Life force energy can flow freely through your veins again, revitalising you to live life fully, embracing possibility and taking action to live your dreams, your greatest potential while here on Earth.

To achieve this the wounds must be healed, the emotional pain must be released / transmuted and your heart opened back up to allow love in, to trust and take action, to risk changing / trying something new and letting people close.

When people are closed down out of disappointment, it is like they have bolted the door, put up a security fence, have guard dogs snarling, attempting to keep out anything good from occurring, so that they will not be disappointed or hurt further.

People with good intentions attempt to come close and they are faced with snarling dogs, electric fences and machine guns aimed at them, as if they are the enemy, when all they want to do is love you. It takes a strong and determined person to persevere in this situation and say “Let me in, it is okay, you can trust me”.

Many just walk away, they see the wounding in the other, the closed door, so they turn away. Hence the hurt person ends up alone, isolated, desperate for attention, for love, but not allowing it. No wonder they feel so hopeless.

There is a war going on inside, keeping the goodness away. When someone does come close they can over react with anger, feeling like “How dare they expect me to let them in, how dare they expect me to take a risk”. You push the person away so hard.

Depending on how deep the wound will depend on how automatic this rejection process is. It can be so strong that rage is triggered and a feeling that you could set the person on fire because they have threatened you and your safety by daring to enter into your closed kingdom, and it literally feels like a threat to your existence. So sad when really the other is saying “Hello, do you want a friend? Do you want to play?”.

toddler-sulkingIt is like two young children meeting in a playground and the first person has planted their feet, crossed their arms, stomped on the spot and said “NO”, shouted “NO, you will not play with me, go away, leave me alone”. They are totally closed off in their tantrum about how they feel and what has occurred to them in life. Then they sulk, pout, kick and scream about how unfair it all is. Most of us can see this behaviour in toddlers, young children quite easily, but we fail to see that as wounded adults we are doing the same thing.

Life can’t change dramatically for the better unless you uncross your arms, suck in your bottom lip, and you open up to connection, to playing, to having fun. While you are shouting NO nothing much can change. So you have to be willing to lower the defenses, to open up to another way of being and to feeling and releasing the emotional pain underneath the wounds, then it dissolves, then you walk free of it and you can see the blue sky and sunshine and let it in, you can see the beauty in life and let yourself be replenished by it and experience good things and have your life work out more enjoyably.

It is clear that it is up to you to take action to heal the wounds. Noone else can do it for you. Even those brave souls who wear suits of armour and non-flammable overalls who come close wanting to help you move forward. Their efforts can only help if you let them in. If you keep shouting NO energetically or actually saying it through your words and actions, then their efforts can’t help.

It is up to you to take the risk to let life be different. You can do it and it is worth it, so worth it, to walk free from misery and enjoy life, to be pleasantly surprised by the mystery of life and finally see the goodness in all things. You can achieve this, simply by healing the past so it doesn’t cloud your future. It can be done and I and many others can help you do it, if you let us, if you open up and say “YES to life, YES I am willing to move forward and to risk being happy. YES I can do this, I will do this, I choose this”.

Then life will lead you forth to the right people, places, books, courses and whatever else you need that best suits you to help you heal and break free from the pain. It will be different for each person based on their current state of awareness, willingness, and ability to feel and release their pain. Some will need to do self-study at first, before they would be willing to risk seeing a therapist and trusting someone to help them move forward. Some may prefer talk therapy as they don’t yet feel safe enough to go into their bodies and feel what is there. Some may prefer to start with body work modalities to help the body relax and let go, preferring this as they are too scared to voice their concerns or speak the truth that they have tried to hide from their whole lives.

Inside your body are all the trapped emotions and memories from the traumas you’ve experienced. It results in muscular tension and holding patterns that are so common in our society. It results in tight, sore shoulders, necks and backs. It is literally like the body has clenched, locked down, armoured up in order to protect itself.
A large part of healing is releasing this tension, melting the armour and the hypervigilance that comes from being in fight, flight, freeze so much.

This has to be done slowly, gently. You can’t take the top off the volcano and have all the pressure escape at once. It’s too volatile, too dangerous, too overwhelming. You need to let out the pressure and steam slowly, gently, so you don’t explode emotionally, but also so your body can integrate the shifts and changes.

There are many ways to reduce the internal stress and pressure, soy ou can cope more easily with whatever life brings you. When you’re already stressed up to your eyeballs internally it makes it so hard to cope. It’s like you’re exhausted with nothing else to give or any capacity to take on more – whether that be a challenge at work, a family member wanting your support or asking you to do something.

When you’re already at your limit, when your plate is full, any additional stressors can result in strong, undesirable reactions. You might react in anger or rage, or just be irritable and cold pushing people away or ignoring their needs. Not because you don’t care. You do care. You just don’t have any more capacity to cope with another stressor.

Thankfully you can use a range of methods to diffuse your internal bomb. Most people turn to addictions to try and numb it, escape it, avoid it, distract from it. They get busy or drink or shop or play video games or any other distraction that stops them from feeling what is occurring inside.

Clearly, this is not a healthy or long term solution. Your nervous system still has all the charge in it, all the pent up energy and emotion, so addictions just form a temporary fix that is bound to fail as the internal pressure continues to grow and the person eventually implodes or explodes.

A much healthier way to reduce the pressure, to let out the steam is spending time in nature, going for walks or swims at the beach. Anything that helps you to slow down, to have greater relaxation and ease in your body.

I have found Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) particularly useful, as it lets out that tension from the body bit by bit, calming your nervous system and giving you more capacity to cope with day to day life. As you release the pressure, it is like you’re taking some of the burdens and pressures from your plate, so there’s room, capacity, to handle life events with a bit more grace and ease. You don’t get shoved into overwhelm as quickly.

TRE is a set of simple exercises designed to help the body access its innate stress, tension and trauma release mechanism. This is an inbuilt tremoring process that uses up the stagnant energy, melts the armour and helps you shift out of fight, flight, freeze into relaxation and ease within. When this occurs it is easier to interact with others as you feel safer in your body, less threatened and defensive. It’s a powerful process for calming the body back down to it’s natural peaceful, playful state.

Excitingly TRE can be learned quickly and once learned you can use it for free for the rest of your life. You can do the exercises and tremoring releases in your own home, whenever you want.
If you want to go deeper, learn more or have some support as you go along, you can see a TRE practitioner like me, but you don’t have to do that regularly. You can just do it when you want to or if you need some extra support.

TRE gives you back your freedom to engage in your healing journey and to heal at a rate your body is comfortable with, listening to and honouring your body. It is well worth learning TRE to empower yourself and move forward with your life. You don’t need to stay stuck, defensive or hidden. You can be free.

pathThere are many roads home, to healing, to your heart and wholeness. It doesn’t matter which road you take, what matters is your willingness to take a step forward into the unknown, into life being different. If you are willing, the Universe will meet you and guide you forth.

May you learn to run joyously along your path, knowing you are taken care of, and see the beauty of life and love all around you. For it is there just waiting for you to open your arms and embrace it. Life really is good once you heal your pain and can see more clearly. May you obtain inner peace as quickly and as easily as you can. With love, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (08 October 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

Why are families so disconnected?

Some are and some are close, still maintaining a heart to heart connection between family members. In today’s world people are very busy, achieving, being better than others, obtaining things / material objects. These advances in gadgets, in stuff, are valued more highly than taking the time to BE, to connect with friends and family in real life. It is quicker, easier, more hassle free to just connect on social media and keep your physical distance, to have space for self, to rest and recover after working hard all day or facing your own emotional turmoil.

We are here on the planet to go through our awakening and this requires events to hapen to get us to stop and rethink our choices. It requires events that totally alter what we see as important and valuable in life, that is why the tragedies occur, the near death accidents or illnesses, the loss of relationships, family members or careers, the bankruptcy and crime. It all occurs to get us to stop and feel.

While we are busy living normal life we are often on autopilot, we go about our days the same way, over and over. It is comfortable, relatively easy, we don’t have to expend too much energy. Our comfort zone is stretched if we are asked to do much more and we may resist by shutting out that person and their demands or whatever it is that is asking us to stretch. It is easy to get lazy, to just rest and watch TV, to cuddle your pets or children or partner and to switch off from what is occurring to everyone else and the larger world. This is not callous, not personal, it is just human nature, to care for those you hold dearest and to draw a boundary around them and your way of being and to keep that safe, happy and easy.

Anyone wanting to come into your space may find it hard, if your boundaries are very strong. You simply don’t let them in, there is no time available for catching up or getting to know each other. No time for interaction. This is not necessarily a personal rejection, it is just that the person or people inside the circle are contented with their lives as they are and do not see the need to let anyone else in.

This may change in time, they may become more open and available, a career change, a new child, a special event, starting a hobby, or a loss of some kind may lead them to open the door a little wider. Their circumstances may change and they may need more people to help them, if someone was ill, if there was a new child or if their was unexpected loss in some way, whether that be a death of a loved one, loss of a job, crime and loss of posessions or finances. These losses occur to get people to open up, to step out of their comfort zone and to expand their consciousness. These life changing events kick-start the next phase of your evolutionary growth. They are meant to occur and they serve us. They shake us up and get us moving again.

hurting againIf you are upset that people will not let you in, that the door is closed, their boundaries too high, then look within yourself, look within and see why you are upset. You as an adult don’t need these people, you just want them. You can survive on your own. Any pain you are feeling is a trigger to heal that pain inside.

Many of us in childhood did not get our own needs met. We were left with an emotional deficit and we are hungry, starving for love and acceptance. We try to get it from many places and one of those is our families. We assume that they are our blood and we should be close, together, supporting each other. We should be happy, friendly and caring of each other. But this is just your thinking, your judgement.

You chose to incarnate into your specific family for a reason. If you chose a family that is disconnected, you did so for a reason. Perhaps you wanted to learn independence, self reliance and contentment outside of the family realm. If your family was all loving and kind and life was easy, you would not evolve at the rate you do when life is challenging. The challenges occur to help you go within and heal, to reconnect with your own divine nature and that of Source.

heart wateringAs you heal yourself you find that you don’t need love from others, you realise you are love, that is your true nature, and the nature of the Universe. We are surrounded by love and support all the time, but we don’t see it until we heal all the pain and trauma through which we view the world and those in it. We judge based on what is inside us. Each person, each family is doing exactly what they need for the evolution of its members. In time as they all heal and become one within themselves, love will flow freely throughout that family system. Until then there will be blockages, their will be conflict or separation.

You can’t force people to change, to heal, to let you in. What you can do is choose to love them anyway and to focus on healing your wounds and reconnecting to peace and love in your heart, so energetically love flows from you to everyone, instead of pain and judgement, shaming or blaming of those involved.

Try to be compassionate, try to accept that each is doing what they need to for their evolution and each is awakening at their own speed, evolution cannot occur over night, it takes time, lots of time and different people have different abilities to do so. We need to learn the skills to change our thinking patterns, our subconscious beliefs, our conditioning and emotional density. We need to learn how to take responsibility for our own lives and make the best out of what we have. We need to learn the power of gratitude and positive regard, seeing the best in things, as opposed to the worst.

Life truly can be Heaven on Earth if we do the work to heal ourselves. When we do so we make it easier for others to do the same. Energetically our freedom radiates out into the family system affecting others, making it easier for them to do the same. This is how we can help and make a difference  – by loving everyone as they are and accepting their choices and journey. We can focus on our own healing and evolution and know that when everyone’s hearts open back up love will flow freely between us all and families will be more harmonious. This will all take time and we can’t force it.

Don’t torture yourself by judging your family. Heal yourself instead, enjoy your life as much as you can and the doors will open in time, allowing greater connection to those you love. First you do the work internally, energetically and then it manifests in the outer world. Choose peace and love – that is what the world needs and what you are craving. You have to give it to you. You have to heal your blocks to receiving and to letting people close.

When you are healed and energetically open people will come, some of your blood family and some your Soul family, those who resonate with you, love you and want to be with you. These are your true tribe or family. The ones you birthed into were just the catalysts for your evolution and growth. Know in your heart you are okay, you are loved and you are held dear by all who know you, it may not seem like it, but the love is there, just waiting for you to heal enough so you can feel it. May that day come soon. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (27 July 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

How bad experiences in childhood lead to adult illlness

Yet another article with the science showing what survivors of child abuse have always known. Abuse in childhood leads to significant physical, emotional and mental difficulties in adulthood. The good news is that more and more people are recognising this and that we can’t simply “get over it”.  Abuse changes the way a child reacts to stress and constant exposure leads to changes in the child’s DNA resulting in the ‘fight or flight’ system being always turned on. The ongoing, chronic stress unfortunately leads to inflammatory and immune responses that damage health as adults.

Joan Kaufman, director of the Child and Adolescent Research and Education (CARE) programme at the Yale School of Medicine, recently analysed DNA in the saliva of happy, healthy children, and of children who had been taken from abusive or neglectful parents. The children who’d experienced chronic childhood stress showed epigenetic changes in almost 3,000 sites on their DNA, and on all 23 chromosomes – altering how appropriately they would be able to respond to and rebound from future stressors.

Likewise, Seth Pollak, professor of psychology and director of the Child Emotion Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, uncovered startling genetic changes in children with a history of adversity and trauma. Pollak identified damage to a gene responsible for calming the stress response. This particular gene wasn’t working properly; the kids’ bodies weren’t able to reign in their heightened stress response. ‘A crucial set of brakes are off,’ says Pollak.

It is great that science is catching up. They are also recognising that there are many ways to heal which can help survivor’s bodies relax and not be in ‘fight or flight’ all the time.

Science tells us that biology does not have to be destiny. ACEs can last a lifetime, but they don’t have to. Just as physical wounds and bruises heal, just as we can regain our muscle tone, we can recover function in underconnected areas of the brain. If anything, that’s the most important take-away from ACE research: the brain and body are never static; they are always in the process of becoming and changing.

Even if we have been set on high-reactive mode for decades or a lifetime, we can still dial it down. We can respond to life’s inevitable stressors more appropriately and shift away from an overactive inflammatory response. We can become neurobiologically resilient. We can turn bad epigenetics into good epigenetics and rescue ourselves. We have the capacity, within ourselves, to create better health. We might call this brave undertaking ‘the neurobiology of awakening’.

Today, scientists recognise a range of promising approaches to help create new neurons (known as neurogenesis), make new synaptic connections between those neurons (known as synaptogenesis), promote new patterns of thoughts and reactions, bring underconnected areas of the brain back online – and reset our stress response so that we decrease the inflammation that makes us ill.

In the article they specifically mention ‘Meditation, mindfulness, neurofeedback, cognitive therapy, EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) therapy’ as some of the tools that can help survivor’s to calm their bodies and reprogram their minds.

I have found a wide range of techniques helpful including:

  • Energy and body work, such as crystal bed sessions or reiki, to help the body unlock and relax;
  • Psych-K or Lifeline Technique to release trauma and reprogram the subconscious mind so you can change negative beliefs about life and the world into positive ones e.g. so you are not always expecting the worst and you can start to feel safe, so you believe that you do deserve good things and that people can treat you well;
  • Mindfulness and meditation techniques to still the mind and create space to witness what is occurring instead of reacting automatically;
  • Skill development including thought stopping, boundary setting, inner child, and self love skills, so that you no longer allow yourself to be abused by others or by yourself;
  • Family Constellations to heal the trauma in the family system and reconnect with love, thereby allowing greater lifeforce and harmony within.

There is lots that can be done. While adverse childhood trauma does have a massive impact on your life, it can be healed.

Article - bad experiences in childhood lead to adult illness

How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime

In this short video Nadine Burke Harris explains how adverse childhood experiences impacts the health of the child and continues to do so over the lifetime of the person. She explains in scientific terms why this occurs and ways the impacts can be reduced. She believes that this is a public health issue and should be addressed as such with multidisciplinary teams available to help affected individuals to heal the trauma and reduce the impacts.

How to heal from emotional abuse?

Free-BirdEmotional abuse is just as devastating as physical or sexual abuse. It damages the psyche and deeply affects a person’s self worth and feeling of safety. It leaves individuals afraid to interact with others and sets up a condemning pattern inside, where they repeat the abuse to themselves, by calling themselves less than loving names and treating themself in less than loving ways.

While devastating at any age, emotional abuse while a young child (0-6 years) of age is most damaging, as this is when children simply believe and absorb anything they are told. It goes straight into their subconscious programming and they are conditioned to act it out their whole life, unless they learn how to change their subconscious beliefs.

Such negative conditioning can have devastating affects throughout their life. If they are told they are ugly, unwanted, not needed, not liked, a failure, hopeless, that the problems others are facing is their fault, etc, then they will believe it and subconsciously they will play it out in their life – at school, at work, in relationships.

When things are going well the conditioning will cause them to act out and self sabotage. If on the brink of success, and the conditioning is that they are a failure, they will find it very uncomfortable to succeed. They will most likely fail shortly thereafter, if not before.

So they may get the promotion, but then find they can’t cope with the job or do something to cause themselves to be demoted – be late continuously, get sick, make a critical mistake or simply leave the job as they don’t enjoy it. This form of self sabotage happens unconsciously and repeatedly until it is changed.

If a child watched one parent being abused emotionally by the other, then the child learns that is how relationships are. They will accept poor treatment from others as they don’t realise that they deserve better or that there can be loving, safe interactions between people.

Worse, the parent who is constantly belittled is likely to withdraw from the child. They are likely to sink into depression, if not addiction, as a way to cope with their unhappy situation. The child therefore becomes neglected as well as suffering from witnessing and receiving the emotional abuse.

If the parent sinks far enough into depression and doesn’t have the strength to stand up for themselves or leave the relationship, then this destructive pattern can continue for years and usually does. A child in such a situation gives up hope. They may have tried really hard to be a good boy or girl, in an attempt to make things better. They may have tried helping out around the house to make life easier for the parent, and in an attempt to reduce the catalysts for fights. The child tries to be the peace keeper.

When that doesn’t work, they may try to rescue the parent, to help motivate them to leave or by standing up to the abusive one. But of course the child is a child acting like an adult, and the actual adult is stronger, more powerful, and can be vicious. The child is dependent on the abuser for their home, food and other necessities. It is a no win situation.

And in this situation the child has lost the ability to be a child and enjoy their childhood. their thoughts are not about their friends, toys, school, sport, playing games or having fun. Their thoughts are about survival and staying alive. Worse about keeping the depressed parent alive, if they have attempted suicide as a way to escape the abuse. The child becomes numb, simply going through the motions, withdrawn in a shell of self protection. Their life is a series of painful events, marked by even more painful events when the emotional abuser turns the focus on them, and lets rip with a torrent of cruel and mean statements about the child.

As the child grows they may come to hate the abusive parent, they may wishe they would die and even fantasise about hurting or killing the parent. This is just an attempt to gain back the power they have lost, to feel stronger, more independent, not so crushed. Few would actually act out such a fantasy.

Emotional abuse is just as devastating to a child as other forms of abuse. It sets up similar fear patterns, mistrust patterns and self loathing patterns. This damage will take years to heal. It will take many decades for the person to become fully aware of their conditioning, to feel and release the emotional pain, and balance backup to a state of self love.

They will have to learn to monitor and change their thoughts to more loving and supportive ones. They will need to change their subconscious beliefs, so that they do believe they are worthy of love, they are a worthwhile human being and they are deserving of good things.

It will take a lot of time to learn to be kind and loving to themselves. This softness will not be natural as they have grown up in harshness. So it will take time before softness feels safe and acceptable. Keep practicing until it does.

healthy-relationships-300x203Harder still will be the ability to trust others. Mistrust will be so deep. Self protection and isolation so automatic, that it will take a lot of concerted effort to break free of it and be able to let people truly close and truly know them.

It will take a long time for the person to actually know themself – what they like to do, their interests and what is fun for them. At first this is such a foreign concept, as life has been about struggle, survival and avoiding further abuse. It hasn’t been about having fun or doing what they like. So they have to learn how to have fun, how to do a hobby and relax and enjoy it.

Their bodies are often armoured, hard with locked up muscles from keeping all the pain inside. The softness is buried beneath the armour and much work needs to be done to help the body relax and come out of its permanent state of fight, flight or freeze. The body is also likely to be exhausted from the constant stress, trauma, and lack of exercise, good food, etc. When locked in fear the breath often shallows, so the body does not get as much oxygen, it can’t digest and absorb the nutrients as well, and the adrenals get over worked and depleted, resulting in fatigue. Good diet, exercise, emotional release work and body work to help dissolve the armour and trauma all help.

Your nervious system which has been in constant fight, flight, freeze is wound up tight, constantly activated, pumping adrenaline and cortisol through your body, or if you feel there’s no hope and you’ve started to give up and shut down, then your body is pumped full of opioids to numb you.

A range of actions can help your nervous system to calm – deep breaths, time in nature, but most importantly Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) which activates the body’s natural stress, tension and trauma release mechanism, so that the body can complete the unfinished trauma reactions and return to its normal, calm state. It is well worth doing to help you find greater peace.

Once the nervous system calms and you are no longer in constant fight or flight, your mind will soften as your body will feel safer and your mind won’t feel a need to be so defensive, so your defences melt and you can open up to play, to softness, to enjoying life interacting with others.

There is much that can be done to heal from childhood emotional abuse, but it takes a lot of time and effort. If you are going through this process, be as kind to yourself as you can, understand that you are undoing a lifetime of conditioning and it will take time. Every step you take is helping. Every day it wil get a little bit better. If you feel discouraged seek help, join a support group, see a counselor, or start a fun activity to help balance up. Love yourself and your life will improve. It takes time, but it is well worth doing. Good luck, I know how hard the journey is. I also know it can be done. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (02 April 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

The impact of a lack of nurturing and stress on the brain

This (4:15 mins) video by Madhumita Murga explains how a lack of nurturing when we are young can limit our ability to cope with stress and creates changes to the way our DNA is expressed. These changes are passed on to future generations resulting in them having a sensitivity to stress.

Chronic stress damages the brain in several ways, which are explained in the video. The good news is that the damage can be reversed by releasing the stress and healing the trauma that caused it. Many stress reduction techniques can help including exercise and meditation, while therapies like Psych-K and Family Constellations can assist in healing any trauma and emotional pain underneath it.

Healing from childhood sexual abuse (part two)

In the first blog on this topic we focused on the fact that a lot of healing is required to release the buried emotions and pain that result from childhood sexual abuse. We gave some advice on how to move through tough emotions that surface and demand our attention.

Precious0005Today we talk about the wider implications. When one has been sexually abused as a child you can lose the sense that your body is precious and should be treated as such. You can forget that sexual intimacy is meant to be loving, kind and about connection with self, other and God. It is a sacred act resulting in union between man and woman. It results in conception, birth and parenthood. It is a sacred act necessary for the continuation of the species. It is meant to be enjoyable and safe.

For those who have been sexually abused as children sex does not feel sacred or safe – It can feel scary, dirty or carnal. The sacredness can be regained once healed, but for many who have suffered abuse sex feels like a threat, dangerous, or worse, meaningless – something you do just to please your partner or to get attention from another.

Many who have been abused as children continue to let themselves be abused by others. They don’t know how to set boundaries or say no. They don’t know that there is a choice to say no or that sex can be different to the physical act that they have experienced. It can become an addiction, a seductive tool used to get what you want in life. This really devalues your body as it is used by others. But someone who has been deeply hurt may be so numbed from their pain and hiding from their true feelings that they don’t even notice that they feel devalued, used, taken advantage of, etc. In essence they let the abuse continue, not knowing that they deserve better.

Some do the oposite. For some the abuse was so terrifying that they won’t let anyone close and sex becomes something that simply doesn’t happen as it feels too dangerous. In between these extremes is the person who can have sex with their partner, but may not feel much physically during the act, their mind wanders thinking of other things, so energetically they are not present or fully participating in the act – they have left in their minds to a safer place.

It takes much healing to get to the space where you can be fully present during sex, enjoy it and see it / feel it as a sacred process of surrender – allowing yourself to merge with your beloved partner and God. God is of course not involved in this, but the energy of union, of oneness, of love, is God and it is through the sexual act that we become most vulnerable and intertwined with another – we become one with them and therefore return in the moments of deep connection to Source, to our true state of oneness with all that is.

Another aspect of life affected by childhood sexual abuse is our self image of what it means to be a man or a woman. It will affect what we think about ourself, our worth, our appearance, our attitudes, etc. It shapes our view of the world to one that is less than loving and kind, less than supportive and caring. All of this has to be worked through as we learn to love ourselves and dress according to our personality or being. For many years a sufferer of childhood sexual abuse may dress as a tomboy to avoid feeling feminine or threatened by further abuse. Baggy clothes are common, trying to hide the fact they are a woman or young teen.

Of course those who have gone the opposite direction dress provocatively revealing their sexuality to all, showing they have power over others by alluring them. That is what the provocation is truly about. It is the person’s way to attempt to feel powerful, to have control over others. That way if they feel they are in control it is less scary than thinking others can control them. It is just a form of self defense.

Both responses are okay and understandable as a result of what they have been through. The goal however is to heal and find balance, where you can just be you and dress how you like because you want to – not because you are trying to prove anything to anyone else or to get approval.

When we heal fully we come to a place of self love and acceptance where it doesn’t matter what others think. When we are in this healthy place we can live our life doing what we want, being present to the moment and enjoying all that comes. We are not preoccupied with the past or the future. Our body is relaxed, not on guard, not scanning for danger or looking about needily or for protection. We are at ease, peace, trusting, flowing with life.

You can get to this stage and you will. All human beings will. It just takes time and effort – a willingness to keep dealing with whatever emotions surface and releasing them to the light, so that your body is ‘lighter’ and you do not feel so burdened, weighed down, heavy from it all – which is what depression is. It is a person feeling ‘de-pressed’ – pressed down by all the weight of their life, their stories of what has occurred to them and their fearful, angry, shameful reactions to it. “Depression” is calling you to “deep rest”. It is your body’s way of saying I need you to stop now, to feel and heal this, to let it go. Enough running, pushing it away, trying to pretend it isn’t real. Stop, feel and heal. REST then you can feel better, find peace and happiness. This is what is needed. You deserve it. You are allowed to have it and you have done nothing wrong. Any actions that you have taken resulted from your pain, your past experiences. You had no control over what occurred to you. You did your best to cope and live life. If you did some things you are not proud of, forgive yourself. Forgive and free yourself of any shame or guilt and choose to behave differently from now on. Know you did the best you could at the time. Let yourself off the hook and let yourself have fun and enjoy your life. You deserve to do so, to be free of the past and making the most of your now.

intimacy-means-that-were-safeA big part of healing from sexual abuse is learning to trust another, to let a partner close to you – to be able to determine when it is safe to do so and the person is someone who is trustworthy, who will treat you well and who wants to be in a loving, intimate, connected, heart-felt relationship with you.

Recognise however that if you are not in such a relationship with yourself you are not likely to do so with a partner. Are you loving and supportive of yourself? Do you respect and treat yourself well? Do you lovingly speak to [yourself] and honour your own needs? If not, don’t expect a partner to do so. Their behaviour will reflect the way you treat yourself. If you treat yourself poorly you are role modelling to a partner that they can do so too.

Part of healing is learning to see the truth that people may treat you poorly if you let them, but as you heal and become more whole, you won’t attract that behaviour in. You simply wouldn’t get into the relationship as you would know deep in your core, your intuition and gut feelings, that that person is not suitable for you as a partner. But in order to access your knowingness, your intuition and gut feel you have to be connected to yourself, to listen to your feelings, and identify your needs. This requires learning to be fully grounded in your body, present within it. You can do this by simply closing your eyes and focusing on your breath in your belly. Get used to breathing deeply and witnessing your body’s reactions, practice feeling/listening to what is occurring inside you. Throughout the day notice whether you are in your body or if you have floated off into your mind or escaped into fantasy / left your body, so to speak.

There are many techniques you can use to help you settle back into your body. One that I use is Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE). It helps the nervous system to relax and unwind, so that the body drops out of hypervigilance, fight, flight, and freeze, so it can return to its normal relaxed state.

TRE is a simple set of exercises you can do on your own at home to start the body’s natural stress, tension and trauma release mechanism. We have an inbuilt mechanism to shake off all the tension and trauma. It uses up all the fight and flight chemicals, like cortisol and adrenaline, that get stored in the body every time we get triggered and don’t act.

If we did run or fight back these chemicals would get used up, but if we freeze or we push through forcing ourself to stay present in a situation where our body is uncomfortable and telling us to flee, then those fight/flight chemicals stay within, adding to the muscles clenching and tension patterns in our body.

Using TRE helps the body to relax, to let go of those patterns, to feel safer and more peaceful within. When that happens the mind also relaxes and our defences melt as the mind is no longer being sent danger signals by the body. It no longer senses threat at every corner.

There are other techniques you can use that also help the body to calm, such as spending time in nature, meditation, gentle exercise like yoga and much more.

Learning to be present to what is occurring in the moment and being grounded in your body is a major step in healing as you can then feel and process what needs to be let go of. When you are present in this way, you can get inner guidance as to what to do and how to improve your experience of life.

The answers are all within you. Your soul knows what you need to do and it will talk to you. Listen to your heart and follow its guidance. This is the goal to reach to live as happily ever after as possible. Healing from childhood sexual abuse takes time and effort, but it is worth it, to find the freedom and peace that awaits you when you heal. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (23 Oct 2015).

Here is the link to part 3 of how to heal from childhood sexual abuse.

Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.