The Voice of Childhood Trauma
May 24, 2018
- Do you remember how you felt when you were being abused, abandoned, neglected and ignored?
- Do you remember the comments that were made inside your own mind when you were being abused?
All children assume blame and responsibility for how they are treated as children.
Our simple brains trick us into forgetting what it was like when we were small. Our brains are designed to keep us in the here and the now. We focus on the minutia of the current day and rarely take the time to remember how we felt when we were small, powerless, and unable to speak up for ourselves.
Now is an illusion. Now is a blend of every moment and breath of our yesterdays. The future is an illusion too unless you can awaken and begin to understand that how your mind operates today is the result of what happened to you when you were the most impressionable.
When children are being abused, they don't think, "Wow, my parents are out of control here. Mom is drinking again and dad is full of rage because he lost another job. They are screaming and cursing at one another right in front of me. Neither of them is aware that I am observing this drama and being impacted by it. Neither of them is worrying about how I feel, or that I am hungry, or that when they ignore my cries I am being violated; they are robbing of my childhood. Neither of them cares that I am being downloaded to act like this--and to think like they do. These people are abusing and abandoning me."
Instead, children think, "I made them mad again. I can't do anything right. I am so stupid. I am so dumb. I should know better. I shouldn't have told them I was hungry or that I was afraid. I shouldn't have asked mom for that basketball, or if I could take swimming lessons. I shouldn't have asked dad about why he lost his job again. They're arguing again and it is all my fault. This happened because of me. They are ignoring me because I am not good enough."
Children must assume everything is their fault because if they don't, their minds could not handle the idea that mom and dad are inept. Assuming blame helps a child feel in control and less out of control. Believing mom and dad know what they are doing, shields the child from the chilling reality that mom and dad are NOT okay. When children assume responsibility, it sets up a fantasy they can cling to. The fantasy is,"maybe one day I will be good enough for my parents to love me and see me--and to care about how I feel."
As we age, we go out into the world and the fantasy becomes transferred from parents to friends and lovers. We are full grown but inside of our being we are trembling with the fear that we will be unable to gain this person's validation. We become love addicted and then love avoidant. We obsess about others and then fear others coming too close once we gain their attention. Love has become a game of hide and seek. We can't live with love and we can't seem to live without it either.
The goal is always to be self-aware of how we think and to correct that thinking as we go. Today, as adults, we must remind ourselves that we were once that little person observing the chaos around us who also blamed ourselves for why we were not feeling loved. We must learn to heal the fears of our inner child one moment at a time until we finally learn to believe it ourselves: We were always enough and nothing that happened to us as children was our fault.
I am thankful you are all here, dedicated to growing in the name of love and light.
The validation we seek today must be our own.
Please enjoy this video;
