With all the pain of the break-up, I am still hurting from sometimes, I almost forgot the power of love and more importantly how to benefit from this strength within me. It’s not that I had completely forgotten it but when that pain floats ashore and you trip over it so that you have a face-sand experience it’s really hard to appreciate that what is left behind unanswered; Love.
A memory on facebook in the shape of a post I made a few years ago reminded me once again to use this love as well to heal and grow. You just need to see past the pain and realize its the attachment and the loss of a loved one that causes that pain. The love itself does not hurt. Love heals, love has given me the strength to forgive, the power to move on and the understanding to let go. The love I have for this person, however, has not changed or disappeared. It’s still there, in all strength.
How can I still love this person who has caused me so much hurt? Because he is so much more than just that. I am not going into detail but I am simply put not going to dismiss the good because of the pain. The good still outweighs it by far. So perhaps my sentence Omnia Vincit Amor may not make sense to others because we are not together anymore but those people may not understand that love is not the same as attachment.
I am moving on yes, no there is not anyone else in my life to fill up that space. But I am not going to keep hanging in the past. My moving on means I am healing from my wounds and learning from my own mistakes. The love I have for all what is dear to me is the main source of my strength.
Early on even before we are born the trauma experience already begin if we are being exposed (as strange as that sounds when we are not even born yet) to situations that we don’t feel safe. Let me quote another few lines from ” The 5 Personality Patterns” by Steven Kessler.
“If something in her early environment/womb does not feel safe and loving enough, but instead shocks and scares her, then she won’t have this felt sense of safety in her body and she won’t be able to fully orient to the physical world and attach to it and her body. She won’t believe the physical world is safe and she won’t expect that her needs will be filled by anybody.”
Now when I think of this and reflect on this it brings me more and more understanding again of who I am. I know my father was a violent man. He was an alcoholic as well. I do not know a lot about him since he left us when I and my brother were still at an early age however from the few stories I have heard about how aggressive he was even I assume that was not any different when my mother was pregnant.
I have already always suspected this since I found out and learned more about my C-PTSD, however having this confirmed does make me feel more secure in my own findings. It underlines my realizations of not having memories of pre-trauma me. This brings more and more trust in myself and with that, I feel a little bit more secure and safe within myself which on its own is a big win in my healing progress.
At the same time, it brings sadness because this also means that my two daughters also may have been exposed to trauma even before their birth altho I can not remember any cruelties during my pregnancy my own state of mind obviously has an impact on this too. Since I was already traumatized even though I had not been diagnosed that does not change their experience. I know not to keep hanging in that feeling because it was not my fault and it is not helping.
Learning about my traumas affects my healing a lot and helps me acquire and learn how the use the new skill sets I receive. I am grateful for this process.
Today I like to quote another part from the book the 5 personality patterns. The book is helping me a lot in the current stage of my healing journey. It writes about parts of myself that of course, I had noticed even long before I started my healing journey and knew that at one point I needed to address this too. It seems the right time for this now and so I have.
In this book, while reading, I came upon a part that is not particular news to me however it’s very little spoken off in the modern western world and there even seems to be a taboo about it somehow. It’s almost never brought up directly and often only briefly.
“In western cultures, especially here in the United States, we equate growing up with separating from other people, from nature, and even from our own subtle perceptions. When our children see things that we don’t see, we invalidate their subtle perceptions, saying “There’s nothing there. Go to sleep. ” or “Don’t be scared, it’s only a dream.” When we tell them what they perceive isn’t real we’re telling them to stop perceiving them, to shut off their innate sensitivity and subtle perception. This tends to shut down the inner capacities which would make them more energetically sensitive and capable of feeling” – From the book the 5 personality patterns, by Steven Kessler
Earlier in the same chapter, the writer speaks of how as we grow up each one of us goes through certain stages of development and that time doesn’t stop. Meaning that if we don’t have time enough or the chance to develop a certain stage and learn or finish learning the skills that come with that stage we skip them. Furthermore, he addresses that this means that this person stays closer to their raw perceptions and stronger sensitivity skills and have more capacity to connect and relate to other people. animals and nature itself.
People who actually have finished the learning stages early in life without complications and have successfully mastered them are taking those skills for granted and assume that everyone has the same skill sets as them while not realizing they actually do miss certain ones themselves. They rather even question those without the same skillset wondering what’s “wrong” with them.
This really hits home as sensitive as I am with my strong intuition, compassion, and empathy. What confuses me somewhat from this book is that it seems as if the writer in some parts of this chapter seems to understand the qualities of having this raw sensitivity yet at the other hand kind of makes me feel as if with those early learning stages it is a good thing that we “unlearn” those raw sensitivity skills. It feels like saying that there IS actually something wrong with it. Which in my opinion it is actually the other way around since these learning stages he speaks of are those shapes that we are being poured into in this modern western culture.
In my honest, modest (or not so much) and unprofessionally educated opinion those modern stages where we learn those skill sets are all shaped to what is expected from us in how our current modern life is programmed and what is expected from us by the general society. I suppose he has to address both “cultures” the natural one and the forced one as I like to call those so-called perfect learning stages which miss the essential skills that mother nature gave us to give the readers the understanding of both modules.
Now after the introduction to this he explains the separate stages, however, I question how truly accurate those stages are when they are viewed from our modern culture point of view.
The 5 personality patterns is a psychology book I recently bought and has proven itself very useful to me already. The book is intended to be a guide to better understanding oneself and others and developing emotional maturity. In the second chapters, it speaks about Survival patterns and then specifically addresses Patterns versus Presence. I will quote a little bit from the book to explain this a little bit.
“Being in a pattern means that our perceptions are being filtered and distorted by a survival pattern. A survival pattern is an automatic body-based reaction that we go into to try to buffer ourselves from feeling overwhelmed. But it’s a reaction that was conditioned into us by traumas in the past. It is not a response to the present situation. Sometime in the past, this was the best strategy we could find to deal with a situation. Over time it was so deeply conditioned into our bodies that now it automatically kicks in whenever we feel distressed, making us react as if the past distress is still happening to us, even when it is not.”
These reactions are caused by trauma. I call it being programmed and sometimes this happened unconsciously and at other times being fully aware at the time of the trauma but like stated before it was the best we found to deal with the situation at hand at the time. These reactions can be very hard to understand by other people because they don’t see what we are dealing with and often we don’t see it ourselves either until afterward, we evaluate a situation. Awareness is key here.
I can truly recommend this book to everyone who is dealing with such patterns or have loved ones who are dealing with these things. And to be honest with you I think everyone who is traumatized in one way or the other has developed such patterns. Some more healthy than others and some more obvious than others.
