That’s what I asked myself yesterday when I felt triggered last week, struggling with a situation which stoked the wound of worthlessness and lack of value; in turn it only served to reaffirm deep rooted trust issues of others. I was too busy to feel anything last week and the pain was muted for several days. Busy brain = unhealed. But as the busy-ness waned, the pain body floated up over the weekend, erupting on the surface of my consciousness, tugging at me: it seems there is a part of me that thinks the worst, that can’t see the good in anyone, a part which harbours a deep mistrust of people; the feeling is not only prevalent but alive and kicking. The wound tells me that people I know lie to me; that people I know who I think are close to me aren’t to be trusted; that people I know who I think I can trust place no value in me; that I’m not as important as others and bottom of the heap, ignored whilst others are attended to; that there is no one truly ‘there’ for me when I need them; that I’m unsupported and with no one to rely on but myself (which in turn triggers my anxious avoidant part); that I don’t have any real surrogate family; friends are just fair weather friends and it’s dangerous for my wellbeing to perceive them as anything more. That I’m truly on my own. That’s how it speaks to me. This is how the wound communicates: “There’s no one really there for you”. “You’re on your own”. So close your heart. That is the wound. And that’s the dysregulated child within me speaking.

This part of me is hyper-sensitive - that’s what childhood trauma does to you. Small things matter muchly and there’s a fragility, a delicateness, one that I don’t often admit to. It’s a part of me that’s easily wounded, easily hurt, easily upset but simultaeously yearns for connection, support and to know that she truly matters in others’ lives. Ironically the fragility is compromised by a frozen heart, a push-me-pull-you energetic. Unwittingly the part softens from time to time and allows people in, whole-heartedly, hastily, devoid of discernment, only to be painfully cast to the side. Since 2020, on two occasions that part unwittingly opened her heart fully and unconditionally - once in 2020 to an older man who turned out to be an avoidant narcissist who bread crumbed and used me like a ragdoll when he felt like it, and then in 2022, to someone I thought would be a friend for life who I truly loved like the big sister I never had, only for her to kick me when I was down in 2024. The uresolved pain works in a repetitive loop that affirms and reaffirms itself. It’s now I know that I have to save her from this plight; I have to break the cycle, for her sake and mine.

Knowing what I now know, I allowed the tears to flow and the emotional pain to allow its passage. I’ve been feeling (and still am feeling) irritable and tetchy, emotionally fragile and bad tempered, sensitive and scatty. Rather than flying into a fit of rage, or overreacting and saying something I might regret later, (as much as the wound wants me to say something to justify it’s pain), I just allowed the pain the flow. The pain body had every right to feel like this in the moment - it’s valid pain that needs to be felt. But I know it’s not the situations causing that pain: it’s old, simmering and burning pain from the past. I remind myself that it’s not me, it’s part of me that feels this way. And part of me that needs re-membering and welcoming back into the fold. However what I noticed is when the tears flow and I speak to the pain body, seeing it in my minds eye and witnessing its grief, I speak to it, telling it that I see it, that I feel it, and the pain subsides. So do the tears.

And then I asked myself: “when did I first feel like this?” “which part of me is feeling like this?” “what happened to make me so distrustful?” and I took myself back in time to start reprocessing the wound, to find her, the little girl, to re-parent her. Where did this pain come from? How old was I when first felt like that? What happened for me to lose part of my soul?

The wound has an age. I know it’s not me; it’s a child part of me reacting, locked in a prison of time. Somatically, I know this wound very well; I just didn’t realise how deep it is until last week. It stems from a combination of sinister, wicked and cruel familial abandonment, the years of hate-fill, derisive and inhuman racial abuse, followed by years of victimisation from other sub-human types when mum and I were alone and fed to the wolves. I’ve written about this fear and broken heartedness on previous posts such as undigested pain and the babadook (both two part posts there was just too much to say) which left a shell of a girl as I’d abandonded myself completely, affirming that people in general are inherently bad - if you can’t trust your own family, then how can you trust strangers? And re-enactments over time have slowly solidified the pain, the roots getting thicker and gnarlier with each re-enactment to remind me of a wound unhealed.

There’s more than one version of her - there’s an 8 year old and a 13 year old that need reassurance, care, love, support and compassion - the support she didn’t get when she needed it. I feel the pain body in my solar plexus - it feels like a lump, a ball of pain stuck there - that must be where she lives within me. I put my hand to my chest and consoled the little girl within. I witnessed her. And here’s what I told her: I see you; I feel you; I hear you. It’s okay to feel upset, it’s totally understandable and that it’s not your fault what you went through: no child should go through that. We’re a team now, you can trust me, you’re safe now, you’re no longer there in that world and that I’ve got your back. I’m going to do everything I can to make things better for you. There are good people in this world, not everyone is out to get you; I’m the good person you can trust; I’m not going to lie to you; I’m not going to deceive you; I’m not going to abandon you or let you down and I’m going to take care of you. I see you; I feel you.

The pain needs to be seen and loved. It needs to be heard. It needs to be acknowledged. And it needs to be understood. I sat with the pain and although irritation, anger and tetchiness has tried to muscle in, I’ve kept the underlying feeling close. I want to heal this, I really do.

To help her heal, in my solace I’ll feel her to release her. I know I’ll need to revisit her again and again. And when I get triggered by this wound again, I know that it’s the little girl that needs my attention, to turn inward rather than outward, to hold space for her and myself.

Most of all I need to learn to trust, tentatively, but trust. I need to think good of people and see the good in people. I need to expect the best, not the worst in people; I need to open my heart and risk getting hurt, but to know the pain is only temporary.

Love heals. Love will always heal.

But I know inner strength is slowly returning; the soft sediment is washing away and a stronger landscape of bedrock is replacing it. The narrative is changing. Un-learning. Un-becoming. And embracing that descent is the doorway to my transformation.

If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:

https://buymeacoffee.com/healingmychildhoodtrauma

I digress.

My feckless, undiscerning ‘give-it-a-go’ thought process to have a ‘guinea-pig’ regression/hypnotherapy session with Mr Hyp No No was made from a place of grappling desperation and fragile vulnerability, irresponsibly placing my wellbeing into someone’s hands which intuitively I should have known may not be right for me. Let’s face it, having a therapy session is NOT akin to trying out a new restaurant. But my wounded child often draws me to need human connection, in whatever context that connection presents itself. Surprisingly, the intervention with him was ok although I proved the tenet right - I felt uncomfortable and bearing my soul to him was way too close for comfort.

That was over a year ago. Fast forward a few months to Summer 2025.

A month or so ago, I was mildly affronted by a text chat with Mr Hyp No No. I mentioned on the brief exhange that I’d been seeing a counsellor since December 2024. To my utter surprise (and disdain), he proceeded to dispense and spew his prescriptive opinion at me (as a very newly ‘trained’ therapist). For the sake of saving face (in case he ever stumbles across this post), I’ll paraphrase what he said: “oh this can be healed quite quickly with NLP. When you know what trauma you want to heal you can heal it really quickly. You just need to remove old anchors and replace them with new ones. The rewind and timeline techniques work very well. EFT is a must and deep meditation But you also need to find peace with yourself and learn to forgive, forgiving yourself for any wrongs and others to help you move on....“

Really? That’s how you re-parent the inner child? Abracadabra, swoosh of wand, whoop-pe-do and you’re fixed of your childhood wounds that quickly? Wow. I must have missed something. How do you know exactly what trauma you want to heal when there are layers upon layers of it! And don’t get me started on the whole forgiveness malarkey. It’s not as cut and dried as just forgiving and ‘moving on’. I’ve got a post brewing in my drafts about the ‘F’ word and I’ve got a few things to say about that too!

I’m no expert but his type of prescriptive response is not only naive but dangerously irresponsible *especially* when some is feeling fragile, desperatly alone and vulnerable, like I was. When you’re crumbling internally, all sense of instinct and intution is shrouded by desperation, fragility, listlessness and the feeling of wanting to be magically scooped up and fixed. And with that desperation you kiss goodbye to any discernment of whether the intervention is going to be right for you. The natural tendancy when you’re an emotional wreck will be to gravitate and cling to people like him for a ‘quick’ solution.

But coming back to his message.

I *never* asked for his opinion, let alone his unsolicited choices on what would work best for me in healing my childhood trauma; yes well-intended but totally misdirected, leaving me mildly affronted by his oblivious but well-meaning impertinence He makes it sound easy; a click of your fingers, hocus pocus and TA- DAH, just like that, you’re healed, super quick to match a fast forward world that doesn’t understand the fallow ground of liminal space. Just to be clear, techniques like anchors, timeline and rewind are all great for programming new behaviours, getting past limiting beliefs and releasing irrational fears/phobias (I know I’ve done an NLP course before but never used it). Personally, I don’t think NLP is a good fit at all for healing childhood trauma; what I have come to realise from writing about and revisiting my own trauma is that it’s a pain body that continues to exist in your psyche, a pain body that’s still screaming in its own echo chamber, a pain body which needs to be witnessed, loved and integrated, a pain body which certainly remembers you and will control you if it’s repressed and stuffed away (as I’ve written about in my previous posts). So then it begs the question: how can a newly ‘trained’ therapist justify doling out unsolicited advice when he doesn’t even specialise in childhood trauma? Yes, he might have had one or two clients who think they’re healed of their afflictions after one or two sessions (and good for them - perhaps they did) but lets get one thing straight: he should NOT have prescribed therapy and interventions unless I’d specifically asked; if he’d have been trained properly, he’d have known that! And that is a whole other topic of conversation to be had but I’m not going to get on my soap box about that right now!

In true Columbo style just one more thing: opinions (the one you don’t ask for) are like arseholes: everyone’s got one and they all stink. It’s a sure-fire repellent when someone projects the horizontal smelly fart of unwanted suggestions in your face. Goes without saying I never bothered responding to him.

For me, my long-fix of months of therapy have been instrumental on this healing journey so far. Had I not fortuitously followed my hunch and found my counsellor last year, I don’t know how much I’d have progressed (or may be even regressed?). The past 7 months I’ve been seeing her have made a palpable and visible difference to me in how I appraoch the past, how I approach my triggers and how I’m learning to reparent the inner child. I have the understanding that you have to revisit and feel in order to heal. And yes it IS about going over the same ground again and again, not for the sake of wallowing in self pity or victimhood but about processing and learning how to manage your own emotions and shadow self until the pain is assuaged. Acknowledgement of the pain for me has been key. Having read some Jung recently, it’s about prising the pain body out of the shadows and bringing it forward, all of it, until it is a conscious part of you. It’s about literally building a relationship with your shadow and not leaving it as an ostrasized part of you crumpled away only for it to metasize. Healing is a process. It’s not about just forward imagining a timeline and manifesting your life (which is what some of these ‘famous’ gurus teach). Never conflate material success with healing (that’s yet another conversation for another day - and yes I’ve made a mental note). Living with the aftermath of childhood trauma, you don’t know WHO YOU ARE or WHAT YOU WANT having abandoned yourself a long time ago; you don’t even know what you want tomorrow let alone in a year’s time or five year’s time. I’ve never known what I truly want; I’ve never been able to set goals - how do you forward think and set goals when don’t know who the hell you are? Everything I thought I wanted that society tells you that you should want just felt like an empty pipe dream; And I’ve never known how to thrive and live fully although I’m still learning how to - it’s difficult when survival has been modus operandi for all of my adult life.

Tear a page from what these online ‘gurus’ say that you’re in victim mode if you think about your past. I remind myself that I am NOT in victim mode when I revisit the past to heal it. Living in the past is another thing entirely but revisiting to hold space for myself to process the pain with a new set of tools is totally different. Processing your pain is essential for healing to occur. Giving my pain a voice, recognising it for what it is, validating it, acknowledgment that yes, it was so very difficult and damaging for my inner child has been the ray of light that had soothed the pain and made a stormy sea within much more calm.

I don’t believe in quick fixes, not for childhood trauma anyway. The invisible wounds are the hardest to heal. Re-parenting the inner child takes time which is what I’m learning to do now I have the tools. Physical wounds don’t simply vanish with a plaster and a poke overnight do they so do you seriously think that an internal emotional wound like childhood trauma has a quick fix? Surely that is just obtuse and wishful thinking. You can’t just push a button and reset the nervous system overnight akin to the fact that you can’t rewire your brain overnight either. It takes time. True healing takes time. And patience. And it takes TLC of the emotional inner self. Just like physical wounds your internal emotional wounds have their healing timeline too. That’s my opinion anyway and yes, my arsehole stinks too.

If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:

https://buymeacoffee.com/healingmychildhoodtrauma

I must admit my journey into counselling and therapy has not been plain sailing by any stretch of the imagination and it’s something I’ve avoided for decades, thinking that ‘IT’ would go away by itself, coupled with a deep lack of trust in others (which I’m still working on) and compensated with an anxious avoidant ‘I-can-manage-on-my-own’ coping mechanism. But no one is an island. And I didn’t realise the wound would simply metasize and devour me, like it has. I started a brief stint of counselling in 2017 with a careless canceller (yes you heard me right and guessed correctly). Seriously, her behaviour was reprehensible by anyone’s standards. I fail to recall the number of times she cancelled on me at the last minute, on the day, You know, the classic family and illness-related excuses — easily No. 1 and No. 2 on the ubiquitous Excuse-O-Meter. Being unceremoniously dropped like a hot potato by a counsellor of all people not only triggered a deep wound of worthlessness but left me feeling bereft of the support that I desperately needed at the time when I was having a full on break down. Perhaps this was a re-enactment of abandonment issues and female betrayal, the lack of value I had for myself echoed in the way she treated me. After that unsuccessful stint with Careless Canceller, and proving my mistrusting, anxious avoidant part right that “I can cope”, “I’ll fix myself” and “I’ll make it on my own”, (remember the thinker thinks and the prover proves) I drew a steadfast line in wet concrete and vowed not to bother with ‘having therapy’ for any ‘issues’ ever again.

Of course, if you’ve read my very early posts, I got my kicked into touch by an enormous, emotionally painful trigger in February 2024 that left me reeling for months and spiralled me into a mini breakdown and depression; ironically, it was the fortuitous realisation and the catalyst to make me realise that there were gaping wounds to heal and that I desperately needed some help. I couldn’t carry on like this, the walking wounded. Without a shadow of doubt I needed the therapy I was avoiding. The abandonment wound was gaping open, raw and festering, about which I spilled my heart out on my early posts, rambling on the page trying to make sense of it all, posts like Where do I start?, covert gaslighting (and do I need therapy?) and silent treatment.

In earnest I started looking for the right help but the thing is: where the hell do you start? There’s literally an ocean of ‘trauma informed’ counsellors, therapists and psychotherapists out there. I tried to tune into my gut feeling of what felt right from reading bios and visiting websites but I didn’t always get it right - I wasn’t exactly in the right emotional state feeling fragile, mentally weak, alone and vulnerable. You lose touch with reality, intuition and instinct when you feel that low. You just want someone to scoop you up, make decisions for you and take care of you. It’s a dangerous state to be in as that’s when discernment wanes, barriers are weak and you can tend to cling to the first person that comes along, get taken advantage of, ripped off and end up making decisions detrimental to your wellbeing.

Spring & Summer of 2024 was hit and miss with various therapists: a stint with an EMDR therapist (who was overpriced, talked more than me and no it didn’t work), another ‘canceller‘ (because I genuinely forgot to pay) - not even a gentle reminder from her; she just flicked me to the side like an annoying ant when I was already feeling fucked up and desperately needed the session (I’d already had one session with her but even from that I could feel she was nonchalant and aloof). And then I tried a hypnotherapist who was pleasant and helpful but it just didn’t gel for me. This wasn’t the first hypnotherapy I’d had to heal my childhood trauma: I tentatively tried a session last year with an acquaintance of mine who was starting out with his practice, trying his modality of hypnotherapy ( I guess I was a guinea-pig test-client for him) ; a well meaning chap but it was way too close for comfort. It is a well-known fact not to have therapy with people you know.

Suffice to say there’s absolutely no point in seeing a therapist for the sake of it. Rapport, the ‘click’ and connection is everything to me. If it feels wrong, it normally is. Feeling fed up, I let go of the search for several months and continued in my anxious avoidant way, consuming whatever I could find online and in books about healing childhood trauma (and hoping for a magic fix by overloading myself with whatever I was reading and watching). Back in November 2024, it was just when I’d purchased the Internal Family Systems (IFS) trio of books when, serendipitously, a thought popped up out of the blue. “What about equine therapy?” the thought whispered, something that had never occurred to me before and wasn’t even on my radar. It’s a hunch I didn’t ignore, and here I am feeling so thankful that I did: I found an equine therapist who uses IFS (and yes, you’re correct in thinking she uses her horses to hold space). As soon as I spoke to her over the phone before we first met, I instantly had the warm gut glow that she was right for me; I knew she genuinely wanted to listen and genuinely wanted to help, someone who doesn’t do what she does ‘just for the money’ (and believe me I’ve spoke to a few who charge exorbitant fees for this type of therapy and don’t actually give a shit about you, the client - you can tell if someone’s disengaged over the phone, talking ‘at’ you and has a general disinterest -the voice speaks for the soul). With the therapist I’d stumbled across, the price was modest; the timing was perfect and she had an opening just coming up which meant I was able to start straight away. Some things are meant to be and that is life unfolding with pure perfection. Never ignore a hunch!

I didn’t expect her to magically ‘fix’ me; she didn’t come with a magic wand, although thinking about it, she is the angelic, fairy-god-mother type with a soft and kind presence and energy to match; a sparkly white gown and some wings would suit her very well. Perhaps she was heaven sent to me? In all honesty, she has been a god send in my life, the conduit and the catalyst to help me start my long overdue healing process, which, may I add, is not an A to B linear journey but a big, messy, pencil scribble with no beginning and no end, just a transition of un-becoming. And it wasn’t about ‘just showing up’; it was about committing to the process, committing to myself and committing to my my inner child, who was, up until that point, screaming in the echo chamber of my psyche. I listened. I learned. I learned what my triggers meant. I learned it’s not me, but part of me that gets triggered. I’ve learned that the parts of myself that I used to label as bad, I’m now learning to love and listen to with compassion. Because these are the wounded parts of me frozen in time that need love in order to heal. Love heals. Through her support I began to understand what my wounded ‘parts’ are, who they are, how old they are, how alive they are and what they needed from me to finally be set free and melt into me. My wounded child needed to be seen, heard and witnessed, over and over again, until the pain was assuaged. The pain needs to be felt, rather than being overrided with anger and sometimes vengeful thoughts of revenge. It’s true what they say: feeling is healing.

Seven months down the line, the magic healing dust she’s given me is a set of tools on how to self-regulate, how to validate and how to soothe and re-parent my inner child, tools I didn’t have 7 months ago. Acknowledging and validating the pain of my inner child for me has been the most important thing I could ever have done for her. It’s what my little girl frozen in time desperately needed to be released from her icy prison, with warm, loving life breathed back into her, to unfreeze her, for her to feel safe, to feel free again. She needed to be seen, felt and heard again, her pain and anguish validated and acknowledged. The memories needed a voice and as a writer, the simple act of expressing what needs to be expressed candidly, in all it’s ugly glory has been cathartic beyond measure.

And something has clearly shifted in me lately. I believe it’s a combination of things that are coming together for me now - therapy, writing these memoirs and chanting. I’ve been chanting regularly for around two months now - Buddhist chanting and OM chanting - it’s a daily practice, that and reciting mantras (indian song like hymns that are ususally in Sanskrit). Your own voice can be a great source of sound healing on the nervous system. You don’t need to pay for pricey sound healing. Use your own voice.

Here’s what’s changed in me....

In those 5 weeks of not having a therapy session, I didn’t feel the urge that I needed another session. Not in an arrogant, self assured, cocky way, but with a quiet inner knowing that I’ve somehow grown, beginning to come together at seams that were once ruptured and torn, with an inner bedrock that’s forming, offering me a certain strength that I’m safe. There’s a connection that is growing within me; the relationship with myself has changed. It’s strange: there’s a belonging within me that I haven’t felt before. A stitching together. Maybe this is true self love and I am the beloved that I’ve been looking for? As in the words of Rumi “to find the beloved, you must become the beloved“.

Since returning from my solitary break three weeks ago, the loving stillness of nature’s embrace remains within me, adding to my new found tranquility: there is something magical about being alone in nature, no electricity, no wifi, no other humans, only a few animals and getting back to basics. I wonder what the animals were thinking or feeling when I was chanting at the top of the hill when I was away? Maybe they understand the sounds better than I do. Sound isn’t something to be understood, it’s to be experienced and imbibed.

Here’s what I’m doing differently: I’m listening to my body; I’m learning to say No when it doesn’t feel right for me. I’m not desperate for or craving connection like I used to; my instincts have deepened; I don’t feel the need to reply to messages immediately. In fact a very good friend of mine said “I’m loving your new energy!“ on a text message only last week and we haven’t even spoken. You can feel people through the written word can’t you? The neediness seems to have dissipated; I love having friends but I’m putting myself first and I’m not so bothered if I don’t hear from anyone all day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no hermit, I want meaningful connection but I’m not craving it right now. It’s there if I want it. Plus I’m living more in the moment and actively thinking about what I want for me, what’s right for me and not trying to escape or getting lost in rootless thoughts of what’s happening around me. If I do, I pull it back to the now. The moment is where the magic is. I know when I’m in my head too much and I stroke to and talk to my anxiety like a fluffy pet. I’ll soothe it and tell it that there’s no danger, we don’t need to expect the worst and we’re safe right now. I felt the anxiety pop up a couple of days ago expecting the worst when I read an email. But I’m learning to calm myself down again and rather than put my system on red alert (the chronic anxiety part of me that I wrote about a few months ago) I shift back into the moment, tell my anxiety that we’re safe and let’s deal with anything IF it comes. In fact, I temper the emails I get which I know might err on the side of confrontatious and leave them in my inbox unread until I feel I want to reply. I’m putting me first. It’s me and my life that’s the most important thing right now. Me and my healing, what I want from my life and what the little girl wanted. No other external dick head deserves a piece of my time or energy. Not one bit. And I’m learning to remain emotionally detached to conserve my tank, not majoring over minors, not sweating the small stuff, not allowing theives to steal my precious energy as I’ve done in the recent past. It’s all a very conscious process.

When I first started this journey I wondered how I’d know if I’m healing, or was starting to heal or if I ever would heal. I think I said in a post last year it’s not like a scab that you can just pick off. How do you witness internal emotional wounds and injuries heal? Well I think I’m beginning to understand; I’m not healed yet, but I know I’m in the process of healing. You can’t measure a feeling you can only describe it. So I’ll leave you with the words of my fairy god mother therapist, from yesterday’s session which is my last for the time being (although I will have some check ins now and again):

“The main changes I saw today, or should I say felt, was a much calmer energy. This was noticed through your actions and speech. For example, in earlier sessions you felt a strong need to walk and move and your speech would become very ‘quick’. What I noticed today is you seemed much more settled and happy to stand still and be present. Previously, you would sometimes change the subject to focus on something the horses were doing rather than focusing on within.

I also noticed when you were discussing your triggers, you didn’t appear to move into ‘fight’ mode and simply accepted how that part of you felt and held space for it. It was lovely to see. You also reflected on what you were feeling instead of focusing on where to place blame outwardly.

You have come such a long way from our initial session and seeing your growth has been truly wonderful to see and I thank you for allowing me to be a part of“.

My healing journey continues...I’m not out of the woods just yet...

If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:

https://buymeacoffee.com/healingmychildhoodtrauma

After the unholy trinity left, Mum and I were alone, isolated and the hunted. Completely cut off and ostracised by any family we had, (she was the divorced black sheep of the family and we literally had no support for anywhere- no hyperbole), under duress I learned that I had to keep my sword drawn and be on guard 24/7, chronic anxiety alarming me with visions of attack by aggressors and readiness to defend. By now the worm had turned and I’d changed overnight into the angst-ridden, rageful, confrontatious creature although at this point, school was my only outlet for my pain and aggression - the abused became the abuser, the bullied became the bully - which I will recount but not in this post. At home, with Mum now unravelling and spiralling into deep, profound depression of the sudden abandonment and neither of us able to deal with the victimisation by the local thugs, I’d lose myself in superhero-type mental movies where the victim becomes the victor, the quintessential anti-hero, usually where I’m a huge, indomitable power, donning an automatic weapon, and better still, being invisible as my superpower, so I can harass, dominate and effortlessly subdue my aggressors. “If only....” I’d muse, and lose myself in these violent mental movies to abate the fear. I shake my head in sheer dismay just even recounting and recalling these memories and growing up from a child into a teenager were the worst, most abnormal and dysfunctional days of my life. It’s shocking to think that as a teenage girl I’d be getting lost in killing fantasies of my aggressors rather than losing myself in fantasies of a famous muse, obsessing over teen girly things like the latest fashion or dreaming of the future that I wanted for myself. Innocent I was not. Naive navigating the world: definitely.

It was from those times as a teen that I learned to cloak myself in defence: constantly.

I recall on a number of occasions being so frightened late at night, usually around midnight, when local racist thugs would knock violently on our front doors and windows, to intimidate mum and I, knowing we were easy prey. They used to knock on the front door with so much force (which led straight into the house, no porch), I thought they were going to kick the door in; and then they’d aggressively knock on the single-glazed glass on the front wooden windows which led straigh into the lounge. I would tremble with fear under the covers, just wishing I wasn’t there, unable to run away, frozen in fear that they might smash the windows or kick the door in, get in and attack us. Luckily for us, the windows never got smashed in and the front door never kicked in, but I had a vivid nightmare which I can still recall today of a bearded, down and out, hill-billy vagrant type of man who probably hadn’t washed in weeks, scowling and angry ready to throw a breeze block through our front window. It was just at that moment my eyes would suddenly opeb being jolted out of my my sleep, before witnessing the horror of the the front bay window being smashed in. Normally dreams float away like butterflies, elusive to catch once conscious but I remember this image of that nightmare: it’s etched deeply. To this day I have PTSD when someone knocks my door too loudly – I literally jump out of my skin and my heart beats as if it’s bursting out of my chest, and it takes me straight back to that time of the teenage girl trembling under the covers, as if someone’s coming to get me.

I cry for her. But it’s not me crying, it’s her. I console and comfort that part of me when I think about her and telling her that it’s ok to be upset, that it was really hard for her back then, that no girl should have had to endure what she went through. I’m learning to hold space for her and give her the support she never, ever got when she needed it. It’s only then that she’ll be able to safely come out of exile and melt peacefully into my inner world.

By the time I was in my late teens to early 20’s my trauma pain body was formed and fully fledged with claws and teeth. “Why me?” reverberated in my psyche and mind for years. Yes it was a victim mindset but I was entitled to think like that. I was a product of my pain. I had unwittingly morphed into a rageful, bitter and slightly unhinged 20-something...although I certainly wouldn’t have described myself as such back then. There was an inner Hades within me, and like Persephone, I was carried away into its underworld: I had drowned in a thick, turbulent and stormy ocean within me, within which I’d formed gills and learned to breathe in. I thought that life owed me something back but in all honestly I was waiting for a saviour, to be rescued from my underworld, oblivious that I needed to rescue myself. I’d become possessed by my pain, the dark side my filter. And here’s how it manifested in the years that ensued.

Akin to the movie, my “Babadook” made me maladjusted and unhinged. It skewed and distorted my thinking. My emotions were a soup of heavy grief, rage, bitterness and anger, which underpinned my thoughts leading to poor choices and erratic behaviour. Having not experienced a ‘normal’ and happy childhood, I was bitter about it, really bitter, which remained a constant undercurrent for years. Of course, I was oblivious at this point that I was traumatised and that my pain body had become me. I was only too aware of the feelings and emotions I harboured. I had uncontrollable rage and anger issues: I would fly off the handle at the smallest, most inconsequential of things; it was as though I needed to expel the thick tar of rage out of me but no amount of blowing-up would soothe it or assuage the rage. The skewed thinking and unhinged part of me manifested as a wildly jealous and spiteful streak which drove me to do the most insane and hideously irrational things, nothing life-threatening or criminal, just thoughtless, bitchy and childish things like interfering in other people’s lives who I thought had it better than me, to try and fuck it all up for them in some convoluted way, and in turn that would make me feel better. Very naive I know but no one told me that wasn’t the way. The truth is I hated myself and I hated my life - I wished I was someone else somewhere else. I hated being me. My deeply wounded part coveted other people’s lives: what they had, where they lived, who they were married to, hated other people’s success and the ease with which some people seemed to glide though life, so effortlessly. It felt as though everyone else had a much easier life, had it much better than me and that life was surely against me, being dealt a shitty hand of cards. Yes I was in complete victim mode with a ‘why-me-how-come’ inner echo chamber that formed the basis of my existence. Can you blame me? “Why me…why did I have to be born into this fucked up family?”; “why couldn’t I have had an easier life?”; “why can’t I find success…everyone else seems to have it so much easier than me, well they didn’t have the shit upbringing like I did?”; “why haven’t I got a boyfriend…when am I going to get married…how come other girls seem to find someone really nice and they’re not even that pretty!”; “no ones going to want me in the shit hole where I live - it’s shameful”; “why couldn’t I have grown up in a nice house and a nice area with nice neighbours…my life would have turned out so differently”; “why have I had a shitty upbringing, in a shithole of an area?”; “why couldn’t I have had a normal family and do normal things like summer holidays, or going abroad and have big family gatherings on special occasions?” ; “why did I have to grow up on the breadline, with a fucked up start to my life - I just haven’t had a fair chance at all?”. “I’ve had a much worse start than anyone else I know! I could have a had a much better start than this! Why me? It’s just not fair! It’s not fucking fair!!”

That’s the 20-something year old me talking by the way. That’s what the inner echo chamber sounded like most of the time. Of course I didn’t realise that I was constantly repelling any goodness with this mindset, but I never had any therapy as a young woman, something that probably could have saved me back then to help reframe and reshape my life.

Looking back, it was as though I’d developed some sort of a personality disorder, although I’ve never been diagnosed as having such. Perhaps I had developed a bipolar disorder, although I do believe I was deeply depressed. I became a foul-mouthed, confrontatious, impulsive and aggressive creature; I was a bitch to my mum in my late teens and early 20’s, telling her how useless she is, screaming at her constantly that she was neglectful and ineffectual as a parent; I was deeply resentful that she kept us where we were living as a teen, feeling deprived of a normal childhood, having to take on adult roles at 14, constantly trying to hold space for and motivate my, by then, extremely depressed mother who was in her mid-late 30’s, settling for mediocre jobs and unemplyed in between. I just wanted another role model, someone to guide me and take me under their wing. I’m ashamed to say that the pain body resented my mum and wanted her gone. I wanted a better life, a better family and to be somewhere else away from everyone, including my mother. But the pain body steered me away from sensible choices. It made me lost, scattered and fragmented, dominated by a toxic, compulsive and impulsive ‘doing’ energy which enticed me like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn, taking me way off-track down the wrong roads to dead ends and dry valleys. It made me forget completely who I am and abandon everything about myself that was honest, innate and true, all the goodness sucked out of me with my beautiful creativity left hung out to dry. I was lost and aimless and became a hollow imposter living my life. I was always in a hurry to get somewhere, wildly impatient as well as hasty, always wanting the shortcut, an energy that still follows me today, although I now know how to temper it (and learning the art of patience in mid-life). I wonder what opportunities passed me by back then on this hasty and aimless trajectory that never allowed me to stand still long enough to hear the distant and muffled cries of my soul which at this point, was gagged and shackled, caged and locked up on the maybe-later-shelf. Glimmers of the real me flashed like torch in the dark now and again but the voice of my pain body kept me on the wrong road telling me there’s something else, somewhere else, but always selling myself short. I threw away lucrative job offers or worse still, I wouldn’t even turn up to job interviews. I never made enough money, fecklessly floating from rootless job to rootless job, on the dole in between and ending up in pyramid schemes where I lost more money than I made, trying to find the quick route to success, building up a mound of loan and credit card debt and keeping me exactly where I was because I hated it so much. It’s ironic, what you hate, you get more of. What you resist, persists. I was fuelled by an unhinged “I’ll show you“ attitude to the transgressors in my life, not fully understanding that the energy was totally misplaced. It’s fills me with heaviness to think that underneath the mountain of pain was was an intelligent, insanely creative and talented young woman, who could have nutured that talent and easily have forged a life as such. She was a bright spark with initiative, but completely fragmented through no fault of her own, having no sense at all of her worth and abilities, waiting for some normality and most of all, waiting for a saviour. That’s what I wanted most of all: a saviour to nudge and beckon me onto the right path. But the saviour never came. Or perhaps it passed me by in my haste. Or maybe the beloved saviour was within me to find. This is painful for me to write but rather than blaming her, or filling myself with regret of the life I could have lived or should have lived, I have compassion for that young woman who just got totally fragmented by her pain, totally lost in her wilderness and possessed by a pervasive, all controlling and all consuming, almighty pain body vortex that sucked her into it, and didn’t let her go for a very long time. Beneath the unhinged and angry facade lay a spiritually and emotionally broken young woman: depressed, lonely, deeply sensitive, broken-hearted and insecure, fearful and distrusting of the world, heavy with grief and burdened with the toxic shame of betrayal and worthlessness, searching for someone to love and accept her so she could love and accept herself.

Life gave me a break - things settled down somewhat when I was 28 years old for about 8 years until turbulence and betrayal followed me again and I eventually imploded leading to my 2017 breakdown - that’s another blog for another day. But it’s no coincidence that I imploded. It was bound to happen sooner or later, trying to come up for air in a very chaotic inner world which eventually would swallowed me, the dark goddess Ereshkigal bringing me into her underworld and hanging me on meat hook, a painful initiation of the soul.

Fight mode was and has been my modus operandi for a very, very long time. The fight and chaos within was projected outwardly into my reality. A self-fulfilling cycle, a loop that has no end and no beginning, but like ouroborous, fighting is akin to biting your own tail. It will always hurt. You can see where it comes from though, what that energy body is trying to do to correct itself with presenting fight scenarios. There’s no winners or losers though, just loss. Fighting leaks energy; it leaks your light, drains your joy and crushes creativity. My life thus far has routinely present me with re-enactments of betrayal or injustice and will continue to do so until I choose not to fight back or choose a different approach. It’s exhausting: how many fights will it take; how many wrongs can I right and at what expense? Perhaps choosing not to fight back isn’t losing? Perhaps choosing peace rather than the fight will assuage the pain and will take me off on a different, more joyful trajectory? It takes more inner strength to walk away than take on the battle. In losing the battle you win the war. How can I erase the indelibly etched streak in my veins that wants justice, to put people in their place, to right the wrongs that I couldn’t right as a child? As I write this I realise that perhaps my only solution is to consciously reign myself in. The rage still lives in me to this day, not as voraciously or fierce but from time to time I can blow up over minor things or have an urge to want to fight back about a wrong-doing or ‘put someone in their place’. I remind myself that to not fight back is not synonymous with weakness, which is how I used to see it.

The way forward is self-compassion and self-acceptance: to fully see and be with the wounded parts; it’s what I’ve been taught in IFS therapy. I no longer have judgement or ill-feeling toward the young woman I used to be. Neither do do I berate her. Nor do I burden myself with heavy regret. I now comfort the regret with a soft blanket of understanding. I soothe the “I should have’s” with a hot water bottle of compassion. And I warm the “what if’s” with a cuddle of kindness and acknowledge the pain that the child endured with an embrace of heart-filled love, pain which rendered her so emotionally and spiritually broken that it’s taken a lifetime to try and fix.

Isn’t this what we must do with our pain body and exiled parts? I think this is what self-love really is: to be tender and gentle with our wounded parts, feed them with loving kindness, acknowledge them in all their glory, and as as ‘ugly’ as these parts might be, to witness them, validate them, acknowledge them so that rather than metamorphasizing to become us, the pain body simply dissolves into our soul to alchemise and evolve.

If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:

https://buymeacoffee.com/healingmychildhoodtrauma

It’s just too huge a subject in my life. That’s probably why it stuck in my throat chakra, not being able to spit it out.

I never coined the word ‘Babadook’ although it might ring a bell. If you’re not familiar with it - no spoilers. It’s a movie I was drawn to watch about 7-8 years ago when I was swept up full flow into the rapids of my descent. It’s not uncommon is it: messages often come into our life in symbolism and metaphor with books or movies we’re drawn to, something that speaks to you at a visceral level nudging you into understanding something about your own life. I could tell from the poster that it was on the creepy, horror-type side (which I’m not really into and therefore not easy bed-time viewing for me). But nevertheless I gave in to the internal nudge to watch it. And yes it was as creepy as hell. To the uninitiated soul, that’s all it is - a chilling horror movie. But if you watch it metaphorically, you’ll understand the deeper meaning and message.

As the story unfolded, I knew exactly what this movie was all about: the repressed pain body. Unacknowledged grief and unhealed trauma, stuffed into the recesses of the psyche, unresolved and repressed, simmering in the background to boiling point and the unwitnessed exiled parts of that trauma-pain-body frantically searching for the tiniest opening to release itself. The more you try and hide it, destroy it, burn it, without acknowledging the pain body, the more all-consuming it becomes, appearing again and again and again, each time reappearing stronger and more malevolent. And if you don’t confront and heal your pain, it will eventually manifest with your inner demon literally becoming you, possessing you, controlling you, pathologically. The film spoke to me at a visceral level, as I drew parallels with my own life.

At that point in time, I was around 42 or 43 years old. I knew I had an abyss of unresolved pain, contributing to a major breakdown in 2017; it was starkly apparent to me that I was consumed by my shadow for much of my teens and into my early-adult life. The pain had shackled my soul and possessed me. And I knew I hadn’t healed any of it, raw as the day it happened, which I glossed over back then with false positivity telling myself: “it’s in the past now”, “I’ve moved on”, “it doesn’t bother me anymore” or flippantly telling myself: “get over it” and “just get on with it”. Like the woman in the movie who couldn’t come to terms with what had happened in her life, I hadn’t fully come to terms with what had happened in mine….

(quote from The Beautiful in the Bad click to read): “I was polarised by my shadow for most of my 20’s, an all consuming, rageful, bitter, hateful, envious, jealous and angry shadow, (which I think I need to write more about) a by-product of my pain body, absolutely no doubt about that“

My mum told me how she witnessed me change, for the worse, literally overnight, when I was around 14 years old. It was after the unholy trinity abandoned us surreptitiously and suddenly. I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

From a loving, congenial, attentive and crazily creative 14 year old with bags of initiative, I became bi-polar with an angry, angst-ridden, foul-mouthed, bitter, confrontatious, spiteful creature that would rear its head, vitriolic venom aimed at anything that upset me. And no, this wasn’t just teenage hormones running amok. There was thick, black bile of melancholy infused with shards of rage cutting through my veins. A dark energy took my soul hostage for years, kept it shackled and consumed me. Just like the woman in the movie, I’d unknowingly stuffed away trauma ans grief into the corners of my psyche, only for that pain body to metasize into a malevolent, stronger, darker force which took over in an invisible coup d’etat.

I had become possessed by my pain.

It didn’t start at 14 years old; my pain body began to take shape around the age of 7.

From age of 7, I’d learned what it feels like to live in fear of terror every single day of my life, being hyper-vigilant against racial abuse and harassment where we lived. We were hideously targeted as the ‘only pakis in the street’ which I recount in this blog here. This was in 1980’s Britain where the National Front and ‘paki bashing’ was rife. My body would react, tensing up in defence with any passer-by in the street, accompanied with the sinking feeling and heavy anticipation of being hurled racial diatribes or worse, being attacked. Living in fear becomes you and I got used to being the hunted. There wasn’t much support in those days; the Police would come to our home, take some sort of statement from my mum, but nothing would change. They didn’t give a shit. Mum was too scared to move, thinking we might jump from the frying pan into the fire, so it was far better to stay with the devils you know. It wasn’t straightforward to just leave either. We were in council housing back then so it was up to them to get us rehomed, and where they’d dump us, that was anyone’s guess. The racial abuse became a part of everyday life, our new normal, something I had to toughen up and suck up as a little, girl although I’d inhale the respite in the quiet in-between when the abuse would lie dormant for a while. I can only imagine what that racial abuse actually did to me as a child, placed on a battle field of hatred like that, how my system became attuned to feeling terrorised, in high alert defence of real danger, unable to defend myself. Defence became my modus operandi as a child which has stuck with me for life - it’s still my normal reflex and stand-by setting. I expect attack and ready for it, on high alert. Highly strung is what I’m often called. That’s what happens when you’ve lived on your nerves for so long. Even today I’m way too defensive and mocked for not being able to ‘take a joke‘ or jovial jibe – it cuts deep and I feel affronted. You think that everyone’s got it in for you. But delicate and fragile is what you become when you’ve grown up in the face of real fear. And there’s no shame in being delicate and fragile.

To compound matters, I was the child to a dysregulated mother - scorned, verbally abused and beaten by her emotionally unavailable parents, I had similar treatment when her rage was triggered; learned behaviour can be a dangerous thing.

At 11 years old when I started secondary school, I learned what depression felt like when I was singled out and victimised by cruel coming-of-age girls for being the odd one out, the only coloured girl in my form class who didn’t know anyone. School became hostile territory but returning home every day was becoming equally as hostile. Far from a safe and cosy haven, acrid, bitter and acrimonious tensions were rising in the family household between my mum and her sisters who lived with us, where I witnessed regular vitriolic rows between the women, on occasions even physical. Have you ever seen women fight? Three against one, two of them restraining my mum when she tried to lash out in self-defence. It was a soul-destroying and despicable sight for a then pre-teen girl. There was no respite which ever way I turned, nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, racists to deal with on the street, bitter acrimony at home and bullied at school. I felt battered from all directions and to be honest, and looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t run away from home but maybe the fear of being hunted kept me with the devils I knew rather than the devils I didn’t know.

By 14 I’d learned what female and familial betrayal meant and to have your heart shattered into a million pieces. My mum and I were abandoned stealthily, suddenly and surreptitiously by the unholy trinity who lived with us back then, women who were my surrogate mothers (that’s what aunts are), who I whole-heartedly loved and trusted with my life. And it’s my life that they played with. Reeling with shock and utterly shattered, there was no room to process or grieve as I was obligated and compelled to hold space for my mum, being the only confidante for her. In fact, I don’t even remember crying the day I came home and mum had told me they’d taken what they wanted and left. I was numb to the sudden betrayal. The most consuming emotion I recall was fear of being alone and the terrifying fact they’d conspired to leave us in that hell hole to suffer our fate and perish, whatever that fate was, fed to the wolves, left to fend for ourselves and fight the local thugs off alone (whilst the unholy trinity jetted off on fancy all inclusive holidays, unbeknownst to me at the time which I discovered decades later). Before that we had safety in numbers. Now mum and I were alone. It was that bit that has been unpalatable for all these years and it was until only a few weeks ago that I finally found the strength to write about it, a year into this healing journey (undigested pain part 1 and part 2). I’m only now coming to terms with that dastardly deed and I don’t think I’ve fully healed my broken heart, how my own flesh and blood could put a 14 year old girl and her mother in the face of actual harm and danger, potentially to perish alone, completely unsupported and isolated: we never knew what the local racist thugs would think of next to try and victimise u). I remember how isolated we were. We couldn’t just pick up the phone and call someone for help - there wasn’t anyone to phone. No family, no community. As a single, divorced Indian mother, still quite taboo in our culture back then, Mum felt the shame of this, like the outlier, and therefore stayed away from trying to gain help from our community, in fear of being stigmatised, labelled and judged, which brought with it other fears of exposing us as easy targets. The Indian culture can be torturously acidic and hideously judgmental if you didn’t fit the cultural norm. So we struggled in the face of fear, alone.

I’m finally processing this part, the sudden and surreptitious abandonment, 35 years following the event. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long but the pain of that betrayal is so vast it echoes, and so thorny the pain is still palpable, with roots embedded deeply, causing a deep rupture when I tried to pull it out too quickly. But in writing this I think I am finally beginning to unroot this pain, seaming the wound back together stitch by stitch, and coming to terms with everything that happened and shaped me. As I’ve said before that it’s not what happened to you but what it did to you, internally, emotionally and spiritually. We are all made up differently. You cannot crudely compare traumas. Our DNA is unique. No two healing journey’s will ever be the same. And if you hate people saying (or reading from new agers) to “stop having a victim mentality” “you need to move on” then give them short shrift. It’s not about “living in the past” or having a “victim mentality”. Internal wounds need a different kind of care. So if it’s taking longer to heal than someone else, have some compassion for yourself.

Continued in Part Two...

(PS it’s taken me weeks to try and write this post which speaks volumes. The 110x revised post, remember?).

If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:

https://buymeacoffee.com/healingmychildhoodtrauma

I’m so conscious of the fact that I haven’t written in three weeks, not because I didn’t want to, but I just couldn’t, feeling completely crippled with the inability to express myself. I hate it when I can’t write. I do have a partial excuse though for the three week hiatus: I’ve been away to Devon for 9 days to my happy place for the second year in a row: the idyllic, off-grid shepherd’s hut in the middle of a smallholding where I needed to exhale for the whole time I was there but interrupted by a silly notion fueled by my compulsive doing-energy goblin that lives in my psyche. Following my previous post, where I candidly expressed how my pain body controlled me, I was left with an itch: I didn’t feel I’d expressed myself wholeheartedly and knew there was much more to be said on the matter. Maybe subconsciously I’ve been holding back? I felt a nagging urge to write something more profound about about my ‘pain body possession’; there was something else begging to be expressed. The problem is that I was desperately trying to get that post written before I went away but my writing was surrounded by a heavy, thick and disjointed energy along with a tightness in my body; there was no fluidity and it felt too contrived, forcing the flow and trying to make words fit on the page rather than just saying what I wanted to say. The stream of consciousness that normally flows through my fingers effortlessly felt like my fingers were wading through a bowl of sticky black treacle. After 110 or so revisions, I gave up. It was like the potter’s wheel turning way too quickly and clay flying off the wheel and spattering into a mess on the wall. That’s how my writing felt. And the post is now sitting in my drafts like like a wet blob of clay that just requires my creative, undivided attention to mould into something. Actually a lot of my writing starts off like that: a spontaneous, incoherent, rambling stream of consciousness captured into my drafts when the mood strikes, sitting there; lots of wet blobs of word clay waiting to be moulded into something coherent.

It’s very cathartic to write these posts and my writing is ritualistic cleansing, these archives serving as an altar to my healing. So when I can’t write, like I’ve been feeling these lately, I feel lost, listless and adrift and I feel crippled, like I’ve lost something very precious. It is a precious gift, one’s creativity, a gift we are born with that no one can remove which is why it feels so debilitating when I can’t write. Of course I haven’t lost the ability to write; I’ve been pressuring myself to get something written and to get things done having lost so many months of my life earlier this year. But my creativity doesn’t like to be hurried, neither does it like pressure nor being caged into timelines.

I desperately needed a change of scenery as my home has felt and become very toxic lately - if you’ve read my previous posts you’ll know I’ve had a shit storm to deal with this year with a legal battle I was foisted into that lasted around 4 months, an energy behemoth which hoovered up those months of my life that I’ll never, ever get back. That ordeal gave my already fucked up, dysregulated nervous system a pounding it didn’t need. After the High Court hearing was over in mid-May it took me 4 weeks just to pick up a vacuum cleaner and tidy my house. I’ve been feel totally flat, paralysed and depressed. It was mid June when I mustered the motivation to actually peel myself off of my settee and think about tidying my home. My home was a mess. That was most certainly a reflection of my inner state – a collapse and total mess. And of course like any battle there are frayed ends to deal with in the aftermath so it wasn’t completely over in the courtroom. For me, there’s nothing like time in nature to soothe and bathe my crying soul. So I booked some time away to decompress in my usual panacea of unbridled nature: breath taking panoramic views of rolling countryside and the idyllic peace and beauty of morning sunshine and birdsong. That, a shepherds hut, an outdoor shower and loo, no electricity, no wifi, just a few animals and 3 acres of a small holding to myself and a scant 4g and mobile connection on top of the hill if wanted to make contact with the outside world. However whilst I was packing for my solitary countryside break, a notion crossed my mind (engendered by the toxic doing-energy goblin I mentioned earlier): perhaps I might be able to write being away and finish the 110x revised post; and then, as thoughts do, it morphed: “why not turn this break into a mini writers retreat?” “Yes! What a good idea!”

Impulsively acting on the notion, I packed my laptop as well as a decade of journals – yes, I mean it - a decade of journals. A big, huge, heavy cloth tote bag full to the brim of beautifully embossed, hard-back, metallic, magnetic-closing journals, my descent and breakdown indelibly etched into them. Since 2013 I created the habit to indulge and treat myself to beautiful looking journals, embossed with all the things that make my soul sing: eye-catching designs of flowers or birds or butterflies that just feel good to hold and caress with my hands. I thought the peace and quiet of the countryside would inspire me to write the 110x revised blog followed by lazy days mining my journals. And, in addition to a decade of journals, I packed my art pad and pastels, in case I wanted draw. My laptop, a decade of journals and my drawing materials. Really, what the actual fuck was I thinking? Did I forget that I was only away for just 9 days, not 9 months? What did I think I was going to achieve in 9 days and wasn’t the point to try to decompress from the warfare that I’d been subjected to? Suffice to say I think I got the writers retreat part all wrong…it just didn’t feel right...the compulsive ‘doing’ energy was misplaced there in the peaceful countryside. I needed to ‘be’ no ‘do. I put the goblin in its place.

I’m sure the toxic, compulsive ‘must-do-this’ energy stems from the wounded child part of me. Toxic doing is survival mode after all, something that most of us in some way, shape or form are afflicted with as a symptom of living in a very sick and unwell ‘modern’ society. Having the tracks of trauma within makes me hyper-susceptible to toxic doing, one super-fast speed setting, survival mode on steroids, as thriving doesn’t and never has come naturally to me. It’s an effort to slow down and thrive and make decisions based on my wellbeing rather than survival. Suffice to say I did sod all for the last 3 days of that break and I’m glad I just lazed around in the sunshine, it’s what my body and mind needed the most. I’m thinking perhaps I need to get away again and do it right next time? Learning to slow down and thrive that is - I’m still learning to thrive, it doesn’t come naturally or easily to me.

With the stark inability to write whilst away, and feeling creatively crippled, here’s something I scribbled out on Whatsapp to myself (a thought note as I like to call them) on day 6 of my break (there’s a 4G connection at the top of hill where I was staying) – raw and verbatim...unedited exactly as it came out:

11/7/25:

I cried this morning for no reason. Well it’s a build up of emotion. I came here to decompress but in my head I thought I’d make it some sort of writers retreat, go through all my old journals for a Substack I want to create – there’s about 15 of them. I’m all prepped with my linux mint laptop too and try and get the blog written. But I didn’t realise that the task of going through old journals is onerous. Or perhaps deep down I didn’t want to come here to ‘work’ on my moving forward; I came here to stay still and experience stillness. But I’m pressuring myself to get things done. That’s not the point of getting away to a shepherd’s hut for solitary time with yourself and nature. I still have this compulsive ‘doing’ energy. TO DO. Which ironically my very early journals that I was reading from 2013-2015 were forcing me to do – keep moving forward and not to stand still whilst I was breaking down...

What is this compulsive energy I have brought with me here to get things done and at that, get it done quickly? I’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do. What do I think I’m going to miss? It’s a toxic energy I’ve somehow either brought here with me, lives in me or is a pre-dominant part of me when slowing down and chilling out is what I came here for and what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t have to do anything today if I don’t want to. No one is judging me (apart from me). Nothing to do. Niente. I’m still crying a bit. The donkeys (Jeff & George) have sneaked up behind me in the field that I’m sitting in front of to hold space for me. They must be feeling my pain and upset. I turned around abruptly but they got spooked. That upset me I needed their presence in that moment.

I still have this strong survival setting of getting things done quickly. Get the photos and videos to people quick of where I am and what I’m doing!! Why can’t later or tomorrow or next week be ok??! I cut some flowers that the host is growing, my favourite, dahilas, put them in a vase on the small cast iron table outside the hut on the decking that overlooks the field, and my compulsion is to send the pictures straight away to her (I only sent it to my mum). What’s the compulsion to do things right away?

I’ve been regimented for the past few days since I got here – get up (early), exercise, shower, eat and do the journals – it’s felt far too structured, too orderly, too regimented for being away to get away from it all. There is no real order in nature – it’s perfectly imperfect - I should be learning from that and imbibing lessons from nature.

On my 2^nd cup of coffee and it’s only just gone 10am. I still feel a toxic pushing type of energy that I’ve still got to wash my hair, exercise, eat and that I might be meeting friends at 7pm. I think the only way to get out of this energy is counter it head on. Perhaps I might not do anything today.

The energy is NOT inspirational – it’s a nagging energy, a tugging energy. It is toxic. I feel like I’m going to leave myself behind if I don’t get through all my journals quick and have a plan that I can hit the ground running with when I get back. That’s what I thought this break would be but it’s not. I needed a mental break. I needed to de compress and come out here to do fuck all. To just be and do as I please.

Why am I restless....?

I was supposed to come out here to try and heal, not force myself to be doing all the time...just to go with the flow, enjoy the animals, the scenery. Opened my sketch pad but the flow wasn’t there and it felt so shit. The feeling place was just not there. I brought too much with me lap top, art stuff, journals, Substack notes which I haven’t read. I just needed a break. I needed to decompress. Should have just brought a journal and art stuff and left everything else behind. I feel like I’ve wasted precious time trying to do too much – what the fuck was I thinking?

I must be releasing some grief which explains the tears. Never chanted yesterday. Chanted today and cut some flowers and pottered around. Now I’ve decided to stop pushing it feels like something wants to be released. A pain body. What am I afraid is not going to get done? This is definitely not flow state. Is this to do with my inner child? Why can’t I slow down? I’m forcing myself to slow down and I’m crying. Something wants to be released right now. There’s no need for any rush or haste. Things will work out in their own time – you can’t force the flow. I feel like I lost 3 months of my life in that shitty legal battle which carried on afterwards for weeks, I’m the only one taking the reigns with all the shit where I live and it’s all soaking up my time and I desperately trying to make up for it. Really I need to just let go. Sitting on this bench at the top of the field listening to sheep baa-ing, cows moo-ing, birds tweeting and calling each other, distant sound of farm machinery, wood pigeon coo-ing, chattering congregation of crows squawking, it’s peaceful and idyllic and I should be soaking it all in. Perhaps if I just do that - soak it all in, do what I want when I want and follow what I feel inspired to do rather than what I ‘should’ be doing, then I’ll have my head back in order. I want to come back feeling refreshed, not unaccomplished or a failure for not ‘getting things done’. I need to let me do what I really want to do. It’s either a resounding YES to whatever it is I want to do - no ifs buts or maybes – YES or nothing – no pressure to do anything. Just be and go with the energy where it flows…

Was also pressuring myself to write the blog post but just couldn’t….creativity doesn’t like pressure or a cage…

There is also a journal entry in the Moomins journal I wrote yesterday about a shit sticky feeling going through my journals. This time away was for a mental break. I’ll do what I can but I’m not going to try and do too much….

In the back of my mind I’ve got moving house, going back to the BS of where I live, if the house will sell, what if moving to the countryside isn’t for me? Where else to move to. It’s not been the break I thought it would be….

If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:

https://buymeacoffee.com/healingmychildhoodtrauma

The questions arose from something I watched recently. It was just a…

Read more

Read more

The unholy trinity abandoned us knowing all of the dangers, without any warning, without a conversation; devoid of an explanation, without a care in the world. They were like sisters to me. I’d grown up with them from a baby. They were all I knew and I loved them with all my heart as sisters and second mothers.…

Read more

Read more

My emotions are teetering and simmering on the surface and I’m edgy as hell. Very edgy. I’m crying easily over seemingly minor issues and I feel weak from within; all my inner strength has dissipated and drained away. I’d be b…

Read more

My creativity has felt crooked and crumpled down within me, concertinaed like a less-than-pretty origami shape that I didn’t know how to undo; I’ve been feeling like a tangled mess (like my split ends all mangled together) and I spiralled and crashed. And I know it’s the re…

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

I have to face facts that I have boundaries like a tea bag (although I like to think I’m oh so together). I say this because of what happened a few days ago when I went to a small event about writing. (I want to start writing in earnest, not in hiding like I’m doing right now that n…

Read more

I needed to get out of the house yesterday; I’ve been up to my e…

Read more

Read more