BBR #192: Unpacking Life with Emotional Scars

I'm your host , jpb , and this is episode number 192 .

I actually started writing this a few weeks ago , when I spent some time with family , which , like most of us us , can be a complex area with lots of layers and lots of emotions all existing at the same time , because the people we grow up around shape us , even , you know , as hard as we try not to let that happen or deny that it has , even if that is

chosen family or biological family , adoptive family or anything else . The people we are around shape us . Our families shape us . They contribute to our traumas , our sense of self , our understanding of the world around us and our role in it .

And the feeling of family as it relates to my biological family is relatively new for me , feeling like I have family , feeling like I want to spend any time with them . There was a long period of my life that I felt like I didn't have any family , that I was completely alone .

I felt like my family didn't understand me , didn't approve of me or my decisions in life , the way I live my life , or generally just kind of look down on me . And there's so many other stories involved in why those things are that way and that all might be true . Some of it I know is true and that all might be true .

Some of it I know is true and that has not changed . What has changed is not the interactions that I have for the most part , but the way that I choose to show up in those . In those times , those interactions for myself , I used to leave family visits hysterical family visits hysterical in tears , incredibly activated and anxious .

I mean , I was hysterical , I was completely dysregulated . I wanted to have something that didn't exist . I wanted my family to be close and loving and supportive and I wanted us to get together and laugh and share joy . But those are all things that lived in my made up world of things I wanted and they didn't actually exist .

And so when those expectations were not met , when I was upset at how something was and refused to accept what it was and wanted it to be something different . It created a lot of pain and that lot of a lot of pain , um , and that stemmed from a lot of other pain , because I wasn't able to accept that it wasn't real .

It was only after years of my own work with my relationship to my life and to myself that things changed . Uh , what changed was my ability to regulate my emotions , to self soothe and create space and capacity to hold the hard feelings , the disappointment , the anger , the hurt , to hold space for them but not carry them , to process them .

And what I didn't understand for a long time was that hyper independence the kind of I can do everything on my own , take care of myself and can't count on others attitude that so many of us hold . And even I will speak for myself , and I know I'm not alone here . There was a long period of my life where I was proud of that .

I was very proud that I didn't need anyone Because I don't know what . At this point I'm like , I don't know why , what that meant , because I have such a deep understanding now that community is an integral part of our overall health and well being , mental health being at the top of those benefits .

So anyways , um , you know , some of us like to pride ourselves on how we don't need any help with anything . We do everything by ourselves , and that is a trauma response . Feeling unwanted , insecure , alone and misunderstood is a trauma response .

These coping skills that I had learned didn't just happen with family , the hyper independence it wasn't just with my family . We don't get to turn these learned survival skills off and on , especially when we don't even know they exist .

I was so insecure in my relationships I constantly wondered if my friends really liked me , if they really cared if , you know , I was actually just bothering them or if they I don't know like if they just felt bad for me but didn't really want me there . There is a specific memory from grade school , I think , like fifth grade or so .

I was invited to walk to school with some other girls that lived close , and the days before and up until that morning , I remember , when we were actually going to meet up , I had thought about not going in order to save myself from the inevitable terrible experience of them not really wanting to hang out with me , but invited me over just to make fun of me

or to ditch me or be cruel in some other way , and this was the fear I carried further into my life that I wasn't actually worth knowing , that I wasn't good enough , cool enough , smart enough , interesting enough , and this is a large part of why I drank and smoked so heavily for most of my young adult life .

It was how I coped with the anxiety of not being wanted and not having a sense of belonging . I never trusted . I never trusted others to show up .

I never trusted myself to handle the outcome of whatever was happening , even though I had a life full of proof that I was able to handle everything up until that point Maybe not in a well-adjusted way , which I was completely unaware of , but I had survived everything up until that point , and there was plenty of evidence that I faced challenges and did not

actually die . I was still here . When we grow up with parents or caregivers who don't acknowledge our feelings and emotions , the lack of response feels like abandonment , and this can lead to all of these other pieces of feeling like we're alone and confused about the experiences we're having .

We learn that our feelings aren't okay , so we ignore them instead of learning to create healthy relationships to our feelings , and because a lot of us grew up with this lack of acknowledgement because our parents didn't know , how Many of them still don't know how they were never taught those skills of emotional awareness or recognition to build the skills in that

area in order to teach . And because of this , a lot of us have the feeling that we are alone , that we're unwanted , that these feelings that make these interactions with our families so complex and sometimes really hurtful and leave us hysterical in tears , completely dysregulated .

And so I want to talk a little bit about why , what that comes from , um , how we end up being hyper independent and not feeling like we can trust anyone except for ourselves , why we are doubting ourselves so much , why we are so insecure .

And when we did grow up with parents who didn't acknowledge our feelings and emotions , again that lack of response feels like abandonment , and a lot of us grew up with this lack of acknowledgement because our parents didn't know how .

I imagine many of us grew up hearing some of the same things Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about . Unless you're dead or dying , I don't want to hear about it . Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about .

Unless you're dead or dying , I don't want to hear about it Stop your blubbering , don't be a crybaby , don't be so emotional , or anything else that gave us the understanding that how we felt didn't matter , it wasn't okay , and we definitely didn't learn what to do with it .

What we did learn is that no one cared about our emotional needs , and so learning at a young age , in prime developmental years , where we are constructing our foundations for sense of safety and our role in the world , that our emotions are not valid , they're not allowed and they're not important .

This leads to all kinds of things later on , like what we were just talking about insecurity , anxiety around uh , specifically around social relationships , intrusive or obsessive thoughts about being abandoned , um , or discarded , or I mean um . I mean , yeah , discarded , but also a disregard for , for yourself , um , self-abandonment .

And we deal with these things by shutting out connection , by not trusting anyone but ourselves , by being hyper-independent and then being proud of it and that part might not actually even be true by self-abandoning , by being hypercritical of others , usually as an outward projection of our own inner criticism of ourselves , or by pushing others away so that we don't open

up to the possibility of getting hurt and being abandoned again . Shame , depression , anxiety , perfectionism , low self-esteem , feeling inadequate and unworthy and difficulty trusting .

These are all symptoms of abandonment trauma , which is a type of emotional distress that can result from feeling neglected or rejected by someone important in your life , especially in early developmental years .

Emotional abandonment is a subjective emotional state in which people feel undesired , left behind , insecure or discarded , and it's common for children with emotionally unavailable or immature parents to experience this . My story , a little piece of it . My mom was a long haul truck driver and a single parent .

For the first seven years of my life she was gone on the road , sometimes for months at a time , without coming home . Because that was the case , we had a live-in nanny . It was her and her son living with us . They had a place to stay and my mom had 24-hour child care .

So , because she was gone , my mom would write notes every day on a calendar for my brother and I , a note about how she loved and missed us . I am assuming I guess I never knew because I couldn't read , because I was too young to read and the nanny's son would read them for us and tell us .

They said things like I hate you and I wish you were never born , or I'm happy that I don't have to be around you . I wish I never had kids and things like that . And I knew it wasn't true , but I couldn't read what it actually said , so that's all I had to go on .

He was also sexually abusing us for the first uh , for the whole time that they lived there . So my mom was physically not there , emotionally unavailable , and the adolescent boy abusing me told me that if I said no or if I tried to tell anyone , I would be in trouble and everyone would hate me .

This led to a lot of problems saying no to all kinds of things later on in my life , and so I learned that I needed to keep my feelings to myself the hurt , the anger , the shame , the fear , anything else I haven't learned to identify yet .

At around age seven to eight , somewhere in there , I inherited a violently abusive stepfather who was terrifying , and so any consideration of my feelings took a sideline to actual physical safety a lot of that time . So I just kept on shoving my feelings down and I kept this practice of intentional dismissal and refusal to acknowledge my feelings into adulthood .

I would tell myself explicitly that if I can't feel anything , I can't hurt , but the hurt I don't know why I was trying to trick myself . There was hurt . It was deep , like one of those scary wells that goes forever . You can see down , but only until the part where it gets dark and scary .

When I was a teenager , I would cut myself on a regular basis just to feel , just to feel physical pain that I could actually acknowledge , because the depth of the emotional pain was too much and I had no skills to . I didn't know what to do with it , I just knew that it wasn't acceptable and so I just kept shoving it deeper .

Abandonment , trauma can affect memory , focus and ability to plan .

Um , not learning to process emotions , the chronic stress associated with this , along with the lack of emotional regulation skills , or even developing a sense of what is going on inside of us , what we are feeling , even the actual sensations in our body these are all things that feeling dismissed and then self-dismissing can lead to .

And this means we probably weren't learning interoceptive cues either , because disassociation is a common coping strategy that helps us feel disconnected from our bodies and or emotions when we don't feel safe there , when we don't know what to do with it .

There's research out there that shows that a lack of introceptive sense leads to inability to regulate emotions , because we can't regulate and process something we're not aware of or refuse to acknowledge . Each individual's experience shapes our neural circuitry input .

Jules' experience shapes our neural circuitry input , so experience guides brain development , and our social interactions play a major role in that .

Many of us did not grow up with a strong foundation of secure social support , as we're discussing , which is a huge contributor to the fact that chronic stress , anxiety and poor emotional regulation , leading to the overall compromised mental well-being , are so common .

There is good news here , though I am getting to , that your brain is plastic , meaning that it is always changing again with experience .

So new experiences create new connections between brain cells and regions , and we can begin to integrate brain regions that weren't previously integrated , and we can reshape our associations to stimuli , whether that be people , places , things . We can learn the skills of emotional regulation .

We can learn to grow our interceptive skills , which allows us to pay attention to our internal environment . How are we feeling ? What needs to be addressed ? Where do we need attention ? Like , what are our needs ? We can choose to pivot anytime we want . Is it easy to learn these skills ? Absolutely not in my experience . Is it quick and painless process ?

Again , absolutely not in my experience , but I will tell you that my life is something unimaginable to any previous version of myself . It has taken years of uncovering , unlearning , relearning , discovering , allowing lots of therapy , lots of crying , lots of patience and forgiveness from my loved ones along the way .

And I am still here , unfolding , and it makes me sad . It is incredibly unfortunate that I did not know that I could change these things . I didn't know that there was another option .

I didn't know that I had agency um , that I could learn to feel my feelings and learn what to do with them , and learn how to process all of the depths of anger and shame and start to address the insecurities I had around attachment and just relationships in general to myself and to the world around me , to others . I didn't learn how to do those things .

I didn't start learning how to do those things until I lost my brother to suicide , and it's unfortunate that so many of us have to have something tragic , something that just kind of destroys our existing understanding of the world , before we take these steps to care for ourselves , to give ourselves the attention to address our needs and give ourselves the love that

we have always been wanting so badly , and sometimes we just can't see any of that until our world is shattered . But it doesn't have to be like that . If you are aware of those things and you're like maybe I should address these things or find some help , give that another thought , maybe do that .

I wanted to share this episode in hopes that anyone else who has experienced any of these things I talked about , anyone who has a complex relationship to family , feeling alone , unwanted or insecure in that way , which is a significant amount of us I want you to know that you're not alone .

I want you to know that it's not you , there's nothing wrong with you and hopefully , knowing a bit about what's going on in your brain and your body because of these experiences and what your brain and body can do to help you move forward . I want you to know that you have agency , that you can change the experience you have now .

You can reshape how you experience yourself in the world . Your brain is always changing and rewriting your story according to new information , but new information doesn't integrate well when we are stuck in old traumas , old patterns , old ruminative ruminations of bad things , stressors , experiences that we keep replaying .

So go see a trauma therapist if you need to Lean on your loved ones and trusted community if you have that around you . And , most importantly , choose you . Choose to keep going . Choose to give yourself the attention you need and still you needed and still do need . Choose to show up for yourself .

Choose to dedicate the time and effort that it takes to create a life that feels good , that you don't want to escape from , that doesn't just drive you fucking mad every day . All right , that's all I got today . I am so happy that you're here . I'm so grateful that you choose to spend your time listening to me .

It's always interesting because I love hearing from y'all , because I am just talking to a microphone in my room here where I do my podcasting , and so I am always so grateful to hear from y'all here about what lands , or your thoughts , questions , comments , concerns , about any of the episodes that you listen to , and so I want to say thank you to everyone who

does reach out and just who gives me the opportunity to connect and make this a little bit less just me talking at a microphone , which I like to do . I'm a talker . So , in any case , thanks for being here , thanks for your time , for your attention , thanks for reaching out , thanks for connecting .

If you enjoyed this , please share it with a friend . I think this is something that a lot of us please share it with a friend .

I think this is something that a lot of us need to hear , need to read here , read here need to know that we're not alone on and understanding a little bit about how our brain and body work is always useful in understanding that we have the ability to navigate a little bit differently if we so choose . So if you liked it , share it .

In any case , we'll be doing this again next week . I am wishing you a beautiful time until then , peace .