I really believe the meaning of life is about truly getting to know ourselves and discovering we are part of patterns that are much greater than us. Having children is incredibly humbling and it is also opens doors of understanding that always would have remained closed if they hadn’t shown up to be taken care of.
The kids are at a new level of awareness and intensity. They are picking up so much from their environment: in our house and out in the neighborhood. They have so much more language to communicate with and they’re both way more sensitive. A friend recently said to me that at 2 years old children’s amygdala’s are growing and coming online. The amygdala is the part of the brain that has a big role in emotional regulation. They both are expressing more anger and fear. This means meltdowns and freak outs about seemingly little things, but it also means deeper connections. It is awe inspiring to caretake these adorable little beings full of emotions and growing intensity.
The other day I had this triggering event that has sent me into a rough internal space. For the purposes of this writing it doesn’t really matter what it was, but I was thrown off and I’m still thrown off. At the time it happened I was fine, it took a day and then another day to really hit me and sink in, and here I am, feeling all these old deep and painful feelings like a fog surrounding me. In the Internal Family Systems model, which is the kind of therapy I practice, we talk about how everyone has “exiled” parts inside of us from childhood, and they carry deep wells of accumulated shame and horror, and until we figure out how to unburden them they stay locked up in the closets of our unconscious. Much of our inner emotional lives revolve around protecting ourselves from feeling these old feelings, and we have all kinds of strategies to keep ourselves from remembering the horrors deep within.
Periodically I will go through a spell where my exiles rise to the surface and make themselves known. It looks like “depression” from the outside. I can still do all the things I need to do, including take care of my kids and work with my clients and communicate with my partner, but something is stirred up in me that is very unsettling. When I’m in these states I feel a deep sense of insecurity, like I’ve done something terribly wrong and I’m going to be punished for it. Like I’m a terrible person and everyone is going to find out and I will be ostracized from my life.
These inner scenerios have actually played themselves out in my adult life a couple times, and only added to the trauma and psychic scar tissue. When I get hit with these old feelings it’s as if there’s a cacophony of critical voices attached to buried memories that rise to the surface and it is as if I am trapped in a horror show of my own creation. The only saving grace of it all is that it gives me a lot of genuine empathy for other people who struggle like I do, and that helps pay the bills.
I was talking to my therapist about it today and it became clear really quickly that this round of the horror show has very little to do with 2023, and a lot more to do with 1977, when I was not much older than my kids are today. Having 2 year olds around in all their intensity makes me realize that when I was really young, all was not right in my household. I was a sponge, absorbing a lot of confusing negativity. And when I try to get closer to the exiled parts there are a lot of other parts guarding them.
I know I’m being vague but it feels good to imagine being witnessed and put myself out there, even in the vagueness. I don’t want to spend my life scared that I’m going to get sucked back into the horror show. I’m doing the work. Just writing this down is how I unblend from it and leave myself a trail.
I know it probably sounds kind of crazy but there’s another dimension I go to, it’s a place I visit in my dreams and it’s a place I can go to in therapy if I’m in the right suggestible state. It’s out of linear time. It looks like the apartment I grew up in as a little kid on West End Avenue. But it’s underwater, like under the ocean, like an old ship wreck where I can still see the yellow colored linoleum floor of my bedroom, and there are toys and a crib and a clock on the wall and a rocking chair and a window that faces a brick wall, but it’s all under water. There are parts of myself waiting for me there when I’m ready to go back.
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What strikes me so strongly, Sascha, is your vulnerability. Also, your courage in telling us your life experiences with such openness and clarity. I must confess that I can not relate to your feelings regarding trauma and sense of horror that still color your world today but I do know sadness and loss and disappointment and even hopelessness with regard to our human condition and what we have wrought on this planet. So, I too struggle but with other baggage. Nevertheless, what a gift your two children allow you to enjoy as you make your way as a parent and still struggling adult. As you watch them develop and as you give your wealth of life experience and self knowledge to the parenting process you, of course, can reflect on your own childhood. You're doing great, believe it.
I think the vagueness is fine and a move of real strength of boundaries. We understand without the details. I think you are doing amazing work on yourself as a human being and of course as a member of a family and society. An understand place out of linear time really speaks to me. Thank you