TW:/. Talk of abuse, suicide, and dark thoughts. Take caution in reading.
Confession: Sometimes I struggle to convince myself I am lovable or worthy of love. Some days I succeed at using the tools I’ve learned in cognitive behavioural therapy, psychotherapy, and working with multiple psychologists. I weigh out why these thoughts are true or untrue and do my best to find a balance. Some days all I can feel is the psychological abuse of my childhood replaying repeatedly in my mind. Whether we want to admit it or not as healing facilitators or participants in the healing community we can do all the work in the world and still be a product of our creators and what was instilled in us at a young age. An authentic sense of self-worth does not simply stick around when you grew up in a hostile and emotionally abusive household. When you are a child growing up in a volatile home, all your energy goes towards being able to read your parents every move so that you know when another low, or manic episode hits, you can intuit how to best support that parent, what the right things to say are, and how to act so that the abuse is minimal, and you’re seen as a good little girl. A lot of people have told me that they wish they had my authentic sense of confidence, and they are right! I have worked hard to be able to speak on the things that I care about unapologetically and I would describe myself as confident. However, does that mean that in my lows I don’t fully revert to what is comfortable and what my subconscious has been programmed around? Here is the full truth of my own lived experience: I have been in therapy since my early 20s; attended group support for sexual assault victims; admitted to the psych-ward of the hospital after my mental breakdown and 2nd suicide attempt only to be told by my psychiatrist in that psych ward that I seem too self-reflexive and willing to do the work to have ended up there – and to this day I continue to do the work to feel better and be able to be more loving towards myself, and still I fight these dark thoughts. I am not sure I believe we fully heal from extreme abuse situations. To be honest the healers who act like they can, always kind of freak me out. They have a vibe to them, have you noticed? It’s an energy that makes me very uncomfortable, because they all seem to be supressing their pain and perpetuating harm without being able to be accountable in any way. In fact, many of them preach anti-vaccine values, continuously make their living off culture appropriative practices not meant for them and supported the freedom convoy. That sounds super judgmental of me and when I find one who doesn’t support at least one of those things I will apologize, until then I stand by that assessment.
From my personal lived experience, the people who program our mind make an impact we aren’t always able to move past 100%. Our subconscious mind reverts to what is comfortable and what is comfortable really depends on how you were raised. What was normal to me was over-giving to appease the most demanding temperament in the house or in my friend groups so that I could keep the peace. I knew if I sacrificed myself things would flow smoothly. I would emotionally cut myself down and call it self-improvement techniques, when really, I just didn’t love myself. So, in my lowest moments when I don’t have enough energy to use my tools, and where I am acting from a robotic place of what has been programmed into me from birth, I sometimes revert to emotional cutting so-to-speak. It is never for long, and I am very in tune with my lows as a diagnosed manic-depressive, (I am also medicated which helps hugely with the extreme shifts in temperament), but there are still those moments where the trauma of my childhood replays. Does this mean we stop trying to heal? NO! All the work I have done on myself has led me to be able to love myself enough to set strong boundaries on what I will and won’t tolerate, and how I deserve to be treated. It has also led me to have compassion for my abusers that were equally if not more abused in life and repeated patterns they may not have been unaware of. This part was important to me because the anger I felt at one point for these people was leading to a thick cloud of resentment that was leading me down a similar path to repeat mistakes, and I felt like enough was enough in my bloodline! I had to break the pattern of my ancestors that had always existed.
In my experience, you can’t just decide one day to be a different person and leave all your trauma behind. That person you use to be deserves to be brought up and acknowledged. I heard a loved one say to me recently that they looked back on old pictures and almost sneered at who they use to be and how much better they are now. That made me so sad to hear. That younger version of yourself, that imperfect, abused, sometimes abusive person deserves to be shown love. You can burry your pain and pretend you’re enlightened but at the end of the day our buried trauma shows up in some funky ass ways, and if you want to see how, just look at what your response was to the pandemic. For me I developed slight agoraphobia. I shut down my business for 3 months and just tried to navigate this new world that felt so dark to me. I feared that all my old issues with chronic illness would come back, and what I feared most was getting long Covid where I would be alive but not fully functioning and never able to live and work. I was forced back into therapy and had to take life one day at a time. Analyzing my own behaviour when I am fully triggered is the best way I can look at what still has control over me. What we store in the subconscious isn’t always visible so when it comes up although painful, once you get past the pain of just existing, you can analyze it, and there is no shame in this process. Sometimes what keeps people from looking deeper on their issues is the shame of owning the harm in which they caused. As an alcoholic 4.5 years sober, looking back on all the harm I did almost kill me, but if I didn’t do that, I would never be able to find peace in myself, even if the moments don’t last forever. Those peaceful moments at least exist now, even if in small increments.
Sometimes it’s painful and exhausting to be alive as a survivor of extreme abuse. I am happy to be here, to be able to experience true joy and to be able to feel love if not continuously in small increments. When I see someone who has struggled lifelong succumb to death by suicide from a life of mental illness born of a childhood spent in extreme abuse, I can’t help but pause and think, I hope now they can feel peace and acknowledge how long they tried to be here for. Most people would be horrified at this response, but I know the people who survived childhood abuse understand this on a deep level. If you’re a healing facilitator spreading toxic positivity, or perpetuating ableist diatribes about being able to choose your mindset, you either have never lived through severe abuse at the hands of the one person who was supposed to love you most, or you burry your shit so deep, perpetuating this terrible myth that you’re healed just because you chose to be, while you project passive aggressive hurt all over the place. My hope is that you one day can look at an old picture of yourself with compassion and instead of feeling like you need to be perfectly healed to be a healing facilitator, know that most people are simply looking to feel seen, in all their messiness.
This blog is a love letter dedicated to the survivors who continue to fight to be here and speak their truth with love while also calling in accountability for themselves from a deep place of self-love, because that is what accountability is; it’s our ability to love ourselves so deeply that we know we are meant to evolve past our human creators of this lifetime. Much love sent your way, Candice of Crazy Cat Witchy.
