Dedicated To The Children Of All Traumatized Mothers

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

psychotherapist, body-oriented trauma therapy

Dedicated to the children of all traumatized mothers …

And also to those mothers who constantly feel

their inner pain, that is, they are traumatized.

Mom, it hurt so much next to you that I chose to forget myself and that pain.

And I created a new myself, hiding the first one so far, but he doesn't care

knocking on me again. And I'm so scared. How scary it was for you next to me …

Traumatized people cannot bear strong feelings

Because strong feelings - whatever - connect them with their trauma, and this can be very unsafe, up to falling into traumatic experiences and mental destruction.

Therefore, they must either avoid such feelings - both their own and those of others, or dose them on their own, for example, the tendency to unrequited love is one of such "dosages" when the pain is at least a little controlled, is in the field of vision, but does not go off scale.

But if a traumatized woman has a child, then it becomes more difficult to avoid feelings. The child is initially unable to hide his affects and experiences them bodily and quite clearly.

There are mothers who are unable to bear their child unhappy, angry, demanding and irritated or suffering. If the child does not get what he needed, then at first he will grieve, cry and be sad. Then he will "postpone" the need (according to the principle of "green grapes") and will live on. In general, the combination of frustration - an attempt to get it - and if it is impossible to get it, refuse, burn out and live on, is very important for a person's mental health. The work of grief is the very work that helps to cope with any loss and move on.

Survive the loss, not replace the lost with something else.

A child, due to immaturity, cannot survive the absence of something very important, he simply postpones the need for "better times".

Sometimes an adult is faced with the fact that he has no right to something that literally "cannot be" and then, even if this (and especially if it is) as never possible, postpones, does not take advantage of the opportunity.

For example, if a child does not receive love (namely love, not functional care) from his mother, then he will demand and demand, and then he will begin to grieve. Naturally, in childhood, it is impossible to survive such grief and the child will postpone the work of grief until later, such children look lifeless and are usually diagnosed as depressed, childhood depression (or anaclitic depression) is depression of loss.

But in general - when is such a job still possible - to survive the fact that mom is not what she wanted and to live on?

Do not look for a substitute for mom, do not try to get unconditional love and acceptance from other people, and if this did not work out, then do not try to get approval or become needed.

To remain with the belief that, in principle, love is possible, it's just that my mother could not do everything. But actually, I am worthy of love and you can love me.

This is possible when the mother cannot give something to the child, but can meet his strong feelings about it and support him in their experience.

For example, the child is in great pain and the mother cannot change the situation (well, some kind of trauma has already occurred and you cannot reverse the situation). What she can do for the child is to remain resistant to his pain and let him know that it will pass, while it is important not to give the child the feeling that he is unhappy, a victim and is suffering a lot.

Because if a child is not taught this, then he will simply experience pain, and not be an unhappy sufferer.

That is, the main thing here is not to make the child a victim and to stay in emotional contact with him.

For this, the mother must be resistant to pain, that is, not have any inner unhealed of her own. That is, either not to be traumatized, or to have the trauma healed.

In this case, she will be able to give him such a connection when the child feels that what happened to him is not fatal, you can experience that his mother loves him and that she is with him.

If the mother herself has her own trauma, then she has her own constant inner pain

And her resources, perhaps, are enough to simply endure her. If someone suffering appears nearby, then her resources are unlikely to be enough to endure two suffering at the same time - herself and a child (or another loved one).

Then she will either reject the child (break off contact with him) by moving away from her feelings (break the connection with her inner pain) or collapse - go into her suffering, fall into her trauma, and then emotional contact with the child is still interrupted. It will become simply functional, but not emotional, and the child feels it internally, as if his mother no longer loves him. Although, in fact, my mother is trying to keep herself from going into the opened trauma.

And she cannot experience feelings, as we remember, and the suffering of a child for her is a sharp knife.

She will try to replace the absent emotions with something else, more accessible, for example, hyper-care, custody, and other material joys.

Children usually feel as if their mother does not give something important, but still gives at least something. And therefore, most often, such children do not separate from their mothers, in the hope that sooner or later they will give them what is missing, because my mother is so responsive, does so much for me and cares so much.

Well, or depending on the context of her trauma, she might get angry and punish the child for his suffering. To devalue his feelings - you already have everything that you still need. Stop demanding.

And actually prohibit experiencing pain and grief.

And in the first - hyper-care, and in the second - rejection and punishment, the child is actually forbidden to feel what he is feeling. Gradually, the child begins to believe that what he feels is wrong, inadequate and, most importantly, harms his mother.

Because if you still worry, then there will be no support, and it will be impossible to save the mother, she will not stand the child's experiences. And in this case, the child finds himself alone not only in the face of his pain and despair, but also guilt for the fact that he did something to his mother and now she is destroyed and herself became a victim. Few of adult mature people will cope with the task of supporting another person at a time when he himself is going through hard times. A child cannot cope with this a priori.

In order not to lose his mother, and for the child she is a guarantee of survival, he sacrifices his feelings and somehow learns not to feel them.

Usually with the help of ignoring, devaluation, repression, suppression and other psychic defenses. Psychic defenses, in fact, are formed as a response of the psyche to a request - how not to feel what I feel, how to get pain relief.

The child also learns them from the parents. Often in the case of suppression, depression occurs (the same anaclitic), in the case of repression - paranoid fears and phobias, in the case of depreciation - narcissistic emptiness.

But more often, of course, these mechanisms are closely intertwined and are extremely rare in their pure form.

And then, growing up, such a child will look for himself. He will vaguely or clearly feel that something is wrong with him, he is missing something.

He will look for himself - alive, real, able to feel and experience life. And maybe he will.

But for this he must allow himself to experience his despair, grief, unrequited love.

He will again have to go through the pain that he once forbade himself.

But then that prohibition was in order not to lose, and this permission was in order to gain.