I have trouble letting go of my anger as well, which is where I lack hope in a way when it comes to my own story. I recognize the different stages of trauma and how silenced and shaking it is to be ganged up on by these empowered systems. I relate to your anger and say ‘go ahead and scream somewhere. Good you are with your mom going through this now. Nurture her through as you can when you can.
Hi Lori,
I’m from a rural town born and raised near where you are from. I have yet to sincerely convince myself there is hope in what I had experienced in 20 years of believing in this system that is still doing the murdering and causation of suicide to so many. I wanted you to know that I cried the longest I have let myself cry for what seems like years now reading your story here. Thank you for being human with us now.
Jenifer,
I feel drawn to comment to you and feel very vulnerable acknowledging what you went through because I have lived experience in the systemic violence and family dominance on both sides.
STILL, after only 11 years of being awoke to the dominance of the system and several ‘friends’ and ‘family’ that were ‘helping’ me, don’t know how to find trust or community and empowerment in the trauma experienced before and the 20 years I believed in the systemic violence as what I needed to help me understand my truth.
Here in this ‘alternative’ space I still don’t know.
I still want to do what you did in destroying your grandparents home to so many rooms and places that ‘didn’t know any better’, ‘just trying to help’.
The closest I have come to feeling and witnessing a place of not giving power to this system that has taken so much away from me in time, energy, and life is reading bell hooks (at moments when I am INSIDE what she’s saying and not struggling with the more densely dialogical moments of her writing). That, and having read Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman after having strong presences of three separate individuals (no longer in my life) help me believe ‘i am not crazy’ but do have trauma. I only ‘feel crazy’.
However you find empowerment I would like to know. I allowed trauma to take my truth away. So, how do I trust myself enough to fight the powers that want to continue traumatizing us? Do you trust yourself more by telling your truth/story? Do you find empowerment there in the aftermath of writing it down?
I am so sad hearing how you described what you have experienced and feel absolutely frozen here and now in knowing how to acknowledge what you’ve gone through and how to find any trust or solution to do or say more than ‘I acknowledge…’.
I trust so few people, and rightly so. It’s a system of power and dominance…everywhere, and I still see myself being in places and moments that show me I can’t escape and ‘take back my power’.
Does writing and sharing your story here help, somehow? I find there’s a frozen, protected place much of the time when I go there unless I’m with someone in person that I trust in a moment and can feel what my story is…finally…and grieve for SO much. Then the frozen and fighting aspects of release help, awhile…then, the systemic oppression is noticed once again.
Thanks, ok.
Yes, you ‘hear me’. And I understand nearly all of the dynamics you’re expressing in the lack of trust you’ve experienced and rightly so.
I would be willing to share my story with you privately, but these days I’m feeling really unsteady, as no doubt many are still. I believe you would be a good listener and would sensitively identify as well.
I appreciate your response here. This hasn’t been familiar to me by many who respond to my responses.
I do hope you continue to find trusted support in your friends and psychiatrist. (Projecting my fear again here) This hasn’t been my experience, even after I had had life lines and they failed me and I decided to trust a ‘god of my understanding’ and talk only to it for a year or thereabout, then that contact was lost (I know there are many paradigms of thought on this) where I am still in disconnected survival limbo.
I have let go of counselors and friendships because of noticing the distrust I felt with them and finally had the courage to not depend on them, feeling I had to edit my process. I am now unedited with myself and take risks with the last couple people I text with and Skype, and yet, I am so dependent on them that I fear I will push them away too, because ultimately, I know they cannot save me from my cycles of trauma, as I go through another counselor relationship now, once again. Thus far he is willing to listen once a week and I feel respected in my self awareness and whatever comes up in our new dynamic of intimate relationship (payed for of course, so not too intimate).
Thanks for being here Lauren, and thanks for your vulnerable open response. I understand free expressing to who will listen. Sincerely I do. Individual to individual is the best I can try to find settling for or some semblance of solace.
Removed for moderation.
I wouldn’t know how to trust friends or a psychiatrist who can take away my power after what you’ve been through Lauren. Telling and retelling my story to people I thought were friends only made them treat me more like ‘a mental patient’. To be honest, I don’t trust many people here that are ‘fighting the good fight’ because the way one is read or sensitized in their own experiences tend to project their own experiences onto who’s speaking. I know you want to be heard and believed and trusted and ‘fought with’, and yet…who really has your back if not you in healing from the trauma of this systemic oppression that continues. And if you aren’t clear in how to heal and who to go to for healing then who do you trust? I’m not speaking for you of course. I’m projecting. I’m curious all the same in how what I’ve replied lands for you.
I appreciate and respect your story and how you chose to tell it, and yet I wonder how you can trust an education that is taking you into the same system that failed you and your parents, and their parents before.
I am curious if there are alternative approaches that are healing to your trauma and those you want to serve in their trauma. We tend to settle in the modalities that are recycling being dependent on counselors and ‘people in power’ and not in finding agency in one’s life. I’m speaking from my own experience of course, but am curious in if you have your doubts about the education you’re going forward in, that and community and systems already in place that cycle trauma in their behaviors and beliefs that collude with systemic oppression.
Thanks for writing and reading.
I have felt the same way, and yet, it still feels incredibly lonely after this repel/rebel for some reason where I am. I needed to read this all the same.
I have trouble letting go of my anger as well, which is where I lack hope in a way when it comes to my own story. I recognize the different stages of trauma and how silenced and shaking it is to be ganged up on by these empowered systems. I relate to your anger and say ‘go ahead and scream somewhere. Good you are with your mom going through this now. Nurture her through as you can when you can.
Hi Lori,
I’m from a rural town born and raised near where you are from. I have yet to sincerely convince myself there is hope in what I had experienced in 20 years of believing in this system that is still doing the murdering and causation of suicide to so many. I wanted you to know that I cried the longest I have let myself cry for what seems like years now reading your story here. Thank you for being human with us now.
Jenifer,
I feel drawn to comment to you and feel very vulnerable acknowledging what you went through because I have lived experience in the systemic violence and family dominance on both sides.
STILL, after only 11 years of being awoke to the dominance of the system and several ‘friends’ and ‘family’ that were ‘helping’ me, don’t know how to find trust or community and empowerment in the trauma experienced before and the 20 years I believed in the systemic violence as what I needed to help me understand my truth.
Here in this ‘alternative’ space I still don’t know.
I still want to do what you did in destroying your grandparents home to so many rooms and places that ‘didn’t know any better’, ‘just trying to help’.
The closest I have come to feeling and witnessing a place of not giving power to this system that has taken so much away from me in time, energy, and life is reading bell hooks (at moments when I am INSIDE what she’s saying and not struggling with the more densely dialogical moments of her writing). That, and having read Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman after having strong presences of three separate individuals (no longer in my life) help me believe ‘i am not crazy’ but do have trauma. I only ‘feel crazy’.
However you find empowerment I would like to know. I allowed trauma to take my truth away. So, how do I trust myself enough to fight the powers that want to continue traumatizing us? Do you trust yourself more by telling your truth/story? Do you find empowerment there in the aftermath of writing it down?
I am so sad hearing how you described what you have experienced and feel absolutely frozen here and now in knowing how to acknowledge what you’ve gone through and how to find any trust or solution to do or say more than ‘I acknowledge…’.
I trust so few people, and rightly so. It’s a system of power and dominance…everywhere, and I still see myself being in places and moments that show me I can’t escape and ‘take back my power’.
Does writing and sharing your story here help, somehow? I find there’s a frozen, protected place much of the time when I go there unless I’m with someone in person that I trust in a moment and can feel what my story is…finally…and grieve for SO much. Then the frozen and fighting aspects of release help, awhile…then, the systemic oppression is noticed once again.
Thanks, ok.
Yes, you ‘hear me’. And I understand nearly all of the dynamics you’re expressing in the lack of trust you’ve experienced and rightly so.
I would be willing to share my story with you privately, but these days I’m feeling really unsteady, as no doubt many are still. I believe you would be a good listener and would sensitively identify as well.
I appreciate your response here. This hasn’t been familiar to me by many who respond to my responses.
I do hope you continue to find trusted support in your friends and psychiatrist. (Projecting my fear again here) This hasn’t been my experience, even after I had had life lines and they failed me and I decided to trust a ‘god of my understanding’ and talk only to it for a year or thereabout, then that contact was lost (I know there are many paradigms of thought on this) where I am still in disconnected survival limbo.
I have let go of counselors and friendships because of noticing the distrust I felt with them and finally had the courage to not depend on them, feeling I had to edit my process. I am now unedited with myself and take risks with the last couple people I text with and Skype, and yet, I am so dependent on them that I fear I will push them away too, because ultimately, I know they cannot save me from my cycles of trauma, as I go through another counselor relationship now, once again. Thus far he is willing to listen once a week and I feel respected in my self awareness and whatever comes up in our new dynamic of intimate relationship (payed for of course, so not too intimate).
Thanks for being here Lauren, and thanks for your vulnerable open response. I understand free expressing to who will listen. Sincerely I do. Individual to individual is the best I can try to find settling for or some semblance of solace.
Removed for moderation.
I wouldn’t know how to trust friends or a psychiatrist who can take away my power after what you’ve been through Lauren. Telling and retelling my story to people I thought were friends only made them treat me more like ‘a mental patient’. To be honest, I don’t trust many people here that are ‘fighting the good fight’ because the way one is read or sensitized in their own experiences tend to project their own experiences onto who’s speaking. I know you want to be heard and believed and trusted and ‘fought with’, and yet…who really has your back if not you in healing from the trauma of this systemic oppression that continues. And if you aren’t clear in how to heal and who to go to for healing then who do you trust? I’m not speaking for you of course. I’m projecting. I’m curious all the same in how what I’ve replied lands for you.
I appreciate and respect your story and how you chose to tell it, and yet I wonder how you can trust an education that is taking you into the same system that failed you and your parents, and their parents before.
I am curious if there are alternative approaches that are healing to your trauma and those you want to serve in their trauma. We tend to settle in the modalities that are recycling being dependent on counselors and ‘people in power’ and not in finding agency in one’s life. I’m speaking from my own experience of course, but am curious in if you have your doubts about the education you’re going forward in, that and community and systems already in place that cycle trauma in their behaviors and beliefs that collude with systemic oppression.
Thanks for writing and reading.
I have felt the same way, and yet, it still feels incredibly lonely after this repel/rebel for some reason where I am. I needed to read this all the same.