Making myself whole again….

I listened to a podcast today. It was an interview by Steven Bartlett with the Hungarian-Canadian physician and author, Dr Gabor Mate. He has a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development, trauma and it’s potential lifelong impacts. I tuned in whilst out on a run instead of putting on my usual running playlist and zoning out to the beat. Today I had been feeling emotional on and off all day, small things would bring me to tears and randomly through the day I could feel emotion bubbling under the surface. It was almost like I needed a release, something needed dealing with but I didn’t know what.

I chose a podcast that I felt would keep me engaged and I ran, I absorbed the conversation and very quickly I was, for at least the 4th time today, crying and releasing this pent up emotion that was bottled up inside me.

Gabor talks a lot about childhood trauma, which does not need to be such a huge lifechanging distressing experience that we may associate with trauma but for a child it could be something such as not receiving affection from their care giver that can be enough over the years to give them a set of behaviours that if not addressed will cause issues in their relationships with themselves and others as they become and live as an adult, such as people pleasing and feeling responsible for keeping the peace and for everyone’s happiness around them.

What he said in the podcast which seemed to trigger me was that for some children a trauma can be when “they are not seen” by their caregivers that causes them to become people pleasers and keep the peace in order to be “good enough” for someone to love them. Cue the tears and understanding from myself.

He went on to talk about how people pleasing, being unable to say “no” or have boundaries and suppressing anger to keep the peace are the biggest reason that so many women have auto immune disorders because that unexpressed emotion creates illness. Wow! It seems that 80% of auto immune disorders diagnosed are in women and bears the question, why is that the case?

Suppressed emotion and learning it’s our job to “keep the peace” as a child can also mean there is no longer an ability to “trust our gut” that we are born with. We no longer listen to what our body tells us as we are so tuned into others and what’s going on around us. We are now looking for answers within our heads and no longer feeling it in our gut.

I have and do struggle with all of these behaviours and I have lived my life until now feeling like I have to care for others, it is my identity, it is who I am. “I would be selfish and people would not like me if I decided to really put myself first” is an ingrained thought process for me. The first time I ever really had the courage to do what was right for myself was when I ended my marriage at age 46 and filed for divorce and I was told repeatedly that this action was selfish.

I am still plagued by guilt but slowly processing my feelings and where they come from to become closer to peace and acceptance within myself. I have no doubt that I will find a way to fully accept this path I’ve been walking and who I was born to be.

In doing that I am realising that I no longer want to care for others as I have in the past, which is a difficult realisation but that’s ok. Caring and putting others before myself was almost a form of self harm, a way to make others “like” me and find value in myself.

I will always be there for my loved ones but I don’t need to prove my worth through a job caring for others or by trying to make myself responsible for everyone’s happiness around me. I can be there to support but also find my own authentic path and happiness which will lead to the peace I crave so much right now.

I am stripping away the expectations, the opinions, the behaviours, that society, my caregivers and I have placed upon myself and in doing so, remembering the girl I was born to be. Finding that true essence of myself is a slow journey but so rewarding.