Trauma attracts Trauma.

Trauma attracts trauma

My mother had various emotional breakdowns. When I was seven years old, I found her overdosed. I felt powerless and wondered what I had done wrong! She was sent into the local “psychiatric bin,” was given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), and came out not knowing my name. I was horrified. And what made it worse was that my mother knew my father was off with one of his women. She could not take the pain of her jealousy. I remember my father covering up my mother’s cry for help to the local doctor, who certified my mother insane without even talking to her. I was in my bedroom, and heard my father say, “I have no idea why Tiny [her nickname] took an overdose; she has so much to be happy about!” I wanted to kill him! Not an easy feeling to carry as a child.

Yet we three children knew. No truth, just a cover up. How often do we all do this in dysfunctional families? I have heard this situation so often from clients. During my years as a social worker, I met many, many parents who could be so brutal to each other and their children. Luckily, nobody on my watch died!

I once said to the ex-minster of heath, David Ennals, whom I was lucky to work with, “So often the wrong people are in mental institutions.” He was confused until I asked him to read the book: Sanity, Madness and the Family: Families of Schizophrenics by R. D. Laing.

Do read this book. It’s a classic that shows that the most sensitive persons in a family are persecuted and become the “scapegoats” for the “sins” or “craziness” of the family. Often people were put in mental institutions, which I visited as a field officer of MIND (a mental health charity in the UK.). I saw at firsthand what hellish environments were given to patients, as so-called caring treatment for such souls. People often stayed for years in these hellholes that should never be there. (I don’t like the word should, yet I feel it’s appropriate in this context.)

David Ennals and I worked together as part of a team to start the MIND campaign that is still going today. The simple aim was to assist people who return to the community after what I call “a break open to their truth”—otherwise known as a “breakdown”!

The danger of unintentional yet harmful childhood internalized labels

My mother labeled my father a “womanizer,” and whenever she told me off, she added: “You’re just like your father!” I don’t think she was even aware of what she was saying. This crucified me inside and still sends reverberations throughout my body. Her anger at my father skewed my thoughts and convinced me that I would grow up like my father. At first I did not compute what a “womanizer” was. All I knew was that it made my mother unhappy. I learned to take in negative thoughts so early into my mind and body that I shut off from anyone who came close.

Insight: When anger is your daily dose, you rationalize the world as an angry place. The lens of your mind, body, and soul becomes contaminated. And so you recreate that negativity in thought, word, or deed!

I love the affirmation: “I clean the windows of my mind, body, and soul with gentle love and forgiveness.” You may think I am crazy, but I am singing this right now to the mountains and the goats outside my door.