How to fix deep rooted damage cause by a broken family

[marceleonidas]

I write this in a moment of self doubt and desperation. I feel pathetic and don’t know else what to do.

I have all a boy could hope to achieve at my age. I do not fear for food or shelter; I am young, healthy and immensely handsome. I’ve never been in any serious trouble and I have far truer friends than any man could possibly deserve. However there is a dark-side. I grew up as my family fell apart; one by one hatred consumed those I held dearest. In my early teen years I lived through hell. As my parents were going through a divorce they put me in a strict Catholic private school. This was my first year going to school of any kind as I had previously been home schooled; the work load was unbearable and I had no friends. I fell for a girl and was utterly humiliated and denied. Sometimes, right in the middle of class, I would put my hands on my face and cry; hoping that people would think I was sleeping.

That was how things went. To this day believe that it was the lowest point of my life. No friends, no family; only humiliation.

But from that day onward I fought. I fought for myself and no one else. I fought like there was no tomorrow; tooth, claw, nail, fist, run, run, RUN! I fought everyday to kill the emotions that made me miserable. No matter how much pain I was feeling I would say to myself “It means nothing”. For a solid year I spent most of my time sitting quietly by myself observing people; understanding what makes them tick. Through the fires of agony I grew into an unstoppable force. I became independent from my failed family and was emotionally invincible.

And now here I am; a good job, a nice play to stay and wonderful friends.
What is the problem? Every now and then I have a total emotional breakdown. For a couple of weeks I just sob and sob in my room; solitary. I don’t know why it happens but I it is indescribably painful. All those feelings of humiliation and emotional insecurity come to me. I the anxiety feels like an elephant on my chest; hard to breath, hard to eat. Nothing seems interesting or beautiful. All tasteless. Miserable.

This happens every 6 months or so and I want it to end. Professional help is out of the question.

Thanks for your time.
-M

 

[sailor28]

The trauma you experienced as a child/teen is imprinted in your emotional make up. It is stored in our unconscious and remains there unless we do something to heal it.

My philosophy is that everyone needs a good therapist at some point in their life to walk through these issues. I personally grew up with a severely mentally ill mother (untreated). I thought having a relationship with God would heal it all. But our emotional and spiritual lives needs to be integrated. I worked on it a lot but it still catches up with me.

If professional help is out of the question perhaps a spiritual director could help? Perhaps come Christian based guided meditation looking back on that time and imaging Jesus right beside you healing you?

 

[tawny]

Praying to the Holy Spirit to give you guidance, direction, strength, fortitude & wisdom in your time of need.

 

[Dorothy]

Marceleon,

I am sorry to hear about all of the emotional turmoil you went through.

If you could find a priest you feel comfortable to discuss this with, it can help.

Another thing to do is to pray for the persons who contributed to your unhappiness. With the help of the grace of the Lord you can will to forgive them, even if you don’t “feel” the forgiveness.

Our spiritual Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, can help you also. Stay close to her.

I will say a prayer for you right now.

May our Lord Jesus Christ and his holy Mother be with you!

 

[ChurchSoldier]

You can find help here Don’t dismiss it at first glance. Look around a bit and see if you relate.

 

[Allegra]

Losing your family unit is a traumatic experience. The family is supposed to be a constant in a person’s life. Members are not supposed to be traded in and out at will. This is unnatural and causes anxiety and sorrow for children of divorced parents. In my opinion, you deal with this pain in different ways, throughout different seasons of your life. It’s okay that this effects you. There really is no way that it wouldn’t. However, if you are having episodes that make living your life difficult, I think you should see a professional in order to learn some coping strategies.

 

[sirach2v4]

I wish I knew, because that is my problem as well.

As a teen, my psychological compensation was to try to act normal, because I didn’t know how to move about in a group. Part of acting normal (in which effort I did not always feel I succeeded) was to try to feel normal and think normally, and it took quite an effort to do this.

I took refuge behind book learning of every type, to try to learn what I could not learn in normal family interaction. To this day, my social interactions are driven towards the things I have learned in books – like what to talk about. It is no substitute for a healthy family life.

The closest I have come to what I consider to be the truth is by studying the Bible and following its precepts. If that ain’t right, then I am in big trouble. And, at that, I am far from the scriptural ideal.

For a number of reasons I never married. My most meaningful iinteractions with the remnants of my family and the scant number of friends I have is based on giving them something or doing something for them. I was distracted this evening by these very thoughts.

The other night I finished reading a Jewish book called Etz Hayim, the tree of life – Torah and Commentary. It’s a great commentary on the Torah, readable by Christians with only an occasional need to disagree with the insights of a separate system of religious belief. There were other readings from the prophets interspersed in the Torah text. One of the last ones was the most impressive to me, Isaiah 56 – what it had to say about foreigners and eunuchs. The point of it, I believe, is to let God guide your life. In this no one can go wrong.

Whatever else happens in your life, be as close to the Lord as you possibly can be. With the Lord you are not alone.

 

[jaimeleglise]

Your grieving a lost childhood is normal. If finances are a barrier to obtaining professional help, contact your priest or your local Catholic Charities. Praying for you.

 

[EasterJoy]

…Through the fires of agony I grew into an unstoppable force. I became independent from my failed family and was emotionally invincible.

And now here I am; a good job, a nice play to stay and wonderful friends.
What is the problem? Every now and then I have a total emotional breakdown. For a couple of weeks I just sob and sob in my room; solitary. I don’t know why it happens but I it is indescribably painful. All those feelings of humiliation and emotional insecurity come to me. I the anxiety feels like an elephant on my chest; hard to breath, hard to eat. Nothing seems interesting or beautiful. All tasteless. Miserable.

This happens every 6 months or so and I want it to end. Professional help is out of the question.

Thanks for your time.
-M

No, you did not grow into an unstoppable force, you did not achieve independence from the trauma of your family situation, and you did not become emotionally invincible. Those were things you told yourself in order to put off the work of grieving the tremedous loss and unchosen isolation you were going through. That work was so far beyond your ability to do it by yourself that you had no choice.

You didn’t do the wrong thing. You just didn’t achieve what you thought you had. You told yourself a myth that made you into a super hero in order to survive. That was OK. To grieve was important, but survival was more urgent. Your myth allowed you to rise to a heroic level of endurance. The problem is, you can’t endure like that forever. You are not a super hero. You need human connections to other people. You need to be able to trust, not just to be trusted, and to be able to accept love, not just to give it. Eventually, you have to stop coping and start doing the work needed for actual healing. You need to connect with other people and form relationships of mutual trust and truly mutual support, just like everyone else. You had to renounce your belief that you needed those things in order to survive your starvation for them, but now you have to rebuild that bridge to the rest of humanity.

You have suffered damage of the sort that essentially never resolves on its own without any outside help. You may as well ask us how to heal a compound fracture without professional help. If you want this to end, you need serious outside help, help of the sort that a non-professional is very unlikely to be able to give to you. I cannot imagine how you will do this with no help at all, because one of the things you need is to trust people to know how much you need them to love you and support you.

Still, you are obviously a strong person. You can survive the turmoil of working through the pain that you need to work through. You have the strength to reciprocally accept love and support from people that you also have to accept will let you down from time to time, to get through the occasional disappointment that comes with letting others truly touch you. You can learn to go outside, to hear a storm coming through, and accept wind and rain without feeling certain that you’ll be struck by lightning again, to only run for cover when the normal signs of a lightning strike come, not every time a tall cloud comes by.

You do have a sort of PTSD, I would guess. Your trauma was emotional rather than physical, though. I think you still need outside help, but on top of that I’m going to suggest something a little weird, just to consider. Many people with PTSD are helped by having pets. Is the companionship of a dog or some other animal something that might ease your pain a bit? I don’t mean it will cure you, but if you are a dog lover, having a dog of your own might help you during these really hard times when you need “someone” to be there, but don’t yet trust humanity to be as unfailingly available in that role as you need them to be.

Your grieving a lost childhood is normal. If finances are a barrier to obtaining professional help, contact your priest or your local Catholic Charities. Praying for you.

If the barrier is financial, do this!! If the barrier is an inner resistance to therapy because you haven’t yet found a therapist who is any help, I would suggest the OP keep trying to find someone.