Confusion Never Ends, Onto the Start of Aware Parenting
Just when I thought I was in touch with my feelings, and feeling happy and good, my daughter was avoiding my eye when I couldn't put her to sleep, and I realized she was being avoidant, something familiar to me. I read that it is normal for babies to pick up defense mechanisms from their parents as modeled, and I am scared of doing this.
I wrote that during the day, and left it at that because I was too emotionally exhausted to go on. I am part of a FB group called Women with PTSD, and it slowly gives me rise to put my emotional turmoil and baggage into the perspective that it is not normal, and I can own up to it being abnormal, which let's me seperaate from it and CHOSE change. When things are accepted as the norm, those actions and believes are stuck, and it is impossible to change. When it is about depression and negativity in the mind, shame is the base, and people feel compelled to shut it out and not face it. I've been that way in the past, until it got too much to handle, HIT ROCK BOTTOM as they say, and I tackled my feelings head on like a WARRIOR. and I never want to go back.
"Survival mode is supposed to be a phase that helps save your life.
It is not meant to be how you life." -Michele Rosenthal, author of Your Life After Trauma
From the Facebook group Is Adoption Trauma:
"Many Adopted children feel invisible because they are forced to repress their need to know about their origins. They feel that an essential part of them is unacknowledged by their adoptive family and society." -Betty Jean Lifton
So I was lost in my unawareness of feelings, a usual case for me sadly, and I put the baby to sleep late at night, imagining that tomorrow I would try harder to become aware, and get to the bottom of my true self.
Just two hours later, at 2 am, baby was up and rummaging around the bed. I sighed and pulled my weak body up and started rocking her back to sleep, my usual go-to action.
Though I know something is wrong with her. Emotions are brewing inside. So, for the hundredth time or so, I type into google to see what the Universe can teach me. I type: why would a baby repress her feelings. Desperately.
And for the first time, I got a FULLY SATISFYING wholesome, step by step, response. :)
I am here to share it with you.
Www.Marionrose.net- Aware parenting, development of the self, and repression was the first page. Slowly, I began to digest the truth.
Essentially, "the more a parent can be present with her own feelings, and differentiate between his baby's present-time needs and his need to express his feelings, the more she will be able to be present with her baby's feelings."
I know, I knew this was true. but I needed a proof from the Outer world, because my inner world confidence get's shaky at times. Based on my past and adoption. But it made me see how my gut feeling of knowing something was up, but my usual outer mind and logic was ruling and putting me down. Telling me that I had no right to my own feelings, and that I was a bad parent, but I didn't want to believe it because it was too shameful. Ego was too fragile to admit that to myself. I had overworked my senses into exhausted, and had not tended to my needs. And it hurt to admit either; that I had no capacity for empathy for my own kin, or that I needed to slow down and be "selfish in giving to myself," So I shut down.
But, here in black and white, I was given the understanding and permission to accept the truth, and admit my flaws without self-judgment. Because someone else, a professional at that, validated them.
Yes- it IS hard having to listen to a helpless baby's needs. It is Scary to think that I am the SOLE responsibility of my child's emotional health. But she said a few things that were of great comfort, and alarm:
That a child can heal through having their tears heard by their loved ones, in arms. Scary because I have been repressing that usually- more on that later,
And that there is no judgment from her, all parents can handle DIFFERENT amount of crying in arms time, that's why AWARE parenting is no one size fits all, it's a spectrum. What comfort, what wisdom. I have been doing so, but I beat myself up inside for not doing it often enough, She also stresses how in-line she is with mothers not feeling guilt, and how that is like literally throwing sticks and stones onto your insides.
She learned that with crying, the idea that denial, repression, and splitting of the personality for a baby is not necessary, it can be prevented! I have also questioned this norm that I have read about, in that you can only work on your child''s trauma from birth when they are old enough to SPEAK. No, they can understand and have a BRAIN of EMOTIONS from when they are born!
This is getting overwhelming, as it was yesterday, when I was spending the day reading up on her website and feeling anxiety and stress to WORK on it already creeping in. I knew I HAD to write about it, because it helps me process and feeling like I'm putting into action these ideas.
The thing about being an "old soul" and victim of emotional neglect- as Lisa A. Romano says- you think that your inner feelings are not real unless they are validated outside, so you CANNOT not react or voice your feeling extremely, because you feel invisible otherwise.
Well, this is happening to me now, but I feel something inner pushing me to write, Adoptee over achiever in me. But it does heal my self- esteem, so I will do it. Ok, stop explaining, just do it :)
I guess in a way I want to do it too, because writing and collecting information and explaining it has always been a passion of mine. So it is really me. It's a bit of both- nature and nurture. The fact that I grew up in a tragic situation and was never given the respect to grieve, thus rendering me feeling crazy and having to repress my feelings, so needing to Shout it out to feel Alive, and the drive to make sense of the human mind and what drives myself and the world.
Love you all, (Lol as if I am already an anchor with a large following of people eating up every word of my posts- get to see my narcissistic wounding)
An Adoptee Heart
I wrote that during the day, and left it at that because I was too emotionally exhausted to go on. I am part of a FB group called Women with PTSD, and it slowly gives me rise to put my emotional turmoil and baggage into the perspective that it is not normal, and I can own up to it being abnormal, which let's me seperaate from it and CHOSE change. When things are accepted as the norm, those actions and believes are stuck, and it is impossible to change. When it is about depression and negativity in the mind, shame is the base, and people feel compelled to shut it out and not face it. I've been that way in the past, until it got too much to handle, HIT ROCK BOTTOM as they say, and I tackled my feelings head on like a WARRIOR. and I never want to go back.
"Survival mode is supposed to be a phase that helps save your life.
It is not meant to be how you life." -Michele Rosenthal, author of Your Life After Trauma
From the Facebook group Is Adoption Trauma:
"Many Adopted children feel invisible because they are forced to repress their need to know about their origins. They feel that an essential part of them is unacknowledged by their adoptive family and society." -Betty Jean Lifton
So I was lost in my unawareness of feelings, a usual case for me sadly, and I put the baby to sleep late at night, imagining that tomorrow I would try harder to become aware, and get to the bottom of my true self.
Just two hours later, at 2 am, baby was up and rummaging around the bed. I sighed and pulled my weak body up and started rocking her back to sleep, my usual go-to action.
Though I know something is wrong with her. Emotions are brewing inside. So, for the hundredth time or so, I type into google to see what the Universe can teach me. I type: why would a baby repress her feelings. Desperately.
And for the first time, I got a FULLY SATISFYING wholesome, step by step, response. :)
I am here to share it with you.
Www.Marionrose.net- Aware parenting, development of the self, and repression was the first page. Slowly, I began to digest the truth.
Essentially, "the more a parent can be present with her own feelings, and differentiate between his baby's present-time needs and his need to express his feelings, the more she will be able to be present with her baby's feelings."
I know, I knew this was true. but I needed a proof from the Outer world, because my inner world confidence get's shaky at times. Based on my past and adoption. But it made me see how my gut feeling of knowing something was up, but my usual outer mind and logic was ruling and putting me down. Telling me that I had no right to my own feelings, and that I was a bad parent, but I didn't want to believe it because it was too shameful. Ego was too fragile to admit that to myself. I had overworked my senses into exhausted, and had not tended to my needs. And it hurt to admit either; that I had no capacity for empathy for my own kin, or that I needed to slow down and be "selfish in giving to myself," So I shut down.
But, here in black and white, I was given the understanding and permission to accept the truth, and admit my flaws without self-judgment. Because someone else, a professional at that, validated them.
Yes- it IS hard having to listen to a helpless baby's needs. It is Scary to think that I am the SOLE responsibility of my child's emotional health. But she said a few things that were of great comfort, and alarm:
That a child can heal through having their tears heard by their loved ones, in arms. Scary because I have been repressing that usually- more on that later,
And that there is no judgment from her, all parents can handle DIFFERENT amount of crying in arms time, that's why AWARE parenting is no one size fits all, it's a spectrum. What comfort, what wisdom. I have been doing so, but I beat myself up inside for not doing it often enough, She also stresses how in-line she is with mothers not feeling guilt, and how that is like literally throwing sticks and stones onto your insides.
She learned that with crying, the idea that denial, repression, and splitting of the personality for a baby is not necessary, it can be prevented! I have also questioned this norm that I have read about, in that you can only work on your child''s trauma from birth when they are old enough to SPEAK. No, they can understand and have a BRAIN of EMOTIONS from when they are born!
This is getting overwhelming, as it was yesterday, when I was spending the day reading up on her website and feeling anxiety and stress to WORK on it already creeping in. I knew I HAD to write about it, because it helps me process and feeling like I'm putting into action these ideas.
The thing about being an "old soul" and victim of emotional neglect- as Lisa A. Romano says- you think that your inner feelings are not real unless they are validated outside, so you CANNOT not react or voice your feeling extremely, because you feel invisible otherwise.
Well, this is happening to me now, but I feel something inner pushing me to write, Adoptee over achiever in me. But it does heal my self- esteem, so I will do it. Ok, stop explaining, just do it :)
I guess in a way I want to do it too, because writing and collecting information and explaining it has always been a passion of mine. So it is really me. It's a bit of both- nature and nurture. The fact that I grew up in a tragic situation and was never given the respect to grieve, thus rendering me feeling crazy and having to repress my feelings, so needing to Shout it out to feel Alive, and the drive to make sense of the human mind and what drives myself and the world.
Love you all, (Lol as if I am already an anchor with a large following of people eating up every word of my posts- get to see my narcissistic wounding)
An Adoptee Heart
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