Crying In arms and repressed feelings
It really scares me when I see that no matter how long I push my daughter into showing me her emotions, and her eyes focus somewhere else where she seems in deep pain as she screams and screams her emotions out, she still can't seem to face me from her most intimate self. It saddens me to no end that she is detached from her at her true core, and cannot be in relaxation with me there. This means that her true self, the deepest self that she is, is built on pain, and fracturing due to it's first memory in the world.
I discovered another sharp trigger for her: being held up from her armpits with her body dangling in the air. She screeched the moment that happened today. I flashed back to when she was first held in the world, in that same exact position by the hot-headed doctor who was triggered by the fact that me, his patient, was telling him that I wanted to give birth on my own terms, that is without 6 nurses holding me down for dear life. He threatened a C-section, like I had threatened his pride, and I was a misbehaving child in preschool that had to stand against the wall because I wasn't listening to the teacher.
So there my baby was, dangling butt naked covered in blood and white goo with her arms and feet bend up waiting to be held by her Mother, She had no clue what was happened, and her eyes were glazed.
So from that moment, terror was stored in her body. it accumulated with each passing hurt, and each time I, her mother, did not lovingly let her cry out her feelings and instead shoved a pacifier in her mouth and swung her around to shush her. It became a usual practice: feelings come up, suck fiercely on rubber nipple, experience shaking up and down motions. She associated the feelings with getting those things, and never learned that they could actually be worked through and comforted by letting them OUT of the body through tears.
And so now, here we are, almost ten months later, experiencing rage, frustrations and bitterness that was never released.
On the website www.evolvingmamma.com, Thumb-Sucking: An Aware Parenting Approach. Guest Post by Marion Rose says that if we never experienced crying and crying o let out your emotions in the arms of someone loving, until you "return to a sense of peace, and self-connection" and "Your eyes can see so clearly, until you feel a spaciousness in your chest, and openness and love," it is going to be very hard for us to give that to our babies. It is going to be hard for us to trust that being held lovingly and having all our needs met is a really healing experience.
Funny thing, I sucked my thumb all through my childhood, along with carried around a security blanket that I literally could not sleep without, and I fondly remember those things saving me in times of big feelings of hurt after a huge hurt happened. I was compulsive about feeling the blanket's soft pili surface, and enjoyed pulling them out.
I can see this in myself, I still have a hard time BELIEVING that my daughter CAN feel safe and secure with all her needs met. It just seems like something that is unreachable, yet I am too scared for her to feel the same way.
Memory: I always used to be scared of being responsible for a baby, because I KNEW that babies needed that feeling that all was taken care of, that their cries would be answered by trusted grown-ups, that life was safe. I knew deep down that life was NOT safe, so therefore I could not be the person to give that to them. The ability to know unconditionally that they were safe and loved. I think a lot of people have this fear, and so when a baby cries, it overwhelms their senses of feeling unsafe and vulnerable, as they feel the babies own sense of it. It expounds everything they are most terrified of within: that life is truly an unsafe place.
Tears and Tantrums by Aletha Solter on Pg. 45 says that, "Research has found that crying itself does not activate the stress response in infants. Instead both crying and the stress responses are caused by stressful events."
Marion Rose further says that our whole culture is based on avoiding discomforts through numbing with shopping, food, and distractions, for fear of the belief that we are crazy, so this also messes with our minds in how we respond to our babies' discomforts.
She says feelings are physiological, when we repress them, they are not going away and they stay in the body. The hormones, the feelings and the physiological components all stay inside us, and tightens the muscles in our bodies further, such as around the mouth and legs.
The more this happens, the more we push away the process of healing, the more the tension accumulates. The baby does this through sucking, and many other ways. Sucking creates disassociation, because in is all-consuming in focus. She says it causes baby to become in a trance-like state.
She says do not blame yourself, for you were brought up in a world where you did not know that babies needed to feel their feelings to heal. And babies, like grownups, keep trying to heal themselves by trying over and over to cry them out, just like grownups try to heal hurts by attracting similar scenarios not their lives again over and over again.
All of the storms of tantrums, sibling rivalry, inability to sleep etc, that a baby/child goes through, from an Awareness Parenting perspective, are really indications of discomfort feelings. and they can all be healed through crying in arms and sitting with the feelings.
I went to the supermarket after my baby woke up from her nap, and many people gave her smiles and attention, to which she smiled back, but was still tired and kind of spaced. I realized she was tired from our hours of staying awake in middle of the night but my refusal to rock her because I wanted her to express her stress, and so when we got home, she was extremely loud when I tried to feel out her emotions. An hour later, of on and off trying to listen to her, I put her in the sling and left the pacifier out, allowing her to cry and cry before she could fall asleep. it worked, and after about ten minutes exhaustion took over and I felt triumphed from this small step.
So long for now,
An Adoptee heart
I discovered another sharp trigger for her: being held up from her armpits with her body dangling in the air. She screeched the moment that happened today. I flashed back to when she was first held in the world, in that same exact position by the hot-headed doctor who was triggered by the fact that me, his patient, was telling him that I wanted to give birth on my own terms, that is without 6 nurses holding me down for dear life. He threatened a C-section, like I had threatened his pride, and I was a misbehaving child in preschool that had to stand against the wall because I wasn't listening to the teacher.
So there my baby was, dangling butt naked covered in blood and white goo with her arms and feet bend up waiting to be held by her Mother, She had no clue what was happened, and her eyes were glazed.
So from that moment, terror was stored in her body. it accumulated with each passing hurt, and each time I, her mother, did not lovingly let her cry out her feelings and instead shoved a pacifier in her mouth and swung her around to shush her. It became a usual practice: feelings come up, suck fiercely on rubber nipple, experience shaking up and down motions. She associated the feelings with getting those things, and never learned that they could actually be worked through and comforted by letting them OUT of the body through tears.
And so now, here we are, almost ten months later, experiencing rage, frustrations and bitterness that was never released.
On the website www.evolvingmamma.com, Thumb-Sucking: An Aware Parenting Approach. Guest Post by Marion Rose says that if we never experienced crying and crying o let out your emotions in the arms of someone loving, until you "return to a sense of peace, and self-connection" and "Your eyes can see so clearly, until you feel a spaciousness in your chest, and openness and love," it is going to be very hard for us to give that to our babies. It is going to be hard for us to trust that being held lovingly and having all our needs met is a really healing experience.
Funny thing, I sucked my thumb all through my childhood, along with carried around a security blanket that I literally could not sleep without, and I fondly remember those things saving me in times of big feelings of hurt after a huge hurt happened. I was compulsive about feeling the blanket's soft pili surface, and enjoyed pulling them out.
I can see this in myself, I still have a hard time BELIEVING that my daughter CAN feel safe and secure with all her needs met. It just seems like something that is unreachable, yet I am too scared for her to feel the same way.
Memory: I always used to be scared of being responsible for a baby, because I KNEW that babies needed that feeling that all was taken care of, that their cries would be answered by trusted grown-ups, that life was safe. I knew deep down that life was NOT safe, so therefore I could not be the person to give that to them. The ability to know unconditionally that they were safe and loved. I think a lot of people have this fear, and so when a baby cries, it overwhelms their senses of feeling unsafe and vulnerable, as they feel the babies own sense of it. It expounds everything they are most terrified of within: that life is truly an unsafe place.
Tears and Tantrums by Aletha Solter on Pg. 45 says that, "Research has found that crying itself does not activate the stress response in infants. Instead both crying and the stress responses are caused by stressful events."
Marion Rose further says that our whole culture is based on avoiding discomforts through numbing with shopping, food, and distractions, for fear of the belief that we are crazy, so this also messes with our minds in how we respond to our babies' discomforts.
She says feelings are physiological, when we repress them, they are not going away and they stay in the body. The hormones, the feelings and the physiological components all stay inside us, and tightens the muscles in our bodies further, such as around the mouth and legs.
The more this happens, the more we push away the process of healing, the more the tension accumulates. The baby does this through sucking, and many other ways. Sucking creates disassociation, because in is all-consuming in focus. She says it causes baby to become in a trance-like state.
She says do not blame yourself, for you were brought up in a world where you did not know that babies needed to feel their feelings to heal. And babies, like grownups, keep trying to heal themselves by trying over and over to cry them out, just like grownups try to heal hurts by attracting similar scenarios not their lives again over and over again.
All of the storms of tantrums, sibling rivalry, inability to sleep etc, that a baby/child goes through, from an Awareness Parenting perspective, are really indications of discomfort feelings. and they can all be healed through crying in arms and sitting with the feelings.
I went to the supermarket after my baby woke up from her nap, and many people gave her smiles and attention, to which she smiled back, but was still tired and kind of spaced. I realized she was tired from our hours of staying awake in middle of the night but my refusal to rock her because I wanted her to express her stress, and so when we got home, she was extremely loud when I tried to feel out her emotions. An hour later, of on and off trying to listen to her, I put her in the sling and left the pacifier out, allowing her to cry and cry before she could fall asleep. it worked, and after about ten minutes exhaustion took over and I felt triumphed from this small step.
So long for now,
An Adoptee heart
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