October 17, 2011 The Eruption of Post Traumatic Stress is a Healing Opportunity

Hi everyone.  I hope you had a wonderful summer and are enjoying this beautiful fall season.  Wow.  Two weekends of Indian summer was such a blessing!  In my eyes the beauty of the season makes up for summer coming to an end.  I hope it is beautiful wherever you are located!  It has been a while since I have written, I have had some ailments that have added some stress to my life.  But as always I feel there is a lesson in everything that happens.

Two ailments occurred on top of each other.  I was already in distress about a painful ailment when something randomly flew in my eye and temporarily blinded me and with such severe pain that I could not drive myself to the doctor to get it removed.  This caused me to over-react in such a distressing way that it caused me to experience some childhood emotional pain that had been hidden from me until then.  The object was removed from my eye and it healed completely in the next 4 days but during this stressful time, I remembered a comment my mother had made. It was an epiphany–an aha moment!  Her comment was, “When you were 1 1/2 years old, you had severe diarrhea and were in the hospital for over a week and the doctors never figured out the cause.  The nurses wouldn’t let me visit you because you would try to climb out of the crib to get to me.”  Years ago when she told me this, I had no emotional reaction to it.  But the stress of these health events caused an over-reaction in me that now makes a lot of sense!  Because of this epiphany, the reason for all of the overwhelming feelings I was experiencing came clear.  I realized I was feeling all the repressed emotion of an abandoned toddler who was terrified that her parents were never coming back, who felt she was being punished in this crib in the hospital, who was confused about why all this was happening and it seemed like the end of the world.  This hospitalization at an age where attachment is so crucial and separation anxiety is at a peak, my whole world crumbled and my security completely gone, I emerged from the hospital traumatized.

Now it took me a while to figure all of this out, but analytical and self-aware person that I am I was fascinated with the process, even though it required releasing these unbearably painful emotions that had been frozen in time, finally freeing me in their release.  I believe that when traumas like this occur and never get worked through, they remain stuck in our bodies causing an energy blockage that can cause illness and disease (dis-ease). (Louise Hay and Dr. Christian Northrup–see Recommended Books.)  Talking through this and releasing the pain and having my husband for a witness, I started feeling like I was finally healing from this ailment that had been chronically stressing me.  Yay!  It was shocking yet exhilarating for these facts about this trauma to be unearthed the way it occurred.  So many unexplained fears that I have had started to make sense to me.  Their origins were from this trauma that had been hidden from my memory my whole life.  It was a post traumatic stress event that now has given way to new understanding of the origins of some of my irrational fears and insecurities.  Now, I feel stronger and less fearful and I am healing those deep insecurities by releasing the pain and having someone witness and validate my feelings–a safe person that I trust completely.  This is the process of inner child healing.  I thought I had worked through all of my previous traumas but it turns out that I had one more vitally important trauma to work through.

At the time I was releasing the pain I felt it would go on forever and that I would never recover.  I very soon felt better though as I released these fears that were from my childhood trauma. Releasing the emotions had to include my memories of clinging to my mother for dear life for years after this event, and with her being narcissistic I had no chance of having my needs for security met and my trauma acknowledged.  She LOVED all the attention I gave her, clinging to her in fear like that and this explains why my older siblings and I never connected.  She would constantly yell at them for not being obedient like I was as I laid in her lap on car trips and never left her side.  Intuitively gifted even as a child, I took care of her emotional needs so that she would not reject me–after my unhealed trauma I couldn’t bear the thought of it, even though, I now understand, it was only conditional love and I was obedient and good out of extreme fear.  Now this explains why she forgot to send me to kindergarten and a neighbor made her send me to school finally.  Thank goodness for that neighbor!  My memories of how I flourished in those few months in kindergarten and how the teachers built me up and I was proud of myself are the memories I hold onto of my true self persevering and shining through.

If you have had some traumatic incidents like this in your childhood, and most HSPs surely have, I understand your pain.  Writing out what happened and/or talking to a safe person is important. It helps to think back to a memory of a happy time before the age of 5 or 6 (5 or 6 is the age when we usually give up, if we have a narcissistic parent, and develop a false self to survive–Alice Miller).  This memory is your true self making itself known to you. Thinking back to that moment can give you strength as to your positive happy potential.  You can recover your true self again if you can see that you didn’t get the validation of your feelings that  you deserved. Then finally release those painful emotions.  The next time you over-react to stress or have a full-blown post traumatic stress episode you can look at it as a healing opportunity.  Learn to recognize and release your painful feelings and then relate them back to the origins of when they occurred–this  is how true healing occurs.  Hopefully you can find a counselor or coach like myself who has experience with inner child healing as a safe person to trust with your truth.

Years ago I read that often the first symptoms of gluten intolerance or celiac sprue is a bout of diarrhea in the first couple years of life–this confirmed my self-diagnosis of gluten intolerance.  At that time I had remembered my mothers comment about my early hospitalization with no emotion at all for that experience on the tiny sensitive child that I was.  Now I have much compassion for the pain I experienced and that all infants and toddlers go through in these early childhood hospitalizations without parents present.  Nowadays, doctors know not to keep parents from their children at these young ages when attachment and security is so crucial but back in the 60′s they hadn’t learned this yet. Thank goodness times are better now.  I was encouraged to stay and sleep in the hospital room for several days with my first-born when he had pneumonia when he was 2.  And my second born never left our room after she was born and I gave her first bath. I am grateful to have experienced such compassionate hospital experiences for my own children.

This ailment that I mentioned is still causing me stress even though it is beginning to heal.  I won’t go into detail about it except that it is chronic pain, slow to heal, and it has become clear to me that it requires more of my attention, more rest, and I must make some adjustments in my activities.  So unfortunately I must take a temporary leave of absence from this blog.  You might call it a sabbatical because I am determined to return stronger than ever and with even more wisdom and insight to share. It is my hope that during this time you will support and answer each others comments since I will be unable to do so.  This has already been happening by some regular commenters, which has been wonderful to see–when you reach out and support someone else who is hurting, the good feeling that you receive from helping others is exhilarating and wonderful.  I hope that you will try it out and see what I mean.

I am not going to say goodbye, I am just going to say take care of yourselves and each other while I am gone and I will be back!  :)

Warmest wishes and love to you all,

Elaine

August 5, 2011 Emotionally Healthy Parenting Info. For Highly Sensitive People–It’s Time To Stand Your Ground!

Hi everyone.  It is now August and I hope all of you have been enjoying the summer.  Yeah it’s too hot!–but I hope you are finding creative ways to beat the heat.  I am having the best summer ever!  I have found that my ability to slow down and enjoy the moment is really sticking this time.  The lessons I learned from my now healed injury are sticking with me–I appreciate the small things so much still… and when I get too busy I catch myself and pull back the reins and say “Whoa, slow down and listen to your body”.  Then I have more energy to do the things that are important to me… like writing to you all!  :)

My creative way of beating the heat is to wait to ride my bike for exercise around my neighborhood until evening and sometimes even after dark. (Please only do this if it is a safe area and there is no traffic.)  There is something special about summer evenings when the temperature is perfect, the moonlight is just enough to see what you need to see, and it’s so quiet and peaceful out.  It is really recharging for highly sensitive people and it feels like such a treat for myself–I feel a spiritual connection to Mother Earth and the Universe and God.

I have a special event coming up.  I am turning 50 years old next month!   I really don’t feel 50 and people say I don’t look 50 so I am really going to celebrate big!  Yay!  I have a lot to celebrate!  I feel more like 32 and have more energy and better health than I have ever had in my life!  The second half of my life is going to be even better than the first half and the first half turned out to be really awesome!

I believe HSPs are very often late bloomers–we have hardships early in life that we struggle with but then we start coming out the other side.  We soon realize the journey we are on is exactly the one we needed to be on to find our voice and true purpose in life.  That is definitely what happened to me.  The first half of my life I acquired a college degree, married, and then chose, for my first career, being a  Mom raising two amazing children to feel good about themselves as my first priority.  I changed the cycle of abuse for them and they have nothing holding them back from pursuing their dreams.  I cheer them on and say “You can do it!

Both of my children are both highly sensitive and intuitive people with kind and compassionate spirits.   They call us often to share good news and also when they encounter negativity and negative people in their lives and we listen and empathize.  They feel better with support and continue to learn to build themselves up.  That is what a healthy family system is supposed to be like.  I am adding 2 new links here on my blog that I want to share with all of you and they are:  Attachment Parenting International Dot Org and The Attached Family Dot Com.

It is so supportive to go to these sites and see what a healthy nurturing family looks and feels like!  It helps you remember, it is their choice not to embrace their roles as parents with compassion and giving and to choose blaming, negativity, and guilt- inducing instead.  Tell yourself, “it is not my responsibility to give up the essence of my self and my energy so that someone else will feel better and not even appreciate it or see how that harms me.”

I will never induce guilt in my children–make them feel guilty so they will visit me more often.  They visit us because they want to because they feel better being around us.  We build them up and give them encouragement.  We tell them, “We are sure you will figure it all out–you are doing a great job so far!”.  We help them to trust their inner guidance and to go towards positive people and positive feelings in their lives.  We teach them to have healthy boundaries. Healthy boundaries are when you are able to be separate and whole and feel good about your place on the planet–you can shine your light and help others without giving up your self.

As highly sensitive children we survivors took care of our parent’s feelings because our compassion is innate in us.  But we have to learn to stop doing this now that we are adults.  When you give up your truth to get a parent’s approval to avoid conflict then you have gone too far and have lost your healthy sense of self and have given up your own energy and truth.

HSPs need support to know that it is important to protect your precious energy that is so easily drained away by people who tell us we OWE them.  You don’t owe narcissistic parents anything–parents who use fear to manipulate and control instead of giving any love and acceptance are deal breakers (not honorable).  You don’t have to “honor thy parent” if they induce fear in their children.  Fear is the opposite of love.

It is always best to try to talk to parents in a civil way to point out these things.  I’m sure you have tried saying things like, “I care about you and I also disagree and I am going to do it this way instead”.  If with your best efforts at fairness you are still constantly punished for your disobedient ways,  (even if it is passive–aggressive silent treatments), even though you are an adult, these are toxic situations for HSPs.  If you have tried it all and you are miserable and fed up, don’t feel guilty!  Or if “no contact” is working for you now or helping you heal so you can get stronger, don’t feel guilty!  You are not responsible for anyone else’s happiness,  just yours.

What would they say if you confronted them with the pain they caused you.  They would deny and blame, right?  You would never do that to them, you would say…“I’m sorry”… maybe even if it wasn’t your fault.  Your compassionate soul is rare and has a special purpose on this planet.  Your specialness is important to the planet.  Focus on giving your gifts to those who really will appreciate it as a mission and even possibly a career for yourself.  The planet needs more HSPs!  Be glad you are one.

I heard the song, I Won’t Back Down by Tom Petty on the radio the other day. It filled me with a sense of fun and positive energy and helped me feel even stronger.  Since then I have been singing it a lot in my head and I love how it gives me strength when I say those words. “I am gonna stand my ground”.  Listen to it when you get a chance.  Here are some of the lyrics:

No I’ll stand my ground, won’t be turned around
And I’ll keep this world from draggin me down
gonna stand my ground
… and I won’t back down

Chorus:
(I won’t back down…)
Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out
(and I won’t back down…)
hey I will stand my ground
and I won’t back down

Well I know what’s right, I got just one life
in a world that keeps on pushin me around
but I’ll stand my ground
…and I won’t back down

The point is that feeling “grounded” is so important to an HSPs health in all ways:   Body, Mind, and Spirit.  Standing your ground can symbolize feeling rooted in the earth.  You are here on the planet for a reason.  Your “space” here on the planet is your own and you deserve to feel confident and strong and separate and whole… standing tall and deserving of your spot on the planet.  We get positive strength and energy from Mother Earth and she recharges us again when we get depleted.  Mother Earth loves us–imagine being rooted in love!  Walking on the warm grass in bare feet (on warm summer August evenings ) is especially recharging–imagine the positive energy of the planet beneath you recharging you up your legs and into your heart and head. Relax your tense muscles throughout your body while you do this.  These kinds of visualizations really work to help me feel strong and inner peace about my independence and freedom and standing “my ground”.  I hope they are helpful to you too!

My birthday is on September 9!  I hope you will stop by my site on that day and say hello and help me Celebrate!  My husband, children and I will be partying all day and evening!  I will have a  message for all of you in my Update Corner on that day.

I will be on vacation August 22-28–So, except for that week, I am here and always available to you, my readers, commenters, and clients.  My next post won’t be until later in September.  Have a wonderful August and rest of the summer, HSPs!  And remember to Stand Your Ground!

With Love,

Elaine

July 12, 2011 The Process of Inner Child Healing and a Poem of Hope for Highly Sensitive Survivors

Hello everyone.  Whenever I write a new post, I “tune in” to you, my readers, and write from my heart.  Sometimes I plan what I am going to write and other times I write something entirely different from what I had planned.  At the beginning I used to worry, “how can I top that last post”, but now I just trust in the process and I know that what I write will turn out all right.

It is wonderful to feel such confidence. It is such a contrast to how I used to feel years ago before I gained access to the truth of who I am.  It was “self-doubt”–a looming horrible anxious feeling of dread and guilt…or more often a feeling of numbness and compulsions to avoid feelings by keeping busy with tasks that I felt I “should” be doing.  I had no access to my truth–I had hidden away my truth to protect myself from the unbearable pain that I experienced as a child.

Through my journaling I discovered a process that helped me to heal more than anything else I tried–it was writing out my pain from my inner child’s point of view.  I knew from all of my reading and training in psychology that blocks happen in childhood–and I had been encouraged by two helpful counselors to continue to write out my feelings in order to uncover them (I had been writing poems about my feelings since the age of 14).

Writing from my inner child’s perspective just kind of naturally happened and I found it to be the most powerful healing tool in my own recovery.  I discovered “her” voice by writing out “her” pain and then I had no choice but to feel compassion for what “she” went through and over time “she” became clearly “Me”!  And as I began trusting in this process of trusting “her” view of what had happened to me I began trusting my self.  My inner dialogue then gradually changed from critical to compassionate.  I remember that I started feeling emotions that had previously been repressed and could then label them.

I was excited about this process.  For example, I’d be at the grocery store and suddenly become aware of a feeling such as shame and say to myself , “this feeling is really familiar but I never knew until now that it is “shame”.  Wow this is shame from my childhood coming up.”  I realized I was feeling these feelings for the first time since I had hidden them away in childhood.  Rather then get caught up in them I was able to observe them and acknowledge them and release them.  I would often go right away and write in my journal about the origins of these painful feelings.  Repressed memories would often come back to me during these times.  It wasn’t always so simple–sometimes I would unconsciously drag my husband into a drama only to discover I was replaying a trauma from childhood so that I could finally voice my feelings of anger, grief, or fear to my envisioned N parent.  My knowledge of what was happening luckily allowed me to be aware of the process of healing–I would quickly reassure my husband what was happening so that he could then support the release of my feelings as a supportive witness without feeling blamed in any way.  Seeing me recover my feelings in such a way and feel relief helped my husband to understand this healing process as well and he began processing his childhood pain in a similar way (he had a Narcissistic parent too).

I am planning to put together a book in which I include the best of my healing writings directly from my journals that show this process of healing first hand from age 18 to the present.  Although it will be very personal I am hoping that it will help others to heal and develop compassion for their inner child and what they went through if they are unable to write out their feelings in such a way that I was able–I consider it a gift that I was able to do this and I am grateful to have such a vivid memoir of my recovery.  I believe this gift of writing I have been given is another way that I can help other highly sensitive souls to recover and to help them to feel relief from the inner prison of emotional abuse by a Narcissistic parent.  Please let me know if you would be interested in reading such a book.

Recently I wrote the following poem when I “tuned in” to you, my readers and fellow highly sensitive survivors.  I was planning to save it for my book but I have decided to share it with you now instead to show an example one of the kinds of writings that will be included.  Here it is:

Poem of Hope and Healing for the Highly Sensitive Survivor

By Elaine D. Sanders

March 22, 2011

Pain so deep, I can’t see the light

I know it’s there but it’s not very bright

The sadness is thick, despair all around

I envision a child giving up with no sound

Pain so deep, I hide all my hope

Afraid to come out, I feel like a dope

Worthless and horrible, don’t ever try

The pain is unbearable, can’t even cry

I can’t feel the love, I need it so bad!

So much fear without it, it’s really so sad!’

I am feeling much better just admitting this truth

You have to have love when you’re in your youth!

Without love you can’t heal all the hurts that come by

When bad things do happen we need love when we cry

Someone has to hold us and give us new hope

If there’s no one for comfort than there’s no way to cope

No wonder I hid my talents away

When I would do well then I was their prey

The taunting, the teasing, “Who do you think you are?”

Shame became my deepest scar

But who was this child all hidden in shame

An innocent victim who will never be the same?

She thinks she is nothing but she is so wrong

The truth is she’s beautiful, wise, and so strong

Scoop up that child all broken and battered

Love her and hug her and tell her she matters

She’s awesome and wonderful, they were so wrong

Talented, creative , and smart all along

Sensitive soul you were so beaten down

But you figured it out and now you can leave town

You’re safe now and free–no more bullies outside

Shine your light, spread your wings, don’t believe all the lies

Be kind to yourself when the pain comes back ’round

Love yourself through it, your true self is found

You know the truth and now you can be free

Fear is from “them”–in the past, don’t you see?

Relax into the pain and it will dissipate

Because the pain is from lies and it’s never too late!

To believe in yourself and your talents and dreams

You are good at compassion and so many things

They did not want you to succeed with your gifts

So they made you give up and they threatened with fists

You were small so you gave up but now you are grown

You can heal all the pain and make it now on your own

You can do it!–the words you’ve long waited to hear

Say them to your self!  And say NO to the fear!

Give them back all the bad feelings that they gave to you

Imagine this energy going outward from you

Then let in the light and the love from a place

Where angels don’t want you to live in disgrace

You know what love is because you give it so freely

To others who need it when they’re feeling needy

Give to your self all this love all the time!

You will find your true purpose and all will be fine

These lessons are so hard that we learn from our pain

But we discover our strengths again and again

So sensitive souls who survived from abuse

Your gifts are so needed to be put to good use

I know how you feel and I hope you feel better

Because we can overcome it if we do it together!

I hope that this poem has helped you to feel loved

You are!–and I send it to you from above!

I understand and I want to comfort your pain

I hope this is helpful.  With Love from Elaine

June 17, 2011 Hurts So Good?–Through Pain You Grow Stronger–Processing Childhood Emotional Pain So You Can Heal

Hi everyone.  Today I was out on my patio getting my morning dose of Vitamin D from the sun (hallelujah, the warmth is finally here to stay!) and writing down ideas for my next post.  When I was finished, the song “Hurts So Good” by John Mellencamp came on the radio I was listening to.  You know the one…”sometimes love don’t feel like it should…”  Anyway, I had to laugh out loud with amazement as it seemed like a sign from the universe/God that my topic was approved–it seemed clear that I should trust my intuition to write about what I had decided to focus on and that was:  what hurts the most in life emotionally can reveal the truth of who we really are–and physical pain can teach us the exact lesson we need to learn to move forward–both kinds of pain help us grow and heal to become our best selves.

Of course the lyrics of the song do not imply that, but the title jumped out at me as confirmation and I have always loved that song!  It always makes me want to get up and dance and celebrate being alive for some reason.  Sometimes when you are feeling the pain from past abuse, acknowledging you were wronged, and you know you didn’t deserve it, you feel so much more alive and you have the right to your feelings about it!!  Your anger can be channeled into positive energy to take action for your self and improving your life and moving forward towards your dreams!  Also the song implies that you know how love should feel but you are willing to take the painful risk of loving again for the chance of being loved in return.

I so look forward to dancing again to songs like this and forgot how much I missed it until it was taken away when I recently injured my back/hip (S.I. joint)!  My pain has almost completely healed. Yay! I still have restricted movements but I have so much to look forward to.  And I am on my way to complete healing and I learned much–I will spare you the details until the end of this post for those interested.

Okay, so about the lessons to be learned from the emotionally painful things that happen to us….   I believe that all of us are here on this planet to learn lessons about who we are, what we are capable of, how to achieve inner peace, love ourselves the way we deserved to be loved, and how we can use our gifts to help others.  For those of us who are gifted with high sensitivity and intuition it is so difficult to figure these things out until we realize that a lot of the pain we experienced as children was our abusers pain that we just absorbed and internalized as our own.

When a narcissist starts to feel any emotional pain they get rid of it immediately by blaming the people around them. The highly sensitive child is the perfect target to take away the narcissist’s pain because they absorb it completely and don’t retaliate.  As kind and loving spirits, highly sensitive children would never dream of blaming someone else for anything so we can’t imagine that our parent might be wrong or sick or unhealthy in any way.  Now that we are adults and we are starting to see the light of how they “used” us to take away their shame, self-hatred, blame, and self-doubt, we can heal as we acknowledge the truth that we were fine before they took away our hopes and dreams and gave us their pain in its place.  We absorbed it all and believed it to be true–saying to ourselves, “I am to blame, there is something wrong with me, I am not good enough, I must try really hard to be someone else other than who I am in order to be loved, I am not as good as I think I am, I cannot trust my feelings, I must not make any mistakes, I am unloveable, I am unworthy, I hate myself, or I must be a disgusting human being for upsetting my parent in such a way.”  This is what a highly sensitive child can determine to be true when they are not seen for the kind and sensitive soul they are but used for the dumping ground of the negative emotions of a highly dysfunctional family.

We numb our feelings to survive as children–we repress the pain and decide to be obedient (if we were the Golden Child) or we rebel (if we were the Scapegoat).  Either way our mind protects us with illusions about our family members because we need them to survive.  We were after all children doing the best we knew how–there is no way for a sensitive child to detect danger when for as long as they can remember, this is what a loving family looks and feels like and it is ingrained in the neural pathways in our brains.  We believed the distorted view that our narcissistic parent presented to us and insisted upon because we believe in the goodness of life innately–we trust completely which is a beautiful thing.  It is a wondrous gift to be able to trust in life, to trust in the universe, that it will support us and show us the way if we trust our feelings and our intuition.  We have the inner guidance and wisdom to be happy and fulfilled, enlightened and loving, full of vitality with the perseverance to press on through the ups and downs of life.  We all (HSPs) have this ability inside of us, this trust in the goodness of life, but it was taken away from us.

But what happened to us is not about us at all.  We were victims, yes, but we don’t have to be victims ever again when we work through the truth of what happened to us as children–layer by layer, injustice by injustice, voicing the truth of how much it hurt, how we didn’t deserve it, and see how we lost our trust in ourselves and our feelings.  Once you start this process of healing the layers, you feel lighter and a little kinder to yourself each time.  It is a blessing when you are in the midst of an episode of despair because someone you trusted criticized you and you suddenly realize, “Oh wait, this is how I felt as a child when my narcissistic mother would feel threatened when I expressed a brilliant creative idea and put it down–I was smarter than she was!” –or something to this effect.

DOCUMENTING YOUR TRUTH STATEMENTS is a method I invented.  Journaling these revelations by writing statements of what you learned about yourself when a new layer of pain is uncovered  helps to document your progress.  Then when you are feeling lost, depressed, or blocked make yourself get out your journal and read over these statements and you will see the true voice of your soul being uncovered.  Statements like “I had brilliant creative ideas as a child”, “I discovered I was smarter than my mother”, “I was kind, caring and innocent and did not deserve to be criticized!”  These are truths come to light and will forever be true about you–they will help you change the internalized beliefs about yourself so you will develop your true voice.  This will help you stop listening to your inner critic and say,” No!  That is not true about me”.  Then say your new-found personalized positive affirmations (truth statements) to yourself instead. Your self-doubts will gradually fade and your confidence will grow stronger and stronger.

Childhood pain comes up to be healed in layers–it is like the truth of your untold story from childhood wants to be told and when you are strong enough, the painful feelings pop up unexpectedly in our lives.  We sometimes unconsciously provoke painful situations in our lives so that the original trauma can be healed.  For example:  you are feeling grouchy, irritable,  numb, and lost, and you criticize your husband for not supporting you enough, for not just listening, (he is trying to solve it and tell you what to do and you just want to be listened to and heard).  He responds with, “Something else must be wrong because I have been listening to you a lot lately but you are still really grouchy.”  You blow up and yell, “I wanted an apology but instead you are attacking me” and you fall in a heap of crying, blaming, angry despair. The feelings directed at your husband are so real to you but you are actually experiencing post traumatic stress from your childhood.  Your husband deserves about 10% of the anger that you are feeling but the other 90% is from your childhood. (90/10 Principle.  John Gray,…Venus and Mars).

In that moment you are reexperiencing the unresolved feelings of your self as a small child with legitimate needs to be seen and reassured and loved–you were perhaps rejected by a narcissistic mother who was too busy with her own agenda to stop and be the loving mother you needed in that moment.  Perhaps instead she lashed out at you for being too sensitive, told you to knock it off and be quiet so she could think.  When you cried harder she may have slapped you on the bottom, screamed at you, and told you that you were giving her a headache and to go play somewhere.  You went to your bedroom and cried and cried and she ignored you–you felt rejected, scared, and humiliated but you felt so ashamed that your mother was angry at you that you wiped away your tears and went out and said, “I’m sorry Mommy I will try to be good”.  Then, she smiles at you and says, something like, “good, you learned your lesson about obeying me”.

This is horrible abuse for a highly sensitive gifted child whose only way of surviving this situation is to be a shell of her former self, deny all of her legitimate feelings and needs for pursuing her gifts and talents and dreams, and become a little robot shell of a person with all her feelings pushed way down deep to the point of repression.  A child incorporates the internalized message of, I must not trust my feelings or I will upset my mother/father and I need her/him.  To the less than sensitive observer this exchange seems harmless enough and they might even think “what a good child” or worse “what a good parent to have such a child that obeys so well”.  That is one reason that it is difficult for HSPs to change our negative beliefs about ourselves–most of society doesn’t yet understand or support a childs need to express needs contrary to the parent in charge.

I have one memory from childhood (pre-school age) where my mother was humiliated by an acquaintance that was brave enough to stand up for me and say to my mother, “there is something wrong that your daughter is so fearful and obedient like that, she is going to have problems later in life!”  I remember my mother being so upset when we got in the car to go home, she was angry and crying and yelled at me, “You are not going to have problems later in life are you!”  And I fearfully said, “no Mommy, I promise!”  I love that I have that memory–it is such a clear example of the sickness of a narcissistic mother. I did have problems later in life–problems of self-worth and self-doubt and finding my voice as a person.  But then by reaching out  for outside support, and looking inward and writing out my pain in many journals, I was able to find my voice as a person, heal, and eventually walked away from an abusive situation.    It is no longer my problem–my narcissistic mother is the one with many problems and none of them have ever changed and never will.   I have created a new life full of love, and found the vitality in life and trust in the universe and my intuition that was robbed from me as a child.

You won’t feel guilty about leaving your abusive narcissistic family members behind when you understand that if narcissists are in emotional pain for even a second, they lash out and blame someone else for it–they are not feeling pain the way you and I do–they get rid of it immediately.  They put on acts of great suffering because they know it works to make us feel guilty.  Don’t fall for it–it is all an act.  They are going about their merry way without a trace of remorse or guilt. They pull out the tears and anguish when other family members are around to get them against you–they get relief and control back from these antics so don’t feel guilty about leaving all of the craziness behind.

So back to how pain is helping us have a better life….  The truth too painful to bear as children has to come up as the painful truth or we can’t acknowledge that it happened, release it, learn from it, and find ourselves!  It is a painful process but you are worth it!  Your true voice has been in hiding for far too long.  Next time something happens to you that is so painful it makes you want to give up on a person, try telling yourself,  “this pain is exactly how I felt as a child when ___ happened to me!”  Then write it out with all the pent-up emotion you can conjure up and see if you don’t feel better when as you write you realize you were an innocent victim and have a right to all of those feelings!

You may just be so grateful for the realization that you were a child who deserved so much more that you will even feel grateful for the person in the present that hurt you! They helped you bring a painful truth from your childhood to the surface to be healed.  You healed a layer of pain from your childhood!  On to the next!  Soon you will begin believing in your goodness and see your inner wisdom and kindness. You will begin attracting only loving giving people like you because your bright shining light of your special highly sensitive intuitive soul can now shine through the existing layers making them much easier to process through.  The illusions that helped you survive will fall away and a new-found confidence and ease will emerge.

So remember, from the layers of pain and hurt emerges the wonderful and amazing true YOU!  You can do it!  I hope that my words can assist you through this complex healing process.

Part 2

Okay, now for the health update:  The recent painful injury to my low back/hip sacroiliac joint (S.I.) is another example of how the universe/God  helps us along our path with painful obstacles that are lessons in disguise.

My holistic chiropractor was unable to answer my many questions about what I could and couldn’t do and what would help and hinder my recovery.  So I made an appointment with a physical therapist that was prescribed by my family doctor. She was able to tell me exactly what ligaments I had sprained, the reasons for my pain, exactly what movements to avoid and which ones were so safe so I could heal in the fastest amount of time.  She explained exactly why it had happened to me–with no core strength in my pelvis from lack of exercise, the ligaments were sprained severely requiring 6 to 8 weeks to heal completely.

She explained that sitting and standing hurts because those actions depend entirely on the ligaments I strained, whereas walking uses different muscles.  I can sit for a one hour at a time now, can drive for short periods, am allowed to walk on flat surfaces only, and should avoid all stairs as much as possible until I am fully healed.  She showed me the correct way to pick up something from the floor, bending at the knees and holding onto something for support–I had been doing it wrong every time.  She has given me homework of daily exercises to start strengthening my core muscles as I heal and I am doing them diligently!

Before I went to my physical therapist, there were 3 occasions when I had no pain in the morning (that is usually when I was in the most pain).  I  had gotten so excited I ended up doing too much that day and the next day I paid for it with pain that sent me back to the couch with ice and rest.  The third time it happened I had this surreal moment of anguish but at the same time a moment of grace and surrender–a reminder of how, even though I was exiled to the couch, I had a glimpse of what I had learned spending most of the month of May on the couch unable to move without the severe pain recurring.  The month of May gave me an entirely new perspective on my life and this moment of grace made me permanently slow down and appreciate that the small things in life were actually huge things to be grateful for.

It made me realize:  the things I missed being able to do most were things I did not expect because they were lost in all the busy activities I took for granted.  I missed most being able to sit up and play my guitar and sing my songs without pain. I missed being able to sit and write creatively on my computer for long periods (my last post I had to write and edit in long hand first).  I missed being pain-free so that I could concentrate again and get back to coaching my clients–having chronic pain is exhausting and I had to put my coaching on hold for a while (but it has now resumed ). Biking, hiking, and dancing were also activities I loved and never found time for.  These are all things that have now been moved even higher on my priority list–maybe this injury is the only way for me to really learn what is most important to me in life.

A bonus from all this is that my husband had no idea how much I did around our home and has a new appreciation for all the years I spent managing our home because suddenly, he had to do it all!  I didn’t even realize how much I took on. Now he has wonderfully agreed to continue taking on his share of these tasks even after I fully recover (including half of the grocery shopping ).  After all, I have a successful career too now and it is only fair!  My husband was really amazed at how much work it was and he now has a new appreciation of how much time and energy I spent doing it.  As I recover I am learning to delegate tasks that need taken care of, but more important than that, I learned to just let the unimportant things go so we can just spend more quality time together and be in the moment enjoying life! I am very grateful for a husband with such a kind and compassionate soul.

With every new victory in my physical abilities, we celebrate together and both of us appreciate our life together and our health so much more.  Soon I will be able to dance again.  We both loved to go out dancing together when we were younger–why don’t we do that more often!  Now with my physical therapist teaching me core strengthening exercises, I am determined to get strong and enjoy things with my husband that we both love to do together: biking, hiking, and dancing! Yay!  Through pain came important changes: the ability to slow down, be grateful, and relax and live in the moment; delegating tasks so I have more time to commit to the work and activities that I love; commiting to getting and keeping core strength and stamina; and letting the unimportant things go!

I hope my words have inspired you to look for and find the lessons amidst all the wonderful ups and painful downs of life.  I hope I have helped you to find strength in the truth re-experienced by your wise and gifted inner child. And I hope I’ve helped you to slow down and discover the joys in the small blessings in your life.

With Love,

Elaine

May 20, 2011 The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and The Body–An Awakening To the Importance of Listening To It and Core Strength

Hi everyone.  I am back and writing again. Yay!  I hope you are enjoying the beauty of this spring season and all the brilliantly colorful flowers. Thank you to those who commented or emailed me such wonderful wishes.  It was quite a traumatic ordeal for me but I believe there are lessons in all things that happen to us–especially the painful things.

As a highly sensitive child, I have always been sensitive to pain and felt my pain more acutely than others–both physically and emotionally.  Having a narcissist for a mother there were many times of neglect and emotional abuse during times of illness.  Being “laid up” as I have been the last few weeks has broken open many of those wounds so that I could remember, reframe them with the truth of who I was, and finally grieve, release and heal the repressed emotions.

I had always had a hard time when I was sick–I would beat myself up, blaming myself for causing it–always finding it difficult to rest in order to heal–sometimes even prolonging my illnesses because of the stress I added to the illness.  I discovered this 2 years ago when I had 2 bad viruses back to back.  I had to face up to the fact that I had to change how I pushed my body too far and was terrible at resting and relaxing.  Things like this always have their foundations formed in childhood.  My husband could see the patterns I couldn’t see as clearly.  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, relax and let your body heal ”, he would always say.  “Take it easy, don’t do anything today but rest.” It helped but as soon as I recovered I’d go back to my bad habits of not listening to my body.

If you’ve read my post from June 15, 2010 on HSPs and allergies and stress-related illness you know that I am recovering nicely from adrenal fatigue–no contact with my toxic family has definitely helped reduce the negative energy in my life and the “fight-or-flight” responses to stress that I had a pattern of.  When your body reacts to stress with a fight-or-flight reaction you have increased cortisol (the stress hormone) in your body in the form of adrenaline.  This is an “extreme fear” reaction that I believe many HSPs with narcissistic parents do not even realize they are experiencing because it is combined with the numbing or anesthetic effect that goes along with the adrenaline rush.  What I now have learned is that even positive events in life can trigger this fight-or-flight response if you had the daily trauma in your childhood of growing up with a narcissistic parent.  It’s like post traumatic stress in a way–any event, positive or negative,  can open the wound and the internalized belief  ”I am not good enough as I am, I must work extra hard to be perfect to be loved”.  These are the roots of the compulsions of perfectionism, workaholism, burnout, and exhaustion etc.  It is automatic and unconscious until we become aware of it, give voice to it,  and then can reassure ourselves and calm and slow ourselves down. Sometimes it takes an accident, illness, or an injury for us to awaken to the knowledge of:  “this pattern has to change–I am hurting myself by doing this!” 

For me it was the event of both my children coming home.  My 24-year-old son who lives 3 hours away and I hadn’t seen since Christmas was coming home for 4 days at Easter.  And my 20-year-old daughter was coming home from her semester studying abroad in Australia 2 days after Easter. I overdid it!  I was drained and exhausted but still so excited by the end of Easter evening–my low back/hip was aching but I ignored it. My son left after a wonderful visit but my daughter would be home in 2 days.  I ignored my hip pain and exhaustion and just had to go to the grocery to get her favorite foods, just had to go to the party store to buy welcome home decorations and balloons, just had to clean up her room and get it ready for her, just had to hang up the banners and reach and stretch to hang lots of streamers in the main area of the house. All that stretching and twisting was way too much for my already injured sacrolilliac joint! (I had moved boxes out of my son’s room to prepare for his visit).  I thought I just needed a chiropractic adjustment and I’d be good as new–but I was continually injuring the ligaments to my sacroilliac joint!  I didn’t listen to my body–it was begging me to stop, begging me to rest, “all this isn’t necessary, don’t do it” my intuition whispered to me. But “I have to” was a louder voice.  I now realize my childhood fear of “not being good enough as I am” was playing out my trauma from the past into the present.

I did cut back on some things I had planned to do and rested with heat and ice packs for 3 hours before we picked up my daughter at the airport–but it was too late!  The damage was done!  And as the adrenaline wore off and my daughter settled into our home with “Mom, you shouldn’t have!”, she ended up being so right!  I shouldn’t have!  And I will never forget this painful lesson of ignoring pain in my body again.  (I ended up in the ER with excruciating pain 1 and 1/2 days later–see my last post for more info.)

Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.  Besides adrenal fatigue, I have never had anything chronic and this was chronic excruciating pain. I thought I had discovered a healthy alternative to exercise with my specific carbohydrate diet that was and is the perfect solution for my highly sensitive digestive system.  Avoiding complex carbohydrates and sugar gave me more energy and kept my weight down.  So I fooled myself into believing I didn’t need to exercise.  (I tried exercising occasionally with fits and starts but the pain always made me quit–I now see there was emotional pain from my childhood tied into “getting stronger”–I was shamed by my mother with looks of disgust when I expressed myself joyfully through my body–dancing, running, and playing were a threat to my mother who needed me to forever be there  ” for her”) Now I am told that if I’d had more core strength and the overall strength and stamina that only exercise can provide I could have avoided this injury.  With weak core muscles I put strain on the ligaments related to my sacroilliac (SI) joint and injured the ligaments severely. Sprained ligaments like I have takes 4-6 weeks to heal.  And you must be very careful not to reinjure them by doing too much too soon–I read that if you reinjure certain SI areas 4 or more times, you could end up with chronic pain there for the rest of your life!

And this week I did have a setback.  3 weeks in I was doing well and was finally able to pick things up off of the floor and drive etc. but I must have done too much and remember one sudden jolt that retriggered my pain and set my progress back a whole week!  Ugh!…back on the couch just when the pain was beginning to lessen.  But I learned from it and am now even more careful and even more grateful for the activities I took for granted before.

As bad as it sounds, this traumatic experience has changed my life for the better.  I learned:

1.  I avoided exercise because of the pain it caused me but that is nothing compared to the pain of being immobile and unable to function normally and perform the simplest of tasks like putting on ones own socks!

2.  I must commit to regular exercise as soon as possible after I heal.  My plan is to start walking and doing core strengthening daily and then I am going to do Pilates or yoga and join jazzercise again.  I loved Jazzercise classes in my 20′s and 30′s–I had stopped in 1999 when it became too fatiguing and painful for me (I didn’t know then that I already had symptoms of adrenal fatigue).  The adrenal fatigue is now better so I should be able to get back into it if I am very gradual and process the emotions as they come up.

3.  I must get in shape and get core strength for the first time in my life and stay that way!  I hope to get up to doing Jazzercise  3 times a week. Also I plan to do lots of hiking and biking with my husband which he loves to do but has always done without me because….well… honestly… I couldn’t keep up.  My body has now taken a front seat in my life–I am sorry I didn’t listen to it sooner!  Fear of this pain returning is a great motivator–muscle soreness is nothing compared to the intense chronic pain and the pain of being immobile and dependent on others for everything.

4.  I am too young for this kind of injury–I am only 49. Now my body has caught up to the “new beginning journey” that my heart and mind were already on!  And so for this wake up call I say, Thank you, Universe, for all that it taught me!!!

Wishing all of you love and kindness to your spirit, mind, and BODY!!

With love,

Elaine

May 5, 2011 Pain is a Teacher

Hello everyone.  I am sorry to be late with my next post–I am recovering from an injury to muscles connected to my sacroiliac joint (low back– right hip area). I am gradually off of pain medication but I am spending most of my hours laying here on my left side.

It was quite a shock last thurs. a.m., after a sleepless night, when the pain was so excruciating I had to go to the Emergency Room and there received two doses of morphine because the first dose was not enough! Now, after lots of vicodin which helped me to rest I am now weaned off of it completely and am able to walk without severe pain for a whole 5 minutes!

Needless to say progress has been slow but now it should speed up as I am under the care of a wonderful holistic chiropractor who has helped me much this week treating and relaxing the muscles and the healing has now speeded up.  “Pain is a teacher” he says as I complain about the pain ha ha.

He has now reassured me that I will fully recover–of course I will–I know this!  (Perhaps only those who have experienced the hopelessness of a childhood dominated by a narcissistic mother would harbor such deep-seated irrational fears that I will be in such a dependent and debilitating state forever. lol) This happening to me perhaps is healing those last unconscious fear remnants once and for all.

So what is the lesson in this happening to me?  Plenty!  I will be writing all about it in my next post.  As a highly sensitive person, my recovery is slower, my pain more deeply felt, but my resolve and appreciation for all things in life is raised to new heights!  My post will be about HSPs and the body, the importance of exercise and core strength, and this “awakening” that will forever change my habits of not listening well enough to the cues from my body and how this relates to emotional healing.

I just want all of you to know I am still here, I am thinking of you, I care and I will get to your emails, comments, and back to my coaching as soon as possible.  All is well and wonderful.  Life is even richer now as I contemplate the activities that I took for granted but never will again!  Pain relief is my immediate goal and it is getting better each day. I am so fortunate to have my loving husband waiting on me hand and foot  and my son and daughter of course have been wonderful as well.

Life is still good!

With Love,
Elaine

April 19, 2011 Moving On From A Narcissistic Parent-Part 2

Hi everyone. Easter will be here in less than one week and I have been reviewing the state of No Contact with my extended family.  It has been 1 year and 4 months since I have had any contact with them and I know I made the right decision.  The time away from them has continuously shown me more and more memories of how bad things really were.  Slowly the illusions that I had accumulated to survive as a highly sensitive child (HSP) have fallen away and the truth is so much more clear to me. I am able to reframe my life so that I can see the truth of what I went through and who I am.

When I started No Contact, it was mostly my N mother’s behavior that I could no longer tolerate and I was sad to have to give up my relationships with my siblings and my Dad who are in complete denial.  Now I see the truth about the way I was always treated by all of them for as long as I can remember.  I survived the only way I could, by being obedient out of fear, in an environment with no loving  support from my mother and just jealousy and contempt from my siblings.  My Dad was always working and was tired and stressed when he was around and always took my Mom’s side just to avoid conflict.  My Dad has a good heart and I could sense it as a child so this just compounded my confusion when I felt so victimized by my mother–he was not there for me and was not a safe person for me to go to.  He also had a very low opinion of women in general and was at times emotionally condescending at her inferiority to his high intelligence.  And now I remember even more and I can add that my Dad was very sexist and did not believe ANY women were as competent or as intelligent as men.  So for me, this meant I was just out of luck at being seen for  the intelligent soul I was.  My straight A grades in school surprised him and I remember the prevailing attitude of “well but she has to study a lot” whereas my brother got straight A grades without even trying.  I could not win!–and it was made worse because I claimed to be studying a lot as an excuse to be alone in my room to get away from my N mother!  I was not studying a lot however, and I was actually singing to my favorite music or writing in my journal to cope with all the chaos around me.

All of this lack of love and support and contempt caused me to decide as a young child in my despair that I needed someone to take care of me and that I could not make it on my own.  My mother crippled and shamed me to the core with her constant criticisms, mean looks when no one else was around, and invalidation of  my feelings and gifts–I felt there was something deeply wrong with my being and thought my answer was to find a man to take care of me. (My most extreme trauma happened at the age of 5, when I experienced the death of my true self and completely repressed this pain and replaced it with a false self that was obedient, sweet, and not very bright to please my mother–see post Sept. 15, 2010.)

Looking back, I see how I was drawn to some Narcissistic boyfriends in high school and college that thank God I did not marry! I remember in college, after some devastating relationships, finally deciding only to date men who were kind, introspective, interested in self-growth and capable of remorse!  At one point I gave up and wrote in my journal that I was finished looking for someone to take care of me and would now focus on my career and my future on my own. As if heaven was waiting for me to learn this lesson first, my husband and I met the very next day after I wrote this.

My husband of 27 years is a compassionate person who is immersed in self-growth the same as I am and is grateful for my gifts of empathy that help him to learn compassion for himself as he processes through the repressed layers of his own emotionally abusive childhood. (He has a Narcissistic father and a Narcissistic older brother who tortured him emotionally throughout his childhood.)  I am so happy now to see how supportive my husband is in my new career endeavors in Coaching and Writing and Singing.  I feel I truly have made it full circle now and can stand strong on my own two feet with my strong true voice and new-found vitality in helping others. My self-doubt has been replaced by a trust and acceptance of all of my feelings and intuition. It is because of having a Narcissistic mother that I grew up using my intuition to figure out how to survive and I had to finely attune this empathic intuitive gift that I now use to help others.  It is as if it was all meant to be so I would learn 1)how valuable compassion and love are to myself and others and 2) how horribly damaging it is NOT to have compassion and love as a highly sensitive child.  I am grateful for all that I have learned.

I have learned from my family that Narcissistic mothers can manipulate their children into bullying her other children–often the innocent, kind, compassionate, highly sensitive child is the Scapegoat (SG) or Golden Child (GC) depending on whether they are obedient to her demands or not.  She will sweetly get you to confide in her so she can find your Achilles heal and then insidiously use it to control you.  She can be a brilliant actress of love and caring around her husband  or your siblings and save the stabbing criticisms said with a smile for when you are alone and least expect it. She feeds her other needy children with lies about the  SG and rewards them when they do her bidding. I was the Golden Child first and saw first hand how she turned me against my siblings by talking terribly about them.  Then it all switched when at 25 I stopped being obedient and she slowly turned them against me.  I didn’t realize she was doing this until many years later–we were all low contact then, seeing each other once a year or less and all being on their good behavior.  As my children got older and their schedules got more demanding and I had to be even more assertive about when we would visit, I soon realized she had systematically turned them all against me and made herself out to be the victim of my so-called selfishness.

Narcissists are dangerous people and I feel so fortunate to finally know the truth and to be free from the Narcissists in my life.  I feel passionate about educating others on the dangers of Narcissists, especially as they prey on highly sensitive people who seem to be almost like targets of their remorseless lust for destroying dreams and confidence. Their lack of compassion, lack of guilt or remorse, and endless blaming others for all that is wrong in their lives are the red flags that help me to be able to spot a Narcissist a mile away. 

So if you need help because you have a Narcissist in your life, I understand your pain and confusion.  I can help you get free and feeling good about yourself and on your path to becoming your true self that is hidden under many layers of fear and self-doubt.  The lessons I have learned have been painful but so worthwhile as I have risen from the darkness into the light and I can help you do it too.  Sometimes No Contact is the only way to freedom.  It was for me and I have no regrets.  I am moving on with great success and love in my life!

Click Here To read my post entitled Moving On From a Narcissistic Parent  which is considered Part 1. (My statistics show that this is my most popular and most viewed post by far).

 Happy Easter to you all!  My 24-year-old son is visiting us for the entire Easter weekend and my 20-year-old daughter will be home from her wonderful semester in Australia in 8 days. Life is good!!  

Take Care and God Bless,

Elaine

March 30, 2011 Honor Thy Parents Only If They Are Honorable–Support for Highly Sensitive Survivors at Easter

Hi everyone.  April is almost here and as highly sensitive survivors you may be experiencing what can only be described as Easter Guilt.  Easter is a family time, when families get together and celebrate God and Jesus and we contemplate our very reason for being on the planet.  Even for the non-religious, Easter causes many to deeply evaluate our true purpose and our humanity.  It is similar to the Christmas holiday when we look at our lives and say to ourselves ”Today I SHOULD be happy!  Where is my happy extended family that loves and supports me!”

Depending on where we are in our recovery from narcissistic abuse, we may have started our own new Easter traditions with our selves or with our own children which are more loving and focused on celebrating Spring, the miracle of nature and new life, and appreciating the ability to renew our selves by being more loving–we remind our selves, our children, or new-found friends that God loves us as we are, unconditionally.

Still, the Easters of our childhood may hold onto our hearts this time of year.  You may still unconciously hold down the pain of Easter family get-togethers filled with religious abuse and guilt-inducement, or the pain of no celebrations at all at a time when other families and children seemed to be so happy and loved and celebrating.  Holidays such as this can surface feelings of deep loneliness as we realize we are separated from our true selves and true potential  because we had to manufacture a self that was pleasing to our narcissistic parent, a false self that was superficial and not at all the rich, deep, complex personality that we still feel ashamed to completely step into.  We want so badly to be good, kind, fair, and right with God so we feel guilt not honoring the commandment that tells us to Honor Thy Father and Mother.

Part of my recovery included reading Alice Miller’s book, The Body Never Lies which was part of the helpful information that eventually freed me from the guilt of no longer honoring my parents.  I want to share with you a  review of this book that I found on her website in order to support those of you who still struggle with the guilt of No Contact:

“Norm Lee, May 2, 2005

Of Moms and Moses A Review of Alice Miller’s book, THE BODY NEVER LIES: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting

….  We have to break free of our (internalized) parents’ grip on us, that of the biblical injunction, “Honor (obey, worship,) thy father and thy mother.” Until then we, in a sense, feel and behave and think like the little children we once were; we cannot grow up. Worse, because as children we weren’t accepted and loved for who we were, parents repeatedly punished us in attempts to force us into the imaginary mold they had prepared for us, i.e., what a child should be. Dr. Miller’s message is that our bodies bear a detailed record of every childhood hurt and humiliation inflicted, every spank and slap, insult and indignity. And until or if those internal, psychic wounds remain unhealed, we can expect to continue to pay the terrible price in physical illnesses. Powerless to do otherwise, we suppressed our true and good authentic selves to win the love our emotional survival depended on.

Dr. Miller writes with astonishing and penetrating truth about the connections between childhood suffering at the hands of parents, and the physical consequences of obedience to the Fourth Commandment. The Biblical law, “Honor thy father and thy mother” is here challenged as the source of widespread – even universal – life-long suffering. As children we attempted to free ourselves from our feelings of fear, insecurity and confusion thru repression and dissociation/self-alienation. Whatever the cost (abandonment of our true selves), we persisted in loving and trusting our parents (we hardly had a choice) and strived to earn their approval, (and (thus) to please the Greater Parent in the Sky.)

Today, what stands between our bodies and the healing of those injuries is the hold the Fourth Commandment has on our minds. As we live and breathe, the fear of parental rejection/punishment lurks within that fear. It has to be brought to consciousness and examined before healing can take place. We walk carrying a sack full of personal history, the burden of wounds inflicted by all the punishment and indignities that have ever happened to us. Until we heal those internal wounds, we daily pay a terrible price in suffering, much of it physical illness, and make others pay as well. Those others are most often our own children. The claim so often heard, “I got spanked and I turned out OK,” cannot be upheld when it is understood how the denial of physical and emotional injuries are connected to present illnesses.

“….  Dr. Miller repeatedly emphasizes the tragic effects, in the form of physical ailments, of the body’s life-long yearning for parental love and affection. She touches on the way this suppression is expressed in religion: the command to love God, on pain of punishment when we fail to do so; the absurdity of inventing a parent-like creator, perfect and omnipotent, who craves our love. It is an odd god, an immensely dependent god, a Big Daddy who, if given the love demanded, will reward with an eternity in blissful heaven. (And the teenage suicide bombers of the Middle East are promised the bonus of 72 virgins to sweeten the deal.) Inasmuch as the Great Father is not loved, even worshipped, the alternative is agonizing punishment from now to the “end” of eternity.

We have to liberate ourselves from the propaganda imposed on us – and enforced on us on pain of punishment – by conventional morality. This book calls for a higher morality, as it applies to parenthood. We cannot truly love our parents, she asserts, until we are liberated from the infantile attachment, the idolatry, that trapped us in childhood.

Dr. Miller wants the reader to understand and accept that parents who abused us do not deserve our love and honor, regardless of a Moses-imposed commandment to do so. As we all must know, love is one thing that cannot be enforced. Like Sgt. Joe Friday, the body, in its wisdom, rejects illusions. It accepts only the facts, as higher morality is inherent not in the mind, but in our bodies. She takes to task all those friends and relatives and preachers and therapists who say, “Forgive your mother, forgive your father; they did the best they knew how. She changed your diapers, he sacrificed for you, and above all they loved you.” Miller will not hear it: forgiveness is a crock and a trap, laid to continue the dependency, and preserve the hope, that somehow, sometime, we will finally bask in the love that was so long ago denied us. Reading Alice is like hearing someone whisper, “I know the secret you are hiding in your past, the feelings of hurt and fright and shame and humiliation at the abusive treatment you suffered at the hands of your parents. And I’m asking you – urging you, challenging you – to come out of that dark closet and face up to it.”

In the valley where I live, the #1 fear at whatever age is parental punishment. And among adults, it’s primary defense is Denial. Behind the denial of childhood mistreatment lies the fear of punishment, therefore acknowledgement or recognition of it in adulthood can approach terror. But the price for denial is paid in physical as well as mental illness. When aware of it we see it everywhere: the suffering in the bodies and minds of strangers and of those dear to us. But we must begin with ourselves, confronting the punishing parent within.”

As supportive as this information is, I know how difficult it is to step away from your abusive family ties and go it alone and start a new emotionally healthier life.  You need support for such drastic actions and I offer you that support through my posts, articles, poems, songs and lyrics, my coaching, and a community here with many comments on my website that I hope lovingly states, “you are not alone, we are not alone, we are a community of survivors that is growing in number as we dare to come out of our darkness and speak the truth of what happened to us as children!” 

As highly sensitive people (HSPs) you have many gifts to offer that are lacking in many of the people around you.  Celebrate your differentness, celebrate YOU this Easter and open up to the love that exists from God and from other HSPs like yourself.  I believe we HSPs are gifted with compassion and an ability to love deeper so that we can help each other through the negativity and dark energies that do exist around us.

Love to you this Easter season, may you realize your shining light inside of you and shine it on your children, spouse, friends, and especially your self!  You deserve a wonderful Easter!  

With Love,

Elaine

P.S. For more information on Easter Guilt for HSPs, please read my post from last Easter entitled, April 1, 2010 Guilt at Easter Time and How to Cope…  

 

March 15, 2011 HOPE For Overcoming Childhood Pain and Guilt–For Highly Sensitive Survivors of a Narcissistic Parent

Hi everyone.  As we are halfway through March, there is HOPE!  There is hope for Spring and warmer temperatures around the corner, hope for the U.S. economy as joblessness decreases, hope for the Japanese people as they recover from the horrific earthquake and tsunami. We put ourselves in their shoes and imagine how we would cope.  Messages of love, compassion, and hope from other nations via the social networks on the internet are helping them to cope.  Hope gives us all the boost we need in hard times.  We then know “things will get better!”.  The suffering of others reminds us how we are all connected.  Helping others to have hope really makes a difference for us all as humans together on this planet.

As Highly Sensitive Survivors (HSPs) of a narcissistic parent we were deprived of hope as children, our hopes and dreams were stomped on, and we repressed the pain of these events.  Now we exist in between bouts of denial of how bad things were, bouts of pain and anger etc. that rise up “out of the blue” (often when things are finally improving for us), and bouts of hope that our struggle to be happy will somehow get easier.

As the truth of what happened to us gets validated and we learn to comfort the wounded child within, slowly things are getting better for us.  But often it feels like 2 steps forward and then 1 step back as we heal.  Please do not be discouraged by this back and forth process, we must have compassion for ourselves through the difficulty of the healing process–we must acknowledge the pain before we can release it and heal another painful layer that was hiding our true self and true voice.

With the release of the pain hopefully you are beginning to experience the aliveness of  “feeling” and noticing a spark of light inside of you.  That is your soul shining through to tell you that everything is going to be okay.  Hold on to that feeling–it will help you to remember the truth about you–you are God’s child and God/The Universe is love itself and you are loved unconditionally.

Try to think back in your childhood to a time before age 5 when you were happy, excited, loving, sweet, full of great ideas and enthusiasm, and with the confidence that your ideas were great ones!  That memory is of your true self!  Out of fear, caused by your Narcissistic parent, you were made to give up and your true self went “underground”. Often the repressed and unremembered trauma happens at the age of 5 or 6 (A. Miller).  A false, obedient self emerged in order to survive and “get along” with your narcissistic parent.  But that is not you.  You are much, much more.  You have a deep and rich inner life that you still feel ashamed to reveal.  I understand this.  I hope that my website is a safe place for you to find validation and comfort in your deepest dreams and desires that are beginning to awaken inside of you.

Many of you who find my site are struggling with the guilt of wanting to be free of your narcissistic parent. Highly Sensitive People want so badly to do the right thing–the thing that is right in God’s eyes or to be humane and kind and unconditionally loving.  I want to help you understand that narcissistic parents are not “of God” or “of Love” at the soul level and I believe their lack of remorse and compassion proves this to be true.  We must protect ourselves from dangerous others who try to put out our “light“– the very essence and expression of our true self and true voice that is our “vitality”.  We can regain our vitality when we “walk away” from such dangerous dark souls (meaning their souls have the ”absence of light” because they are not “of God”.)

How they got that way and how to help them is not our concern now as we KNOW from experience they do not WANT to change. There is a theory from some of the books I have read on spirituality that gave me a lot of comfort.  It is that God did not reject these dark souls (dark entities)  but “they rejected God” at the soul level. (S. Browne)  All souls in heaven are given free will, and even with God’s unconditional love and comfort, there are those souls who came to earth deciding to go against “Love” and the learning of lessons to advance our souls in heaven and instead decided to come to earth “alone and for themselves”.  They have no spirit guides or angels guiding and protecting them so they are very much unconsciously jealous of those of us with “shining lights” and so are always attempting to “put out our lights”–they drain us of our energy–they are energy vampires.  They are “wet-blankets” on our bright ideas and dreams, instilling fear in their children by projecting “How dare you be happy when I am not happy”. We learned to feel ashamed of our innate joy, and enthusiasm for life!  It is so painful to our sensitive souls to be so unloved and unappreciated, so unseen and invisible because we were not mirrored, our very basic needs went unmet, we were not accepted as every child, every soul, deserves to be!

All of this may sound very esoteric and mystical to some, but the reading that I was drawn to, to help me come to terms with “why did God give me a narcissistic parent”, helped me to understand that God/The Universe is not to blame.  I have come to understand now that, within my true self, and with the belief in a loving Universe/God, I have the strength and knowledge to overcome this deprivational beginning to my life, get away from dangerous and narcissistic people, and make the second half of my life full of love, joy, bliss, and heaven on earth! You can do it too!  There is hope for us all as we learn from each other and support and encourage the true essence of our spirits that shine through amidst all the pain and self-doubt.  I can feel the hope and light inside each and every one of you. I care and I am here for you.

With Love,

Elaine

Feb. 28, 2011 Stress Relief For Highly Sensitive People (HSPs)

Hi everyone. We made it through the harsh weather of February.  Yay!  March has visions of early flowers budding up through the ground, warmer temperatures, and hopefully a lot less snow and storms.  It was beautiful and fun at first, but here in the midwestern United States, the continuous snow and storms soon started to wear on us all.  Now we can breath a sigh of relief as the temperatures gradually rise and we can get out and about easier and with less stress.

Stress relief is so important to us highly sensitive souls who survived the stressful conditions of having a narcissistic parent.  We have stressed-out bodies and wounded hearts and we need to learn how to relieve stress in our lives.  We have been controlled by guilt and compulsively take care of the needs of others instead of ourselves.  We often feel guilty even thinking about putting our selves first.  But in order to truly have something real to give others, a real human emotional connection, we HAVE to make ourselves and our healing a priority.  This really begins with giving ourselves permission to reduce the stress in our lives.  You may be so used to stress in your life, that you don’t even recognize it as stress.  Here are some examples:

1) Do you have long lists of SHOULDS in your life that you really don’t enjoy doing?  Perhaps you even have a large house and yard to take care of and it never occurred to you that you would be happier in a smaller place with less chores to do on daily basis.

2) Do you have relationships in your life that drain you rather than help you to feel good about yourself?  Do you have friendships with people who do not see your sensitivity as a uniqueness about you that makes you special, but instead make you feel like they put up with you and are willing to work around the nuisance it causes them that you are different?  For example, food  and seasonal allergies, needing more time alone, and frequent breaks from stressful work are not things you should be made to feel guilty about.  These are things that, when tended to with care, help reduce your stress level from the busy lives we are thrust into, and give you more time and energy for the things that you deep down really desire to do with your life!

3) Do you find comfort in collecting THINGS that fill your time and fill up your house, but then you are overwhelmed because of the time it takes to maintain the care of these collectibles and things that you just had to have?  Clutter can be draining to highly sensitive people.  You may be beginning to be aware that a shift in your feelings about material things in your life is starting to happen.  Does the phrase Less is More help you to realize that when we get rid of things in our lives that we don’t really need, then we have more room to relax and just be our true selves in the space around us?

When you empty a room, do you ever notice how your kids get excited and start to dance around and do cartwheels?  Self-expression happens when we are not cluttered by unnecessary material things!  It is difficult to get started sometimes because as highly sensitive people we often have deep emotional attachments to things that have been in our lives a long time.  I solved this problem for myself by taking pictures of things before I get rid of them.  Also, allow yourself to feel and grieve the thought of the loss of the item before you actually get rid of it.  Sometimes it is helpful to set items aside in an out of the way place and wait a week or a month or whatever you need and ask yourself if you really miss the item–you may be surprised that you are now ready to let it go or you have completely forgotten about it and then it is easier to give it to Goodwill or someone who will get some use out of the item.

As highly sensitive people, reducing stress put upon us by the SHOULDS instilled from childhood and less sensitive others can make a big difference in the quality of our lives.  You deserve to live the life that you envision for yourself and not someone else’s vision of what almost everyone else seems to be doing to be happy.  The key to happiness for hsps in listening to your own unique guidance from within. Often it is only through the quiet of being alone that we can hear the truth of our inner needs and desires.  Listen.  Listen to your heart and not to what your chattering mind is saying.  You can find inner peace and joy in your life if you can find ways to begin to really relax and enjoy YOUR life.  Noone else can know what is right for you but you. 

With Love,

Elaine

February 5, 2011 How Highly Sensitive People Who Are High Achieving and Intuitive Can Overcome Self-Defeating Behaviors

Hi everyone. My new website is here!  It is called Highly Sensitive Survivors and it is at hspsurvivors[dot]com.  Today’s post is primarily for high achieving intuitive thinking types (for example, INTJs, and ENTJs) but also may apply to high achieving feeling types as well. Today I want to talk about the special complexity of being both a high achiever and Intuitive, and a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and how this combination of academic giftedness, and a deep thinking facility can lead to avoidance and a numbness in regard to emotions.

What I have come to learn about healing is that it is often so difficult to begin when, as highly intuitive (highly sensitive) children, we have spent most of our lives trying not to be so “sensitive”, and to fit into the rest of society, that, at least in the American Culture that exists today, being sensitive is not the “ideal”.  There exists a pressure to be extraverted, social, superficial, constantly busy, productive and able to produce and work hard no matter what is going on in our lives.  Also the word sensitive is often used synonomously with the word “insecure” and that is not at all what is meant here.  Sensitivity (Intuition) is a gift and it causes you to experience everything in life at a deeper, richer level.  Less sensitive others may outnumber us and put it down but they are just plain wrong!

Because of ridicule of our budding sensitive selves early in life, we have hidden away the part of us that “feels” and have become very good at being successful and “thinking” our way out of problems and “thinking” our way to finding a cure for the emptiness and loneliness we sometimes feel.  So we keep seeking out superficial relationships and experiences, looking for some “one” or  fun experiences that will be the answer to our discontent.

Also we try to fill our time with busy tasks that satisfy our immediate need for validation and often this is through technology, being constantly plugged in to our computers or phones, being news junkies, texting, video games, watching television etc.  All of these tasks seem to keep us going through another empty day of being out of touch with who we really are and help to keep us in a state of numbness that was a state of survival for us as highly sensitive children.

The problems that crop up in our lives are clues to the fact that this superficial state of existence is not really working for us and we need to make a change.  For example, it is often a shock to us when we have relationship problems with others because we, for the most part see nothing wrong with how we are functioning and relating to others. When you have spent your life avoiding painful feelings you begin to believe that you have no real problems at all and everything would just be fine if people would do things your way—the logical way.  It isn’t until others in our lives complain about our emotional unavailability that we even see that there is a problem at all.

Other problems that may crop up from not being in touch with our emotional side are that you may be out of touch or blocked from fully utilizing your creativity and this can lead to a feeling of dissatisfaction with the work that you are doing.  Also, when you are dissatisfied with your work because it is unfulfilling on a deeper emotional level, gradually it saps your energy.

You may also “over-work” to continue numbing out your feelings because you are out of touch with your feelings that tell you a natural time to stop and you are not listening to your body. When you over-work at an unfulfilling job you run on adrenaline a lot from stress.  This causes your body to produce too much cortisol which can mess up the balance of hormones and cause you to have less energy. motivation, and even feel semi-depressed (possible symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue or “burnout”). This can cause you to become overwhelmed with even simple tasks in your life that you just don’t have the motivation or energy to do anymore.

This is worsened when you are highly intuitive (sensitive) in that you are constantly taking in more stimuli than other people who are not intuitive.  You may be comparing yourself constantly to less intuitive (less sensitive) others and you get overwhelmed trying to do what everyone else seems to be able to do.  Intuitives are only 15 to 20% of the population and it will help you so much if you embrace that it is a gift that sets you apart and you are different for a reason. You must make allowances for your need for breaks and time alone to recharge–even extraverts who are highly intuitive (sensitive) need to cut back on their “list of shoulds” because they are taking in more stimuli than extraverted others.  Just realizing you “require” more rest and more time to recharge and regroup when you are in a stressful job can be quite a relief–especially for this group that tends to be harder on themselves anyway and want badly to succeed and be the best at their jobs which are often technology based.

Getting access to your emotional side and out of the left-brained thinking side which you exist in most of the time will help you to feel more satisfaction and joy in your life and at work and have more fulfilling connections with others.

This is not easy but it is so worth the effort because the end result is the connection to the real you—the emotional side of yourself that is the connection to the source of all love and compassion which is a higher power/universal consciousness/or “God”!  Now I know I may have lost some of you just now because your scientific mind refuses to believe in something so intangible and illogical.  However, if you do some research you will find that some of the greatest minds including Albert Einstein believed in a spiritual creative universal consciousness that could be tapped into. This can be achieved by believing in your self and your dreams and requires a certain amount of “emotional self-discovery” and healing of those blocks which keep us from feeling things on a deep level.

When you work through the blocks that keep you from enjoying your life on a deep level you can overcome compulsive behaviors such as perfectionism, over-working, and procrastination as well.  These behaviors often result because you are trying to do too many things and have unrealistic expectations of your highly sensitive self–you may try to “overcome” your sensitivity if you look at it as a weakness or you may try to ignore it–but it is innate in you and it will always be there!

As I said before, it is better to embrace it and surrender to it and see it as the gift that it really is–a higher level of creativity and vision will be available to you at your work if you finally start taking care of your extra needs for sleep, time alone, and down time from the left side of your brain. You will be able to tap into your creative genius as a visionary at work if you do some things that help you tap into the right side of your brain–the creative, emotional, and spiritual side. Operating with access to both sides of your brain is so important for balance in your life and in your health and vitality.  Makes logical sense, right?

My recommendation is Journaling–writing out your feelings, whatever they are, negative or positive, daily in a journal for your eyes only–because it is a scientific fact that writing in order to express your “feelings” opens up neural pathways to the right side of your brain.  It is a channel to the creative side of your life which is the key to a fulfilling connection to your true self and to a source of love we are all capable of experiencing as humans on this planet.

You can do this yourself by following the journaling guidelines in the book, “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron.  It is a course in discovering and recovering your creative self and I highly recommend it–I did these “morning pages” myself as part of my own recovery.  I have written some other posts on how journaling has helped me and I have referred to it as my own inner grief work and the process of “growing a backbone”.  My husband (an INTJ) journals for healing and was amazed at it’s effect and referred to the process as “growing a new heart”.  The outcome of this kind of journaling is as unique for the person as the uniqueness of the person doing the writing.

The truth is you need to be able to love your self in order to give love to others and that is necessary in order to be happy and fulfilled in your life and in your work.  You may be saying, “I love myself already”, but it may be more of a sense of entitlement for things and success and a superficial love for self.  What I am talking about is loving all of you including the parts of yourself that you are cut off from and avoid–the feelings that make you uncomfortable–shame, sadness, despair, loneliness, and anger etc..  These are feelings that we all feel for a reason and the reason needs to be acknowledged along with the feelings so that you can express them and ultimately release them and heal them.  When you allow painful feelings to be expressed at the core of when they occurred and for the reason that they occurred then you are connecting to the truth that you blocked from your memory.  A block such as this is always going to keep you from being able to experience full joy and happiness in your life until you work through it.

Often these blocks were formed in childhood.  If you were a highly sensitive child in an environment where your parents were already overwhelmed with dealing with their own feelings, then you may have shut off your feelings and repressed them in order to “be good” and helpful to your parents.  Sometimes we were so gifted and so intuitive that we were able to shut down our feeling sides without the memory of any real trauma from childhood but just because we constantly told ourselves that our feelings didn’t matter.  We then have a “belief” that we are no more than this false self that we created to survive—when in actuality there is a whole other rich and emotional side to us that is begging for our attention!

Problems that come up in our lives are clues to this other side of our life that needs healing.  Gary Zukav, author of the Seat of the Soul, is a physicist who embraces the spiritual side of his life and believes that the way to feeling wholeness is by excavating our feelings as if we are an archeologist looking for clues and answers to “why”.  The answers are inside of us and often are because of events that occurred in our childhood that keep us stuck at the emotional level that we were at the time the event occurred.

Often, things that happened in childhood were unbearably painful and we had to repress them in order to survive them.  To “repress” is to completely deny them and remove them from our consciousness!  Journaling helps to bring them forth and allow us to discover things about us that are important clues to how to be happy in life!

Remember, the opposite of depression is not happiness but “vitality” which is the ability to express and let flow the full spectrum of emotions—the negative uncomfortable ones as well as positive and easy ones. (Alice Miller–The Drama of the Gifted Child).  I hope this information has been helpful to you.   I care and I am here for you.

With Love,

Elaine

January 14, 2011 A New Coaching Website for Highly Sensitive Survivors of Emotional Abuse

Hi everyone.  Today is the 1 year anniversary of publishing my very first post on this blog!  I can’t believe all that has happened since then.  Thank you so much to all of my readers and subscribers and those who have left comments in support of what I am doing.  I just purchased a domain name and started a separate website for my Empathic Life Coaching today as well! (That’s not my domain name–you’ll have to wait and see.  )   I have been working hard the last week getting the pages ready for it’s release and I will have a connection to it here on my blog as soon as it is ready.

This new website is primarily for my Coaching Services but it will also provide:
 
  –informative articles about healing childhood wounds
 
  –tips for highly sensitive people
 
  –and survival guidelines for those with a narcissistic parent.

I will also be adding some Ebooks that will be available for download in the not too distant future. Some of the topics I plan to include are:

  –parenting as a highly sensitive survivor

  –overcoming codependence and working through marital issues
 
  –and health advice for highly sensitive bodies.

Some of these Ebooks I plan to write will be free to my blog subscribers.

Another longer, larger Ebook project about my journey from self-doubt to finding my voice and true purpose will be available upon completion for purchase through this new website.

I will be spending more time on these Ebook projects and so I will be spending less time writing very long posts on my blog. I have a lot of helpful content on my blog from 2010 and I will be reorganizing these posts into more readable article format for quick information on this new website.

I will still be blogging in 2011 but with just a few changes in my content.  I plan to continue to write posts about twice a month with interesting personal updates and insights and various relevant topics but my posts will not be as long as they were in 2010.

I will still be checking in on my blog and comments frequently and continue to add to my Update Corner and I will still be responding to comments as time allows.

Here’s part of what it says on the front page of my new website: 

“Elaine’s Empathic Coaching : 
My Coaching is primarily for people who consider themselves to be Highly Sensitive People (HSPs). I am a highly sensitive person myself and I specialize in Inner Child Healing.

As the survivor of a narcissistic parent and a dysfunctional family of origin, I have done the inner grief work necessary that lead me to rediscover my vitality, and actualize my true self.

Please read my blog and articles, song lyrics and poems and you will find evidence of my amazing journey of recovery.

With my skills as an Empath and Life Coach, it is a great joy for me to help others to heal their childhood wounds from emotional abuse and assist them in reconnecting to their true spirit as they process through the truth of what happened to them as children.

I believe that true healing occurs when a person is deeply heard and that is my gift as I serve as your companion and enlightened witness and accompany and guide you on your journey to vitality and healing.”

I’ll also be including a section that summarizes my journey to becoming an Empathic Life Coach and here is the final part of it:

“…Upon finally removing ourselves completely from the negative and stifling grip of our narcissistic parents and toxic families in December 2009, I completed the final step that was keeping me from standing in my truth and expressing my true voice. I experienced a surge of exhilarating positive energy as I started a WordPress Blog to help others to heal and share my healing songs and writings with others. 
As a natural progression in the successful reception of my blog, I soon started my online Email Coaching and Telephone Coaching Services on this Blog-site. It felt very gradual at the time but looking back now it seems truly amazing how it all happened. And without spending any money at all on advertising, I had over 24,000 views to my site by the end of one year and much success in attracting clients to my Coaching Services. 

Now it is my great joy to expand to add a new separate website for my Coaching.  I am adding more articles, services, and Ebooks and testimonials of hope and healing from clients so that I may continue to help others who experienced a similar plight in childhood to find their vitality that is hidden within them, their true voice, and their true purpose in life as I was able to do.”

So please wish me luck on getting it all up and running soon.  I am very excited about my new plans for 2011 and again I thank all of you for your support as I continue to provide hope and healing to highly sensitive souls like us. I will continue to follow my heart and my inner guidance as this has been a spiritual journey in so many ways.

I’ll be in touch soon with an announcement on the day my website is ready.  For those in the U.S., please try to stay warm, snuggle, and enjoy the beauty of the falling snow.  I recommend warm soups and hot green tea–warm food and liquids are soothing to the soul.  You deserve it.  Take loving care of yourself.  And always remember, I care and I am here for you.

Love,

Elaine

January 2, 2011 Happy Shiny New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope that you had a wonderful, safe, healthy, and memorable holiday celebration with your loved ones–full of love, gratefulness, and compassion towards each other.

It has been a unique holiday for me in that I am helping my 20-year-old daughter get ready for the trip of a lifetime. She is leaving tomorrow to study abroad for a semester in Australia! I will miss her but I am so excited for her to have this wonderful adventure. We are driving her to the airport tomorrow morning where she and a friend leave from Chicago and then they land in Los Angeles, then to Australia and then two more flights to get to her final destination (30 hours from start to finish). I’m glad she has a friend with her to help navigate the airports and all the unknowns along the way.

She is more excited than afraid and that is the way it should be! I am so proud of her taking the initiative to go on such a trip! And it helps knowing that Oprah took her entire audience there just last month ha ha–so it MUST be a safe and wonderful place. And we have Skype set up so we can catch up whenever she wants.

After spending the night in Chicago and then taking a couple days to regroup, I will be back with more posts and news of new things to come for the new year. Yay 2011! It’s going to be a great year!

Love, Elaine

Dec. 14, 2010 Happy Bitter-Sweet Holidays!

Hi everyone. December is here!  Winter is here! And the Holidays are upon us!  And doesn’t it feel that way sometimes–like they are upon us instead of within us or about us…instead of about love and giving and sharing the joys of all of our uniqueness as humans on the planet and that we are here to help each other.  But we can make the holidays about love again and enjoy the moments of joy in the season if we can separate ourselves from our pasts and focus on our gifts and true nature of being highly sensitive souls.  Having a Narcissistic parent, our true selves and our gifts were ignored, ridiculed, and shamed so our hearts can feel heavy this time of year–we want so much to be loved and appreciated by those in our families who are unable to love and appreciate us no matter how hard we try to please them.

It’s time to accept that they may never love and appreciate us as we truly are.  It’s time to move on with our energy to becoming what are hearts are yearning for us to become–happy from the inside!  When you can know you deserved love and can then give it to yourself, as you would any child who was treated the way that you were, then you can heal and find joy in the small blessings of the holiday season.

Besides the obvious favorites–houses decorated with christmas lights, and christmas music in all the stores, here are a few of my favorite things of the season:  big, slow-falling snowflakes, ice covered ponds that shimmer in the sunlight (proof that God invented “glitter”), warm, soft scarves and mittens, friendlier smiling neighbors, bell-ringers at the grocery dressed up like elves, children’s holiday singing programs, and hot decaf skinny vanilla lattes (sugar free and low fat ) at the local coffeeshop, and cats curled up by the fireplace or under a Christmas Tree, just to mention a few.

Even with the joys of the season, we as survivors can be surprised by the sad and heavy feelings that come up. Last week when I was in my car, a song came on the radio that felt like it was meant for me to hear.  I was deeply touched by the words and I knew I wanted to share it with all of you highly sensitive souls out there who were wounded by a Narcissistic parent.  I hope it inspires you to believe in yourself the way that I believe in you.  It is sung by Katy Perry and it’s called “Firework”.

Firework lyrics:
Songwriters: Dean, Esther; Eriksen, Mikkel; Hermansen, Tor Erik; Perry, Katy; Wilhelm, Sandy Julien;

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?
Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
Like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?

Do you ever feel already buried deep?
Six feet under screams but no one seems to hear a thing
Do you know that there’s still a chance for you
‘Cause there’s a spark in you?

You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
Just own the night like the 4th of July

‘Cause baby, you’re a firework
Come on, show ‘em what you’re worth
Make ‘em go, oh
As you shoot across the sky

Baby, you’re a firework
Come on, let your colors burst
Make ‘em go, oh
You’re gonna leave ‘em falling down

You don’t have to feel like a waste of space
You’re original, cannot be replaced
If you only knew what the future holds
After a hurricane comes a rainbow

Maybe you’re reason why all the doors are closed
So you could open one that leads you to the perfect road
Like a lightning bolt, your heart will blow
And when it’s time, you’ll know

You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
Just own the night like the 4th of July

‘Cause baby you’re a firework
Come on, show ‘em what you’re worth
Make ‘em go, oh
As you shoot across the sky

Baby, you’re a firework
Come on, let your colors burst
Make ‘em go, oh
You’re gonna leave ‘em falling down

Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon
It’s always been inside of you, you, you
And now it’s time to let it through

‘Cause baby you’re a firework
Come on, show ‘em what you’re worth
Make ‘em go, oh
As you shoot across the sky

Baby, you’re a firework
Come on, let your colors burst
Make ‘em go, oh
You’re gonna leave ‘em falling down

Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon
Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon

Happy Holidays to all of you!  I truly cherish and love each and every one of you and consider you to be part of my new extended family as we heal and move forward together.  My holiday wish for you is that you will “listen to your heart above all other voices” and that you will find inner peace, hope and the love that your sensitive soul deserves.

Warmest Holiday Wishes and Love,

Elaine

Nov. 30, 2010 Narcissistic Parents Are The Cause Of Learned Helplessness in Highly Sensitive People (HSPs)

Hi everyone.  Today I want to write about a subject that many of my clients and readers can relate to as Highly Sensitive People with a narcissistic parent.  It is something called Learned Helplessness.  Learned Helplessness is that feeling of powerlessness that we all feel at times, and for some of us it is more pervasive and all encompassing than for others.  There is much hope in talking about it because if we can understand the roots of this feeling, we can understand that it is “learned” behavior and that we can become aware of it when it hits us and ultimately heal from it completely.

I first heard about Learned Helplessness in my introductory psychology class in college and you probably have heard the story as well–the story of Pavlov’s dog. Pavlov used a dog in an experiment in human behavior to demonstrate the result of conditioning and punishment. I can’t recall the exact details except that the dog was given rewards or withheld the rewards and the resulting behavior of the dog was recorded and studied. There were other dog experiments by a psychologist named Seligman in which he shocked sets of dogs to demonstrate learned behavior and conditioning.

The main thing I remember vividly about the whole thing was that at the end of the Seligman experiments, the dogs were shocked repeatedly both when they completed a task correctly and also when they did not.  The poor dogs were so confused that they layed down depressed and GAVE UP and even whined–and this was Learned Helplessness that the dogs were experiencing.  I still remember learning about this vividly because I felt SO bad for these dogs–I was empathizing and upset beyond what the average person reading this would expect to be.

At that time in college I did not have the insight or self-awareness yet to realize it was because I resonated so much personally with how the dogs were treated.  I knew just how those dogs must have felt and I related to them giving up and laying down, hopeless, and helpless, in fear, and self-doubt.  Those dogs were experiencing the same damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t no-win situation that those of us with Narcissistic parents were subjected to day in and day out as children!  Years later I remember blurting out to a counselor, I know just how a dog in those experiments must have felt and it helped the counselor have a picture of the frustration, fear, desperation, loneliness, despair, hopelessness, and helplessness.

After I voiced this to the counselor, I was able to picture myself as a small child with the same compassion I had for such a dog and finally realize that I deserved SO MUCH MORE from a supposedly loving family.  The roots of my anxiety were then exposed–no wonder I felt anxious all the time, no wonder I was a perfectionist and afraid to disappoint anyone, no wonder I didn’t know how to relax, no wonder I had no access to my own dreams and desires and was filled with self-doubts and negative messages in my head.  I was treated the same as those dogs by a narcissistic mother who was incapable of giving any love–but would reward you only if you did what she wanted and severly punish you with emotional rejection if you did not!

The Scapegoat child of a N parent can very much relate to this constant punishment and criticism.  But the Golden Child can relate as well because they are often the obedient one who needs desperately some kind of loving approval and, out of fear, becomes what the parent wants for them to become.  Outwardly to others it may appear as if the Golden Child has it all–the love, attention and admiration of the Narcissistic parent.  But inside there is so much emptiness and pain, an absence of the knowledge of self and true feelings–feelings that had to be hidden away because they were too painful to bear.  The false self is developed and honed in, we know exactly how our N parent feels even before they do.  We develop a radar that helps us to survive the lack of love and support–and we develop an illusion that we are the ones at fault if, even with our best efforts, we fail to win the acceptance of the N parent.  We blame ourselves and have very low self-esteem, crushed by criticism, holding relationships at arms length so no one will get too close and cause us further pain.

The roots of co-dependence are also linked to this learned helplessness–we tell ourselves that there must be something wrong with us and that we are deeply flawed and it usually goes in one of two ways–either we decide we need to find another person to love us and take care of us and then we will be happy (co-dependence) or we become a porcupine not letting anyone one else near, lashing out at anyone who suspects that we just might have some insecurities underneath our outwardly successful yet workaholic exterior shell. People who suffer from panic attacks and even agoraphobia often have learned helplessness from childhood as a root cause as well.

“What can a person do?” you may be asking if you relate to what I am describing.  Plenty!  Just being aware and believing that this happened to you as a child is the first step. Just as you have compassion for the dogs in the experiments, you need to develop this same compassion for yourself and make a decision to stop being so hard on yourself.  Make a decision to be kind to yourself every time you are feeling bad–it is almost always childhood pain coming up to tell you the truth of what really happened to you.  Become aware that the negative messages in your head were put there by someone else and that you did not deserve them.  Change them to positive messages.  Write in a journal all the things you were good at as a child and never given credit for.  Writing out the truth is powerful and go back and read it often to remind yourself.

It takes time so be patient with yourself.  Taking baby steps in the direction of healing is wise because there is pain to work through and release but you can do it!  You have many gifts and talents that have never been acknowledged yet and only you can bring them out from their repressed state of Learned Helplessness.

Whether you were the scapegoat in your family or the obedient golden child, you can heal from the trauma of Learned Helplessness.  Often people who experience post traumatic stress from an abusive childhood fall into this state of learned helplessness when their wounds are triggered.  It can feel like an inability to function, a numbness–but sometimes the feelings along with that are a mix of rage and despair.

If you have lashed out at loved ones with an intensity beyond what is appropriate then you probably were a victim of a parent that punished you in an abusive way far far too much with no remorse. If you were extremely sensitive (extremely emotionally gifted ), just a mean look from his/her eyes could cause a traumatic reaction in you as a child and the fear may have felt like a spear through your heart.  The rage and despair you feel is understandable and appropriate but needs to be directed, voiced, and released at the parent that did this too you (never to them or to their face but with the presence of a counselor or coach or a safe person in your life).  You will find a sense of relief each time you release some of this truth and the light inside of you will become brighter and brighter and you will feel lighter and lighter. You will begin to experience the essence of your true self and the vitality you deserve.  This is the process of healing.

Why did you experience learned helplessness while your siblings did not?  You had the gift of high sensitivity and along with that the knowledge and expectation of a higher level of love.  And when you did not receive this love that you innately knew existed, you had no choice but to blame yourself because…it made no sense to you.  Your siblings just got mad at your parents and rebelled–they had no higher vision of a loving existence.

So you see, the cure and the answer to all of your self-doubt and learned helplessness is LOVE.  Love yourself as you deserved to be loved and give yourself the love that you so easily give to others because that is your gift.  Compassion and love for yourself will help you overcome all of the many symptoms of Learned Helplessness just as consistent love and affection and kindness would help Seligman’s abused dogs to learn to trust people and trust themselves again.  I hope my words have been helpful to you.  I care and I am here for you. With Love, Elaine

November 17, 2010 Holiday Survival Tips and A Poem To My Narcissistic Mother–An HSPs Recovery From Artistic and Creative Self-doubt

Hi everyone.  It’s November!–and there’s a briskness in the air and the  awareness of the holidays approaching.  For many of us highly sensitive survivors that comes with a bitter-sweet feeling–of light and love from God above (the true reason for the season) mixed with the grief of a lost childhood and sad or painful holiday memories of being misunderstood and abused.  Or it can be an overwhelming feeling of dread on some days for many reasons related to your present relationship with your N parent and your family of origin (FOO), and on other days of stress–being caught up in the busy-ness of getting ready for the big days ahead for your loved ones–often too busy to feel anything at all.

Depending on where we are in our recovery, it is normal for us to be feeling all of these different ways.  Be kind to yourself no matter how you are feeling and please try to slow down, breathe deeply and take self-care breaks–stop and be aware of the negative messages in your head and change them to kind words that you deserved as a child such as:  Everything is going to be all right,  You are doing a good job,  It’s okay to make mistakes,  You are special, deep, and a rare gift to this planet.

Affirmations you can say to yourself are:  I love and approve of myself, I am safe, and, my favorite, I give myself permission to be the best that I can be. This last one is helpful especially because often our parents were threatened and jealous of our gifts and so, sensing this, because we were highly sensitive and empathic, we protected them by hiding our gifts away so they would feel better.  Giving yourself permission to be the best that you can be can be so empowering and satisfying–like suddenly realizing, “Oh, wow, I don’t have to protect them anymore and I can just relax and be awesome!”  Many of you feel guilty for everything even for your own creative and artistic gifts! A narcissistic parent may have caused you to feel shame for expressing them.  This is what happened to me and maybe you can relate. Please take your gifts out of hiding and take a good look at the truth of the gifts and talents that you brought with you to this planet.  They are your gifts and yours alone and you deserve to enjoy and feel good about them and share them with others!

Today I want to share a poem I wrote in 2005 that expressed and released my exasperation and confusion about my musical talents.  Until I wrote this poem I still suffered from much self-doubt about my singing and songwriting abilities.  Writing this poem allowed “the truth to come out” so that my inner child could express herself without fear.  I need to make it clear that this poem was written to my mother but never for her to actually read–writing feelings out in such a way is very healing and is for your eyes, your self, and for your healing only.

I have come such a long way since writing this poem–it was during a time of my most intense inner grief work.  Now I am confident and creatively unblocked!  This takes a long time so please be patient with yourself.  I hope this poem inspires you to write out your truth in order to free up your creative and artistic gifts that may still be hiding in shame.  Thank you for reading.  Please remember, especially during the holiday season, that you are not alone–I understand, I care, and I am here for you.

Before I conclude, I just want to add a quick note to those of you who get my posts by email subscription.  I hope you will be able to stop by my site from time to time–I am adding many new informative Pages and a new feature called Update Corner where I will be leaving notes about new services and HSP related topics.

Now here is my poem:

Thank God For The Tapes I Saved In My Attic

by Elaine Sanders

September 12, 2005

How can it be that I was so wrong?

I was sure that my singing just didn’t belong

But I know now that it somehow survived

The pain from rejection I did carefully hide

And I hid my soul, became what you needed instead

And so on the inside I was almost dead

But clinging to life were pieces of hope

And when I’d feel happy your eyes made me grope

How dare I feel happy and want to be free

My role in this life was devoted to thee

As a child I trusted you with all of my heart

If you disapproved then I should not start

Then I’d sing and I’d feel really good to express

All of my sadness and my happiness

 

But your criticism and judgement caused me such great shame

I’d berate myself for trying over and over again

I said, “I’m not as good as I feel in my heart

Or she would have told me ’cause she’s really smart”

“She knows good music and I must be bad

Or she would have told me”.  So sad, so sad

And so each time I’d sing at home in my room

Your disapproving looks made me feel such doom

I understand now that my heart it was breaking

My trust in myself, it was completely taken

I developed a false identity

Approval from others was all I could see

But now I am seeing that this pattern is insane

Every time I sing well I feel really deep shame

And that is why I stopped singing all of those years

Its ingrained in my neurons and it brings me to tears

What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t true

I’m actually good and shouldn’t feel blue

It’s so hard to change when it’s so automatic

Even when it’s fantastic there’s that negative static

The feeling inside, it’s this horrible dread

And I realize the messages are inside my head

“You’re horrible, disgusting, the sound must be grating.

Or she would have told you, you deserve all the hating”

But I don’t deserve it and I’m through with this trick!

For whatever reason what you did it was sick!

Maybe it was done to you as a kid

And you are in denial of all that it did.

And that is why you must control and be critical

You run from your feelings and that is so pitiful

I’ve tried to help you almost every year since

I’ve given and reached out and it still makes me wince

When you criticize others and I see it’s not true

It helps me to see it’s not me—it’s all you!

Still I’m left with this legacy of fearing to try

Being myself well it just makes me cry

If it weren’t for the tapes I made of my songs…

I’ve listened to them lately and I know you were wrong

But still now it happens again and again

When will I stop feeling as if I have sinned.

I want to believe in myself and my gift

Perhaps writing this poem will help me to shift

I’m angry and I’m trying to handle the rage

All my life I was cheated–I’ve been in a cage

I try to forgive–you didn’t understand?

How painful it was? It wasn’t your plan?

You thought I’d be happy to stay home with you

And not go to college, my ambitions were few.

That’s what you saw but you were so wrong

And I didn’t dare tell you what I felt for so long

I wanted to be a singer and in college well I did it!

They told me I’m good…but it was too painful to believe it.

Now I understand I’m a sensitive soul

Few understand me but I am no fool

It’s amazing all that I have overcome

Raising two happy children with what I came from

To trust in their feelings and believe in their dreams

Noone can stop you if you believe in these things

And I have learned how to comfort myself and my feelings

When all seems a loss from the past and those dealings

I still get afraid but sometimes I’m ecstatic

Thank God For The Tapes I Saved In My Attic!

Love,

Elaine

For more about overcoming creative self-doubt please read my post from January 28, 2010 On Overcoming Self-doubt–The Story Behind My Songs Of Hope and Healing. 

 

  

October 31, 2010 Get Free From The Wicked Witch In Your Life

Hi everyone and Happy Halloween.  Halloween to me and my family is about dressing up in costumes and getting candy and is primarily Fun For The Kids!  I hear the origins of this holiday are about something dark and scary but I don ‘t believe there is any harm in celebrating the FUN part and I think it’s great way to celebrate this beautiful season as a family.  I won’t be in disguise as I pass out our candy, but I look forward to the chance to wear my WICKED t-shirt that I purchased after watching the wonderful live performance of the musical WICKED in Chicago.

Speaking of the WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST, she was definitely a narcissist!  Please check out my new page called, “What does NARCISSISTIC mean?” to see if your parent could possibly be a narcissist if you are not sure yet.  He/She could be WICKED IN DISGUISE!  Most narcissists aren’t so easy to spot, in fact most of them can act more like Glenda the Good Witch at times and can be charismatic and charming when you are doing what they want you to do.  I hope this article will help you decipher whether your parent is just difficult or is actually a narcissist in disguise.

It is my sincere hope, that if you do have a narcissistic parent, that you find comfort and encouragement from the words and songs here on my blog.  As a survivor myself, I understand the pain and frustration of trying to break free and live a life that is relaxed and anxiety-free, and full of the joy and inner peace that each of us deserve.  As highly sensitive souls, we are here to help each other discover and believe that, just like DOROTHY in the Wizard of Oz and her magic ruby slippers, you have had the ability to find your true home all along!  The love you deserve is inside of you–and if you have the courage to go within and explore your feelings, dreams, and desires you will discover a compassion for your wounded inner child and you will begin to heal.  You will discover your true self and your true voice and your true purpose in life.

Here on my website you will find articles that help you to know how to start journaling as a means to finding your voice and expressing the truth of what happened to you as a child.  There are also articles to help you to overcome the horrible guilt and shame that so many of us are plagued with when we try to break free from our toxic families that try to control us and make us doubt ourselves. Take comfort here, on my blog, knowing that you are not alone.  Join the community of survivors who are beginning to come out of hiding and stand up for their rights to freedom and time alone and the space to heal.  Learn how to have healthy boundaries against the narcissistic predators that seem to target highly sensitive souls.  This happens to us because …we don’t want to cause anyone harm and cause any conflict so we go along with these dominating others thinking it is doing no harm.

But it is doing YOU harm, you are drained and depleted and you don’t even realize it is because you are letting so much negative energy into your personal space–it is draining you!  You need to set limits today and believe you have the right to say no to them.  “Say, “No I don’t want to!”  “No, I need my space!”  “I need time alone to recharge!”  “Leave me in Peace!”  When you assert your right to be alone, you will be amazed how much better you will start to feel.  As highly sensitive children, our narcissistic parents invaded our space so much we don’t realize we have a right to it!  It’s your space, you need to defend your territory, your right to a peaceful life.  Stand up and say, ”no more, I want a change in the way things have been going!”

Narcissists will twist your words against you no matter what you say.  You really can’t win–be prepared for this!  You don’t owe them anything–they took away your peace and gave you guilt, shame, and anxiety.  You don’t even owe them an explanation although I know this is difficult for a lot of you to do because of the guilt–you don’t want to hurt them!  They blame you for hurting them but do you ever blame them to their face like they do to you?  No, because you know it’s not right to “blame” and yet you listen to them when they do it to you!  Stop listening to the crazyness–stop reading their emails and letters, stop listening to their phone messages, stop all communication so you can begin to heal. Walking away is not easy–but neither is letting things stay the way are.  You deserve inner peace.

Start exercising your new healthy boundaries as you learn to love and accept yourself and your gifts of high sensitivity.  Walk away to inner peace and compassion for your self.  You deserve love.  Narcissists do not love, they just need, need, need and take, take, take.  It is not your responsibility to fill their neediness–they were needy before you were even born.  Love is out there in the world and it is also within you.  You ARE a loving person and as you learn to love yourself you will start attracting people into your life who recognize and acknowledge how much you give and they will appreciate you just for BEING–so the giving will feel like a bonus to them and to you.  Aren’t you tired of not being appreciated?  I appreciate you, all of you highly sensitive souls out there who make this world a loving, peaceful, and beautiful place to live in.  I am so grateful for you.  You deserve to relax and enjoy your life.  But remember it’s okay to get assertive when your personal boundaries have been crossed!  Defend yourself with your new words–”I need SPACE!”  This holiday season or whatever family get-together you are dreading because of your narcissistic family member, if you need to then tell them, “I need space so I will not be visiting or able to invite you as usual or….”–your words here.  No further explanations needed.  They may lash out at you for your selfishness which is ridiculous!–They are selfish ones for not understanding or empathizing with your needs for space and peace.

Whatever they say to you you don’t have to reply.  But if you are looking for words to appease them, this can take so much energy because you will soon discover they will not take any words for an answer.  Some people ask me for the right words to reduce contact with their parent or even to say goodbye.  Each person’s parental situation is very unique and complex and your own truth and your words are important for you to decide on your own.  Whatever action gives you peace so that you can heal is the right answer to this question and some choose to walk away with no more communication.  For those of you who find it too painful to say goodbye but still want words to end it perhaps you might prefer saying, “I wish you peace, please leave me in peace.”  Leave it at that and then don’t listen to the messages.  I know this is hard. The advice from the experts is to delete the messages from narcissists without listening to them to avoid opening up painful childhood wounds and causing stress and distress that is harmful to your healing.

I hope what I have shared with you today gives you some strength in dealing with the most difficult of family dysfunction–Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  I want to share a song I wrote recently in the hopes that it will give you strength.  Here are the lyrics–It is called “I Am Free”:

Love, Elaine

I Am Free by Elaine Sanders

September 4, 2010

I Am, I Am, I Am Free

I Am, I Am, I Am Free

Please try to remember

everyone is free.

Noone can tell you

what to like or do or see.

God gave us the feelings

and the desire to say no.

Guilt was made by humans

Rise above and let it go!

I Am, I Am, I Am Free

I Am. I Am, I Am Free

Rules are there

for children to

keep them safe and sound.

But when you’re grown

the rules are not

supposed to tie you down!

Fly to where

you want to go.

Follow all your dreams.

Parents who still

punish you

Don’t love you as it seems!

I Am, I Am, I Am Free

I Am, I Am, I Am Free

If you still obey them

then you are not grown up.

Try to talk it over–

their controlling has to stop.

But sometimes our parent’s love

is only just control.

We must turn and walk away

to love and peace and soul! Yeah!

I Am, I Am, I Am Free

I Am, I Am, I Am Free

God is your true father

Mother Earth is from above

Imagine they embrace you

with their warmth and bliss and love.

You have feelings for a reason.

Look inside and let it out.

The child inside has much to say–

that child just wants to shout…

I Am, I Am, I Am Free!

I Am, I Am, I Am Free!

Repeat

I Am Free!

October 12, 2010 Journaling for Joy and Finding My True Voice In A Poem

Hello to all of you sensitive souls.  I hope you are enjoying this beautiful week of Indian Summer we are having. The news says that most of the U.S. is experiencing gorgeous mild temperatures and colorful changing leaves right now.  It is definitely my favorite time of the year and it feels like such a gift from above now that I can relax and take it in and be in the moment and fully appreciate it.  As many of you who follow my blog already know, it wasn’t always this way for me.  I used to be numb to my feelings, keeping too busy to feel, compelled to be a people-pleaser and a perfectionist, and full of self-doubt and anxiety.

There are many facets to my journey to finding my voice as a person, many of which I describe on my blog so that I might inspire other highly sensitive people (HSPs) to believe in their dreams.  Writing out my feelings in a journal has been one of these many facets that contributed to my awakening to my true spirit which was hiding inside. I have been writing poetry in a journal since the age of 14, but it wasn’t until about 2002 that I set out to to try to do Julia Cameron’s morning pages (3 pages of free writing every day) which turned out to be extremely therapeutic “inner grief work” that took place over a period of 5 years.  It was during this period that I wrote about the feeling that I was “growing a backbone” and this felt very miraculous indeed.  I knew I was finding my voice finally and it had been hidden away in fear for so long.  I was writing songs and poetry and it never really occurred to me to seriously share them with others until one day when an extra special one poured out of me.  When I wrote this poem, it dawned on me that I had been transformed and now, finally, I could reach out and help others–something I had always wanted to do but I always felt I had to figure myself out first.  I had a new found sense of self and there was no going back.  I am very happy to be sharing it with you today.

After I wrote this poem, I got the idea to write a book sharing many of my poems and my growth along the way to finding my voice and that this poem would be the final one in the book–a finale of sorts.  However, since then I have written even more special poems and songs so I have decided to go ahead and share a shortened version of it here in my blog. (I haven’t written my book yet but I plan to start it in the near future.)  This very special poem is entitled, “Joy, Our Birthright, Waiting There”.  I want to explain that I wrote this with my children in mind– when I say “and I was never there for you the way I thought I was, it’s true”.  What this means is when I went through growth and gradually had more access to my true self, then I couldn’t help but feel regret about the past when I had been doing my best but I was not able to be my strong confident true self yet.  When I expressed this regret to my children expecting them to agree and feel relief and tell me it had been hard for them, they both instead said they always felt I was always emotionally available to them and it meant a lot to them that I always apologized to them whenever I made emotional mistakes and they felt fully validated at each step along the way in their upbringing. For this I feel extremely grateful because nothing has ever been more important to me than my children feeling good about themselves and their unique gifts and breaking the cycle of abuse that my husband and I experienced as children.  Still…I can’t help but wish I knew then what I know now….

So here it is:

Joy, Our Birthright, Waiting There

By Elaine D. Sanders

Feb 21, 2007

Telling someone helped me heal

All the pain inside was real

No wonder I had been so tired

My whole heart had been so mired

So much grief to lead the way

Let it out, so much to say

I was never there for you

The way I thought I was, it’s true

Because I was empty – none to give

Alive but I just now learned to live

Soulful is the proper word

I have “me” – it sounds absurd

Let your painful feelings out

You can’t be whole and live without

Expression of unfairness do

Your soul will help you live anew

And learn compassion for your self

Don’t put feelings on a shelf

Any doubt is harmful thought

The truth is–look how far you got!

Negativity and blocks

To true self and joyful shocks

Being blamed can stunt our growth

Fear of feelings: anger, both

Also fearing joy and bliss

Pain comes up and we all miss

The connection to our rightful heir

Joy, our birthright, waiting there!

Love is what we all deserve

Joy it feels when then observed

Share it then and it comes back

Filling up the past we lacked

Helping others heal their wounds

Nothing like it – glowing moons

Stars are twinkling, warming sun

Nature loves us one by one

Let the love come down on you

It is there don’t block the view

Doubts of self will keep it blocked

You must trust your soul’l be rocked!

With this truth I’m trying to tell

Creative soul fear-blocked is hell

Heaven is a word away

Love is here please let it stay

You deserve its welcome home

Inside you it does belong

Love yourself I’m trying to say

God is trying – just light the way

Ask him to comfort your soul

Believe!  And he will rock and roll!

I’m not kidding this I know

I let out grief and felt a glow

A light inside I did believe

I’m OK. I feel. I grieve.

Compulsions all have fear beneath

God has no shoulds or work hard work teeth

Be yourself and kindness do

Serve to help others heal anew

Help them see that love transcends

We can all relax and mend

“Relax and enjoy your life

and everything will be alright!”

This phrase came in a dream so real

I hope this poem will help you heal

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Love,

Elaine

September 29, 2010 Part 2–More Helpful Tips for HSPs With A Narcissistic Parent

Hi everyone.  Today I am releasing Part 2 of my More Helpful Tips post for those of you Highly Sensitive Souls trying to figure out how to thrive when you have a narcissistic parent.  It may help for you to review tips 1 through 6 in my last post. To summarize, they were about: your gift of intuition; the childhood traumas you repressed to survive; anxiety, self-doubt, co-dependence and PTSD; there is hope; inner child healing can help; and no contact with your Narcissistic parent is vital to the healing process. So here are tips 7. through 12.:    

7.  Know that the GUILT is relieved by acknowledging the anger and hatred you felt as a child that you were forced to repress.

 The guilt of stopping your relationship with your Narcissistic (N) parent will be strong!  IGNORE IT! It is guilt that they induced into you to control you since you were a tiny child.  That was an abuse of your freedom as a gifted child to become your own wonderful self!  They took that from you and gave you guilt, shame, and fear in it’s place.  So what do you do with the guilt you feel when stepping out on your own to become the person with freedom to do whatever you want with your life?  Get angry about it!  Righteous anger is a healthy emotion that you were not “allowed” to express to them–but it is important that you release this anger in harmless ways (not to the parent who abused you) .  Acknowledge it, tell a safe person, or write it out in a journal (for your eyes only) in detail the “hatred” you feel for all that you lost.  That’s right, I said Hatred.  Because this rage inside that comes out sometimes in your life at the wrong people has an origin that needs to be expressed.  You have a right to feel hatred for the traumas that happened to you as a child.  You felt this hatred then but it was too painful for a child to survive this kind of excruciating, unbearable emotional pain of hating your parents when you needed them so desparately.  So the trauma is repressed and the truth of what happened to you needs to be released so that you can finally be free. Punching a mattress with your fist and/or screaming into several pillows for as long as you need to is helpful to release the rage you have kept inside all these years.  It helps to have a supportive and safe person present to validate your feelings as you release them.

8. Know that grieving the loss of your childhood is part of the healing process.

Often after the release of anger you will begin to feel all the hurt and pain of not being truly loved as you deserved. Letting this out and releasing this is so important as well in the healing process of your wounded soul. It helps so much to talk to another empathic human to feel fully validated and comforted through this grieving process–but if there is no one possible then you can write this pain out and you may even surprise yourself by the poetry that pours out of you.  (No rules when you write–just let it pour out).  These words of your soul will always surprise you– you will discover a richness and deep inner life inside of you that you never knew existed.  Because it was hiding in fear all this time–a very real fear–fear of your parent’s judgemental rejection and abandonment of your budding wise self.

9.  Know that it is okay for you to be FREE of them and put yourself first.

It is a free country!  You are a free person to do as you wish.  And noone knows the pain that a narcissistic parent can do to the soul of a highly sensitive child except those of us who have experienced it.  So stop waiting for approval from the rest of society.  Stop all contact with the harmful, negative, narcissistic parent in your life forever and always. You do not even need to attend their funeral if that is something that worries you. It is okay to protect yourself from all the negative energy and judgements of others at family gatherings if you are feeling this will happen. (I now believe our souls live for eternity and those who truly love and support me will be there in heaven and watch over me in spirit–they will understand my reasons for staying away.  I don’t need to go to a funeral to say goodbye or to appease family members who don’t support me either.)  And to support you further, I just happened to hear on the radio today, a Christian counselor reminding someone that  “Honor thy father and mother” DOES NOT APPLY when they are emotionally abusive and use fear to control you.  Fear is the opposite of love!  God wants for you to protect yourself and go towards love in your life and away from those who induce fear. I agree with this.  Loving parents want you to feel safe and loved–N parents do not care if you feel safe and loved, they want you to obey or else!  Please get yourself safe and free.

10. Know that Narcissistic people are known as “Crazymakers” for a good reason.

Your N parents are not going to change and they are not going to stop trying to make you wrong.  You are not wrong for putting your life and your dreams first for a change.  This is your time!  This is your life!  This is your time for healing and dreaming and learning to love yourself as God has always wanted for you.  Malignant Narcissism is mental illness.  It’s a severe problem and insidious in nature because they appear to fit in with other people and have friends and thrive and look fine on the outside. They may even be religious and say they are devoted to God but it is not true!  It is just words!  They may even appear to change and will be on their good behavior around your children but don’t believe it.  They will turn your kids against you in an instant if they are able.   There’s a dark self-hatred there underneath in a narcissist and a desire to control others with no remorse and no desire to change.  That’s enough knowledge for you to know you need to get you and your children as far away from them as possible.

11.  Know that highly sensitive people absorb the negative energy of others. Time alone and the beauty of nature can help recharge your positive  energy.

Narcissists are like energy vampires sucking the good energy out of you and replacing it with all their unconscious negative feelings about themselves.  You feed them, so to speak, and they take it and feel better about themselves. And they constantly want more, not seeing or caring how it is hurting you.  Only you can stop feeding their endless need for your supply of positive energy. This is what it means to develop healthy boundaries.  It is your very essence, your ”gift” that they are taking–your ability to give light and love to others.  You must protect this gift. It is meant for those who are also of light and love so that we can build each other up and help each other so that all of our dreams can come true and we can improve life on our planet.  These dreams and desires that we have deep inside are the innervoice that connects us to God and the light that feeds all of us (HSPs).  It is the LOVE that we never got from our N parents that we begin to feel has been inside of us all along.  As we begin to connect with our real feelings and our vitality we connect with God and the love and bliss that was there innately in our true selves.  Love exists and we can give it to ourselves when we realize we were loved all along and were born with this love to give to others who don’t exploit us.

12.  Know that you can rescue yourself!  Noone can do it for you.

Take the first steps and start on a path of healing today!  Be strong and stay away from your narcissistic parent and anyone who judges you for doing so.  You don’t need to explain it to anyone.  Most highly sensitive people will understand without explanation.  They are out there–don’t give up! I am proud to be a highly sensitive person that survived a narcissistic parent and now I shine my light brightly to help other sensitive souls out of the dark.  You have a light inside of you that has just been hiding in fear.  Everything is going to be all right now as the truth of who you are comes to light. Please take extremely good care of yourself so your highly sensitive soul can shine and inspire others. I hope these tips have been helpful to you.  I care and I am here for you.

Love and Light,

Elaine

September 15, 2010 More Helpful Tips–For Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) With A Narcissistic Parent–Part 1

Hi everyone. As highly sensitive people, many of you are struggling with how to cope with your relationship with your narcissistic parent and your unsupportive siblings and extended family.  First of all I want to tell you that I understand your pain and how hard it is. There is very little support in our society for not having a relationship with ones’ parents no matter how negative and destructive they are to you or were to you in your childhood.  Many people have difficult parents but they tolerate them and seem to get by okay so why can’t you, right?  The pressure is very real.  But let me help you understand the difference between you (an HSP) and everyone else with some more helpful tips that are very important for you to know. 

1. Know that your greatest gift is your intuition.

As highly sensitive people (HSPs), we were naturally giving and loving and trusting as children.  We had high hopes for ourselves and others including our parents.  Those of us with loving and supportive parents are living lives full of vitality and creative fulfillment and healthy boundaries to keep negative, manipulative, harmful people at a distance naturally and sharing our unique gifts with others. (Taylor Swift is an INFJ).  These people don’t feel guilty about not getting along with everyone–they just “know” there are some people who are unhealthy and dangerous–they pay attention to their natural instincts.  But those of us with a narcissistic parent were taught at a very young age, even from birth not to trust our own instincts, our own intuition.  The horrible thing about that is, that was our greatest gift, “our sensitive intuition”, and it was used against us.

2. Know that you repressed a terrible trauma from your childhood–the loss of the knowledge of your gifts.

If you had an N parent, then part of your sensitivities were seen as a gift for “them”.  They could control you easily because of your trusting nature–so often they used fear to get you to be quiet, anger to get you to obey, and shame to keep you from feeling independent and strong.  And it worked.  We trusted them and needed them to take care of us and protect us from a world that overwhelmed our sensitive souls so we…experienced a trauma that caused us to shut down our true selves and become what they want us to become. Something happened that was “the last straw” for our fragile but wise self that was developing.  Typically it happens around age 5 or 6, according to Alice Miller (Author of The Drama of the Gifted Child).  After an incident that we can’t remember because we have repressed it, suddenly, we are obedient and sweet wanting only to please.  And please them we did.  And that is why it is so hard for them to let go of us now.  We took care of them.  Completely and amazingly.  They felt loved by us and validated by us filling a void inside of them that was caused in their childhood.  It is as if we were the loving parent that they never had.  That is how gifted you were.  Those gifts of intuiting the needs of others are still there–they were just misused and abused by your needy and narcissistic parent.  Those gifts of being a loving and giving and caretaking soul were mis-directed.

MY TRAUMA AT AGE 5:  (As for myself, I was able to finally gain access to the memories of my trauma after much journaling, support, and inner grief work.  I had always had the vivid memory when I taught myself how to read at the age of 5. Before I even entered school, someone taught me the letters to my name (not my mother) and I remember saying them over and over in my head when I suddenly realized how it worked–the letters had sounds and they fit together to form words!!!  I remember it vividly–the grass outside on our lawn where I had been playing, the details of the interior of the house, and running excitedly to tell my mother!  And that is where my memories ended.  It wasn’t until in my thirties when my Mother casually said, remember that time when you were 5 and we couldn’t find you?…and we searched for you all day and finally found you asleep in the closet.  Pouring out my emotions writing in my journal soon after that, the memories and emotions came back to me.  The pain of telling my mother the wonderful news and having her laugh at me and shame me saying, ” You can’t read!  You are too little to read! That’s ridiculous!”  I remember the rage I felt, the exasperation, the unbearable emotional pain!  I ran and hid in the closet determined never to come out.  I heard them later looking for me and I hated them all so badly. It was the last straw for me.   I felt like I was dying and I was.  I gave up being “me” but with the last disobedient act of my life–I was determined never to come out of that closet on my own.  I don’t remember if I fell asleep in there or pretended to be asleep when they found me but I was forever after…changed.  I believe I repressed my wise and intelligent soul and voice so completely to please my mother that I convinced everyone and even myself that I wasn’t too bright.  They ignored the fact that I got straight A’s easily in school pointing out the fact that I was a worry-wort and anxious.  Oh yeah, and the story goes from my siblings that my mother forgot to send me to kindergarten that year and that a neighbor noticed and made my mom send me to kindergarten.  I was the baby of the family and she wanted to keep me forever her “baby”.  I remember going to kindergarten a few months before  the end of the year and the first day being mortified because I was the only one who didn’t know how to use scissors.  The great thing was I remember that I caught up to everyone in every subject and I was so proud of myself at the graduation ceremony–there is a picture of me just beaming with happiness in my graduation gown after I recited my little poem (we each recited a 4 line poem).  And I remember how the teachers beamed and told my family how well I had done catching up to all the other kids.  But then I remember after that it all changed immediately after the ceremony because my mother was angry about my happiness at my graduation and the mean looks she gave me caused me to regress again… in fear and self-doubt and anxiety.)        

3. Know that your N parents are the cause of your anxiety, self-doubt, post traumatic stress, and co-dependence issues.

As you grew up and tried to do some of the creative endeavors that were driven by your soul, your parent probably did not support you because they selfishly did not want you to leave them or stop taking care of their emotional needs or they just liked controlling you.  As narcissistic parents with no conscience or guilt, it was easy for them to manipulate you, so they did.  The pain of your original trauma at the age of 5 or 6 would come up for you each time you tried to express your true self and these outbursts of emotion were shamed and punished by your parent and made you give up each time.  This is the beginning of the post traumatic stress that still plagues you today. ” Why do I over-react in these explosive ways”, you may have asked yourself.  This is why.  Your true self and all your repressed feelings and desires from childhood still want badly to be heard and understood and validated and “loved”.  Your narcissistic parent was not capable of giving you this love and still is not and never will be.  Your love needs are still unmet.  You searched for love from others but sometimes, because parts of you are still undeveloped and childlike, you end up being attracted to people who seem wonderful and charming at first but then turn out to be needy and manipulative and unable to comfort you when you need it most–just like your N parent. 

4. Know that there is hope and you can heal.

So what is a highly sensitive person with an N parent to do?  You can heal and learn to love yourself and slowly unblock all those creative parts of yourself that never got a chance to be expressed.  You can learn to trust your self and your gifts of emotional intelligence and intuition that were robbed from you and misused and abused.  You can gain clarity amidst all the confusion, and hope amidst all the despair.  You can learn that it is okay for you to say no to other people’s demands and put yourself first.  You need to learn about extreme “self- care” (Cheryl Richardson–author of the book Life Makeovers) and you need a journal to pour into all the feelings from your deepest heart.  You need support from like-minded, highly sensitive, safe people to share the pain and grief from the loss of a childhood that was taken away from you.  All your desires and free impulses were repressed so that you could survive with an illusion that your parent’s needs were more important than your own.  But surviving was not really living your life.  Surviving is not good enough.  Your survival skills just cause you trouble because they are not driven by your heart, they are driven by a needy inner child trying to please a parent that is unpleasable and without remorse about what they did to you.

5. Know that the answers are inside of you and support is available.

You need to take a new direction.  A direction into your own soul.  You need to excavate the desires of a child who never had a say in the development of his/her own life!  Write it out!  Talk it out! Cry it out!  Shout it out!  You can do this in a journal that is meant for your eyes only.  Or you can find a counselor or coach like myself who does inner child healing.  It’s important to find support somewhere so you can find your true voice and express it.  There are HSP meet-up groups in larger cities.  You might also look into Unitarian churches or Unity churches to meet people of a spiritual nature who are not necessarily “religious”.

6. Know that no contact with a narcissistic parent is not just recommended, it is vital!

One of the first steps into this new direction of healing for yourself is ending the old song and dance and unhealthy relationship that you have with your narcissistic parent.  That means no contact so that you can move on with the life that you always deserved.  The fact that you understand the word Narcissistic is crucial here.  We are not talking about a parent that is remorseful about your childhood and trying to change, we are talking about a parent who blames you every time the relationship isn’t going their way–they resent the loss of control over your life that they always had. Control is not love. It is time to cut them off!  You do not owe them another ounce of your precious energy.  You owe it to yourself to stay away from them, because being around them at all always takes a toll on you,  a toll that is much heavier and destructive and stressful and toxic to you than you realize. 

There are a total of 12 tips that I have written about here today, but I am going to stop here and give you the other 6 in my next post in two weeks because this is getting really long. I hope that what I have written has been helpful to you.  I hope that you can enjoy this last week of summer and get out in the warmth of the sunshine–slow down and feel the connection to God’s love that nature provide’s and really take it in. Walks in nature are a great way to recharge your energy.  Your highly sensitive soul and body deserve this special treatment.  It’s never too late to start on the path to the healing you deserve.  I care and I am here for you.

Love, Elaine