Some of us have witnessed or experienced that which most would only view in a horror movie. Maybe we grew up in an area that had drug dealers right down the block or maybe they were in our apartment building. There was violence and a constant threat in the air everywhere. It was not shocking to hear about someone you knew or were friends with being shot. Maybe we grew up with drug addicted caretakers in our family, with our caretakers so obsessed with crack that they didn’t even notice us around at all. I’ve seen it. They had a dog as well, and there was clothing, garbage, and dog shit everywhere. Some of us grew up with indescribable torture. With our parents finding new sadistic ways to cause us physical pain without leaving scars. Some of us grew up with brutal beat downs, so bad that we were left for dead. Beaten within an inch of our lives as Henry Rollins once sang. Some of us were mentally and emotionally tortured, with the same creative, sadistic mindset. Purposely setting their child up to believe that something wonderful was going to happen and their dreams would come true, and then, after the child had put forth months worth of effort toward their goal, the caretakers would conveniently and nonchalantly wave a hand and exclaim “I forgot“. They would take the opportunity to diminish them instead, telling the child that they had some other unimportant task to do instead, ie. a club meeting, instead of deliver on the promise that was so important to the child. Gaslighting to the ultimate degree. There are so many different scenarios. Narcissistic or sociopathic individuals can come up with an endless array of torture. Our environments, where we live, can inflict damage on our psyche.
But there’s great news! We can get past these things. We can journey into self-integration by taking a full assessment of ourselves and working hard and tirelessly to change those things about ourselves that we don’t like. Keeping our word to ourselves is the most important golden gift that we’ve ever known. It can be a long haul, but the end result is worth it. When we learn how to truly take care of ourselves and then implement it, that’s when everything begins to change. When we realize that our thinking has a baseline to it of “Why take care of ourselves when we were apparently not worth being taken care of?“, we can then begin to gently forgive ourselves and lift our Inner Child and ourselves out of the Chaos.
Eating healthy meals at regular times every day, personal hygiene, keeping our environments clean and organized, getting the proper amount of sleep, all of these things are basic things that many of us that have experienced this type of trauma find difficult or even perplexing to do. Learning more about ourselves, who are we? What do we like to do? What is our favorite color? What is our favorite food? What style of clothing do we like? What makes us feel a passionate and positive response? What qualities would describe our ideal partner? These are the things that must be separate from what our friends, family or anyone else thinks. Every one of these things can bring us to a point of self-integration that we never imagined. This can genuinely become real life for us. It takes time to do. We must learn patience, which is hard to come by in the age of 10 second videos. But this is the thought that has never left me since I heard it so many years ago and I hope it will stay with you as well…if you don’t take action on that which you really want, than the years will simply roll by. Either way time will go by, either way the years will roll by. Time does not care if you have accomplished your goals or not. No one else will either. If you really want the type of life you dream of, you must put the work and the time in.
~Janice M. Burke
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