Tag Archives: comfort

Mother’s Day Survival Guide–How To Cope If You Have a Narcissistic Mother

By Roxanne on | 16 Comments

Hi everyone.  May is approaching. It’s a big month for many.  If you have a difficult relationship with your mother, you may find yourself here, reading this, because you need support on how to cope….

If you are a mom then it may help to stay focused on the fact that this is a special day for you as a mother–my two children and my husband like to make it special which is wonderful and I look forward to spending the day with them and being the focus of their attention. My daughter’s birthday is always around Mother’s Day and our anniversary is in May so there is always alot going on.

If you are not a parent then allow yourself to be busy with all the positive things that are Spring related–even spring cleaning and decluttering to bring renewed positive energy into your home. (Distracting yourself may only be helpful if you are also working through any painful feelings that arise by writing in a journal for your eyes only or purging your pain verbally with a safe person in your life who can be an enlightened witness for you.) I allow myself to be distracted because I know in my heart now (after all of my inner grief work) that it is okay for me to detach from any relationship that does not feel like I have the freedom to be ME!  I no longer feel guilty for putting LOVE and self-compassion first in my life.  It is for your higher good to have healthy boundaries in your life–detach from people who you do not feel safe around to be YOURSELF! After you fully heal and feel safe to be YOU without being triggered and stressed then you can reassess your desire to have a closer relationship with any people in question.  It is okay whatever you decide to do–just do what is the least stressful for your healing soul.

So, focusing on being positive and on the other positive events going on for you in May and making them special for your loved ones will help to supercede any negative feelings that may arise.  And isn’t that what we all need to do all the time anyway?  Build ourselves up with positive messages–affirmations if you will–the opposite of what we (highly sensitive children) may have received growing up.  For example, tell yourself  “I can do it!”  instead of  “you can’t do that–who do you think you are!”  And “I love and approve of myself” instead of “what were you thinking–why did you do it that way!”  And say, “I am safe” for the dreaded “how dare you talk to me that way–you are so ungrateful!”    Perhaps now you can see how ridiculous the accusations and blaming are, because you know the truth about you is the opposite and these were said out of inner fear, inner shame and ignorance and not necessarily to hurt you.  But at the time, these accusations were excruciatingly painful to you.  As highly sensitive children we trusted our caretakers more than we trusted ourselves.

There are so many more examples  you may be thinking of, but the point here is not to believe these negative messages in our heads, given to us by someone with conditional love as a parenting method that was passed down for many generations without guilt.  Conditional love is not love.  The opposite of these messages is probably more the real truth.  When you find yourself thinking something negative like “I am never going to get this done” or “I am not good at this”–turn it around and be the ideal mother to yourself that you never had.  Say “I am doing a good job”  and “I am great at this” and “look how much I got done already”.  You deserve these positive messages now and you deserved them as a child.

I can feel the stress of Mother’s Day approaching from all of you out there and so I want to give you some additional extra support to help you stay strong and be true to yourself and honor your feelings.  As highly sensitive people, we want so badly to do the right thing, the kindest thing, the most compassionate response at all times and so we feel guilt for not wanting to honor thy mother on this day that is meant to honor those mothers who are honorable.  And so I am going to write out some quotes from a book that helped me in my darkest hours when I needed them most at the age of 25.  The name of the book is “Cutting Loose–An Adult’s Guide To Coming To Terms With Your Parents”.  This book by Howard M. Halpern, Ph.D.  is full of wonderful emotionally healthy ways to deal with every kind of difficult parent you can imagine.  There is the martyred parent, the despotic parent, the seductive parent, the moralistic parent, and of course the parent with a narcissistic disturbance but who is remorseful about their actions if you confront them.  The book talks about all kinds of ways you can learn to communicate with these kinds of parents and for some of you there may actually be some light at the end of the tunnel if your parent is genuinely remorseful!  A very helpful part of the book is the very last chapter that talks about dealing with the narcissistic parent that takes an adversary stance.  Here is some of it:

“The narcissistic parent in a adversary posture is an enraged peacock.  When you stop trying to win his (her) nurturant caring by being a compliant extension of him, when you no longer exalt him, when you stop following his pre-scribed script, he will react with the indignant certainty, “If you are not a part of me, you’re against me.”  And, if you require reciprocity in your relationship with him, if you insist on a flow of give and take, he will feel that you are trying to take everything from him and always have your own way.  He (she) may be willing to write you off rather than submit to such an obviously unfair demand on your part, and unfortunately you may have to let him do just that.”

“The form a parent’s rigidity may take when it hardens into an adversary position will differ with the type of inner child he has, but what they all have in common is enormous rage and outrage if you fail to act as they expect.  And theirs is not a transient outburst at unexpected frustration or disappointment–their fury may calcify into a chronic suspiciousness or hatred in which you can sense the willingness to destroy the relationship with you and even to wreck your happiness and theirs rather than accept a new way of relating.”

“Depending on you, the experience of your parent perceiving you as an enemy will either so traumatize you that you will choose to regress back to the old song and dance, or will so clarify how impossible it is to have a viable, constructive relationship with him that it will make it easier for you to terminate the tie.  You know what going back means; you’ve been there.  Under the circumstances, if you’ve come so far that you’ve been able to change the song and dance and this has done nothing but propel them into an adversary stance, it is clearly better to make the painful decision to let it go.”  

Hoping this is helpful for you to read!  As I have said before, it takes a lot of inner strength and outside supports to take the action of setting boundaries with a parent. If you are one of the people who is in this position and struggling with guilt on this Mother’s Day week, please know that you are not alone.  I am here to say, everything is going to be okay, if you will be especially kind to yourself and your wounded inner child this week.  Think back to some things you loved as a child and do that for yourself on Mother’s Day.  Ride your bike, play with your dog or cat, skip through a field of flowers, read a favorite comic book, watch your favorite show, take a bubble bath, draw a silly picture, or finger paint. If this just seems too silly to you, wasn’t it fun just imagining yourself doing those things?   That is the power of visualizations and affirmations to change your mood–it really works!  The strong part of you can mother, nurture, comfort and love the wounded inner child part of you on Mother’s Day–imagine the adult you comforting the child you.

This powerful exercise will help you in your healing if you do it whenever you are feeling a lot of self-doubt, guilt, or emotional pain. Also do something special for yourself.   Maybe you could buy yourself a small gift you’ve been wanting or wanted as a child as a reward for being strong.  You survived!  And as a highly sensitive person (HSP), you are stronger and have more to give to others because of the compassion you recognize that you deserved but never received from your mother.  Be the mother you never had to yourself and you can begin to heal your childhood wounds and find your true voice and become the person that you are meant to be. God Bless You All.

Today I have decided to release the lyrics for my song, “Finally I See, Now I’m Free”.  This song was written  at a time when I realized the futility of a relationship in my life and was grieving for what would never be–but also discovered an inner strength and a new found sense of freedom.  I hope it brings you some comfort and strength during this difficult week.

With love,

Roxanne

Posted in: Cutting Loose--An Adult's Guide To Coming To Terms With Your Parents, freedom, inner strength, parents who take an adversary position, POSTS, songs of hope and healing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Helpful Tips About Healing Childhood Pain–From Self-doubt To Finding Your True Purpose

By Roxanne on | 7 Comments

Hi everyone.  I hope you are able to enjoy the beauty in the spring flowering trees and all of the splashes of purple and pink that are so breathtaking–at least they are here where I am located.  Wherever you are, I am grateful for the technology of the internet that helps me to feel as if I am connected to you–all of you who are highly sensitive and have endured a less than healthy environment during your formative years.  I understand your struggle to make sense of the self-doubt and negative messages in your heads and of the occasional upheaval of childhood wounds that are sometimes too painful to bear.  I used to feel that way–I have come such a long way from self-doubt to finding my voice as a person and knowing my true purpose in life.  I can still remember the pain and confusion and sometimes I still have wounds that come up and surprise me.  The difference is, now, I am no longer blocked and afraid of feeling my feelings and I am able to release them and comfort my inner child through them much faster and with positive results.  This took many years but I am hoping I can help you to feel supported and encouraged by my sharing what I learned to get me from there to here.

One of the first things I remember vividly about my painful journey was reading Alice Miller’s book, The Drama of the Gifted Child.  I was 28 when I first heard about this book and started reading it with the feeling that finally someone understands what I can not seem to put into words yet.  The parts of this book that were most helpful to me was when she, the author, talked about her own struggles, her own denial about her abuse as a child, and her own ultimate acknowledgement of her childhood pain that she had suppressed until the age of 48.  That is when she started doing spontaneous painting and began painting out her pain.  Mind you, she had Ph.D’s in Psychology, Philosophy, and Sociology and was a practicing Psychoanalyst when she said that  it was her own patients and her own innate compassion for what they were going through that made her look at her own life and begin to question her psychoanalytic training. She then started writing about inner child healing and about her discoveries about her own and her patients’ emotional childhood wounds–she wrote about how speaking their truth to an empathetic listener (enlightened witness) helped them to free themselves from their inner prison of self-doubt and loneliness.  I used to have to read parts of this book over and over because the concepts were just outside of my comprehension. But each time I would read it I would grasp a new concept and then feel much comfort and relief.

TIP #1:  One of the things I learned that really helped me a lot was when she said that “loneliness is a symptom of the traumatic separation from the true self in early childhood”.  There are people who are alone who do not feel lonely at all; in fact they feel whole and complete and have much love to give because they have access to their true selves, their feelings, their voice as a person.  This gave me so much hope–that this loneliness I felt was not my fault but the result of something that happened to me–something that was taken away from me as a result of a survival mechanism that I had before but I just cannot recall ever having it–this true self.  When I think back 20 years ago and realize that I have now been able to recall and acknowledge that traumatic separation and access my true self and have compassion for the self that I lost as a child, it is just amazing to me and I want so much to help others to regain their vitality as I did.

That brings me to another helpful quote from her book that I will never forget:

TIP #2:  It is that the opposite of depression is not happiness.  The opposite of depression is “vitality and the ability to spontaneously express all the feelings of your true self” as they come up and release them.   For me this concept was monumental in that happiness was no longer a goal of mine and I could relax and just work on releasing my feelings whatever they were so they would become unblocked and I would feel relief.  This just reinforced me to continue journaling out my feelings even further which I had been encouraged to do by my wonderful first counselor at the age of 23.  I couldn’t find an enlightened witness to talk to about my childhood pain but I would write out my truth and become my own enlightened witness.  Whenever I felt blocked (depressed) I would write out my pain and find relief in my own compassionate heart.  Alice Miller’s words helped me discover my own compassion because she paved the way with her own compassionate heart for others and then for herself.  She was truly a pioneer in her time of validating one’s truth and finding our true self through compassion for the painful childhoods we endured that caused our feelings to become repressed–our truth was hidden from even ourselves because it was too painful to bear as children.

Many other famous psychologists have used her concepts and quotes in their books including John Bradshaw and his book on internalized shame and Charles Whitfield’s book called Healing the Child Within.  Both of these books are included in my Recommended Books section under PAGES.

Alice Miller became famous because of her books and decided to take a public stand against child abuse of all kinds including corporal punishment (spanking) in schools and in homes too of course.  She has a website which just this month she posted her last comment in the readers’ mail section that said, due to her ill health, she will no longer be able to maintain her website.  She is 87 years old and I feel so sad about this. I am hoping you will visit her website at www.alice-miller.com.  She is leaving it up and available so it will continue to help others.  All of her books are wonderful and I highly recommend them for anyone with childhood pain issues and even if you do not recall any childhood abuse but still suffer from self-doubt and depression–it could be that your lack of memory (repression) is protecting you from the truth and her books will inspire in you a compassion for yourself that will make a difference in your life.  That is certainly what happened for me.  Compassion for what happened to us as highly sensitive children is just the beginning of the end to our suffering from deep loneliness. And it is the beginning of a life filled with vitality and love for ourselves.  And when we finally can love ourselves as we truly deserve, then we have the energy to share our hopes and desires and gifts with others and that, my friends, is our true purpose in life!

Quite a few of you find my website by searching the terms “I have never been loved” and “hsps and emotional pain.”  I hope that you feel much comfort and support when you read of my own struggle and journey and read the lyrics to my songs of hope and healing.  The Number One most clicked on song lyrics by far are for the song “I Have Never Been Loved Before” so I am sharing this link with you today.  I hope it brings you the hope and healing you deserve on your journey to finding your true purpose and your voice as a person.   As a highly sensitive, highly gifted, and compassionate soul, your voice is so needed on this planet!  I am grateful for your beautiful soul!

With love, Roxanne

Posted in: enlightened witness, inner prison, Loneliness is a symptom of..., never been loved, overcoming self-doubt, POSTS, songs of hope and healing, The opposite of depression is vitality, TIPS--helpful healing tips, unbearable emotional pain | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How My Best Counselor Helped Me to Break Through My Illusions and Self-doubt

By Roxanne on | 6 Comments

Hi everyone. Yay it’s Spring!  I hope you are enjoying the beauty of nature as it comes to life again.  That’s how I’m feeling too–as if I am coming to life–happier than I’ve ever been in my life.   And it is a new feeling–I catch myself out of habit being tensed up in my shoulders and neck and then I realize it and relax.  It feels like for the first time I can finally… really relax!  It is really quite amazing to me–this feeling of exhilaration with my life and how I can feel happy in the moment.  As highly sensitive people (HSPs) we are all too hard on ourselves–as children it HURTS to be different from almost everyone else around us–so without proper encouragement and support, we hide our gifts away to protect ourselves from further pain.

It’s taken me so long to come to this place where I understand what it means to be my own best friend. I used to hear people say that or I’d read about it and it just sounded like Blah, Blah, Blah, (like the adults sounded on Charlie Brown ha ha).  But now I get it.  I found it difficult to feel good about myself or love myself growing up. I grew up in a time when I felt I wasn’t even supposed to like myself.  I could feel the “Who do you think you are?” judgement of those around me much of the time.  I didn’t know who I was but I felt who I was trying to be was never ever good enough.

I have realized that illusions play a valuable role in our survival as children when we have been emotionally diminished (abused), whether it was intentional or not.  The pain of our disappointment is too great to bear as highly sensitive children, so we make decisions about ourselves that help us to cope with the situation.  For example, rather than facing this pain we say to ourselves, it must be me, I need to act differently in order to get love and approval so I will become obedient and do what others want, then I will be loved and seen.  And it appears that we feel accepted as long as we keep up this facade and keep our “real” selves and feelings hidden away.  I believe this is why journaling “for your eyes only” works so well to uncover the truth of how we really feel about things–and we can then break through those illusions and gradually free ourselves from our false self that we created to survive and eventually find our true voice.  But you really need to do it often enough that the voice in your journal (and your heart) becomes dominant over the negative voice in your head. I know I’ve written about this before, and I apologize if I am repeating myself.  But I guess I feel it is crucial to really make this point–the way you speak to your “self” is ultimately what ends up mattering the most in your ability to be able to comfort yourself and relax and enjoy your life in the way you truly deserve.

I apologize if I make it sound easy.  It can be really difficult if you don’t know where to start and when you write it’s all bad feelings and it doesn’t help you feel better.  I guess my real success in journaling really didn’t start until after I had found a person I could trust to talk to–an outside support  for the hidden “me” that I was sure was supposed to be hiding away because I was sure I was flawed and thought “something is wrong with me”.  I had forgotten about the fact that I really felt that way most of the time but it wasn’t even in my awareness–I didn’t know I was hiding–I just existed that way–it was completely hidden from me.  I thought, this is who I am–an insecure and anxious person who will always and forever need someone else to take care of me. Until that special day–the day I went to my first counselor who turned out to be the best counselor I’ve ever had in my life–and she really changed my life.

At the time I had no idea how hard it would be to find another counselor who came close to her compassion and depth of understanding ever again. But I will never forget her words and wisdom and how she saw the potential in me that I didn’t dare even imagine.  I was 22. She listened and cared and I learned to trust her with my deepest feelings and I shared some of my poems with her. She told me, to my surprise, that I was a gifted writer and that I could be my own psychotherapist if I kept on writing in this special way.  Together we discovered the roots of my self-doubt and she revealed to me that she had benefitted from counseling too in the past. She confided that, as a counselor, she felt it was important to have been on both sides in order to really understand the helping process. Another very helpful part of this special counseling experience was when she had me take the character and temperament test from the book Please Understand Me (See Recommended Books).  My results were that I was an INFJ–Introvert, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judicial and that this type is only 1% of the population. Then she told me I had the gift of empathy like her and that she was an INFJ too. (I will explain more about the 16 temperament types in a future post). I thought how could this be…like her?  She had a Ph.D and was a successful professional clinical psychotherapist and yet she said I was like her.  Unbelievable…could all those hopes and dreams I had in the back of my mind actually be a possibility? I went out and bought that book and I studied it a lot.  The book talks about the positive aspects of each of the types and my type described me so well I felt special and normal and understood for the first time in my life.

I went to see her once a week for 6 months and then I had to stop because our health insurance only covered 25 visits per year.  During that time, my confidence soared and, I remember now, I joined the Sweet Adelines and had fun performing in a barbershop quartet. (It was easy to perform with these other ladies on stage with me–I continued to have stagefright about performing alone or singing the kind of music where I expressed my soul though, but it was a start in overcoming it ).  I also started taking some guitar lessons and learning to play and sing the songs I had always loved.  Even though I had my college degree, I had temporarily taken a job at JCPenney’s catalog ordering service because I thought I wasn’t ready to help other people until I figured myself out first.  But she said this job was way beneath me and encouraged me to go to graduate school in counseling psychology.  (Even with a 3.8 in my major, much praise from my professors, internship experience, and letters of recommendation–when my graduation was barely acknowledged, all my confidence had evaporated.)   “Make sure it is a program that is APA approved,” she said.  And I listened.  And I grew in confidence and continued writing my self-help poetry.  And you know what happened next…I was so confident in myself, I thought I could even change my relationship with my extended family!  Without talking to her first, we moved many states away from my wonderful counselor.  We decided to start a family and I put graduate school on hold…

And now, telling you my story, I realize I do NOT want to emphasize  how tragic it was…and that I had to wait so long to find myself and be happy and figure myself out so I could finally be that counselor/coach and writer that she saw that I could be.  Instead I feel strongly that it all really worked out for the best.  I grew so much as a person watching how my children thrived with our unconditional love and emotional support and I saw the world through their eyes and healed my soul right along with them experiencing the wonders in this world.  And I continued to write in a way that I was able to be my own psychotherapist–writing through the layers of pain and breaking through the illusions that helped me survive a childhood of feeling emotionally diminished and misunderstood.

And I see how I had to try everything before I had the ability to start setting boundaries in certain relationships in my life. My counselor back then never used the word narcissisism and I wonder if that would have helped me realize the futility of my quest for healthy give-and-take in certain relationships in my life sooner.  It is all right though, because I know the meaning of the word now and had to find out the depth and scope of it’s meaning in my own way.  I hope my journey inspires you to embrace the path you are on but also to look inward and explore your true feelings and write about them–and keep listening to your hopes and dreams that exist in the back of your mind . For I believe that is the voice of your true self that you must not ignore.

Finding a caring, empathic counselor to support the true reasons for my deepest fears, and self-doubt, and to believe in my unique gifts made all the difference in my life.  Her words kept me on the right track and kept me writing through the layers of pain that would arise between the numbness or anxiety. Her words kept guiding me towards the release of my pain and ultimately to the joy and pride on the other side. It changed the course of my life and to her I will always be grateful.  I hope my story has been helpful to you and provides you with some comfort and encouragement.

Today I am releasing the lyrics for the song “This Too Shall Pass”.  This song was written to ease myself through a period of my worst grief and anger when I started setting some boundaries for myself–and instead of getting respect and love, I felt rejection and experienced guilt-inducing manipulations.  It was a pivotal point in my recovery when I let go of my illusions about the potential of  certain relationships and grieved for what would never be and comforted myself by writing this song. After writing it and singing it, I felt stronger than ever before that everything was going to be alright and that ultimately I must take care of myself and honor my feelings. This song still comforts me when I am feeling my worst and I hope it does the same for you.  I hope you enjoy it.

With love, Roxanne

Posted in: counselor, emotionally numb, illusions, insecure, My best counselor, obedient child, POSTS, singing, songs of hope and healing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Childhood Pain Comes Up to Heal When Things Are Going Well

By Roxanne on | 11 Comments

Hi everyone.  The day after I started writing on this blog for the very first time you might be able to guess what happened–I woke up in the morning with the dreaded feeling of Guilt like a black cloud hanging over my head.  In the past I might have felt guilty and spiraled into negativity but thank goodness I knew what to do.  I observed this feeling instead of falling into it.  I was actually grateful for my new awareness of knowing and being able to label this feeling as Guilt.  (I used to just feel numb or a generalized anxiety in the morning–it was a familiar and comfortable state–it was how I survived as a child.)  I said to myself, okay this makes sense to feel this feeling today after the success of my first blog. This is Childhood Pain Coming Up to Heal Because Things Are Going Well.  This powerful phrase has helped my husband and I so many times.  I learned about this from John Gray–in one of the last chapters in his Venus and Mars book.  This was one tiny section which I feel was so important he could’ve written a whole book on it for the impact it made on my husband and I.

I realized I had internalized shame that showed up after I had successes that made me feel good about myself.  I believe ultimately as a small child that I believed “there is something wrong with me.  I am guilty–it is all my fault.”  To survive I had to repress all the anger and fear at having been blamed unfairly.  I was a highly sensitive child. I desperately needed love and approval.  So I settled for conditional love–I became an obedient and anxious shell of a person.

So I had expressed my true authentic self by writing my truth and my inner child was expecting to be punished and blamed and felt guilty.  What I have learned is that the strong part of me which now  knows the truth is able to comfort the wounded child in me that still feels fear and insecurity and blamed and guilty. See, as a child we make decisions and believe them so thoroughly it’s very hard to change the neural pathways in our brains that are so deeply set.  The negative thoughts are so automatic–that’s how we survived.  But we can change those pathways in our brains by becoming aware that the negative things we are saying to ourselves are from a wounded child’s perspective!  As highly sensitive people, we know how to nurture and love and comfort other people through their self-doubt and fear–so by taking that wounded child inside of you and comforting yourself you can change your inner child’s beliefs about yourself and the pathways of negative spiraling thoughts.  Realizing that I had to be the one to love myself and that noone was going to do it for me was a big revelation and turning point for me.  Learning to comfort myself with positive affirmations and taking it easy when these big overwhelming feelings come up is now something that comes much easier.

So do I still feel guilty about my speaking out and writing on this blog?  In a way the guilt is still there but it is small and completely manageable.  And the part of me that is strong, wise, and knows the truth is keeping it in check–telling the wounded child in me that it is going to be okay and I am doing the right thing by speaking my truth.  Do I have days when I still succumb to the child part in me and spiral negatively and beat myself up in despair?  No, not any longer but I used to and it was a gradual process to get me where I am now.  It used to happen mostly in the mornings and sometimes I couldn’t stop it right away.  But then, there usually came a time of awareness a short time later, on the same day, when I realized this was a brand new layer of unbearable pain from my childhood that came up to heal because things were going well.  My inner child felt safe enough to show it to me and say hey this really bad injustice happened to me and I needed to let it out finally. These are days when I put everything else aside–my list of things to do can wait until tomorrow.  I allow myself to grieve for the childhood I never had and deserved.  I comfort myself with my favorite things and am nice to myself  like I deserved to be treated as a child-legitimate needs that went unmet until now are being healed–by me.  I am a nurturing, supportive, comforting mom to myself.  I can do it!  And so can you.  Ultimately this process  is what a good empathic coach or inner child counselor is for.  They are someone you can trust with the pain of your inner child to help you figure out the truth of what really happened and help you grieve.  Then, when you can comfort yourself through the worst of the feelings that come up, then you know you no longer need the coach.  You can take care of and love yourself through anything!

Thank you for reading!  I hope my words have been helpful to you.

With Love,

Roxanne

Posted in: counselor, emotionally numb, guilt in the morning, Guilt--tips for healing the guilt, inner child counselor, John Gray, obedient child, overcoming guilt, overcoming self-doubt, POSTS, spiraling negative thoughts, unbearable emotional pain | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,