Psychological Trauma and The Me You Can’t See

I minimized the abuse I endured for decades. I wasn’t physically beaten. I was given a place to sleep. I was given food. A ride to school. I had nice clothes, toys, video games, and whatever else I wanted in that sense. So many people in the world had it worse than me! 

I was so depressed that I resorted to self harm in my preteen years, but I didn’t call what I was experiencing abuse until my late 20’s.

Sure, I had all of the physical basics I listed above. But there were many things I didn’t have as a child that were of equal importance. Importance I didn’t realize until I started my healing journey a few years ago. 

Throughout my childhood, my mother liked to call me the ‘absent minded professor’. She marveled at how ‘book smart’ I was from a young age, but how gullible and ‘not thoughtful’ I could be in other situations.

I lived with my grandparents, my moms parents, my first two years of life. I grew insanely close with my grandmother, and when she passed when I was 6 years old due to Lou Gehrig’s disease, I was devastated. I don’t remember any talks with my mother about her death, or the acceptance of it. I do remember constant fights in later years that they were her parents before they were my grandparents, and that the way my still living Grandfather loved me was unfair and not right. 

When I was in middle school, I was at the center of a custody battle between my parents. And my mom would say she would be okay if I wanted to live with my dad, she would say how wonderful it is that I have so many parents who love me! But then she would flare and rage when I indicted that maybe I did want to live with my dad, grounding me when she would snoop through my diary while I was at school and read my inner thoughts about how I felt about her and my home life. ‘It’s okay if you want to go live with your dad’, she’d say, ‘but you’ll break my heart and you will be betraying this family that loves you.’ 

Super not confusing for a 12 year old who’s already expressed in writing that she feels unloved. 

So I wrote my dad off, in the name of loyalty to my mom. A decision that still makes me cry to this day. I didn’t talk to him for almost 7 years. I thought I was preserving my relationship with my mom by doing this, but instead I was giving her the smoking gun.

Every bad and horrible thing that happened in our lives after that point was my fault, in my moms eyes. Her divorce, a cross country move, substance abuse with my brother, financial strain, all was a result of the battle with my dad in my mother’s perspective. And I blamed myself, too. The whole reason I had made the decision I had was to show my mom I loved her, and the turmoil of those events destroyed everything around us anyways? If mom said what I did was the cause of all of that, it must be true. ‘Man I can’t get anything right, can I?’ played in my teenage mind on a daily basis. 

Blaming myself for this event and accepting my mothers blame paved the way for me to blame myself for many more things that would present themselves in the coming years, all things that I understand now were out of my control and most certainly not my fault. 

But this psychological warfare my mother played left the biggest gaping wound in me that you can’t see with the naked eye. One day taking me for manicures while we read Us Weekly and chit chat about the cover stars. The next day drunkenly looking at me with a glass of wine in her hand, slurring: “You know, I know sometimes you want to have a different mom. And I just want you to know sometimes I want to have a different daughter.” One minute dancing with me while we drink champagne and ring in the New Year, the next disappearing to her room with a closed door. When I knocked on the door and asked what was wrong, she opened it with a crack and a vehement stare before she hissed “I don’t want to see you, go away” and shut the door in my face. 

Acceptance

Forgiveness

Nurture

Love

These were the things I was deprived of growing up, and accepting that these unfulfilled needs were the root of every poor decision I’ve made in my life was a hard pill to swallow. I’ve spent 2 years working on my abandonment wound, and when it’s triggered I feel there’s so many layers I still have to unwrap. The little girl inside of me felt that she was abandoned by her grandmother, then her dad, and she was emotionally abandoned by her mom her whole life. It gave me this insane core belief that people leave, all of them, even family, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it from happening. 

Through healing I know that’s not true. I saw the ways I was hurting my husband, the man who has devoted himself to me over and over again by harboring this fear. How I was keeping my rectified relationship with my dad at arms length because of how much internal guilt and blame I carried. I kept all relationships at bay because if anyone got too close, I was vulnerable. I left people before they left me, and I realize now I was perpetuating the circumstance I was trying to escape. 

Therapy, a GOOD therapist who gets you, EMDR, meditation, and my own self reflection have been instrumental tools in healing these wounds. As I’ve released the fears that kept me caged in my own prison, I have in turn opened myself up for the love and intimacy and connection I have always craved. 

But the girl inside of me, the girl who lived through all those abuses, the girl who felt the deep pangs of loneliness and grief more often than not, the girl who never knew a life without pain, she still needs some convincing. She may need a lifetime of convincing. And I’m okay with that.  

I shudder thinking back on the years that I called what I was experiencing ‘not a big deal’. How I allowed family members to tell me that what I was saying wasn’t true, or that I was dramatic or misrepresenting things, or that I simply needed to get over it. I willfully laid myself down to be walked all over, at the mercy of everyone else’s reality. This would ensure they wouldn’t leave right? Maybe, but at what cost?

The cost of my self respect?

The cost of my self worth?

The cost of my self love?

The cost of my boundaries?

The cost of trusting my own intuition?

The cost of validating my own experiences?

The cost of healthy relationships, ones where I am seen and celebrated for who I truly am? 

I let myself be the butt of the joke. I let those around me demand who I was supposed to be for them and those around them. I let myself be judged and criticized like I was the embarrassing blemish on our family. And for a long time, I thought I deserved it. I didn’t deserve basic respect, or decency. Not someone horrible like me. That’s truly the damage psychological abuse does.

If you’re reading this, and my words hit a familiar pang in your chest, please know I’m with you, and I love you. I do not just stand up for myself, I stand up for all of us. Survivors with battle scars that strangers can’t see. Your trauma is valid. Your experiences are valid. Your wounds are valid. Own your story, and anyone who doesn’t like it or doesn’t believe you doesn’t have to be a part of your world if you don’t want them to be.  

If you’re reading this and you were blessed with loving parents, I hope this piece inspires you to be kind. I can’t tell you how many people throughout my life judged me for being cold, a troublemaker, an attention seeker, a conceited pretty girl, a lost cause, or a horrible human. All while not realizing the internal battle I was fighting on an every day basis. This doesn’t mean my bad behaviors that affected those around me should have been permitted. You can hold firm boundaries, while also coming from a place of kindness and understanding when enforcing those boundaries. 

As Oprah put it, there is a me you can’t see. A me that exists just behind the me I present to the world. And every single one of us has that version of ourselves, including those who hurt us, like my mom. You truly never know why people do the things they do. The sooner we as humans accept that, the sooner we will break these cycles, and the sooner we will live in a kinder world. 

A photo of 8th grade me that hangs on my fridge as a reminder of the little girl who lives inside of me. She is loved, she is brave, she is a warrior, and I will celebrate her always.