Please Read This * You Matter!!!

I want to address the fact that you matter, FIRST…… BEFORE we start down the path of learning how to love ourselves because if we don’t feel that we matter, it’s a 911 SITUATION. We’ll look at this fact from a few perspectives.

Let me use this analogy to explain the REASON I feel this is so important. Just like when we’re physically unwell, there are stages of illness.

No Care – Maintenance: We eat well, exercise and get plenty of sleep. We look and feel healthy.
Home Care – Mild uncomplicated illness: We’re around germs or we push ourselves to the limit. We “don’t feel well, and it’s obvious because we’re coughing, sneezing, running a fever, etc. and people shy away from us. So we slow down, rest, take zinc, vitamin C, eat chicken soup and increase our fluid intake.
Dr.s Office – We’re sick. Home remedies aren’t working. Symptoms are persisting. People around us are concerned. We need to be assessed in order to determine a course of action, whether it be medication, to see a specialist, etc
Hospital – We are very sick. Our symptoms are extreme. We need medication, possibly through an IV, and to be under constant supervision and care.
Emergency Room – URGENT! There’s something very wrong. It’s blatantly obvious to everyone around us because our symptoms are so extreme. We need attention STAT or there will be very negative consequences.

I think that’s a pretty standard protocol, and probably makes sense to everyone reading this. However, matters of the mind go unseen.

Notice in the above scenarios, people are either avoiding us, concerned about us, visiting us in the hospital, or calling an ambulance.. But unless we share what’s going on in our minds with another person, others might never know what we’re going through mentally. A lot of us become very good at stuffing it down and covering it up.

This is dangerous because we’re not equipped to know how to process and handle what we’ve been through, and until we speak to someone who does, things compound, and we become more distraught. That’s why counseling is so important. (In future blogs we’re going to discuss many types of therapies, how they’re conducted, and how they help). In the meantime, stuffing it down, pretending it never happened, or just dealing with it might work for a while, but without outside help, we won’t reach the level of healing that will give us emotional freedom.

In fact, if our situations do compound, we could escalate from having

a mild uncomplicated illness (feeling mildly anxious, depressed, confused)
to needing a doctor visit (seeking therapy due to persistent anxiety/depression)
to requiring a hospital stay (perhaps taking medication for anxiety/depression)
to needing an ambulance (suicidal ideation) very quickly, especially if we’ve never experienced a normal maintenance level of mental health or have never received any type of helpful therapies.

In other words, mentally & emotionally you can ESCALATE QUICKLY into needing to CALL 911!! THIS is why I want emphasize your importance before anything else.

So, UNTIL YOU’RE ABLE TO GET TO COUNSELING, PLEASE READ THIS!

There is a REASON you feel the way you do! It’s not random. There’s not something wrong with you. To quote Oprah, “Something HAPPENED to you.” Just for now, know that, believe it, and know that whatever thoughts and emotions you’re experiencing are normal for what you’ve been through.

I’ve written so much about this in other blogs that I’ll just use bullet points, and if you want to skip this whole section, click here.

CAUSES (why we might feel we don’t matter).

When you grow up with a primary caretaker who is

Selfish
Martyr
Takes the spotlight in one way or another
Unpredictable for whatever reason: mental illness, alcoholism/substance abuse
Condescending
Critical
Unreliable
Abusive
Neglectful

EFFECTS

It causes us to become Peace-keepers, Pleasers, Put-er Uppers, Protectors, Perfectionists, Patrol Officers

Peace-keepers – in order to stay safe and to keep our siblings safe, we do whatever we need to do to keep the peace, even to the detriment of ourselves.
Pleasers – we figure out what it is that makes our caretakers happy, and we do that.
Put-er uppers – we learn to stuff down our needs, wants and opinions so we don’t rock the boat. We put up with behavior we shouldn’t have to endure.
Protectors – Many of us had to be caretakers for our siblings because one or both caretakers weren’t responsible enough, they were abusive (physically, verbally, emotionally, sexually, psychologically, or all of the above) and/or the other was either gone, an enabler, or both.
Perfectionists – not meaning that we’re perfect – we know we’re not. We just think we have to be in order to be accepted or noticed or approved of, and of course that’s impossible. Early on, nothing we did was good enough so we kept trying harder and harder, striving to do better and better, to no avail.
Patrol Officers – When our primary care takers are unpredictable, we are always on high alert, looking for signs that their moods might be changing. We never know when their mood might shift from one of calm to rage. We become hyper vigilant, always waiting for the shoe to drop, because we know from experience it will, and we need to be ready to either de-escalate the situation, or look for the nearest exit.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT

The result of all of this – putting our needs aside in order to control our environment – is that we become emotionally dysregulated, meaning we don’t understand our emotions let alone how to control them, we become

Anxious
Depressed
We have low self esteem
We have low self worth
We hate ourselves
We feel small
We feel insignificant
We feel we’re not enough
We fly into rages
We cry at the drop of a hat
We freak out
We stuff everything down and go completely numb.

WAYS WE TRY TO ESCAPE PAIN

Sometimes we induce numbing through the use of alcohol, drugs or other substances; or we dissociate (sometimes involuntarily)
Sometimes we feel we deserve to be punished, and we do this to ourselves by not taking care of ourselves, i.e. we eat too much or too little, exercise too much or too little, we engage in risky behaviors
We harm ourselves because our minds are driving us crazy and we can’t find anything else distracting enough
And when we’re really overwhelmed, we wish, contemplate, plan, focus on no longer existing

YOU MATTER

You Must Matter to Yourself

Let’s look at that from a few different angles. Of course you need to know this and believe it for your own benefit. But you’ve been through so much trauma, that deep down you feel worthless. It’s not true, but it’s a normal response to trauma. For now, I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise, because you need to come to that conclusion on your own. I can, and will help you with that in future articles (as a matter of fact, I can’t WAIT to help you!) For now, consider the following.

YOU MATTER TO OTHERS

What you say and do matters TO OTHER PEOPLE. I’m not referring to people you don’t care about (or the ones who hurt you). I’m talking about people you DO care about. Your friends, parents, family members, classmates, coworkers, your children. This might seem like an obvious statement, but let me give you an example.

When I was in second grade, we were doing round robin reading – each child in a circle took turns reading aloud. A certain boy was struggling with pronunciation, and said a word incorrectly, which struck me funny, and I started laughing out loud. It wasn’t the boy’s mistake that I thought was funny, it was the sound of the word.

My teacher took me outside into the hall and said, “When you laughed, that really hurt Donnie’s feelings.” I instantly burst into tears. I would NEVER want to hurt someone’s feelings. My home was so dysfunctional, and I felt so invisible, that it didn’t occur to me that ANYTHING I did or said could have an impact on anyone else. I’m so thankful for the way my teacher handled that. Though it didn’t restore my self worth, it made an impression on me and from then on I was mindful of how I reacted to certain situations.

Here’s another example. Fast forward 25 years, and I still hadn’t processed what I’d gone through as a child, and therefore (I believe) I drew more abuse into my life. You get treated the way you believe you ought to be treated. I was married to a man who was controlling and had major anger issues, and I had three young kids. Never had I been so depressed.. I went to the grocery store, and while going down aisle 3, I looked at the floor and thought, “I just want to lay down on the floor and never get up.” After returning home, I went into the bathroom, dumped a handful of pills into my hand, and stared at them. A vision of my children’s faces stared back at me, I couldn’t do it.

I recently heard some statistics regarding the effects on children when one of their parents commits suicide. Children who are under the age of 18 when their parent takes their life are THREE TIMES more likely to commit suicide themselves. What if I had followed through all those years ago? What if it caused one of my children committed suicide? It’s sobering to say the least.

A friend was speaking about her mom taking her life. She said, “It’s something you never, ever get over. You just learn how to handle the pain surrounding it.”

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When I first began blogging, my focus was on trauma due to narcissistic abuse. My main mission was to help people recognize narcissism, which is super important, because unless you recognize the signs, you’ll keep choosing the same person over and over.

However, from what I’ve read, listened to and researched, for the most part, trauma is trauma, and healing is healing. The strategies and methods I’ve used to help myself and others can be used by people who have gone through many types of emotional trauma, because the bottom line is – what we’ve gone through has caused us to believe we don’t matter. But we do matter!! And understanding that is the KEY to healing.

I love the YouTube video hosted by Francis Chan called, “The Awe Factor of God.” Whether you believe in God or not, what he shows is very impressive! Using a Hubble Telescope, we get views of the earth, the moon, the other planets in our galaxy, and many other galaxies. It’s hard to believe, after watching that, that we’re here by accident. I’ll post the video below. Tell me your thoughts on it!

Did you know that the statistical chances of us being born are almost ZERO?! Think about that. A lot of things had to happen and perfectly align for us even to exist. There must be a reason we’re here! We have to retrain our brain to understand and believe that. Only then can we heal and reach our full potential.

The beliefs and behaviors listed earlier are ingrained in us from a very young age and are extremely hard to change, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE. In Oprah’s new book that she co-authored with neuro-scientist Bruce D. Perry, PhD, MD, they make it very clear that the younger we are when we experience trauma, the more it impacts us. We may not even have the vocabulary to explain what occurred, but we could FEEL it vibrationally. Parents think they can act and say certain things in front of their infants because they’re so young they won’t know, or remember. But the opposite is true.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but so far it’s very intriguing. The first two chapters left me with goosebumps all over and tears streaming down my face, now only because I can relate to so much of what’s being said, but because they say (and if Oprah AND a neuro-scientist who specifically studies the brain say it, I believe it) that these patterns in our brains can change. There is hope! And hope is a powerful thing.

Even if you currently feel you don’t matter, I believe 100% that you do. I also believe you can change that belief in your brain, and become a calm confident, self-sufficient, successful person, and I can’t wait to help you get there!

The Narc Narc