Posts Tagged ‘Emotions’

20 May

Memories that we carry from an abusive childhood

Posted by Marty in Assorted. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

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As a child being criticized constantly, followed by physical violence, my self-worth was destroyed.

I felt like I did not deserve or belong on this earth.

My nervous system stayed on constant alert, life was lived with anxiety and fear of abandonment.

I was always fighting an internal battle as life overwhelmed me. My early life was lived inside my head, in a make-believe world.

Living in constant fear as a kid, corrupted my view of myself and the world around me.

Now, as an old man of 71, memories arrive connected to emotional distress and anxiety.

Funny how trauma memories(implicit memories) have all the anxiety and fear of the original event.

It is how they are stored, short powerful snippets of charged emotions.

This morning an old buried, long-forgotten memory came back to life without provocation.

We never know what will surface from our childhood.

It’s hard to feel self-worth at times, while happiness is covered by traumas abstract fear.

My mind wants to engage and change the memory but that only fuels its longevity.

Best practice is to follow the breath while letting memories fade without attention.

Life is a minefield for adults with a history of childhood abuse.
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14 May

I did an interview about my baseball career

Posted by Marty in Assorted. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

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Recently, I did an interview about my baseball career. It was for a college project on a 20th-century man. (If that does not make you feel old)

First question: Tell me about your childhood.

That froze me for a long minute. My brain has this well-developed record, that plays my narrative of childhood. I know it is how I perceive my childhood, saved under duress.

How can you share in words the damage this abuse has caused me? It never goes away completely. There is a void inside me, a feeling of not being good enough.

When you are physically and emotionally abused by your caregivers, self-worth never develops. Constant criticism leads to a flawed ego, a feeling of being worthless at our core.

My memory of childhood is sparse, and limited. My ability to hide most of my childhood back then saves me from more anguish.

These images are hard to share, I bluntly state a few incidents without any hint of nuance.

My childhood is recorded as a black-and-white movie, with short snippets of violence and shouting.

So after the interview, I felt vulnerable and exposed.

Abused kids never like to be judged. I have a sense of fear about what he will write.

It’s part of our disorder, PTSD, fear, and worthlessness.

It’s hard to write and own up to it.

A PTSD life.
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30 Apr

Our Thoughts are the Problem

Posted by Marty in Assorted. Tagged: , , , , , .

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Childhood PTSD (complex PTSD): It is how our brains are wired during childhood that makes our thoughts (dissociation) the problem.

From the Complex PTSD workbook: “Dissociation, like all other symptoms of C-PTSD, is a learned behavior that initially helped you cope with a threatening environment. A neglected or abused child will rely upon built-in, biological protection mechanisms for survival to “tune out” threatening experiences. In adulthood, dissociation becomes a well-maintained division between the part of you involved in keeping up with daily tasks of living and the part of you that is holding emotions of fear, shame, or anger.”

My nervous system and emotional regulation are distorted: Childhood abuse fires the fight or flight mechanism, consequently, we store these memories as traumatic.

Traumatic memories or implicit memories are stored in the right amygdala, out of reach consciously.

Our brains are wired to spot danger above all else.

We spend enormous amounts of time spotting danger.

Questions bombard us on how to avoid, face, or deny our perceived danger.

Our self-worth is damaged, and we feel vulnerable and isolated too often.

Emotional regulation is a constant issue.

Our thoughts are a big issue, for me, it is a constant battle to let go and come back to the present.

How do your thoughts impact your life?
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18 Sep

Healing spiritually

Posted by Marty in Assorted. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

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A decade of therapy helped me but did not stop the demon from doing damage. My spiritual healing offers me hope, calming what therapy could not.


The online kundalini group is doing a 40-day meditation on positivity (love).

Ten minutes of breath work: Inhaling for five seconds, a short pause, exhaling for five seconds followed by a 15 second pause, then repeat.

Thoughts subside with intense focus on the breath like this.

Next, we chant for ten minutes. Chanting is new for me.

We rarely chanted at the zen center, silence was cherished.

We finish with ten minutes of deep breathing.

Instructions are to think of ourselves in the most positive, healthy, and happy way.

This is a task for us. No negativity, no gossiping all day.

I am working on opening my heart and trying to heal more spiritually.

Our job is to continually find new ways to improve, then take action.

The act of trying, and never giving up sustains us during the rough times.
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17 Sep

The Wounded Heart

Posted by Marty in Assorted. Tagged: , , , , , .

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Excerpt from The Deep Heart

“We are continuing to learn more about the origins and impacts of childhood conditioning, particularly when it comes to developmental trauma.

Researchers have discovered that children respond differently to traumatic events than adults do.

In part this is due to their undeveloped nervous system, in part due to the ongoing nature of the traumas, and in part due to the fact that their primary caretakers — those the children rely on for stability, guidance, and protection — are the source of these traumas.

Developmental traumas arise from ongoing neglect, abandonment, or abuse.

The impacts of chronic, relationally oriented trauma are pervasive and long lasting.

All aspects of children’s experiences become distorted.

Their ability to self-regulate, experience relative control and mastery, think clearly, self-soothe, take care of themselves, recognize and articulate needs and feelings, feel worthy, focus attention, learn, trust others, bond, and stay physically healthy are all compromised, sometimes severely.

Studies have shown that 75 percent of prison inmates suffer from developmental trauma.”
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12 Sep

How Does Social Anxiety Affect the Brain?

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Excerpt from PyschCentral

“Social anxiety disorder, also known as social phobia, is a form of anxiety that causes intense fear and embarrassment in social situations.

For example, it’s common to feel slightly nervous when meeting new people or speaking in public. People with social anxiety disorder can experience a paralyzing fear that makes it hard for them to live everyday life.

We now know that social anxiety disorder affects more than just relationships, work, and other daily activities — it also affects the brain.

Researchers have found that critical areas in the brains of socially anxious people function differently. These areas mainly involve processing emotion, danger, and social cues.

What causes social anxiety?


It’s still not clear exactly what causes social anxiety. Research from 2022 suggests that genetic and environmental influences cause social anxiety, such as upbringing and life experiences.

Research has revealed certain areas of the brain that play a role in fear and anxiety, and we know that genetics affects their function. But researchers don’t yet know which specific genes those are.

Children of controlling, overprotective, or intrusive parents are more likely to develop a social anxiety disorder.

Stressful life events such as sexual or emotional abuse also increase the risk of developing the disorder.

The hope is that by studying how the brain is affected by social anxiety, researchers can develop more effective treatments for the disorder.”

Continued in response

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11 Sep

PTSD: trauma over time

Posted by Marty in Assorted. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

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Childhood abuse impacts our life and does the most damage by repeatedly exploding month after month, year after year.

This strengthens the symptoms of PTSD and makes them almost a habit. We adjust our behavior, avoid triggers, while trying to limit the danger we feel.

Then, we start to anticipate danger, it feels like real fear.

It sure secretes our fear drugs (cortisol and adrenaline) numerous times a day.

We navigate life by avoiding triggers and danger subconsciously. It becomes a habit over time.

Hypervigilance becomes a way of keeping safe.

Avoiding calms our hypervigilance for a while but narrows life.

Hypervigilance happens quickly without thought, every time I go out, enter a building, or plan an outing.

I have never been able to stop my hypervigilance from happening but I can ignore the danger as not real at times.
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28 Aug

The Laundry List – 14 Traits from a Dysfunctional Family or an Adult Child of an Alcoholic

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From https://adultchildren.org/literature/laundry-list/

  1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
  2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
  3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
  4. We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
  5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
  6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
  7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
  8. We became addicted to excitement.
  9. We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue.”
  10. We have “stuffed” our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).
  11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
  12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
  13. Alcoholism is a family disease; and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
  14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

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28 Aug

Our small bodies are marinated in those chemicals.”

Posted by Marty in Assorted. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

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This sentence about child abuse and kids of alcoholics shocks me, “As children, our small bodies are marinated in those chemicals.”

It explains more accurately how PTSD impacts my body and nervous system.

We carry these hypervigilant drugs at higher resting levels than normal people without realizing it.

That makes sense.

I can not remember a time when my body was calm.

Our brains developed while we were in these hypervigilant and survivor modes.

Our brains were wired under duress and abuse, in a state of fear.

This is why we focus on spotting danger, why we worry constantly.

We live with that tightness in our solar plexus, it feels like fear, and we read it as danger.

When you value safety over all other desires, life becomes more and more narrow.

We find it extremely difficult to trust.

It is all stored in our cells and brain, our own body and mind carry PTSD through life.

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27 Aug

Part 2: Dysfunctional Households or Adult Children of Alcoholics: The Inner Drugstore

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Inner drugstore:


“Or perhaps we were ignored or emotionally abandoned by our parents, creating anxiety and the general feeling of being alone and unsafe.

Our normal can become anxiety and fear.

And since it is perhaps all we have ever known, and since we may already have learned to shut down access to our feelings and our bodies, we may not even be aware of our anxiety.

Hypervigilance creates a stress response in the body, it even releases dopamine in our brains.

As children, our small bodies are marinated in those chemicals.

Even if we have never taken a drink of alcohol nor any drugs, we are all addicts.

We, as Adult Children, learn to be addicted to our own inner drug stores.

We can subconsciously seek out situations which recreate these feelings.”
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My two cents: Our small bodies were marinated in these chemicals because of abuse?

That is an ominous claim, makes my body twitch a bit reading it.

We were innocent kids.

This is another PTSD layer that needs healing.

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