By Carly Ko
I’ve been obsessing over this band called cigarettes after sex lately. The name definitely describes the mood, not that I smoke anymore, but you know… Something slow and sensual that feels like molasses.
I’m coming out with it. I’m falling. Not to say falling but rather, expanding in love.
How do I know? I can feel the difference between a heart that compresses with attachment and a heart that spreads its wings and expands to so much capacity that I wonder if I’ll explode.
How do I know if all this is healthy?
After leaving a 5 yr. what I would now call a “trauma bonded relationship”, even though there were a million beautiful things, we kept torturing each other through replicating our old wounds.
This new relationship, it feels like an exhale.
It feels like I can relax.
It feels like my security systems and defense mechanisms can take a break.
Called off duty, one reaffirming nervous system relaxing interaction at a time.
I had no idea I was making compromises with myself, until I don’t have to make them anymore. I can show up who I am, be seen, heard and cared for.
Thanks to my last relationship, and the hundred different inter-personal exercises we did and trying sooooo hard to save it, I get to use those tools to live and enjoy what I have now.
My number one saving grace in this relationship is a vow I made to myself after a family trip to Kauai with my mom and Sis back in May, just after having moved to the big island.
My mother had been the most critical person I knew and until recently, I was probably worse.
I grew up with relational developmental trauma, pre-verbal trauma, CPTSD, emotional and physical abuse. (Youpi, I now have names for all this.)
I hated the world.
I thought that Americans sucked, egocentric, shallow, fat capitalists. Boom.
No-one understood me. I believed my mother disapproved of me, God thought I was a wretched sinner, my Dad was controlling and abusive, no-one told me I was worth anything, and I didn’t know what love felt like.
SO of course, I hated the world and felt utterly alone.
I spent years criticizing. I’d criticize the foreign cultures where I travelled to once the novelty wore off.
I held an extremely high bar of perfectionism with myself because I could not bear the idea of being criticized. I worked myself up to be the most beautiful and talented woman I knew.
I’d find boyfriends with whom I would be enamored and then as my needs and my triggers were brought up, I would begin to find their faults.
Even though most of them were technically “good looking” really well liked men, I would start seeing them as ugly, find character faults, and constantly use passive aggressive language to express how they were inadequate.
After a few years, I would leave them. I would bawl my eyes out, be sad for months before leaving them while slowly picking them apart to the point that I could actually say goodbye.
This was a flyer from a show I used to perform, the irony...
My mother was a notorious “victim” to the inaptitudes of most of her husbands.
She would constantly criticize them and I believed she was the perfect one and THEY were the assholes.
Here I was, being the perfect one, finding the cracks in my partners just like her.
I was the victim of these men with all these problems, I thought.
Thanks to a course I took with my ex (which did help us enormously, but didn’t heal our mutual CPTSD from our reciprocal childhoods being played out again and again in our relationship) we did learn how to properly communicate when our triggers weren’t activated.
The 6 month course on Authentic communication was a mix of Somatic Experiencing, non violent communication and mindfulness by Oren Jay Sofer. I recommend it to EVERYONE.
I learned to own my shit.
It is not the world who is fucked up (although maybe it is, but that is not my problem now.)
It is my CHOICE to react to the world. It is my choice to see what need in me is not being met.
SO at the end of May, after finally voicing to my mother how I never shared anything personal with her because I was afraid of being criticized or that information being used against me, I made a CHOICE.
I will stop judging and criticizing.
STOP.
DONE.
Hence, one of the main life changing tools I am bringing to my current relationship.
It is no longer that HE did something.
It is ME who is having a challenging emotion generally related to an unmet need or a trauma trigger.
The way I reason this out is “maybe this situation COULD ACTUALLY BE OK for someone else…”
It is ME who is having the problem. What is this saying about me?
How can I come into better connection by OWNING my responsibility, looking at it, being kind with it and THEN… I can use my fabulous communication tools to share and hopefully create more UNDERSTANDING.
Understanding is a primary key in being able to truly love someone or something.
So here I am, all wise and illuminated, coming home to family in Arizona for Christmas and guess what pops up?
I get to meet up with my 16 yr. old self! The one who felt like her mother never approved, no matter how hard she tried.
Me at 16-
My mother asks me, “Do you remember your obligations?” Referring to an important phone call appointment I had set up for the following day, as a service to her and my handicapped adopted sister.
I notice rage rising in me.
I notice my heart pounding, getting hot and desire to leap up and leave.
I’m currently working on a frustrating computer issue FOR MY MOTHER since the last hour as she says this.
My inner child hears a translation from the tone of voice she uses. “You are worthless and irresponsible.”
So, my protector pops up and gets defensive.
I respond.
“Look at all the things I’m doing for you! I came here for a vacation! I didn’t come here to just work for you nonstop, what am I, your employee!?”
Wow. That came up from a far away place.
That tone of voice she uses always made me think that I was “less than her”, it felt so condescending.
It brought up the times when I just wanted to die because I felt so utterly worthless, alone and no matter what I did, she wouldn’t accept me or ever try to really get to know me.
And it was just THAT TONE OF VOICE.
You know what is even better than jumping off of a cliff and skydiving? (I’ve never done that, but let’s go with it, feels exhilarating. )
Freeing myself from being a victim.
Yes, I had a really crappy childhood by most people’s standards. True to CPTSD, I had blanked out many years of it and now at age 45 I have had the honor of revisiting and healing my inner crying baby needing to be picked up, my 5 yr. old, and recently the 16 yr. old rebel teenager who said “Fuck you, I’m running away from America and my family to the other side of the world.”
Now I get why I had restless legs syndrome (it is an actual condition, google it.) ! The body is so smart.
The healing journey from emotional and developmental trauma is not an overnight journey. Some say it can never be fully healed, you learn to manage it.
One thing I do know is that relational trauma must be healed THROUGH relationship. Hopefully you also have a good therapist to accompany you.
It can’t be done alone.
I’m happy to say that the older I’m getting, the younger, freer, happier and more alive I’m becoming.
It’s moving from a situation of powerlessness to empowerment, where I get to CHOOSE.
With more and more self awareness of my own triggers, nervous system activations and physical body reactions I have more choice to choose how I want to REACT.
And yes, having this self awareness took a lot of therapies and modalities to get here.
I did apologize to my mother. It was a short apology.
Before I wouldn’t have been able to take ownership.
She may or may not have said that phrase as a criticism but it was up to me choose my reaction.
I wouldn’t say anger and expressing boundaries are a problem. Actually they are great things. Anger averts us to what is not aligned for us and boundaries are definitely needed in certain situations.
In that situation, I may have been able to let her know in different wording that I was hurt.
But even then, my expression to her of being hurt in the past has often not been met with empathy or understanding, just defensiveness.
I now know her history and her behavior makes sense. It allows ME to have deep compassion for her, even though I have received the brunt of it.
But first and foremost, I can have compassion for myself as I grieve the pain my inner child lived with.
I also grieve the realization that she may NEVER give me the approval and understanding that I desperately needed no matter what I do.
Letting go of expecting something to change can be heart breaking, like a small death.
It is the experience of loss that we grieve, like losing a part of our identity that we spent years building.
When that space is freed, lightness can ensue.
I know now that it is I who can choose to suffer all my life or I can free myself of my expectations.
My heart has been squeezed, shot, ripped into pieces countless times.
The rivers of tears I have cried in this lifetime gather with the wide ocean of our collective tears.
The heart is a muscle.
By allowing my heart to FULLY process the grief, it grows in resiliency and the capacity for greater depth of bliss, joy and love.
I’m letting go of victimhood, judgments and expectations, it is still a journey.
But through this lens, my heart is finally able to fall deeply in love with the world and to receive love more fully.
I wish you an incredible new year where you get to CHOOSE.
<3 Carly
Uplifting books I just read about trauma! (Um, really…?)
The personal stories of both authors are intense and emotional, but their captivating personal accounts are truly a beacon of hope for healing from even the most traumatic situations.
The Choice by Edith Eva Egar (Holocaust survivor to renowned public speaker and psychologist)
What my Bones Know by Stephanie Foo (Story of healing from a story of childhood emotional developmental trauma)