Estimated reading time 10 min
The saga continues…..more tea will be needed!!😉
So a couple of weeks prior to my call with ‘Snooty RRT Lady” I stumbled across some videos online by Dr. Gabor Maté who is sought after for his expertise in addiction, stress, childhood development and childhood trauma. Rather than offering a ‘quick fix’ solution to all of these complex issues Dr Maté aims to highlight the significant role childhood trauma has on our physical and mental health.
And yes, you guessed it…I once again fell in love and became a little obsessed;-)
But I think, this time, I was obsessed for the right reasons.
Not because Gabor was offering me a way to stop my anxiety or a way to be a better more improved version of myself! But simply because he was offering me a much deeper understanding of where and how this anxiety had started in the first place. While I feel like my RRT sessions definitely did a good job at helping me to connect to that inner child and the pain she felt being so emotionally disconnected from her mother, it was merely a tiny crack open in that door to my own inner healing.
It is hard to explain really, I mean it’s not like this journey to my inner child had only just started.
That journey began over
….. with my life coaching and then my therapy. I also read a book in 2009 that was an absolute game changer for me called the Narcissistic Family Model.
The authors of this book Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert M. Pressman were both psychologists who started to notice a pattern emerging with certain clients that they couldn’t quite account for. Clients were coming into their office showing all the signs and symptoms of having grown up in typically dysfunctional families. (ie drugs, alcohol abuse, sexual abuse). The only problem was when many of these clients when questioned about their upbringing they seemed to routinely report normal, non-eventful sometimes even ‘happy’ childhoods. That being said they were still struggling with chaotic lives, stress, anxiety, self-esteem issues, a lack of healthy boundaries and that oh so familiar ‘constant need for validation!’
In this compelling book, the authors go on to explain how ‘Narcissistic families’ are simply those where the parental system for whatever reason (Be it job stress, physical disability, alcoholism, mental illness, lack of parenting skills; self-centred immaturity) is primarily involved in getting its own needs met rather than the child. While these parents may tick all the boxes when it comes to their children’s physical needs being met (ie ‘Helicopter parents’ being the perfect example) more often than not are unable to provide for their children’s emotional needs. Children in these narcissistic family systems who try to earn love and attention by satisfying their parent’s needs sadly never developed the ability to recognise their own needs or developed strategies to get those needs met.
The ‘Narcissistic Family model’ was intended to introduce this innovative therapeutic model to therapists to help them better understand and treat adults from emotionally abusive or neglectful families.
You only have to read all the reviews out there to realise how much further this book has reached.
This book was honestly one of the most life-changing books I ever read.
It was like the blinders finally fell off and I ‘got it’ – It was the first time my ‘head’ understood how much my childhood had affected me….and was still affecting me. To this day I still find myself using certain techniques provided in the book to help ground me and to identify unhealthy patterns that still show up with me at times.
I say my ‘head got it‘……because intellectually things finally made sense. But I still struggled for years trying to figure out how to ’emotionally get it!’ I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I needed to somehow ‘love myself more’ But hell that was soooooo wishy-washy….. (like tree hugger SHIT!!!)
I just didn’t know how to ‘love myself!’
Acknowledgement: Apart from 2019 Gayle of course. Who seemed for ‘that year‘ to have been enigmatically infused by Aphrodite, the Goddess of love, a zillion times over!!
2019 Gayle seemed to have it ALL figured out!!
(Dam that was a super amazing year!:-)
By the time I started listening to Gabor it felt like things were now starting to fall into place emotionally. Rather than my anxiety being something that was “happening to me” I started to think about what it was that my body might be trying to tell me. I found myself actually starting to be curious about the anxiety….
So much of what Gabor spoke about resonated not only with my own experiences but also with my last 20 years of teaching and working with children. This ‘disconnection’ and ‘sadness‘ that oozed out of so many of the schools I was working in.
I was starting to slowly become more aware of how much this was affecting me on a daily basis.
But undoubtedly, what I admired about Gabor the most was his down-to-earthness! How he was willing to openly and honestly share his own personal ‘fuck-ups’ with the world.
He wasnt claiming to have all the answers.
He wasnt claiming to get it right all the time.
He radiated “humanness!”
I found myself so drawn to him and his work that a couple of days after my call with the snooty RRT lady I signed up to study “Compassionate Inquiry” with Maté.
2021 Was a particularly interesting year:-)
For a while there I replaced my old plan to become an RRT therapist with a new and ‘updated’ plan to become a compassionate Inquiry therapist.….but honestly even that has fallen away now.
More than anything, my year of studying ‘Compassionate Inquiry’ was about me finally acquiring the tools and skills that I never learned as a child. For me to start practising compassion with myself daily, learning to regulate my emotions, to start listening to my body and recognise my triggers. Rather than simply being reactive all the time I was regularly being challenged to start noticing exactly what it was I was reacting to. 2021, in hindsight, was probably one of the hardest years for me with regard to my anxiety. At times it felt like the ‘little skin’ I already had was very slowly being peeled off…..
I felt raw.
I cried buckets.
My anxiety got worse!
The internal rage, at times, was all-consuming!
Of course, it didn’t help matters that In 2021 I promptly ignored my ‘Self-Care-Declaration’ never to take on a full-time teaching job EVER AGAIN.……and I accepted a 6 months position in a reception class. Looking back, it’s almost laughable….as much as I adored the school and the class (They were truly an amazing little bunch of kids) …..I very clearly knew the second that I met the teaching assistant that the two of us were not going to gel.
(AT ALL!)
She was dismissive, cold and unfriendly.
The vice closing on my heart was instantaneous.
Every inch of my GUT said
Needless to say, I didn’t!
(But that’s a story for another day…)
Funny thing is, as difficult as that whole teaching experience turned out to be for me, it also turned out to be exactly what I needed…the penultimate lesson in my learning to stand up for myself and learning to love myself despite what goes on around me.
Despite what other people think of me!
Hell, I learnt a shit load about myself during this year!
So I guess that pretty much brings me up to date…..except for 190 poems that I still need to post. 🙂
Throughout these last two years, a couple of things have become abundantly clear to me:
This month I am starting my master’s in the practice and research of the ‘The Attachment Theory‘
…..I have no idea what I’m going to do with it when I am finished.
I have no idea where it’s going to lead me….
All I know is I can’t wait because I’m fascinated by it!
