Terrified of the dark, and terrified to ask for help
I was terrified of the dark. And equally terrified that someone would realize I wasn't actually sleeping. Because I knew that I would get in trouble for being awake. And for being afraid.
This is how I remember feeling for many nights when I was little girl. Lying still and awake in my bed, feeling scared and alone. While my sisters and parents were up and awake. Together.
These moments felt like an eternity, every night. For too many nights.
And already, by that tender age of about 5, I had learned to suppress my instinct to ask for help.
No matter how frightening these moments felt, I knew that there was no use in telling anybody.
I'm pretty certain that the fear itself would not have been enough to overwhelm me. My daughter experiences her own fears at night. But she is able to ask for help with them, and I know how to pick up on her cues of fear.
But in my case, it was knowing I was alone with my fear, that eventually made these nighttime experiences overwhelming.
Today I can look back on the many ways I had to learn to avoid my pain as a child. And on all of the years I spent subsequently guarding my heart. Trying to protect it. From the vulnerability of letting anyone see my insecurities, fears and needs. And of course, I didn't even realize that I was doing this.
I look back on those seasons of my life now, and can clearly see that:
I didn’t know it then, at least not on a conscious level, but I was avoiding pain because I believed that acknowledging and feeling it, would inevitably lead to overwhelm, and
For me, overwhelm was to be avoided at all costs. It threatened all of my perfectionistic and "functional" protections. It meant I would lose my cool. It meant I would lose sight of myself entirely. That I would spend hours in the day distracted from my "happy" life, or awake at night, lost in denial, obsession or dissociation. Until it “passed" or I figured my way out of it. Alone. Or desperately hoping someone else would tell me what to do.
And so, understandably, I dedicated a lot of my energy to being and relating in ways that would keep my heart guarded.
But as you know, it is humanly impossible to prevent ourselves from being hurt.
Unexpected news, things other people do or say, or painful memories will pop into our lives at any given moment.
And the more we have been guarding our hearts, the more power these things will have to knock us over with the tiny flick of a finger. Life's inevitable hurts will more easily, and more frequently, overwhelm us.
One of the things I regret the most about living this way, is that ironically, my efforts to protect my heart from pain, made me more susceptible to being overwhelmed by it.
You see, the painful moments of my life often became unnecessarily overwhelming.
And this led to some pretty bad decisions.
Decisions that I don't judge myself for.
Many of which, even seemed like good or bold choices on the outside.
But I know that these decisions were often impulsive and came from a place of extreme self-doubt.
With each one of them, I was urgently seeking the certainty and immediate novelty that would provide an out from the hell of overwhelm.
And they did deliver the quick fix I was looking for.
But in the end, they created terribly unsustainable situations in my life that would eventually return me to the place of overwhelm.
Overwhelm that I was still so afraid of, that even my early days of healing involved the hope that maybe one day I would get to that "healed" place where I would no longer have to feel pain.
But as you probably know, that’s not how healing works.
And there is nothing quite like healing while parenting to make that evident.
You see, parenting pain is it's own special kind of pain.
Which is why parenting overwhelm, is its own special kind of overwhelm.
Because as you know,
The stakes feel really high when you are aware that your kid's future relationships will be greatly affected by how they experience their childhood.
Your child will inevitably poke your oldest, most tender wounds, in the most unexpected ways.
There is a huge physical workload.
There is an equally massive mental workload.
There are very real and very loud material pressures.
You feel the weight of other people's judgement for how you parent.
You are triggered by how others (oftentimes your co-parent or partner) parent their children.
There is no manual to tell you how to care well for a child, and you probably don’t want to just do the only thing that you know; which is what your parents did with you.
You feel really guilty sometimes.
Parenting is overstimulating. The noises, the touching, the smells, the shouting, the really big feelings.
The world can be cruel and scary, and you can’t protect your child from its harsh realities.
You carry the burdens of intergenerational wounding from your lineage.
Kids get sick.
You get sick, but there is no sick leave from being a parent.
You worry about your own health and longevity, oftentimes without being able to trust that your children would be well cared for emotionally in the hands of relatives if something were to happen to you.
And if you or your child are sensitive or neurodivergent, parenting in today's society will require even more mental and emotional effort.
It is exhausting.
The list goes on, doesn't it?
And what is absolutely unacceptable, unsustainable, and yet very real for most parents, is that more often than not, you carry the weight of these worries alone.
No wonder you feel overwhelmed at times.
And if you learned a similar story to the one I did about overwhelm in your childhood, then the impact of these pressures can be far more painful and overwhelming than they need to be.
And luckily, they don’t have to be.
I know this, because I see parents like you every day (including myself), who now experience even the most challenging aspects of parenting with connection, resiliency and a sense of purpose.
This, is healing while parenting.