Facing Painful Emotions and Childhood Consciousness During Recovery
My name is Dr. Lane Lasater, a retired clinical psychologist. In gratitude for the life I have been given, I am sharing everything I learned during my career and personal life here on my website http://www.LaneLasater.com and on my YouTube Channel Life Roadmaps from a Retired Psychologist https://www.youtube.com/@lane205 Each post contains my written material, an AI generated graphic, audio summary, and a short video summarizing the material.
A printable and fillable PDF “Exercises to Support Recovery from Family Trauma Syndrome” with each exercise I describe in my videos can be downloaded here:
https://www.lanelasater.com/exercises-to-support-recovery-from-family-trauma-syndrome/
Below is the AI audio summary of this post.
When I think back over my life and recovery one thing I have learned is that children and adults do the best they can with the information and resources they have at that time. Unfortunately, as you know, children are often limited to the resources (or lack thereof) available to them in the environment where the grew up and the immediate community. As children, people faced significant family trauma and sometimes community trauma and they did the best they could. During future posts, I describe specifically the range of challenges and trauma that children in troubled home environments face, and the ingenious strategies children develop to cope with what were often impossible situations.
Powerful Feelings from the Past
Today I want to alert you to potentially overwhelming emotions from the past that you may encounter during the process of recovery—including helplessness, fear, shame, despair, anger, loneliness, sadness and grief. These feelings are extremely challenging to endure at any time, but for a child trapped in a difficult environment, the feelings are catastrophic. I have found that during my recovery and during my work with traumatized people is that we can unexpectedly plunge into what I call “childhood consciousness.” We suddenly find ourselves feeling powerful emotions from past situations, and momentarily we can’t seem to access our adult knowledge and skills. This is why I encourage you to have a trusted friend, self-help group or therapist to support you as you move forward in recovery.
I sometimes forget how desperate these feelings can be because I have been graced with so much healing and recovery. But, the process of preparing these blog and YouTube posts about Family Trauma Recovery has caused me to remember experiences from long ago, Last night I woke from a vivid dream which thrust me back into childhood consciousness.
I found myself as a little boy in a terrible argument with my mother in which I felt desperately hurt and rejected. She seemed so cold and unreachable. I felt afraid of her and catastrophically abandoned and alone.
Facing Painful Feelings is a Necessary Part of Recovery
While growing up, I had conflicts with both my parents, but although my father got enraged and would lash out at me, I somehow knew that he didn’t mean the things he said. Thankfully, before my parents passed away, I was able to come to love and peace with them both, and have a deep appreciation for the many gifts they gave me. But this dream put me in touch with the desperate little boy of my childhood.
I want you to be prepared for the powerful emotions that will arise, sometimes unexpectedly, as you move forward in recovery. Understand that this is part of the healing process. One of my recovery mentors summed this up beautifully for me when he said:
“I was always complaining about the ruts in the road until I finally realized that the ruts are the road!”
Keep the faith!