Dear Rachel:

Welcome back. You wrote today: “I also feel a lot of guilt because although my family talk regularly through a group chat & video chat, deep down I have no desire to interact with them”.

In 2017, you wrote about your family: “I grew up in an emotionally abusive household.. with parents who also screamed, shamed and criticized me constantly.. As a result, I developed a very deep sense of shame, perfectionism and self loathing and have battled depression and anxiety for most of my life”.

Fast forward three years, you wrote today: “I am often really disassociated due to trauma.. I am not sure how to return to my body… I am still plagued with negative thoughts.. I’m not sure how to go about freeing myself from this mental prison”.

My input today: when you were a child growing up in a home where your parents screamed at you, shamed  you, and constantly criticized you- that home was your physical prison. In that prison you experienced endless times of anxiety, shame and depression, and in that prison, you disassociated so to survive the trauma.

Fast forward, you are sitting in your apartment, looking at the computer at your family’s group chats, seeing the names, the words, the photos of the same people who screamed at you, shamed you, etc. This very activity, and even the thought of turning on the computer and seeing their group chats, is keeping you imprisoned in that anxiety, shame, depression and disassociation.

Every time you are in contact with them, and every time you expect the next contact, you can “hear” and you can feel them scream, shame and criticize you. And just as you disassociated as a child in that terrible physical prison, you are disassociating now, as an adult, living in a mental prison.

Adult children are most often very reluctant to end contact with their parents, feeling too guilty for doing that. But ending contact is a necessary first step in freeing yourself from that mental prison and re-associating with yourself, returning to your body and emotions, becoming one.

But it is a very difficult first step to take, it requires that you have some adequate social support, that you are able and willing to endure those guilty feelings, and it requires you to practice endless patience with the process that I wish was quick and easy.

anita