I'd like to share this piece of information regarding dormant trauma because I know that if I had understood this when I was a young adult - it would have helped me to avoid toxic relationships that only added to my childhood trauma. My hope is that you can learn from my mistakes!
I believe I grew up in a narcissistic family system that had been in place sadly over generations. NPD and more importantly how a person with npd can affect others - was not widely known at the time. I do remember once when I was about 17, my mothers best friend asked me if I knew what Munchausen by Proxy was.... because she wondered if my mother had it. In my moms defense, she never did anything to harm my physical health, which is the hallmark of munchausen by proxy but - she DID harm my emotional health. I've always felt that having a narcissistic parent forced you to have to deal with EMOTIONAL munchausen by proxy.
Narcissistic family systems assign each child a role - mine was the scapegoat. Through the years I felt like the black sheep of the family, an outsider, something everyone had to put up with. My mothers unhappiness, her moods, her challenges were all somehow my fault - due to my very existence. Even if those words were never spoken they were deeply applied and my nervous system got the memo.
When I was 15 years old I tried to take my own life - the emotional pain of the constant rejection, neglect and abandonment was too much. I felt unworthy of the air that I breath, the space that my body took up in this world and I just wanted to stop hurting.
I swallowed a bottle of pills and waited.... my mother forced me to go with my two younger brothers (both golden children at the time) and honestly that probably saved my life because it forced me to stay awake.
The world seemed to be moving up and down and I constantly stumbled as I tried to walk. By the time I got home I was vomiting black gunk non stop - I was hallucinating and incoherent.
I was not brought to the hospital. My stomach was not pumped. I was not asked why I was so sick. I was told to go to my room.
I stayed sick for two weeks and when I finally began to feel human again - I did not have to kill myself to stop hurting.... my 16th birthday was a couple of months away.... maybe there was another way out.
At 16 years old I tried something else. I left home leaving nothing but a note on my moms pillow. I had no place to go, I had no money, I only had the shirt on my back and a burning desire to find and experience happiness.... something that was a rumor to me.
So many things could have happened to me - but thankfully I was taken in by a wonderful family and my life did a 180.
The pain of my childhood - felt like a distant echo as I began learning who I was and how to love myself.
What I didn't know was that while my past trauma had become dormant, having no affect on my young adult life - and while my young adult self was developing agency and confidence - the pieces of me from childhood that had developed the painful trauma beliefs..... still felt the same way. The only difference was that these beliefs were compartmentalized and out of my conscious awareness.
Symptoms though, of this unhealed trauma showed up in things like people pleasing, hiding my true self, shape shifting and craving external validation.
But because I didn't understand trauma, I did nothing about the emotions and beliefs that lurked in my shadow... that is until a relationship woke everything up.
I had always had healthy romantic relationships (except when I was young, and truth be told - I was the unhealthy one since I didn't know what healthy relationships looked like.... sadly I hurt someone that was only trying to love me in a healthy way).
Then I met someone that honestly - I was not interested in at all. But as the friendship grew - something woke up inside of me. That something was limerence.... sadly thought it was love.
That relationship flung open the door to past trauma that woke up like a vengeance.
