Unresolved Emotions and Feelings: Getting Familiar with your Past

The older we get – the more we forget – or so it seems. When I began my personal growth journey for recovery I began remembering the most traumatic events that transpired when I was a child. After researching information concerning memories, I realized that some of the things I was remembering that happened in my childhood might not be accurate.

Why - you ask? I am an adult now remember a child’s perception of what happened. When I was a child and experienced a sniper crawling on his belly in my front yard with my entire house being surrounded by police and firemen and lights and sirens it was very stimulating to me. It was foreign. When I heard the machine gun sound as the sniper began shooting out car windows, I had been frozen in fear as a child. But as an adult, understanding more about what happened with that situation, I may remember things differently than I thought they occurred.

My mother and father never spoke about that incident again. As an adult I never asked them about it. But I did research it. I typed in “automatic machine gun firing around a child,” “child exposed to traumatic machine gun firing,” and so on. After reading several articles describing the damage that could be done to a child who was exposed to this event, I understood so much more than I did before.

It didn’t change my memory, but it allowed me to say that perhaps my post traumatic stress disorder had been actually triggered by this event instead of a later one that I had previously considered. Children are especially prone to develop PTSD when exposed to automatic gun fire. This connection is simple to follow. Why is it important? It’s important because it happened to me. I had a reaction to a traumatic event. No one explained what happened to me back then. I had the same nightmare about that sniper climbing up the side of our house for ten years.

Another connection that was made with the nightmare was that the sniper always interrupted my father giving me a bath with my brother and sister. I hated those humiliating baths. I was almost in 4th grade and my father refused to let me bathe myself. I began to get anxious at bath time and after having the nightmare every night I was hysterical. I wasn’t allowed to cry out for my mother and father because my father told me that it was just a dream and nothing would happen to me.

The sniper in my dream began shooting my entire family and I was standing there naked and dripping wet crying and begging him to stop shooting everyone. I was last and when he fired his gun and the first bullet hit me I would always wake up. Can you see how this whole thing connected with two unpleasant experiences then continued on with the nightmare as the symptoms of PTSD began to escalate? Ten years in a row I had that nightmare almost every night and it was just as frightening each time I had it.

I wasn’t allowed to have my mother or father soothe me while I was so fearful from the dream. This was when I began to self-soothe with food. This was the beginnings of my night eating disorder. This escalated into a nightly experience that has haunted me my entire life until a few years ago after I began this personal growth recovery journey.

Letting those emotions and feelings out of me was so refreshing. I felt free. I felt relieved. I could understand what happened and I could connect all the dots. I didn’t have to blame myself for being crazy. I thought that being mentally ill meant I’d have to go to a crazy house to live in. I thought it was a hospital that had monsters in it.

Finally I had processed the emotions and feelings involved with this terribly traumatic experience and connected it with several others that I had forgotten about. I continued to journal experiences that I remembered and when I had trouble remembering things I would ask my mother about it. Once I had released a large amount of fear that had been pent up inside me, I was able to talk about things without getting over-emotional.

I never blamed any of my family members for the things that happened to me. This process will allow you to accept that your parents did the best they could do for what they knew. If you research the times in which they were raised, you’ll see how confused they were from their own upbringing. If I blamed anyone, I always blamed myself.

Take the time to do this exercise. Ask as many family members for their opinions on things you aren’t clear about and write it all down. It’s liberating. Another thing, it has helped my own mother to actually admit that she has felt guilt and shame through my own expressions of what I was feeling. This has been a miracle. I could feel her tension flowing out of her body as she spoke to me.

Every single time I get to spend time with my mother I ask questions about things I’m not clear about and every time I learn something very valuable. It’s a very good thing. I hope you can experience this as well and get some perspective on emotions and feelings that are being held inside you that want to come out and be let go forever.