It is even difficult to imagine how many trauma we actually carry in ourselves, how many uncried tears, restrained words and screams we carry in ourselves. How much pain, resentment, bitterness and much more we keep with us for years, what a heavy burden we carry on our shoulders through life, not daring to throw it off and straighten up. And you can deal with all this for more than one day and a year, but there is always hope that you can remove most of the mental garbage, cleanse yourself of unnecessary things and free yourself, give place to new feelings, new emotions, new sensations.
My parents divorced when I was 10 years old. I remember that then I did not feel any special emotions about this. I very calmly accepted this news, I felt a little sorry for my mother when she told me with tears in her eyes that my father would no longer live with us. And I tried with all my girlish strength to help my mother then. Since she worked a lot in shifts, I took responsibility for everything: for my little sister, for studying, for going shopping and redeeming coupons (remember the 90s …), for order in the house, in general, I myself was very much hung on herself and carried this heavy burden for many years. There was never any resentment or anger at my dad, I grew up like everyone else, and everything was fine with me in principle. The topic of divorce never came up in my thoughts, it seemed to me that there was nothing tragic in this situation. Even in adulthood, I took someone's divorce for granted and did not understand if it was presented as some kind of tragedy.
Today I practiced one of the techniques, with the help of a colleague, we worked on a topic that in no way related to divorce, all spheres and levels were involved in the technique: thoughts, feelings and emotions, sensations in the body. At one point, pain appeared in the right arm, they began to work it off, it suddenly moved higher up the arm to the shoulder and stopped there. Peering into this pain, I suddenly realized that she wanted to remind me of the divorce. At first I did not realize what it was, but suddenly tears welled up in my eyes, I began to cry out loud, like a child, I completely entered the state of that little Olya, who found out that dad was leaving, I wanted to scream, stamp my feet, in general, throw a tantrum, as kids know how to do it, but I never allowed myself to do that.
I felt so sorry for myself, so wanted to be pitied, cuddled and hugged. But I didn’t get it then either from my mother or from my father. Then, as a child, I wanted to seem strong, only now I realized that I did not want pity for myself from others. Only now I realized how deeply this trauma sat in me and protected me from myself.
After that, such relief came, such a powerful emotional charge, so much energy was released. Self-pity was replaced by joy, which, as it turned out, I forbade myself to feel in full, because it was impossible to rejoice when my mother was bad, and I supported her as best I could. Apparently then I forbade myself to really rejoice, of course, it was not always and I am a rather optimistic person in life, but this feeling of restrained joy was constantly present.
