Thought So?

In late 2019 I began reading about a phenomenon called Childhood Emotional Neglect and thinking about its effects on my personality and my life. As is obvious from the name, it’s when a person grows up without validation of their emotions, causing it to be difficult to access, describe, and understand their feelings as an adult.  More recently I have also been looking into and thinking about the ways my childhood experience was not just neglectful, but actively abusive. Not in big, loud ways: there was rarely any screaming or physical violence, but in small, insidious ways: dismissing of my interests and aspirations, and a general lack of acknowledging me as a whole person with her own feelings and needs.  I have been trying to address the effects this has had on me for… well, really since I started going to therapy as a teenager, but for a long time therapy was just looking at the symptoms and not helping me elucidate or analyze the underlying traumatic experiences. It’s been...

I have more than 2000 saved posts on Instagram in a category I named “Wellness.” I started this category before I knew I wanted to divorce my now ex-husband; before I noticed how problematic some of his behaviors toward me were.  The posts in this category include ones about codependency and boundary-setting, parenting and reparenting, and anxiety manifestations and management.  The oldest post that Instagram will let me see is from 2019. Among other topics, it covers the “comfort zone” — the place in your life where you feel safe and in control but sacrifice growth for this feeling.  I don’t believe it’s hyperbole to say I never feel safe and in control. Sometimes I feel safe when I am distracted from my anxieties by some kind of absorbing activity like television, exercise, or work (there are obviously other such activities, too) and I do feel in control when I’m using my calendar as a planning tool or putting my outfit for the day together. It seems like it would be fl...