Uncover the Hidden
I was recently talking to a client about the low-hanging fruit, easy to recognize issues we focus on and how I had concentrated most of my life on sexual abuse. And then when I went to do my internship working with mandated teens in an inner city substance treatment client, I realized, “Holy shit, I hadn't addressed the bullies.”
Over the last several years I had resolved so many things but didn't recognize that there was a part of me that was still needing to be addressed, cleared, resolved, loved, and that was my 7-8 year old who had to leave Belgium, had to leave the life where she finally had her first friends, her first real relationships.
When we're growing up, when we're little, we play by ourselves. Then we play by ourselves next to each other. And then we start playing together. And at about that age is when I had to move again. This was the third move of my life, through 3 countries.
But this move was significant, and I didn't even know that that part of me was hurting. That little self who finally had friends, finally felt she belonged, finally felt cared about. And then we moved back to the states and the kids were just awful. They were just little assholes, and she mourned that life she had over there.
That was probably the first time in my life I actually felt a loss in my life. And it wasn't just the loss of those friends, it was also compounded by difficulty making new friends when there were so many kids that were so mean to me.
We are layers that show up as we clear things out and those new layers reveal things to pop up that we never expected.
That little 7/8 year old, even though she had experienced the rape, looking back I know it didn't have as much impact on her. It didn't have as much impact on me. My biggest impact really came from my social standing, social inability, how I socialized, how I talked to other people, how I felt my place in that world.
I was put at a big disadvantage coming back to the states. It was just a bad time in 1971. People in this country hated foreigners. They were very mean to me. Even though I was born on Long Island, I just didn't know a lot about American stuff because I'd been living in Europe and so the kids called me foreigner.
They were just really mean to me and my social standing was pretty much in the tank. And that set a huge precedent for how I was going to act and react in my social world going forward. And then compound that with the beginning of the sexual abuse happening regularly at home when I got back to the states.
It all spirals. We focus on the big things that are obvious to us. But, I know now that the sexual abuse wasn't as difficult as the social disconnection - just not being selected, included, and loved like I had experienced when I lived in Belgium.
When you're thinking about your life and thinking about what's obvious to you, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that probably the things that are impacting you the most are things that you've never really expected.
I invite you to reach out and let's let your unconscious mind give us the information about what's driving you. What's affecting you? What's impacting you in how you are living your life today?
