Reading what Matt posted on Surviving My Past.com, reminded me of my own healing history and journey. For a long time I really minimized what I had been through.
Some of my own statements were:
- Everyone else has been abused, so it's just normal stuff.
- It really wasn't that bad.
- I'm making too big of a deal about it.
- Just move on and get over it already.
- It was a long time ago.
- I haven't thought about it in years and why should I start now?
- Everyone has stuff to deal with in their life.
- Every family has skeletons in their closets.
- I'm healed. I'm over it!
- Just don't think about it.
I'm sure you've had your own statements and done your own minimizing. After all, if you haven't, then you might want to check your pulse. As humans, we all minimize. It is part of how we deal with events and experiences that are so horrible in our lives. If the brain isn't able to deal with it, we often minimize it as a way to avoid it and distance ourselves from it.
While minimizing can be helpful at the time the trauma or experience is taking place, it becomes a distraction to us later if we don't go in and heal our lives. Sometimes, the minimizing gets us through, but in order to release that from our life, we have to stop minimizing.
My minimizing went a little further. Of course, that's where Conversion Disorder for me comes in because it is like I could minimize with the best! In many ways, I could have cut off my arm and the way Conversion Disorder lets you think is that I would have said, "ah, its just a scratch. Let me put a bandaid on it".
Learned how to minimize to survive...
This is one of the reasons why those of us who have been through Conversion Disorder have such a difficult time coming out of it and healing. We learned early on how to minimize what was going on with time, it just gets easier to minimize to the point where you cannot even see what it is that is impacting you. I know that some will greatly disagree with what I say, but I'm speaking from experience here.
I remember when Dr. Canali started using the term, "tortured" around me and I dismissed it for a long time. Again, I was rationing in my mind, my abuse was just like everyone else. It wasn't that bad! As time went on and I dealt with some very physical issues that most medical doctors would have been at a complete loss in treating, I learned that the story was more than I thought it was.
Amnesia in trauma...
We often have amnesia about trauma we have been through. We do it by minimizing.
In fact, a more recent story that emerged along from the rash I just dealt with is nothing but pure torture on many levels. I cannot bring myself to share it. It was hard enough to let anyone read it. I'll probably take it to my next session with Dr. Canali, but the shame with it and the humiliation and very real physical pain is just so intense. Even writing these words is almost too much. But, it was torture.
I know I still minimize things. It is sometimes the only way a brain can continue functioning because otherwise, the memories are like taking a garden hose to a fuse box - something is not going to end well. I remember not that long ago when I was confronted about my anger outbursts. I had minimized the anger so much that I did not realize just how bad this was getting. It took an "intervention" so to speak in order to get me to wake up and see it.
From my experience, every person that I have been around with Conversion Disorder minimizes what happened to them. I know there are many that would claim this is not true, but in the early days of my Conversion Disorder experience, I would have been agreeing with them. In fact, I acted like nothing happened, yet my body could not function and my mind was anything but in a normal state. The trauma runs so deep.
Minimizing is part of every disorder and health condition, whether it is a physical situation or mental health. When experiences are too great, its the only way we can escape in that moment, but we pay a price physically and mentally as a result. It is in healing that we begin to come to terms with those moments and start to win back our life and find our own power we hold inside.
It has taken me years and many deep body healing sessions to understand just how much I minimized things in life. I'm finding my way back from a deep inner core level and embracing the body part of healing, not only just the mind part.
