A Wake-Up Call — The Call That Took Me to Self-Reflection

“You become a different person on Sundays!”

They were words that caught my ear in a very heated moment. It wasn’t name-calling; it wasn’t petty, or jealousy, or any of the other things couples usually argue about. It was exasperation. Exasperated truth, to be exact.

Due to my inability to regulate my emotions, I unknowingly took them out on other people. Unknowingly means I didn’t know I was doing that. Which is weird, right? I mean, how do we not know what we are doing?

I didn’t know I was doing a lot of things I didn’t want to be doing. Then one day, someone finally pointed it out in an effective way. The way I needed to hear it.

At some point in my childhood formative years, someone influential in my life and development did or said things that caused me to feel and believe that I was not worth anyone else’s time, attention, or love without major performance.

When a child learns this, they usually begin to take one of two paths:

• The child either becomes an intentional screw-up (I’ll show you just how bad/unworthy I can be), or;

• The child tries to prove to everyone that he or she IS worthy of love and affection. (People Pleasing)

I took the people pleasing route, which later also developed into codependency due to other life circumstances - all of which created the perfect storm for me arriving at this particular rock bottom during this chapter of my life.

When people-pleasing fails to bring the desired feelings, it sends a person right back to the beginning of the toxic cycle, with even more hurt than before, making future reactions worse.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been told “you’re too much”; “why are you this way”; “why do you have so many feelings”; “that’s just you being stupid”. These are things I grew to believe about myself, and I think that’s why it caught my ear when “you become a different person on Sundays” was said.

It wasn’t an accusation where my personality rubbed someone the wrong way and they had an unkind thing to say about it. It was exasperation due to my actions affecting that person over a period of time. I didn’t know my actions were affecting that person the way they were. It wasn’t intentional. But for the first time, I learned it was happening.

The Toxic Cycle

“I am having some big feelings and I need you to recognize it!” is what I was feeling, but ANY kind of feeling inside of me at that time presented itself as anger, so when “big feelings” would arise, I would do "big angry things" - break things or yell or slam doors; I would do “loud” things to “be seen”.

(I’m absolutely not saying this is right or the correct way to behave. I’m giving an example of what I used to do to - some people will recognize this in themselves.)

Then, some short time later, I felt guilty about my actions and needed to begin mending those relationships. Granted, I understand that this LOOKS narcissistic and this is exactly how narcissists operate, but stay with me.

This is how my intimate relationships (friendships and romantic) had been my entire adult life - in this terrible and toxic circle. This is also what I had seen my entire life, so it was normal to me, but that didn’t mean it was normal to everyone else, so once I knew THAT I was doing those things, I definitely didn’t understand WHY I was doing them, and (most importantly) it was not the person I wanted to be.

I felt confused during and after the events and would fall into a people-pleasing “I’m so sorry” fawning pattern shortly after. It looked a lot like narcissism, and I’m sure it felt that way to others as well, but in my case, it was truly a trauma induced response to a trauma trigger I didn’t know I had.

Due to grooming I experienced in a DV relationship in my late 20’s-early 30’s, on Sundays, my big feelings intensified. My stress and anxiety levels would spike; my fuse was significantly shorter; and my need to control everything around me was bigger than ever.

When I started to reflect on myself and my actions and how they were affecting others, I began to wonder “am I a narcissist?” but when I would search online, no. No, I don't match enough of the traits to be classified as a narcissist. So why was I so “terrible” at times?

Throughout the friendships and relationships in my life, I can count on one hand the ones I didn’t feel used in. Every other one, I either left or stayed in and felt used; like I cared for or helped them way more than they cared for or helped me.

It created resentment. I felt unlovable and always unworthy to take up anyone else’s time or inconvenience them in any way. I would go out of my way to make others comfortable or feel good, regardless of what it did to me, and often without reciprocation — until I would explode.

And this was the cycle:

Give every piece of myself to every person around me, regardless of how they treated me, until I exploded and demanded to be treated better or seen.

At that point, the relationship would usually end. I still didn’t feel seen or vindicated; it only hurt more and “proved to me” even more that “I wasn’t worthy of receiving love in this life”.

It took a very long time for me to learn that I was emotionally harming others due to my own untreated trauma, misdiagnosed ADHD, and maladaptive coping skills. It made me sad when I realized what I was doing because that person wasn’t who I wanted to be.

I had a lot of love in my heart people didn’t know about because these symptoms usually presented and overshadowed anything good or joyous.

Learning From the Symptoms to Identify the Cause

When I was a young adult I heard someone say, “once you know what happened to you, you’re able to heal it.”

I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. I had experienced “bad things”, too and I’ve known my whole life “what happened to me”. It’s MY LIFE - I lived through the experiences, so: I know them.

But what I DIDN’T know, was how the scars of those experiences were affecting me and, as a result, those around me.

So, I tend to believe that once you understand HOW what happened is affecting you, THEN you can heal.

You must recognize the symptoms and tie them to the cause. Otherwise, you’re only suppressing symptoms….not treating the cause.

I tried to seek help for my behaviors and feelings but was unfortunately misdiagnosed with general anxiety and depression. Over the years, I was given up to 5 pills to take at any one time. That was unfortunate on too many levels to discuss in this blog.

Knowing now that what we were REALLY looking at was trauma-induced codependency with maladaptive coping skills and undiagnosed/untreated PTSD, multiple forms of CPTSD, and undiagnosed/unmanaged ADHD, my treatment options should have been very different.

Medication does not release these types of chains that need to be released; it only suppresses symptoms.

My symptoms needed to be managed & reconciled, not suppressed.

When you are medicated but you actually need to be managed, reconciled, & delivered, the results will never be what you need them to be. You will not feel your best.

You may not recognize it for a while because the suppression relieves what you have been feeling, but eventually, you must manage and break the chains in order to not fall back into the same cycle.

Managing Myself

For me, I found HUGE success with mind and body work. I did talk therapy with the right counselor; EMDR; Brain-spotting; EFT; Tapping, and Box Breathing.

In my experience, I typically feel the anxiety and trauma response come up in my body and then my mind gets anxious (you know, I get a “gut feeling” and then my mind races about how much danger I’m in at that moment and then, I’m no longer in that moment and I’m LOOKING for things that are “dangerous and familiar”.)

So even when I was eventually able to recognize in my mind that nothing is happening around me right now to produce these physical feelings, my body would be betraying me and auto-starting the cycle on its own, out of habit and learned behavior. This is why I knew I must do both mind and body work.

Looking back, I now know that the Love of God & Jesus Christ, and Boundaries were the first things I needed to learn in order to overcome myself.

LM

No Medical Advice was given in any context. This is a testimonial of the authors experiences only.

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