A start
Trying to break free
Substack scares me. It seems like you have to write some profound and important things on here and that’s just not what my thoughts are at the moment.
In the last few months, I’ve been ill with multiple viruses and at the moment I’m having severe back pain, which seems not to want to leave me. I appreciate its loyalty, but I actually wouldn’t mind for it to change its carrier. All this got me thinking that maybe it’s time for me to read The Body Keeps the Score as my health problems seem to start just when I decided to fight myself free from the influence of my narcissistic mother.
I’m so absorbed by this issues that the best season is passing by without me noticing it properly. Also my mind is so often blank, that I’m afraid that I will never have any interesting thought ever again.
Every book on the subject of recovering from the influence of a narcissistic mother’s tells me to do the things I enjoy and to try some new things. I need that to find my true self, to discover who I really am, outside of the role my mother wrote for me. It’s hard. I love writing and reading and since the beginning of the year I wrote almost nothing and reading was slow and not very satisfying. There are days when I feel that I can get through it and do all those things I want to do and try, but on most days I feel like I’ll never be free and be stuck in this anxious, paralysed state.
It’s so weird to know what I want to do and not doing it. Not even trying. Not because I don’t want to, but because I’m not able to. And I know that it’s all conditioning from my youth, but how do I break this circle?
Don’t answer that. I know that the only way is through action. But tell it to the anxiety stored in my chest. I’m actually nauseous all the time writing this letter, but it’s a start.
I will not read it through, as I may not send it if I do, so forgive all the mistakes.
I hope you’re doing well.
I’m sorry to hear that you have been unwell, but please, be aware The Body Keep the Score is very weak on science and its central premise has been repeatedly questioned/debunked. One recent paper said: ‘The body does not keep the score; the brain keeps predicting it. When prediction becomes too rigid, experience repeats itself, not because it is stored, but because it cannot yet be reinterpreted.’ I have read up on the science of chronic pain as I suffer from it myself. Hope you feel better soon.
I love your honesty and I don't have any easy answers, but I do see you and empathise. One thing I find especially hard is figuring out where the line is between giving myself time and space to rest, but also knowing that when I stop writing it gets harder and harder to start again. When that happens I sometimes read through my old posts to remind myself that I can actually write.