Our Feelings Are Not the Enemy

A Woman In The Forest

Source: Pexel Photo by Eyup Beyhan

Alice Miller, psychoanalyst and an authority in the area of child abuse, wrote, “If we do not work on three levels—body, feeling, mind—the symptoms of our distress will keep returning, as the body goes on repeating the story stored in its cells until it is finally understood.”

The expression of feelings is a critical component in the healing process.

The mothers I saw in my practice were often the victims of abuse as children. They feared disastrous outcomes from expressing themselves, and when they attempted to assert their needs, feelings, or wishes, they were confronted with the original traumatic experience in which their efforts at self-assertion were unsafe or futile, or were met with violence.

To facilitate a client’s ability to express herself, it is important to examine the ways in which she was coerced into silence as a child. To silence a child and to keep her from revealing abuse, a common threat used by perpetrators is that the family will break up or the child will be blamed and ousted from the family. The perpetrator may have threatened to hurt or kill the child, another member of the family, or the family pet.

When the client is faced with reversing her silent and submissive behaviors, what surfaces is the original terror that created and sustained those behaviors. Therefore, the therapist needs to be sensitive and supportive in acknowledging the fears that surface when a client attempts to express and assert herself. It is helpful to remind the client that her beliefs, feelings, and behaviors were a means of coping in a dysfunctional or violent family and that now, as an adult, the strategies that once helped are no longer adaptive. Traumatic childhood experiences that remain hidden and unexpressed continue to fester in the present. The old ways of thinking and behaving re-create childhood dynamics of powerlessness in which the child was unheard, negated, unacknowledged, and unprotected.

Clinicians need to create a safe holding environment where exploring strong feelings and the erroneous beliefs that the client has internalized about herself and her world can be recognized and addressed. Several erroneous beliefs that keep adult survivors from expressing themselves are:

• If I am visible, I will be a target for other people’s rage.
• If I assert myself, I will be harmed.
• If I express myself, I will not be liked.
• If I am compliant, I will be safe.

To effectively work with mothers who were abused as children, it is important to teach them how to identify their feelings. Clients may have survived by repressing their feelings, or the most uncomfortable ones, and not learned to identify or differentiate among the various emotions. Sadness, fear, shame, rage, pain, or some combination of these were experienced during the abuse phase. The strength and range of feelings experienced by little girls who were abused were too intense for them to process, and their bodies reacted by shutting down, collapsing, and/or dissociating. However, one of the consequences of shutting down and dissociating is that the person becomes disconnected from a wide range of experiences and feelings.

As time passes and feelings begin to re-emerge, clients may experience them as intrusive and overwhelming and become frightened, fearing that such intense sensations may consume them. At times, the client may experience multiple and seemingly disparate feelings simultaneously, and, as a result, feel overpowered by their intensity and complexity, making it difficult to articulate and work through the experience.

Therapists can assist clients in managing the emerging feelings and the memories that often accompany them, exploring where feelings are experienced in the body and conversing with that part of the body, supports re-connection and teaches the client that her body is not the enemy and can be a powerful resource in her healing.

This topic will continue in Part II.