We, the traumatized, are often inauthentic. We are not really saying what we want, what we feel. We are not behaving from our gut feeling. We are just acting or performing, too much in our heads, everything passing through an intellectual filter, without knowing, too afraid of being ourselves. We don’t stand up for ourselves, we don’t even know how to. We are fearful of voicing our opinion. We walk on eggshells. We can’t express any of what we would like, to the point we might not even know what we like and what our opinions are. We are not being true to our emotions, we might not even be feeling our actual emotions.
Why? For that you have to dwelve into the world of emotional abuse.
I discovered this because I was in an abusive relationship which opened my eyes to the emotional abuse I suffered in childhood. I always thought I just lacked social skills, and that there was something wrong with my brain, that my personality was just quirky, or that this is just who I am and I’m destined to have to only manage this weird condition of social awkwardness. I couldn’t somehow connect with others. Like there was something missing from me.
Nope.
There was nothing wrong with me. There never had been. When you were abused for years on end how are you supposed to be happy, like everyone else? Imagine this: A soldier coming from war, a terrible war where he felt like he lost a part of himself. He lost loved ones. He suffered immensely. How is he supposed to be happy if all that suffering goes unaddressed, swiped under the rug? If he never allowed himself to grieve that, to get support, to talk about it. Well that’s us. When I saw other people just merrily having fun I wondered, what’s up with me, why can’t I also be happy and have fun like them? Well… How could I? How could anyone that went through the same…
If you see videos of children in orphanages (example 1, example 2) and how a lack of a stable loving caregiver affects them so severely, not only is it tragic but it also becomes clear. They are not as curious or playful or happy. They can’t focus on playfulness – they are either too scared, confused, agitated or silent and awkward. Their focus is externalized because they are searching for danger, and for love. They are in survival mode. And in survival mode you’re not going to feel like being playful. The normal kids are playing with each other, discovering the world, bonding. Not the traumatized ones. Those live in a dangerous, scary, confusing and lonely world. Orphanages are an extreme case, but we may experience somewhat less severe forms of neglect with less severe results. So instead of borderline, narcissistic or antisocial personality disorders, we may get “only” CPTSD.
Then when you cross the realm from emotional neglect to active abuse, i.e., when someone makes you doubt of your gut feeling, of your instincts and of your sanity with gaslighting, when someone mocks you – your tastes your opinions your way of being, criticizes you – the things you like how you do things, invalidates your feelings, manipulates, guilt trips you, makes you feel like you’re not good enough and everything you do is wrong or could be wrong and you get someone who ends up being disconnected from their emotions, living in a state of dissociation and inauthentic. The ones that didn’t end up being awkward just got better at faking. There’s no way around it. But there’s still a lot of awkwardness in faking, because faking is never truly a perfect copy. Those are the people we interact with where we feel there’s something off about them despite them seemingly being charming. And often abuse is subtle and without malice. In the end most people just attribute all of this to just being awkward, lacking of social skills or having some brain defect.
That confused, scared child in you is the key, because they are you, the authentic you, but the pain to feel the real emotions was too much, and dissociation occurred. And they’re there, wanting to be loved, heard and protected.