Healing Attachment Wounds: Internal Family Systems

I have always had attachment issues, from a very very young age. My mother says that I absolutely could not be alone as a child and I constantly needed to have someone with me, playing with me. I was extremely jealous when my sister was born because my parents no longer had as much time to spend with me. As I got older, I would repeatedly cling to one single friend and depend on that person for a sense of security. We would become attached at the hip and I would feel abandoned if that person became closer with someone else. As I got even older, this turned into needing a relationship all the time in order to feel whole. It’s been a lifelong journey of needing others, attaching to others….even if those people were terrible for me and caused me mental anguish. Apparently the mental anguish was better than being alone. 

After my divorce 4 years ago, my attachment issues got exponentially worse. I felt so devastated and alone that I grasped onto anything I could get when it came to human connection. I was addicted to finding someone that would fix my broken heart, but no one was able to do that. No one could do that but ME.

After a series of toxic relationships and mental health breakdowns, I finally took charge and decided I just couldnt live that way any longer. I began seeing a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with a variety of things and got me on appropriate medication. This began to help, but I still felt a strong need for others and depended on them for my sense of well being. 

My mother has been in therapy for many many years and recommended that I try something called IFS (Internal Family Systems). At this point I was willing to try anything and by a twist of fate, an incredible woman in Moab provided that method of therapy and she also took my insurance, which was one of the biggest hurdles for me in getting the help that I needed. I’ve been going for about 6 months now and I am absolutely astounded at the change within me. 

IFS addresses issues from your childhood, specific events that shape and form who you are. You go back in time, in a bit of a meditative state, and you talk to your former self. You learn more about that person and why they felt the way they felt. You learn about why you may have developed specific patterns, and how to nurture all of the different parts of yourself. It’s self love, acceptance and understanding of why you have become who you are today. 

After addressing the events that shaped me, I can't explain how different I feel. For the first time in my life, I feel like I truly do not need a relationship. I don't want or need someone else in my space all the time. I like me. I am looking out for me. I look in the mirror and I love me. I've been going on dates but I leave feeling overwhelmed and just want to be alone. Alone! It’s actually one of the wildest experiences, to change so drastically that I’m not quite sure how to process it yet. It’s both confusion and pure joy at the same time. 

This post is not only for me to express what I’ve been through, but hopefully to let others know that it is possible to heal. It takes work, the desire to change and the hope that it’ll happen. I am beside myself with gratitude for how far I have come, for the practitioners who have helped me and for my own willingness and strength to get through it all. Mental health is something that we all struggle with in some way or another and is part of the human condition. I’ve decided to let go of any shame associated with that, and you should too. We’re all in this together and I’m rooting for anyone who is on this journey. You can do this. So much love!! 💜

Things won't change until you learn the lesson

When it's time for you to learn a specific lesson, the universe will provide you with every opportunity to master it. I never really understood this concept. When the same circumstances would happen over and over again in my life, I would get angry, complain, and act like a victim. I would feel like nothing was going right for me and that I had no control over this. Somehow, over the past year, I've realized that until we master a specific lesson, the circumstances will not stop. It is our changed behavior that matters.

My most recent lesson has been standing up for myself and not allowing others to treat me poorly. So, the universe has provided me with countless people and situations where I can practice my responses. I will not name names because that is absolutely not the point here at all; the point is how I have evolved and how freaking proud I am of myself.

In the past, I would have let the following things slide. I would have accepted the treatment and continued to allow these people to exist within my life for fear of upsetting them. With practice, I am now able to release people while standing up for how I deserve to be treated. All of these things have happened within the past year and here is how I responded:

1) Someone close to me judged me, talked behind my back and was not there for me when I was in the deepest, darkest depression of my life; someone that I have always been there for during their darkest times. They compared my difficult circumstances to their own, claiming theirs had been worse and that I was overreacting to my situation. I had been accepting this kind of treatment from them for a very long time. Instead of continuing to accept it, I released them from my life.

2) Someone I was dating and living with last year was verbally and emotionally abusing me. In the past, I would have continued to suffer because I didn't believe I deserved better. I would have also stayed, believing that I could fix the person and help them to understand their behavior and grow. This time, I packed my things, left, and saved myself from any more pain.

3) The most long term partner in my life told someone that was interested in dating me that I am "just your typical Moab girl with nothing going on". When I heard about this comment, it was like a stab to the heart. So, I confronted them about it and released them from my life.

4) I have been cat sitting for someone for the past few months. One of the cats that this person had rescued had a 3rd degree burn on its neck. The owner was cutting socks to cover the burn but the socks did not actually cover it, so the cat was scratching the wound down to the muscle. I told the owner I would be happy to bandage the cat in a different way so that it could heal and he said that was fine. Somehow, he began to get upset with me (I think it was his ego stepping in) and started to treat me poorly because I wasn't using the socks that he had cut. He told me that I would have to purchase supplies myself to take care of the burn. He began sending passive aggressive messages and treating me like I was doing something wrong by helping the cat. I told him that I genuinely cared for the cat, but that didn't want to be talked to that way and that he could find a new cat sitter.

4) Someone that I have known for a long time was interested in dating me and pursued me for a month and a half, from a distance, while he was traveling. He texted me morning and night, bought me presents, talked about future plans, started to call me his girlfriend and even sent me money to get my passport so that I could travel with him. When he got back from his travels and things were going well, 5 days in he told me he wasn't sure if he wanted a relationship due to his travels, that he needed time to think and that he was having a mid-life crisis. In the past I would have fought for the relationship and tried to prove my worth. Instead, I released him from my life and wished him well.

6) Someone that I know recently decided to tell me that I am fatter than I used to be. In the past, I would have been heartbroken and felt like crap about myself. Now, I ignored it and next time I see this person I am going to tell them how inappropriate it is to talk about other people's bodies. Also, it didn't emotionally affect me. I love my body.

7) A customer who had come into the restaurant drunk decided to tip me zero dollars the other day (after I heard him tell his wife that he had tipped me $12). I walked up to the table and asked if he had meant to leave me nothing and if there was something I could have done better. He said "well yeah, we never saw you" in slurred speech. The wife was stunned and later came up to me with money, apologizing. In the past, I would have ignored this and sulked about it. Instead, I said something.

These were ALL tests.....were the people involved happy with me? Absolutely not. But, I think I passed with flying colors.

How Barb Higgins Changed My Life

    

    My sophomore year of high school, one of my friends convinced me to join the cross country team. I truly don’t know how this happened because I was always a sprinter and had no business running long distances; maybe she told me that the coach was really cool or something. Anyway, I decided to join to see how it went. It turned out, the coach was cool. Like, really cool. And 20 years later, we are still friends.

    Two weeks into my long distance running career, I decided I was going to quit. It was too hard. Too painful, my legs were cramping, I couldn't breath, we had to run in the rain….and I was just too weak. I remember the moment that I walked up to her to tell her I was quitting and she looked at me with a straight face and said “No, you’re not” and just walked away. I stood there, a bit stunned, and realized I wasn’t getting out of this easily. I proceeded to make up excuses about why I couldn’t run, one of which was period cramps. And even if it were true and she believed me, she still made me run. If it was raining, we ran. If it was sleeting, we ran. If we complained, we ran more. The season went on and I started to get the hang of it. She made it fun and I eventually ended up going from a 30 minute 5K to 24 minute 5K, which felt like leaps and bounds for me. The best memories that I have from high school are from that team, and it was all because of Barb’s passion. She didn’t just help us create fun memories, she taught us what we were capable of. She taught me not to quit, to trust myself, my body and my mind. I attribute a lot of my athletic success to Barb’s influence and I will always, always be grateful for that.

    The thing about Barb is that despite her positive attitude and her visible passion for life, it has not been an easy ride for her. In 2016 she lost her daughter Molly to an undiagnosed pediatric brain tumor that is something I cannot even begin to imagine experiencing. On top of that, shortly after she was diagnosed with 3 brain tumors of her own and had to undergo brain surgery. But knowing Barb, here she is….not only living her life day by day as best as she can, but she’s competing in crossfit competitions at age 58. She started her own podcast . And even more amazing, last year at age 57 she gave birth to a baby boy, Jack. She is one of the oldest women to give birth in this country.

    If you take anything from this post, please let it be that you can get through anything. ANYTHING. This woman is a testament to that and I will forever be grateful that I was able to have her as a mentor at such a young age. She not only made my experience on the cross country team fun, but she showed me what perseverance was. What confidence was. What passion was. And without that, I’m not sure where I would be. Thank you, Barb. 444

    Also, she was in an incredible commercial filmed in Moab that you must watch. It brings me to tears:

Healing Inner Wounds

    I’ve been having a really hard month as many of you know. And to those of you who have gone out of your way to check on me, I am honestly filled with gratitude and love and I cannot express how much it has helped me through all of the insanity.

    Because I believe vulnerability is strength and only connects us all to one another, I’ve chosen to share what I’ve been going through. This isn’t easy to share, but due to covert verbal and psychological abuse by my boyfriend that I was not truly cognizant of (and honestly I'm not even sure he was cognizant of), I had a panic attack that left me uncontrollably hyperventilating for 25 minutes. I proceeded to experience a full blown mental breakdown where I made some very poor decisions that could have been catastrophic. Despite my brainwashed desire to stick around in the relationship, I chose to break up with him to preserve my sanity and well being, which led me to move back to NH (this is all after giving up my apartment and moving all of my stuff to Massachusetts only a few months ago). In the midst of all of this, I started a new job and had to travel to a different place for a week to train for it by myself while in an extremely fragile mental state. All I wanted was to be under the covers somewhere safe. I was also in my sisters wedding, which was emotionally overwhelming given my circumstances. The fact I am still here right now with a smile on my face is actually quite shocking given that I was pushed to the end of a rapidly fraying rope.

    All of that aside, the whole point of this post right now is not about pity or complaining about everything that happened, because life dishes these things out to everyone and I am not special or unique: it’s about the fact that I am actually okay today. I have been doing absolutely everything in my power to get through this and so, I’m slowly getting there.

    On my long commutes to Massachusetts I’m listening to an incredible self-healing podcast by The Holistic Psychologist that has been truly eye opening and is helping me access parts of my mind that I haven’t accessed before. I’ve been working with a psychiatrist to manage my mental health and found out I’ve been misdiagnosed my entire life; this is amazing because now I can take steps to heal in a way that will actually work for me. I’ve been journaling. I’ve been breathing and meditating. I’ve continued to stay sober from alcohol and have joined various support groups. I’ve been talking with friends and family and started a daily gratitude journal. All I can say is that when you chose to face yourself, take a long hard look in the mirror and actually do the work, you start to see results. I’m nowhere near where I want to be yet, but I’m slowly but surely moving in that direction. I wake up in the morning feeling a sense of peace that hasn’t been there before, and that’s progress.

    I think that I actually, truly, hit rock bottom for the first time in my life and it forced me to face all of the things I’ve been running from for decades. There’s clearly a reason that I attracted and stayed with someone who was treating me in a way that was less than what I deserve; it’s time to heal my inner wounds so that I can first and foremost, love myself unconditionally without the need for anyone else to tell me that I’m worthy. I am finding that each day that passes, the more I trust myself and the more I feel comfortable in my own company. I have so much hope regarding my healing and my future and I hope that by sharing this, there can be hope for anyone else struggling with any type of abuse or mental health issues. Honestly this is the most vulnerable I have been yet in all of the writing I have shared over the years, so thank you for reading it.

Would I do it all again?

    Some of you may know that I have been dealing with extreme neck and back pain for the past 10 years; pain that I have become pretty good at hiding when I needed to. This pain has come along with a plethora of other daily symptoms like migraines, fatigue, body pain, hot flashes, blurry vision, ocd, adhd and depression, dizziness, achy muscles/joints and extreme brain fog. Needless to say, that list is not all encompassing (and who knows if they are related to the neck pain). But, regardless, it has been an absolutely wild journey that cannot be truly explained in one blog post. It's been a journey that has taken a toll on me both physically and mentally as well as affected those that are close to me. Countless doctors and specialists, ER visits, tests, medications, and even surgery... nothing ever seemed to turn up or truly fix the problem. Not to mention the financial burden it has had on me and my family over a decade.

    The past 10 years has also consisted of me trying to hide the fact that I wasn't well by: continuing to go to work even though I was in extreme pain, feeling terrible when I had to call out and wondering if my bosses actually believed me, making excuses to my friends as to why I couldn't go and do something because I really just didn't want to explain that my unexplained illness was flaring up, feeling stupid because of the brain fog I was fighting to see through, and driving my ex husband and my mother insane with my constant search for answers. The past 10 years has also been full of anxiety and depression due to the uncertainty and impact of my body dysfunction.

    My neck pain has recently gotten significantly worse so I decided to go and see a chiropractor that specializes in the cervical spine (after an old friend of mine mentioned something called "cervical instability"....thank you to Aluna). It turns out that my C1 and C2 are out of alignment. I also have disc degeneration, osteoarthritis, bone spurs and a potential herniated disc for which they have ordered an MRI. All of these things have clearly stemmed from my participation and passion for sports, having multiple falls as well as one very bad fall directly onto my neck back in 2011.

    Honestly, I do feel a bit validated right now after hearing all of this information. It's the "SEE! I told you so!" feeling; the "I haven't been making this up just for attention" feeling. But then there's also the fear...you know, that nagging little feeling that there's no fix, the "what if I need surgery?" question or the worry that it's not the main cause of all my symptoms and I will be left searching for the rest of my days. Thankfully, despite those fears, it's the overwhelming sense of relief and gratitude that I want to hold onto right now. The gratitude to my parents for sticking by me all this time and for supporting me through it all, and the gratitude to my absolutely incredible partner for falling in love with me despite all of my pain.

    The picture below is really how I'm feeling right now; sitting in silence and looking out at all of the things I've done in my 36 years of life. The sports that I played starting at age 7, my adventurous spirit that led me to rock climbing and highlining; all of the things that brought me to life but that in turn contributed to my injuries and where I sit now. I could have chosen a more conventional life and avoided a lot of this. And so the question remains: would I do it all again? As Garth Brooks sings, I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance.