How I went from being caged in abuse to living with mindful freedom.
My memory is a bit fuzzy. In 2008, I was heavily medicated and experiencing anywhere from 5-20 seizures in a 24-hour period. This carried on for over two years.
I remember this moment of clarity, or at least the most important fragment of this moment because it changed my life. It was 2010, and I was sitting in the office with my psychiatrist. He was doing a case study on me for his last year of residency. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy was the name of the game to help me work through C-PTSD (complex post traumatic stress disorder) from childhood dissociative amnesia. The compounded trauma of current and childhood events induced psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. My body was scared and shut down and my brain was hurt because my physical and emotional body had been deeply hurt. I was desperate to be loved, to be cared for, to be heard and seen. I felt undeniably unworthy of love and hated myself with such a deep distaste that it is shocking to recount for you right now. Every emotion, fear, or perceived threat to my wellness triggered me into a state of seizures.
What Dr. H. pointed out for me in a very long drawn-out way, was that I was living in my pain from childhood instead of living in my current day as an adult. I struggled to see the difference though and found the lines of past and present blurry. Every time my body interpreted a 'perceived' threat to emotional or physical safety, my nervous system would physically act out the fear by inducing a parasympathetic shutdown response. Enter dissociative seizure hell.
What Dr. H. pointed out for me was that I was living in my pain from childhood instead of living in my current day as an adult. I struggled to see the difference though and found the lines of past and present blurry.
I didn’t know that I could learn a different way of thinking. I was not taught how to process pain and suffering. I was not taught how to love myself and what that actually meant. I was not taught how to separate my past from my present moment. Feelings up until that point, were to be avoided at all costs, because feelings hurt, and that hurt was physically painful for me.
The awareness of my perceived identity could have broken me. I often think of how I might have ended up, or not. What this awareness did instead was create room for growth and understanding of my own self. The beginnings of self forgiveness and compassion for what had happened to me. I started to understand that all of the labels and stories I had taken ownership of weren’t mine, but projection of other people's pain; and here I was perpetuating it.
I was told, incessantly, who I was and who I wasn’t and I took it as my identity. I was physically and sexually abused, neglected, and emotionally fragmented by the actions of other people. The perceived rejection of my parents and peers was adopted as my identity and in my mind, my existence was unequivocally worthless.
To my surprise out of all the players in my life, I was my worst abuser.
I was storytelling their projected lies as my truth.
Here’s the thing, we don't know we’re in a cage of abuse until we’re shown freedom. The door to my cage was unlocked the entire time, but I was conditioned to believe the other side of the door would kill me. Turns out, the noise of the feelings on the other side, was scarier than the actual feelings. No, I was not greeted by unicorns and rainbows and all was magically healed. But I was greeted with my own self. An unedited raw, vulnerable, and courageous version that leads me with grace through my days now.
Here’s the thing, we don't know we’re in a cage of abuse until we’re shown freedom. The door to my cage was unlocked the entire time, but I was conditioned to believe the other side of the door would kill me.
12 years later, I'm teaching others not only how to turn the handle, but how to break down the f*cking door and live outside of their caged pain. Your life, how you live, how you feel, and how you think, starts and ends with you. If you’re ready to show up for yourself you don’t have to do it alone.
I say, screw the door handle, I’ll be there with a f*cking sledgehammer. It’ll be a party fitted for transformation and mindful freedom. I’d like to say ‘trust me’, but what I really want is for you to trust yourself.
Let’s start there.
With love,
Lea Morrison
Trauma-Informed Coach, Healer & Medical Intuitive
Empowering survivors through trauma-informed regulation and care
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