Give to others what you most desire for yourself

Polarities vs Childhood Trauma A few articles ago we saw how common opinion it is to maintain that the codependent adult was a neglected, ignored child, kept emotionally distant, above all from his parents. In the worst of the cases, he felt treated as an object to use, show off, or be ashamed of if it doesn't work well. I would add that that child has often perceived that he has been in some modified and damaged or that they have constantly attacked him. The left side of Amanda's face had become completely paralyzed, and she couldn't move. I rushed her to the emergency room at Phoenix Children's Hospital, where they took her in for immediate scans on her head. Nowadays, I am a designated hand-holder to be there for moms and dads in times like this. But on that day, I could barely keep my hands from shaking, waiting for the results. That day--exactly three months after she had been placed in remission--doctors discovered a cancerous brain mass behind her ear. Apparently, one of the leukemia treatments she had received had the potential to cause secondary cancers, but we didn't know that. We had no idea. We sat there in shock as they told us Amanda had cancer? We had to tell her, making it the worst day of our lives, only second to her passing. I couldn't do it, so we had to bring other people in to help me share this information. Seven days later, she knew her biological mother's name. She learned that Effie had been the salutatorian of her high school class. She learned that Effie had been working as a nurse and was unmarried when she got pregnant with Mary Anna in 1963. And she learned that, over the course of their lives, she and Effie had been at a wedding and a funeral together without realizing it. She also learned that Effie was now living in Charleston. When Mary Anna told her husband, he suggested that they call his uncle Donald, a child psychologist in Charleston, and ask if he knew her.

And so he called Donald, Mary Anna said of her husband, and he said, `Donald, have you ever heard of a nurse by the name of Effie? Mary Anna met Effie a few weeks later in Charleston. They had a cordial lunch. Mary Anna assured her she had led a good life. As we have discussed, the ego-mind seems to limit who you are as a kind of person. It will give you a limited identity, role, or some other temporary label. Fear-based thoughts like, I can't do it come from the ego-mind, as do thoughts like He or she doesn't love me. Why do I say these are fear-based thoughts? Well, if the words I am afraid. I am afraid that he or she doesn't love me. If that fear were to occur, could you love it with attention without validating the fear? Could you follow the fear underneath the thought? As it feels right to you, and when you feel prepared to do so, I encourage you to try it. HIDDEN IN SENSATION Unfortunately, this is often true, knowing it helps us a lot not only to understand codependency but also narcissism. The bottom of the truth is indisputable, but we should get into more detail about the reality of each of us, we will certainly find different degrees of intensity in all this. The fact remains that if we look back into our past, at times we will find ourselves fully mirrored in that childish reality of aggression and violence, other times it will seem an exaggerated reality in which we will not be able to identify ourselves. Why do I feel that my parents did nothing terrible but I am still here with my big codependency? Have they not done it or am I unable to realize it? Not less important, recognizing our trauma sometimes automatically led us to afflict us even more, it introduces an element of error into us.

Looking for trauma and not recognizing it is not a much better feeling. I understand that he was mistreated so much as a child, he has the right to be codependent but I have not been mistreated yet I am codependent! How do you get out of a picture like this? How can you not feel wrong inside? It's amazing that when you're a mom, the core of a family, somehow you just do what you need to do. God provides strength and courage for moments like this that you don't even know you have, but even though I always believed in God, I surely needed professional assistance in that moment. A song I used to play, which I don't remember the name of, said, When I'm weak, you're strong. You better be, Amanda, I thought, because I'm not. I guess I was a good pretender because that's all I could do at the time. When you look back, you wonder how did you even do it? How were you able to function? That's one of those unspoken miracles I first learned about in church as a young girl, and I suppose my faith continued to carry me through, even to face the challenge of that day, as I sat there in that hospital, barely able to breathe. We prepared for a bone marrow transplant, which meant a whole new regimen of chemo and radiation and finding a donor. Fortunately, one of Amanda's sisters was a perfect match, and the surgical procedure was scheduled. Effie told her about her two sons. She also explained that she put Mary Anna up for adoption because she thought she'd have a better life. Afterward, the two women parted ways and never saw each other again. The meeting helped Mary Anna gain a new perspective on herself and on her relationship with her own three daughters. You can only imagine, Mary Anna said, what Effie was feeling as she was expecting a baby, knowing she can't keep it, making a decision to give a child away. How much of my personality--of my temperament--was affected by my in utero experience?

She wondered if spending her first seventeen days on earth in a foster home, with no consistent and strong bond with a caregiver, contributed to her loneliness and depression. She thought about the hard and courageous decision Effie made to give her up so she could lead a better life. She realized that it was a decision she could never have made. Motherhood was much on Mary Anna's mind in the booth. Sometimes a distressing thought or fear won't verbalize itself at all. Instead, and in the place of a thought, a subtle to very intense, physical, gut response, or uncomfortable emotion may be the only felt indicator. Either way, these uncomfortable emotions or physical reactions are evidence. They are evidence of a false limitation on you, the soul. How can you tell this? Because the soul is inherently unlimited. In contrast to the suffering imposed by the ego-mind, you, as the liberated soul, are perfectly comfortable and content. You are open to hearing and receiving any and all thoughts and fears. The ego-mind only auditions for the role of the soul. What happens when you do not cast the ego-mind auditioning for the role of you? The number of codependents on the planet is huge. We are hundreds of millions. The probabilities that all codependents' parents have all been violent manipulators and all have been psychopaths are low. If this were the case, it would have been easy for us to identify the reason for our actions, there would be no reason to investigate this because it would be before everyone's eyes, very clear to anyone. The truth is that sometimes when we think of our childhood we have very unpleasant moments in mind but often most of our memories are more or less in line with the reality of many other parents that we have known throughout our lives. Parents with strengths and weaknesses, sometimes, more strengths than flaws, other times more flaws than strengths, but finally imperfect human beings like everyone else.

This is why I consider so important to go beyond the most common explanation that we can find in most self-help articles, to get out of the famous psychological concept of childhood trauma, to go beyond the relationship between codependent and narcissist, to go further and understand reality in a wider and more useful photograph for us. Staying in the level of knowledge of childhood trauma theory serves us to understand but is not so useful for healing. Childhood trauma cannot be changed, it has happened in the past, we can understand it, we can forgive it but we cannot change it. While our identity can be changed, we can change it forever, and indeed, we can choose to change it several times if we wish. That's when we found out that Amanda was dying, when we were in the hospital getting the tests done. They were putting in a second port, so Amanda was in surgery and Leah was at the cardiologist, as both departments were readying the girls for the transplant. The doctors calmly explained the science and the numbers, but they were a blur to me. Apparently, when a particular cancer cell count is at . But anything higher means you can't. This was after Amanda had already been through severe radiation and chemo and we thought we were on track by bringing her cell count all the way down to make a transplant possible. They told us she was good to go, and then she wasn't. It all happened so fast. Lorraine, we're so sorry, but Amanda has cancer in more than 80 percent of her body. The last chemo we gave her actually mutated the cells to grow instead of going down. She and her husband were about to become empty nesters. One of their daughters was in pharmacy school. Another was heading to law school. And the youngest was getting ready to graduate from high school. For a woman who defined her identity primarily in terms of being a mother--in large part because she never knew her own biological mother--letting go of her children was a deeply painful process. What does it mean to you to be a mom?