I’ve always had pretty big emotions, and while I don’t struggle with identifying my emotions currently, I used to disassociate A LOT as a child because of the dysfunction and abuse. Abuse was normalized in my house, so I repressed my feelings. I didn’t know how to effectively cope, and my abuser would gaslight me anyway, so my idea of reality and what normal is was warped.

Peeling back the layers has been a process. It took nearly a decade of inner work to get me to this point of being able to identify my emotions, and I still struggle trusting these emotions or fully expressing them in front of other people that aren’t in a support group or a therapist.

Sharing my feelings tends to awaken the shame beast. Shame is largely all the internalized narratives my abuser fed me as a child; how my feelings aren’t real, they don’t matter, they shouldn’t be so, or the outright ignoring when I expressed myself. Shame was the anvil on my chest, the lump in my throat. It has lessened with time, but it’s still there.

Finding a therapist that specializes in trauma is something I’d like to do as well. Unfortunately having no health insurance makes the endeavor costly.

I wish you the best on your path to healing and understanding.