Emotional suppression linked to childhood and tapes?
(If any of this is too confusing or sounds weird remember this. I almost never talk about this, I have maybe shared 10% of everything, I am just lost and sad right now so my spelling and grammar can probably be confusing and I just want to share a piece of me which is hidden to everyone around me. And sorry that it’s long :))
I don’t know why I am typing this, because I feel like I have never been able to put all of this into words, but here goes I guess. First of all English is not my first language, so sorry for any spelling mistakes or whatever. I’ve wanted to share this here since I started the tapes around one year ago, because I noticed it was hurting my progress. Now 1 year later I feel ready to share it here, just some random Sunday night. I don’t expect replies or anything, I just have to get this out there and if anyone has any insight I’m open to it. Also if any mod thinks this isn’t tape related I get that and I can post it elsewhere. Put because it has hurt my progress with the tapes and is the reason I’m even typing this I want to post it here.
I have 3 brothers, one older two younger, they are very important for this story. When I was 9 (March 2015) my parents decided to move to Sweden after growing up in the Netherlands. Both my parents are Dutch with some Indonesian blood from my dad’s side. My father had not had a job for 4 years and my parents wanted a total reset. Sweden was their choice because of the nature and because my father had built a connection there with another man let’s call him Peter. Peter rented out a small house to us where we begin our lives in a small town of around 2000 people. Everything was scary to me, new language, new school, new everything. After half a year of living in Sweden my parents divorced. I won’t go into the details but it wasn’t a good separation and my father moved out. It affected me deeply. I became more quiet and kept to myself.
One year after the separation everything was okay. Parents were fighting about money and other stuff but mostly hidden from us kids. My father had decided to move closer to where my mom lived who we were staying with most of the time. We saw my father each weekend but that changed when he moved closer to us. We started living one week at my mom’s, then on Sunday we went to my dad and stayed there for the week, then back again to my mom and so on. You get it, that was the new system. My father had met a new girlfriend who moved in with him. Which means she became our new stepmother.
I was 10 almost 11 when this was my living situation and is were things got bad for me. I am very close to my mother, always have been, and started missing her a lot when I was at my dad for the week. I also noticed that my youngest brother, was having a tough time with being away from a parent for a whole week. Things got worse when my stepmother started accusing my mother (who she had not even met btw) of sending me to spy on her relationship with us. She then made a new rule for when we were at my father’s for the week. That we were not allowed to speak dutch and had to speak Swedish because “we lived there now” or something like that. This upset all of us kids of course. We had only lived there for a year, almost two and were used to speaking dutch at home, our mother tongue.
I just noticed there is to much to share and will just skip through some parts and talk about the biggest problem I was having, (when at my fathers) around the time I was 11-16 years old. My youngest brother. He expresses his emotions a lot. As a kid of like 5-6 years old this is normal. He could get very angry but also very quickly switch. But he was mostly sad due to the separation and everything. My father didn’t know how to handle him. He just got mad at my him whenever my youngest brother just needed love and patience. It became so bad that my father and stepmother would argue and scream at my 5 year old brother. That is where I came in. I started to go against my father and stepmother every time they got mad at my brother. What I can remember is that I usually took over their frustration to me instead of my brother, to protect him. During this time and for the coming like 4-5 years my youngest brother would need me even more. He often could not sleep, was scared of the dark and needed someone with him to be able to get sleepy. He slept in the same bed as my other younger brother, but he always fell asleep very quickly. On the weekends my father and stepmother went to bed at around 10-12 pm. Tucking in my youngest brother with an iPad and then going to sleep. He could not put himself to bed, he was fucking 5 years old. So every night on the weekends at around 12-3am he would come into me and my older brother’s room. Every time I went with him, put on some childhood stories and lay next to him, holding him or his hand until he fell asleep. I loved doing this because I knew I was the only one with the patience for it. Much more happened but that was the consistent thing, I did every weekend, at my father’s for years. One might ask, “if you shared a room with your older brother, why didn’t he help?”. He was awake every time my brother came to our room because he couldn’t sleep. But that is the next big thing that has created this emotional suppression. My older brother. But that is a story which is just as long so I’ll save that for another time.
I learned early on that I had to suppress my anger, sadness and everything, to stay strong for my youngest brother, older brother and mother. Why I had to stay strong for them are other stories, which have almost the same impact as the energy I put into helping my youngest brother, but I feel like this is already to long so I can share that to if you are interested, some other time. I couldn’t cry at my grandfathers funeral, who I was very close with. I kept it all in. In fact I kept all my sadness and anger in. All the shit that happened to me and my brothers. My ex girlfriend, who is the next chapter of the whole story about my emotional suppression. Because she kept me in my cycle, even when I was 17-18, of taking care of others and suppressing my own feeling, because she, well needed it, and I was so used to it so I did.
Anyway I love the tapes and know that releasing emotions from my traumatised nervous system is important to be able to go further with the tapes. Last night I was practising focus 10 without the tapes and noticed that my hands felt like gloves. It felt like my real hands (idk what to call it, I am not experienced enough to just say “yeah that was my second body or out of body feeling” or whatever) were stuck in my body’s hands. Scared to let go like I’ve always been. Scared to face the past, my emotions everything. I have tried talking to my mother and a spiritual life coach and everything. Nothing has helped. I feel like the thing that would help is expressing my anger and sadness to my father. Who has become more relaxed now and devoted that evil women. But I am scared.
Remember this is not the whole story and thank you if you have read this far. It means everything to me.
I love this sub and am thankful for all the tips and interesting things I’ve read on here. I hope you have a good day and remember you are strong and powerful.