Feelings – Feelings are subjective experiences that can be positive or negative, and can be influenced by sensations, thoughts, images, or situations. Feelings can also involve emotional or moral sensitivity. — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Everyone has feelings. They are part of our human nature. We can’t avoid them because they are with us no matter what we do, who we meet, and where we go. They are our emotional outlet when we are affected by something. They are how we learn. Feelings are all around us, in other people, and in situations that influence us in a positive or negative way.

Pertinent to the CPTSD Foundation blog, a survivor of sexual abuse has a lot of feelings that have been repressed and buried. Survivors’ emotional wounds tether them to their past. To be able to heal from childhood abuse, survivors must acknowledge their feelings first. There is no other way to begin the healing process, which is not as simple as just “remembering a feeling” out of the blue and dealing with it. So, where do you start? How do you begin to heal when those feelings won’t resurface easily because they have been pushed down and forgotten for decades? Your Complex PTSD brain has made you “forget” because you were too young to understand and handle what was happening to you. The trauma was too much for your young mind to process.

You may have always known that you were abused as a child, or you might be a survivor, like me, who was living in denial. I didn’t want to remember my past. It was too painful, and I was not ready nor willing to begin to even try going down into my dark past. I wanted to forget. I tried hard to start living again and keep busy, not feeling anything. I was fine without my feelings. My brain, in contrast, had other ideas.

Feelings from traumatic events can be like a toddler having a tantrum of epic proportions in the middle of the mall. You cannot walk away and are forced to stop and “feel.”

Once a survivor becomes an adult and life begins to look up again, you start relaxing. Maybe you start breathing for yourself for the first time, so to speak. As an adult, the law gives you the free will to make your own decisions. It is overwhelming for someone who has never had free will to be living free. Then once your body and mind decide that you are in a good place and feel safe, those “feelings” from your childhood will start resurfacing. It will happen whether you want it to or not. You will start experiencing triggers from years, maybe even decades ago that suddenly crash into your newfound freedom. Those feelings can wreak havoc in your now well-adjusted and happy adult mind. That is what happened to me: my feelings resurfaced from a lifetime ago that I thought I had buried firmly in my past. Unprocessed memories must come out to be dealt with. These trauma memories need to be time-stamped, reorganized, and stored in the correct part of the brain. Until a survivor deals with these unprocessed memories, they will keep returning. It can be the most embarrassing and inconvenient time to flashback to a traumatic event. Feelings have no appointment in your busy calendar, and they will not phone you to make an appointment. No, your feelings just appear whenever demanding all of your time in that moment. Feelings from traumatic events can be like a toddler having a tantrum of epic proportions in the middle of the mall. You cannot walk away and are forced to stop and “feel.”

I started remembering things in my late teens. To begin, I had nightmares and flashes of darkness and uncomfortable painful feelings. They evoked a deep fear inside me, and I couldn’t make sense of any of it. It was like my mind was making soup of someone else’s life or from a horror movie. There was no way these feelings were my own. I was in denial. Feelings, whether they provoke negative or positive emotions, need some kind of outlet while we process them. The first step is to take a leap of faith and realize that these feelings are real. These traumatic events happened, and they happened to you. It was not a story from a book you read or a movie you saw. These feelings were from your life, from a long time ago.

I’ve written about coping strategies from triggers before in my posts for the CPTSD Foundation, but I’ve never explored our relationship with the arts and music as a way of therapy. Let me show you how you can have a go at creating without even thinking about it.

Try to close your eyes and allow your body to relax. Focus on your breathing as your body relinquishes the day’s stressors from your body. Breathe in and out a few times until you are relaxed. What do you feel? If you can’t think of an answer, then maybe you could draw, paint, play, or sing it? Whatever those feelings show you in that moment, it might be time to let them out and feel them? How about giving it a try?

I have always had a love for music and the creative side. I am a victim of child abuse and trauma. When I had no voice, I expressed myself through art and music. You don’t have to be an expert at drawing or creating paintings, you can just experience it through your feelings. Let the art flow through you and create what comes into your mind. 

How are those feelings making you feel today?

 If drawing and painting are not your thing, then how about listening to music or trying to write? When I was a selective mute as a child, I spoke through my own comic pictures and then eventually added words to my pictures. In addition, I often sang to myself or hummed tunes, and I liked to drum my hands on my legs when I sat on my feet. As an adult, my love for the arts and music has followed me. Once I started remembering feelings from my painful past, I picked up my flute or my guitar and let the music flow through my fingers. I sometimes played for hours until my fingers got blisters, but I felt better. The music helped me deal with those dark memories of my past until I could make sense of them. I could then start writing my feelings in my journal. Once I had got to this point in my healing, I realized I needed to get professional help to help me deal with my past.

I still play music today and I write every single day. It is important to acknowledge your feelings no matter what they are. No feeling is wrong, they just are. We need our feelings to process the world around us, and when we do, we feel better. My therapist encourages me to use music and writing to heal in between sessions. I adapt my music to suit the mood I am in. Sometimes, music and art are not enough because I need more. That is when I turn to sports like running. The beat of the music in my earbuds and pounding my feet on the ground feel great after a hard day at work.

What do you think is your best self-regulating therapy to keep your feelings in check? Are you like me because you turn to music, arts, and sports? Or, do you find yourself doing something else to process emotions? Whatever you do and wherever you are, be kind to yourself. Remember that you do matter and feelings come and go.

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Elizabeth Woods

Elizabeth Woods grew up in a world of brutal sex offenders, murderers, and inconceivably neglectful adults. She suffered sexual abuse throughout her childhood and witnessed unspeakable events. Elizabeth survived in an environment where most people would not. She is now able to help other survivors heal from trauma through her writing and blogs. Elizabeth is passionate about spreading awareness of what it is like to survive after trauma. There is always hope.

Elizabeth is the author of several books and has written her memoir, telling her childhood story: The Sex-Offender’s Daughter: A True Story of Survival Against All Odds, available on Amazon Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Offenders-Daughter-Story-Survival-Against-ebook/dp/B0BBSV97VF/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=0pSdX&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=134-9913214-5397651&pd_rd_wg=MPpMc&pd_rd_r=d375a758-2d9b-4c6e-9aee-52c1f5a4e6f7&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk

Elizabeth is also the author of “Living with Complex PTSD” and the Cedar’s Port Fiction series: “Saving Joshua”, “Protecting Sarah”, “Guarding Noah” and “Bringing Back Faith” available here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQRNST2B?binding=kindle_edition&qid=1711883073&sr=8-2&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin