Do You Love Me?
By Jesse B. Donahue © 2023
I could suffer no longer; I had to seek a cure for my inner child’s living the symbiotic, enmeshed feelings of my mother’s abandonment issue (always unconscious to her and me). I asked her one day, “Do you love me?” I couldn’t handle my inner agony of alienation any longer. What was I seeking at eight to ten years old? What had I expected her response to be? I was frightened, somehow knowing this was forbidden behavior..
Accept me.
\She turned to me and said, or rather yelled, “How dare you ask me that I am your mother!” She was existentially wounded and consumed in the now out-in-the-open, before hidden, repressed core trauma. Why didn’t she take me in her arms and comfort me, as her child was clearly in need of love? That is what I was starving for: love me. Hold me… heal me. LOVE. Accept me.
Later in the early evening, my father came to my bedroom door and said, “You have no idea how badly you hurt your mother.” Then he just turned and walked away. Where did you go, Dad? You could have helped me to cope with my agony, too, then and there. So, I continued to suffer in silence as C-PTSD further reinforced a stronghold within me.
To this day, when I see someone emotionally angered, upset, or hurt toward me regarding something I said or did, I get a devastating gut punch of fear in my psyche. I become consumed in the symbiotic experience of my being responsible for their inner emotional damage and upset; Brutal, toxic shame infiltrates from my core and leaves me in agony. That is a good, I think, definition of co-dependency, where I become responsible for how you feel and, to the point of hysteria, try to fix you. Essentially, metaphorically, I ask any person I hurt, “Do you love me?” I need to get your forgiveness, to be plugged in again frantically, enmeshed as it was when you were not outwardly emotionally suffering. It is my responsibility for your inner feeling of Ok’ness. If you are emotionally hurt, I am responsible, and I live with inner torture for having made you emotionally hurt. Such power I have over others! Such damage was done to a young child from the undealt with, denied, and repressed generational trauma.
This is my core unbearable state, of now an autonomic (involuntary functioning, like breathing) emotional reaction to an interpersonal upset or conflict in a social interaction with another. It is like a psychic umbilical cord from my soul to another’s, where when they feel hurt… I feel hurt, guilty, shamed, and potentially in crisis. Psychic Enmeshment. My inner core is rejection. A developed state of RSD, Rejection Sensitivity ‘Dysphoria’ (unbearable). Did my mother abandon me, emotionally neglect me, or was I rejected by her (a really good question)? This paper certainly talks of the “Black Sheep” in the family, as there was a Golden Child, too. She never left me, but certainly, emotionally, regarding my attachment needs, feeling loved and welcomed as I am, she was absent from my needs being met. And I was shamed for daring to ask the obvious question a love-starved little boy would ask, “Mom, do you love me?” The family narrative is that I was loved… I beg to differ.
After the above essay, “Do You Love Me?,” this would be a good place to lay out my understanding of RSD: “Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.” (I believe the original naming of this condition was termed Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, but my assumption is Sensitive seemed a better sounding term… as it did for me.) RSD, that state of “Dysphoria” experienced with the feelings of rejection by some, was the culprit or answer I had searched for a lifetime. “What is wrong with me?” Dysphoria is a term specifically chosen to express an experience that is nearly impossible to describe. Its meaning is “unbearable” or an experience that borders on intolerable.
The feeling or experience of rejection is something we all have to deal with in some respect when growing up. But for some of us, this feeling of rejection by others can take on an entirely different inner reality. Rejection can be emotionally painful, upsetting, or certainly unpleasant for most, but for one who has dysregulated emotions, the experience of rejection can consume an individual to the point of a nearly unbearable emotional nightmare. Dysphoria: the near-unbearable, definition-resistant experience of severe psychic, emotional suffering. RSD lives as a potential symptom within those whose emotions are dysregulated. The ADHD community, as well as those on the autism spectrum, and individuals who suffer from depressive conditions whose emotions are dysregulated, are potential candidates for RSD.
Emotional dysregulation. Oddly enough, for the many years of therapy that I sought and engaged in, I hadn’t the remotest clue I was emotionally dysregulated until recently. I had some emotional issues, but no terminology to explain my unexplained hyper-arousal and feelings. Nor was it ever mentioned to me. I was repressed and numbed out, apparently with an emotional system shut down, blocked from open, free-flowing expression.
RSD, arising from untold numbers (multitudes of thousands) of rejection experiences growing up (internalized), is a product of hyper-aroused dysregulated emotions regurgitating the emotional pain lived and accumulated throughout one’s life. RSD sufferers may find relief in a limited number of medicines. I will leave the conversation about meds, as well as diagnosing, up to you and your doctor. Unfortunately, like CPTSD, RSD is not an “official diagnosis” (at least not in the DSM). I have read that psychotherapy may have a limited effect on the impact of RSD. That has been my personal experience that talk therapy is somewhat ineffective for true RSD.
Dr. William Dodson, an ADHD expert, speaks eloquently on the condition of RSD on YouTube and other professional journals.
Photo by Christopher Ott on Unsplash
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*Copyright notice. All writings copyrighted and registered with the Library of Congress.
Therapy has helped improve my self-understanding as well as writing skills through journaling and essays. Although this writing journey began in later years, it has led to 70+ essays oriented around issues with CPTSD – a trauma disorder.
My writings, which include therapy notes, poems, novels (unpublished), and essays, are all a part of my ongoing personal therapy. Initially, the essays, intended for my therapist’s eyes only, began with exposing my thoughts, fears, and feelings, or the lack of, onto paper, a journal of therapy notes. Then, with fear overcome and via a personal decision, I shared them with the readers. *My thanks to Paul Michael Marinello, the editor of the CPTSD Foundation. My intent is to encourage readers to recognize traits in themselves and find (if desired) a therapist when they are willing and ready for that step. For some of us, it can be a long and challenging process, over extensive periods, to awaken to the unconscious issues that cause us to act out in life. Our behavior may seem like dancing to a buried, invisible cause we cannot directly see or confront. It is my sincere hope that my insights will assist the reader in the process toward reaching a deeper self-understanding.
Bringing the unconscious out into the light of self-awareness, understanding, and acceptance fosters self-love and the process of change.
Jesse B. Donahue
*Type a keyword into the foundations search engine. (Jesse, Heart, Personal, Twelve, Bugaboo, etc.) Or, Type Jesse Donahue at The CPTSD Foundation on a Google search.
Published with the CPTSD foundation. Top 10 essays in order of number of views:
- The Smoldering Embers of C-PTSD
- The Heart of the Matter
- Learned Helplessness
- Personal Honor, Integrity, Dignity, Honesty
- Twelve Days Without Coffee
- The Hidden Bugaboo
- Cast Out of Eden by Toxic Shame
- Codependency – Overriding the Monster of Self-Hate
- The Emptiness of Yesterday
- Surfing the Light Through the Darkness
My spine tensed up when I read the first paragraphs, the core of the wound.
So familiar. Do we had the same parents?
And yes,I can agree, talk therapy on its own doesn’t work, you need to address and connect to the body first. At least for me I needed to learn to bring my self down from dissociation and survival state.
Hi Juste. My first response to hearing of your spine tensing up was one of empathy. I felt sorry and saddened that you could relate, as if from having the same parents. The bonding wounds… your entire comment was worth saving and distinctly worth sharing. I’m glad you did it here.
I hope more people dare to share their experience and understanding of what this essay tries to convey and expose here in the comments. If you’d like to share more briefly on this topic, that would be most welcome and I would respond. I think this is an important experience, perhaps brushed off and shoved under the carpet for many people.
Appreciatively,
Jesse
This put words to my struggle. In my family it was not ok to criticize Dad. Mom wouldn’t stand for it – and our religious cult taught that not only was I disrespecting Dad, I was disrespecting God – both of whom loved me “unconditionally.” Mom was easily hurt by words or behavior or even things she assumed I thought. I was taught I was a social embarrassment and she made it so that she was my only friend. Thus my world – don’t name the sadistic behavior of Dad as “bad” and don’t embarrass Mom or hurt her feelings or hide anything from her. Because those behaviors are not loving. I spent my life needing a demonstration (that I couldn’t accept) of love.
“Hi Jessica. So much of what you wrote deeply resonates with me. The message “Do You Love Me” is generally not crisply stated or heard when listening to survivors. You and I are not alone, but one might think so from the silence… the silence in the unspoken words – “Do you Love Me?”
I was brought to tears reading your childhood experience. Sincerely, I had thought for most of my life that I was alone, an enigma, somehow unrelatable to others’ feelings and experiences. I was raised in Catholicism, like your mentioning of a cult… perhaps not so different. I could go on about each thing you said, like one has to walk on eggshells around mom’s fragile feelings, and I completely relate to being a social embarrassment to my mother. You are “definitely” not alone, and you and I are now better enlightened.
Thank you for sharing that; it was important to me to hear your words.
Jesse