The Frozen Scream

There are memories of abuse that I can go back to but there’s also something darker and deeper that I always felt present in me and could never quite get to. An ancient shadow from before stories, before memories, from a more primitive time of development that I couldn’t quite grasp. A deep nameless terror that kept me on my toes all my life. I could see signs of it, indicators and symptoms of something that happened, which I may never fully understand but which has been quietly shaping me all along.

Part 1 - The Black Octopus

About a year ago, I committed to facing the bottom of the abyss and finding out what’s there. I put on all my chakra bracelets and my cozy green sweater. I took a heroic dose of mushrooms. I sat down on my PEMF mat. Turned on the mood lightning. Turned off the music. Laid down and closed my eyes and there it was. The core of the blackness of darkness.

The Encounter

I could feel it physically: a black octopus sitting on my left shoulder, reaching its tentacles into my head through my neck, into my chest, wrapping around my heart, around my bones, all the way through the spine and the hips into the legs. Holding on desperately, fiercely, sucking on my left cheek, pulling on my fascia, contorting my body into scoliosis. Still there after so many years of being denied, pushed aside, ignored.

I wasn’t sure whether to fight it, try to exorcize it, or to attempt to embrace it and hold it but I was there for it, whatever that would mean. Tired of avoidance. Tired of games. Ready to be devoured, ready to fall apart. Unencumbered by fear. Finally, ready to listen to whatever it had to say.

The Message

And it was ready for me. It sucked me right in. Under the surface into the blackness, into the darkness. I gasped for air, terrified. I let out a scream, which got suffocated out of me into a moan. I felt it all. Immense pain. Greater than anything I let myself feel before. Physical, emotional, mental. Sheer terror. Like a shrieking scream of a baby. I felt the helplessness, the desperation, the begging for help.

It was saying I’m in so much pain. I don’t know what to do. And there was a need. Deep, unfulfilled. To be held, to be told it’s okay. I got you. You are safe. You’ll be taken care of. Soothed. Loved.

The Holding

I had a choice to turn back. To take a breath. To get back into the light. To push the darkness aside, as my nervous system was reeling in agony. And I didn’t. I held firm. I held gentle. I said I am here for you. You are welcome here. You are welcome to all of me. I tried to visualize opening every cell in my body to this pain. Holding it, hearing it, as it was tearing me apart.

And then I realized that I don’t have to lose myself to it. That I can control how much I can accept. That I could hold it gently without letting it burn me up. And I felt like I could actually take quite a lot of it. I wanted to take a lot of it. I felt that if I really opened up to it fully I could hold all of it. With care and gentleness and firmness. And it spread all over my body and it thinned out. And it’s not on my shoulder any more. It’s everywhere. I’m not ashamed of wearing my screaming inner child on the outside or on the inside.

The Aftermath

I wrote the following lines in my journal afterwards:

“It’s been a year of shattering and letting the pieces fall to the ground. Of letting go of what I couldn’t hold any longer. Of acceptance and capitulation. Now I’m ready to pick the pieces back up. I’m ready for integration, connection and love.

I feel capable of healing. I know I can be full and complete. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. I know I have a lot to give and I’m open to receive.”

Part 2 - The Screaming Toddler

About a half a year after this, I fell in love. I thought this was it — the one I’ve been waiting for, the twin flame, the one that will make it right. But it wasn’t, it turned out to be just another projection of the cravings and the unmet needs I’ve been carrying around forever. Another avoidant soul that reminded me of my mother and made me want to chase, compete and fight for something I could never get as a child.

The Descent into Restlessness

The desire was so strong, the rejection so devastating, the ambiguity that followed so confusing and destabilizing. I could not sleep that night. And I could not sleep the next one. And the next. I didn’t sleep a full night for over two months. I would go to bed and wake up after a couple of hours, heart racing, mind spinning.

The current pain reminding me of countless situations in my past relationships that carried the same charge. I was not sleeping, just watching my past play out in front of me like a dream, like a movie, spiraling backwards through my high school crushes, my lonely childhood days, towards a younger and younger age. All the disappointment, the rejection, the abandonment, the abuse. Night after night.

Recovery of Memory

The memories I’ve forgotten about tucked away unprocessed, unfelt, unintegrated because the capacity hadn’t been there for it before. But not now, now I had the capacity to feel them fully, to gain the insights and the learnings and to process and to let them go. Every night was intoxicating with new understanding, the dots connecting, the meaning emerging. I was recovering memories that I had lost and dissociated from before, like the time my dad hit me over the back of my head and my head hit the edge of the table and slit the skin open and the blood covered my face and my body, when I was three.

The Fire

The pain of it all was colossal. Cranked up to 11 after years of dissociation, landing on my fledgling new sensitivity like being chained to a fire, like staring at the sun, like holding a hurricane inside my skin. I wanted it. I could handle it. I took it.

During the same time I was studying to be an AI engineer, a whole new skillset for me. I would study for 30 minutes. Then lay down on my bed and cry for 10 minutes. Then study for 30 minutes. Then cry on my bed for 10 minutes again. On a timer. Over and over again. And I got the job. So. Much. Capacity.

The Bottom

Until one night, I was up like the one before, and the mind kept spinning ADHD machine gun thoughts. Only this time they weren’t new insights, just the same things looping around in a closed circle. And I wanted to know what’s underneath that. Body and mind exhausted after two months of sleeplessness and trauma processing. I begged for it to stop. I sang, I chanted, I did breath work, I meditated, I walked around, I spoke my chakra affirmations. I dug my heals in and asked what the fuck is going on.

The Frozen Scream

I knew I was a failure to thrive as a 3 month old baby, I knew that it held back my physical and mental development: I was always the smallest kid in the class, my puberty came way late. I knew of my dad’s comment of how frustrating I was as a baby, constantly crying and not sleeping, he said he wanted to smash me into the wall. I’m familiar with that desire, I’ve stayed up many nights trying to calm down my children too. But I have never hit my children and he has a lot. What do I make of this?

I tried so hard to go beneath the thoughts. I scanned my body, feeling the tension everywhere, the elevated blood pressure (200/120), the heart racing, the shallow breath. And tried to name the feeling that I’m experiencing physically. What is this thing I can’t recognize? And suddenly the answer was clear. It was TERROR. My body was remembering terror even though my mind was drawing a blank. From a time before stories, words and memories, before prefrontal cortex came online. The terror of a baby too afraid to scream. Frozen in dorsal vagal shutdown.

The core wound. The frozen scream that’s always been there. Making me restless and desperate, trapping me in denial, avoidance, pushing me to distract and dissociate, into constant action, productivity, inability to stop and face what’s there. Leading me into abuse, trauma and the same situations of neglect and abandonment that I feared the most. That hurt the most.

The Reparenting

I wanted to hold that baby, I wanted hear him scream. I wanted to hold him gently and whisper softly: you are safe now, I got you, there is nothing more to fear, I won’t let anyone hurt you again. I will not hurt you again.

I took a stuffy that my daughter gave me, and cradled it like it was the baby. And I cried tears of sympathy and tears of relief. Tears of knowing that I made it. That this is bottom of the abyss. Nothing more left to fear.

I can make this baby giggle.