The Anatomy of Unworthiness - Part 2

His eyes were blackened with demonic rage, his face suffused beet red and his body tense with the task of thrashing the leather strap with as much force as he could muster. In that moment, she looked into the eyes of unleashed fury and hatred. Directed at her.

It was night but not late. She had wanted to watch a tv show, a documentary that captured her young interest and that she was keen to see. All the other kids from school were going to watch it and their teacher had even suggested that they do. They were going to discuss it in class the next day. Many years later she could not even remember what the documentary was about, yet it was very important to her at the time.

She had the reputation in her family of being fiercely independent, quick to anger and stubborn as a mule. She had to be. That night she ignored the ‘no’ from her father and persisted in her requests, whining her wants in a way that ignited her father’s pent-up frustrations in one explosive eruption. That night was worse than the other times.

She lay on her child’s bed, her favourite pink flannelette nighty pulled up to her hips, exposing her bare legs that received the bulk of the beating. He went on and on with a seemingly maniacal force. She did not even try to fight back; he was much bigger and stronger than she.

Her mother remained silent in a nearby room and did not come to her aid. She never did. In fact, it was usually the other way around, with the girl often making desperate yet futile attempts to protect her mother from her father’s onslaughts and attacks of vitriol.

That night she ignored the usual cues that would habitually have made her fade into the background or disappear when her father drank his beers. She later lamented that she should have known better.

She thought to herself that she was too old to treated that way; as though it would somehow have been more acceptable had she been younger. The humiliation and loss of dignity and innocence stung much more than any physical pain. The shock of the attack enfolded her.

Following the beating, her father would sulk with her for days, subjecting her to the all too familiar ‘silent treatment’, as though she was guilty of some unspeakable crime and her childish misdemeanours beyond contempt. He would not even look at her, in obeyance to the injunction for her to ‘not exist’.

She would go to school the next day, pretending that nothing had happened, making sure that she hid the welts on her legs and the pain and despair in her heart. She got used to putting on that mask that all was well, belying her inner turmoil. It became a lifelong habit of hers.

That night, her spirit was all but crushed and, more than the other times, it embedded within her a deep core shame and a belief in her unworthiness that seemed to penetrate down to her very soul. The flame of that feisty, enthusiastic girl was all but extinguished that night. Yet a flicker remained.

That event started her life-long pattern of feeling invisible and her cynical disregard for, and distrust of, authority. Her shame coloured all of her interactions with others as well as her lack of trust in herself. She tried to compensate by being the conscientious hard worker and obsequious people-pleaser, hoping that it might obscure that shame and her pernicious resentment. She buried her emotional pain under layers of superficial achievements and academic pursuits; looking for love and validation in all the wrong places.

She tried to hide her dysregulated, hypervigilant nervous system under a faux-persona of calm, like a duck paddling frenetically under the tranquil water. Her body carried the trauma despite her mind’s attempts to sooth. She knew in her heart that her efforts to appear normal probably fooled no-one.

As an adult, she realised that her father was trying to numb his own considerable unprocessed pain, for which she had become the scapegoat and repository. She later knew that traumatised people did not know how to parent well and that hurt people, hurt people; though her child self knew nothing of those things.

She was well aware that no-one escapes some trauma as that is life on planet Earth; though obviously some experience considerably more than others. She knew that those born into a feathered nest, or who had even ‘good enough parenting’, would never really understand the likes of her. She knew that she was marked and different to most.

Over the years she did much work to heal her early life experiences and learnt a great deal in the process, enabling her to assist others who endured similar circumstances. She had learnt that traumatic and challenging life events came with inherent wisdom lessons that could potentially help one to develop an inner strength, robust resilience and tender compassion for self and others.

However, despite all, the stain of what she later referred to as her ‘grubby little childhood’, forever remained.

Dr Catherine Fyans is a retired medical practitioner, trauma-informed therapist, mind-body consultant and the author of ‘The Wounding of Health Care: From Fragmentation to Integration’