I’d probably describe myself as a former cycling enthusiast, It was a thing I did alot for good period of 2-3 year and then I found it harder and harder to motivate myself to get out on the bike. Though I have done a bit more recently. Scotland was the perfect setting, fabulous quiet roads, scenery and summer nights that were light until very late, and the odd glimpses of red kites in the sky, red squirrels on the roads, and did I mention scenery… that in bucketloads.
I think this was somewhere between Perth and Bankfoot, but memory has gone. It was only many short 20-30 mile routes and it had a ford near the top.
Anyway, one such route that was known was ‘The Beast’ – it involved over 100 miles, from Perth, Crieff, Aberfeldy, then up and over the back of loch Tay and over Ben lakers, Killin, Lochearnhead, Comrie, snd Crieff and back again. If you can see the little roads on this map you’ll see the route, what you don’t see on this map is the hills and climbs. A cafe a Bridge of Balgie supplied essential snacks at lunch, but the calories for them were gone after the Ben Lawers climb, and there was still 50 miles for me to get back.
Anyway, If my memory serves me well, I completed this route three times. It was a summer thing, and needed several 70+ rides in the preceding weeks to build up to it. I didnt ever try and better times on it.
The second time I completed it I had heard of a way of making myself cycle faster.
In the bike magazine I was reading, it suggested that to slow down the messages from your leg muscles that you are in pain, listen to music on a ride. So I did. I borrowed a tiny iPod shuffle (it was 2011) and headphones and so, on the ride I listened to music. I dont remember the music, though I think I tried to listen to lively music for exercising and tempo.
In effect, I was trying to numb the actual messages my body was trying to tell my brain.
So, what happened? It told me, eventually, for though I had maintained carbs, liquids, gels, food all day – it wasn’t enough, I did complete the ride. If I remember I had suffered some kind of cramp around the route or on the 20-30 miles back. But when I got back I collapsed, on the bed, body fully empty of any energy, shaking, weak and beyond movement or functioning.
Those messages had been screaming at me, and I wasn’t listening. Yes I responded at strategic stops for food/water – but to get to the end I was numbing.
I feel like this was such a picture of how I deal with emotions, feelings – whether happy, sad, joyful, angry – I numbed them. I just had to survive. I just had to find ways of ignoring them, distractions, soothing, being busy, new hobbies, shopping, cooking, not stopping, to notice – then working, studying, staying in my head. My head was my safe place – but I also filled it with noise, of news, of podcasts, of opinions, of anything.
Numbing the pain on a ride was just a metaphor for numbing the pain and emotions that I had been running from all of my life. Go faster, climb higher, ride further – dont stop to hear the messages, until..I …burn..out.
Fearing what would happen if I could actually feel. Fearing that and losing myself in the soothing of others, denying myself, numbing myself and not listening.
Why am I writing this today? – well because sometimes when im sitting, thinking, reading, or even processing my emotional reactions to some startling news today – an image, or a memory comes to mind – reminding me of where I was. I needed permission to feel emotions, and safety too, as well as the time to get to know and feel myself. Its funny how cycling 40 miles on bike rides was also part of escaping the childhood house.
I can see that in this photo taken in 2012, that I am lost, and there is no life in my eyes.
What I realised a few weeks ago, is that its far easier to ride a bike when it didnt need to do more than be a bike ride. I could relax and breathe and…enjoy being happy on a bike.
Me in 2022..emotions on display…. a 10 year older face..but with spark and life.
Its kind of obvious looking at these photos what numbing pain and emotion was doing to me, isn’t it?
Instead of numbing my emotions, i’m learning to listen to them, learning that I dont need to hold them, noticing anger, fear, anxiety, and responding sometimes by swearing, drawing, moving, writing, listening – also means that I can feel all the happy feelings too, the bliss of being loved, smiling and laughing with my fiancé. I had to learn, and be in a safe place to begin to feel my feelings. Until that point I was numbing them out, like a mad cyclist on a 100 mile ride in the middle of Scotland. Like I used to.
I think I must have been 7 or 8 years old when I got the lead role in the Primary school play, I was to take the part of the shop keeper. There was no selection process, other that my primary school teacher Mrs Knox (I think) choosing me for the role. I remember it well.
Little Bowden Primary school – its been updated a bit since 1985….
I have been reflecting on vulnerability recently, and also reading Brene Browns book ‘Braving the Wilderness’ in it she tells stories of her childhood. Maybe thats why this one comes to mind to me.
I played the shopkeeper – I was given the ‘adult’ role in the group, being the ‘grown up’ aged 7 or 8 – When everyone else in the class could be a toy, a doll, a vehicle, an action hero. When the shopkeeper (me) closed the door at 5pm, the toys (my friends in costumes) all came mysteriously to life.
They could play in front of people. I had 5 mins at the beginning of the performance and less than 2 mins at the end – the other 40 odd minutes was about the playful enjoyment of the toys that came to life and their adventures, self realisation of ‘life’ and what they discovered they could do – alive.
When they played, I was to one side, waiting for my moment – waiting for a moment to respond to their sneaky, secret playing; being the magical toys that came to life. I overlooked, whilst they played – even at age 7. I watched other people play and have fun.
I was to be the one who was shocked, betrayed, and look as If I was telling them off for it. What and whose role was I copying here I wonder?
The joke was on me. It was also on me, as my time arrived to respond I had to do a ‘shocked’ face, and what I expected was the audience, including my parents, to clap and cheer and even be with me in my faux astonishment – from what I remember, the audience thought it was funny and laughed.
It wasnt a ‘I tripped over on the stage’ moment when they laughed because I made a mistake – no – there was laughter in the audience when I did what I was supposed to do. The joke was on me – twice.
I had never really thought about my ‘on stage’ moments before, I was narrator in a few Christmas nativities or in the orchestra for others, I wonder now what was going on in me at that very young age.
I was good at reading and music, so they might have been easy reasons for my roles. But..
I remember now, 37 years on, being uncomfortable with being physically embarrassed, ie acting, dancing in public that sort of thing. It was as if I couldn’t see myself doing that movement and so I’d shy away from it.
Though I played sports and for teams, the same public physical disconnection occured, I was good in practice but for the team not so much. I couldn’t disconnect brain, thinking slowed down instinct…there was something about how I couldn’t connect my physical body, relax, let it move – so self conscious, so in my head.
And since the same age, probably 7 or 8 I hated action songs in church – and wherever possible hid behind playing the music for them.
There was something also about seeing life from a viewpoint that everyone else seems to have fun, or be able too, and from an early age I was cast as ‘responsible’ or narrator or musical prompt (of others fun) and until these last few days I hadn’t really realised it.
Fun was what other people had…
So it was better for me to grow up quickly and leave fun behind…do sensible things, like study and learn – I assessed that I was to do ‘responsible’ things.
At least, even from primary school that’s the role I played, so I became the facilitator of other people’s fun, on the edges, the sidelines, the owner of the shop, not the toy that came to life. The responsible one.
Theres something there about becoming a youth worker – facilitating other peoples fun, putting my own ‘fun’ to one side..
It’s amazing how some of the smallest things in our childhoods are seen in a new light, light at all, and I’m constantly reminded that being close to these things is an opportunity to heal them. Not that these were traumatic experienced, but ones where I look back on and reflect somewhat… Did these roles cast me in them – or were they what my teachers identified as my strengths? could easily be both.. ..
What about you? What school experiences did you have that might be signs or symbols for you?
‘You’re just so ungrateful – after all I’ve done for you’
In my previous piece I talked about how my abusive caregiver in the way in which they cooked food, often would create inedible food, that actually could be damaging to eat, making the food so uncomfortable, that expressing gratitude or thanks was an act of fakery.
But toxic gratefulness wasn’t just food.
To keep a narrative about being ‘poor’ and working for a faith, and gaining sympathy from people – sympathy they also rejected, my parents specialised in the distribution of valueless, token, ill thought through gifts.
For 50 years.
At the time the gifts stunned and often brought tears to us as children, as well as our cousins too. They were countless items over the years – Christmas and Birthdays nearly always were tinged with some level of crushing disappointment. The specific item ‘wanted’ was instead replaced by one that was ‘needed’ without any care or deliberation.
And as children we were then punished for not being grateful for them.
It didnt stay as children.
My wedding present from my parents, was their second hand car, that they then expected us to pay for. They didnt want to give something on the wedding list as it wasnt what they wanted to give, so they didnt actually give anything.
A fiat Uno , G reg, but black.. that was my first car.
A few years later they said they wanted to pay for a pushchair/buggy for my oldest child, but in going to pay for it, in Durham mother care, the parent asked about ‘keeping the receipt, in case anything doesn’t work out with the baby’.
How can you be grateful when you are stunned by the awfulness? And yet, what do you do? In a public place – when they then make a big deal of ‘giving’ the pushchair in front of the till.
Food has already been mentioned. Though Toxic gratefulness occurred regularly, when theres ‘gifts’ given of food. The open cardboard box of reduced items in the supermarket they scavenged, or were going to waste, that they ‘bring’ – and ‘give’ at the front door. Yeah great.
The problem with all of this, even now, is that I start to sound ‘ungrateful’
And that’s it.
When we dare criticise them for how they have behaved towards us in any way. Not only do they selectively not remember. (and they do this often)
They hide behind, ‘telling the truth ‘ – I was just telling the truth to the cashier..
Or
the ultimate
‘You’re just being ungrateful, I did lots of things… you just dont realise how difficult you were’
‘You’re just being ungrateful, you have no idea how much I sacrificed for you‘
Toxic gratefulness. Though there must be a different word for it. It what gets banded out when the abusive one feels under threat, when their generosity is questioned.
Oh its my fault that you cant be generous now is it?
or
‘You have too high expectations‘ – Well if having awareness and empathy and value for others is ‘too high an expectation’..then..
or..the classic
‘I cant change who I am‘ ; Agreed, but why are you threatened when your awful behaviour is pulled up?
Because. The truth that they aren’t actually generous would hurt if they could even see themselves. But the reality is, is that they’re in such a deluded reality that they can’t see themselves anyway, not beyond their ego, and how the world is there for their taking and getting.
So they give minimally or not at all, or with the emotional loading attached like breadcrumbs from the table, or to try and hoover you back into their orbit, by their pretence of ‘being nice’.
I cant remember the age, but I think it was about 8, the birthday party at my house. the one where I only asked for one thing on the table, I didnt want a cake. I wanted a Black Forest gateaux. (yes it was 1986) They were in a supermarket. They cost £3 probably. Do you think I got one?
guess again?
Instead I got a two layer chocolate sponge homemade with some cream and cherry pie filling on it. Glorioulsy announced in front of my friends. Her version.
Where do you go apart from hide, or want to cry. Our birthdays, were their show.
‘Youre too hard on your mum, my friends would say as they laughed the next day at school, that case tasted yum’ It had no taste.
I didnt want large birthdays or parties, because I didnt want them to be at them. Since 8 (ish) I avoided them.
That they created birthday scenarios, and invited themselves to them, for both my 18th and 40th, and made everything so uncomfortable , not respecting or listening to me, was another thing. Having said I didnt want something, they did it anyway, because they felt they had the ‘right to’ and I had to be ‘grateful’ for something I didnt want, and be violated.
I learned to tune out. Go into the survival zone. It was the only way to cope. It’s like a surreal moment when time goes so so slow, every breath takes 40 seconds and your desperate to need to go pee every 2 mins just to get out of there. Its awfulness upon awfulness. Yet smile, as you don’t want to appear grateful, or that this isnt walking on eggshells or all a game that they’re publicly doing. Let’s not be an ungrateful Trophy child.
Which, by the way, they were rude to the service staff, and I had to pay the tip, for the thing they wanted to do, for my birthday.
I really do sound ungrateful. Dont I.
But thats just the thing. Every scenario is insidious, uncomfortable, disrespectful, and example upon example of awful behaviour that wounds, hurts, manipulates, and abuses. To start listing them, makes me out to be bitter. So, where is this kind of thing exposed? Do those who suffer this kind of awfulness from their parents have to suffer in silence?
Emotional abuse is so difficult to quantify, as is narcissistic abuse.
The penny drops eventually.
The penny drops in that you get to realise over a lifetime, that when there are things that might be considered worth being grateful for, they do these things for a show ‘ look at us spoiling you now, dont ask for this again’ and then that gifts are rarely so, the penny drops that they struggle to be generous in gift giving, because they struggle to actually be nice at all. Gifts are to create toxic gratitude. A show for them.
Its not just the stick that abuses, but the absence of anything resembling warmth, empathy, generosity and kindness. Its a kind of emotional neglect.
So, when I point out the examples above, they are because these are the stories that are most memorable, but lets not get me started on the myriad of others, or the drip drip of the dementor like taking presence in between.
Surviving psychopathic parenting, left a lasting effect on me, that over the last year im only beginning to understand. Gratefulness was one of the moral armouries used as a weapon.
Its hard to write about gratefulness without being… well you know. So no wonder as a child its a weapon.
What about in your case? Is this something you have experience of?
Its only when I share the stories that I realise how awful it was. So thats why I share. So that you can start to see and heal too.
If you’re reading this and its beginning a chain of thoughts in your head about your parents, or partner, then do seek support and a therapist, especially someone who can understand emotional abuse and trauma. There are resources on emotionally immature and narcissistic parenting in the resources section above, do check them out too.
If the end to the abuse and pain was at the end of a tunnel made of bread, then I spent most of my first 40 years on this earth trying to eat my way towards that distance unreachable utopia.
When I say 40 years, I mean all 40 years.
It was said of me, by my abusive mother, that James will eat his weight every day, and his friend C (best friend from 0-11) would drink his way. My friend C drank so much juice, whilst I was eating everything, once I discovered solids.
I bet we all have a interesting relationship with food though dont we? Maybe spend a moment reflecting on yours..
I became the eater. Known for it.
In public I would be the first in the queue at the church fellowship teas – this food was so good, sandwiches, quick, pasta, pizza, deserts..oh my all the 1980’s deserts, cheesecakes, gateaux, jellies, laid on large tables that covered 2/3 of a length of the room, piled high.
I only had one motto on things like that. I didnt eat the food my mum had contributed.
But feast on everything else. It wasnt quite a competition with the contributions (probably all women , it was the 1980’s) , but many would pull out the stops.. and so it was good food, and I was known for being first in the queue, and first in the queue when everyone else had had.
Food, glorious food.
I know now that many of the situations, and the content of the food I grew up with was orientated with emotional trauma. Yes I was forced to eat what was on the plate – what ever it was, and some of it was highly questionable, liver, marrow, but the dinner table was also the place where that person dominated. Anything that was worth eating was worth eating fast, and getting out of there.
What I know now, is that food was a metaphor. My abusive mum was feeding the men in the house, whilst behind the scenes abusing the women, my sister, about food. The old trick- do one thing over here, abuse over there. Eat up – youre working men, or growing boys. She was feeding the men, as a cover up.
Problem was that food wasnt safe. Some of it at times barely edible. It was as if she couldn’t do the thing that other people did, like be predictable, she was a dangerous unpredictability when there was one ingredient missing, would get replaced by something weird.
In later years, after I left home, food got even worse. Or maybe I noticed it more.
So, what else did I do?
Ah yes, that tunnel of bread (though it could have been cereal too)
As soon as I discovered that glorious new meal ‘supper’ I was in for it big time.
Early occasions of supper were about 9.30pm on summer nights after id been playing football so late and starving, or after swimming club, that kind of thing.
But as I got older, and it got later, supper was a safe place too. The house and downstairs would be mine, space, and a few slices bread and late night comedy or sport on the TV to enjoy, to myself.
What I also did was disconnect from my body, That was the place of shame, that wasnt important, compared to my mind, my soul and spirit (and heart didnt get a look in), but if the body was the source of a kind of evil – then it didnt matter what did to it. So I piled it with food. Body health couldn’t happen, when body value was so low.
Was I comfort eating?
Sometimes, as it would be a quantity of bread that I didnt need to eat for physical reasons.
And that was pretty much the pattern that didnt change.
I wasnt ever subject to the horrors of actual toxic food ever again, not unless we went to my parents house, for even when we visited the food was always known to be a weird concoction, or actually something inedible, to make a point, to make a point of making everyone uncomfortable. I mean who makes a chicken soup and leaves all the bones in, crunched up by a mixer (though not fully) and serves this to their 4 and 6 year old grandchildren. Or undercooks pasta. They’ll just have to be grateful……
Childhood food included Prunes in Lime Jelly, chicken frikasee with the bones in, every meat with all the yucky fatty bits, liver…
Its no wonder I developed places of food eating that we’re safe.
Most of my late night eating pattern stayed the same, it was what I was used to. There would be bouts of me trying to give up bread, and trying to discipline myself on food, and strangely I did start this, in the last few years.
But I looked forward to having my own space, when everyone else had gone to bed, and I would raid the bread.
Bread
Toast
Jam
Marmite
Peanut Butter
Bananas
Honey
Sweet
All the above.
I think my record was 8 slices one night. it could have been 12, I just didnt stop.
Craving and filling emptiness.
Then I started to make my own bread. A sure sign of a pending emotional breakdown. Breadmaking.
The other thing I would do is raid the reduced aisle in the supermarket, especially when I was late at work, and was late at work often on late night detached Youthwork sessions, or on the way back from them. Id eat far far more junk that I needed to, over eating, and piling the weight on, one reduced wrap, doughnut, fruit smoothie, cake or cookie at a time. Secret over eating. Secret Comfort eating.
Until I stopped.
My 40th year I stopped, just about.
Or maybe I began to stop.
I wasnt looking forward to my 40th, intact, with abusive parents you dont look forward to any birthday, but I wasnt looking forward to my 40th.
But having downloaded the STRAVA app a few years previously I decided that I was going to do 40 Strava app exercises between Boxing Day and then my 40th that year, in late march. 90 days, 40 inputs of reasonable quality, a run, swim or bike. And I did. I also changed my eating pattern too, I had always cooked food, in fact I had done most of the home cooking for 10 years, but for three months I cooked lots of vegetable soups, lentils and though in so many ways may life wasnt in a good shape, what I was beginning to do was change some of the outer things. Mostly knowing that if I carried on I was only expanding, and doing so from an already getting larger shape at the time. I may have been deeply unhappy (or just used to surviving) but I was going to make an attempt to deal with the food thing.
And I at least started to.
I think I lost about 2 stone that year. I was probably slightly obsessed by my weight at the time, but it was one way of checking and disciplining myself. I was starting to take control of myself. Maybe even to start to care and love myself, which started physically.
What I didnt realise at the time was what I actually needed to do.
Or maybe, was about to happen that was going to unravel, and how food changed even more so.
Not many months later I’m staying in a friends house for 6 months, having left ‘my own fridge’ house, family and have no job.
But do I comfort eat in this situation? Nope.
Through this situation I’m beginning to realise that I’m starting a process of dealing with the inner me. If one of those onion layers is about pain, and emotional abuse, then as I reveal, and begin the work on this, and the roots, then I understand how and why I dealt with life, and food the way I did, and what I needed it for.
As I changed on the inside, other things changed on the outside.
My relationship with food changed, as my relationship with myself changed.
For 40 years I coped with life, survived sometimes daily on the knowledge that late night bread was waiting for me and a safe place.
Is it because I’m in my 40’s that I now see differently. I dont think so. I needed to breakdown and start to see, heal. I needed the disruption of clearer space, a retreat, safety. I needed to start the emotional work, therapy and see the monsters differently, and see myself who had unnecessarily carried guilt, shame and responsibility for everything and everyone.
Am I ‘over it’ – Now that I’m in a place of safety, a place of knowing and valuing myself more, a place where I have a better body image, where previously I didnt matter, my body didnt matter, and I was grasping for something with food that food could never do. How do I feel about food now?
On one hand it took me 5 months of living in my own space to realise that ‘I was cooking for one’ – and I enjoy cooking, following recipes, trying new things, and part of valuing myself has been to value what I eat, and value making good healthy food for myself. I like experimenting with new recipes, growing food that I can eat, and also in becoming vegetarian over two years ago, have developed other new cooking habits.
Whether its African bean stew or Mexican Avocado eggs.. food is a thing of value and beauty, because thats what I deserve.
Do I still eat bread? Yes.. because its nice.
What about food and you? I can see how my relationship with food changed as I developed a different relationship with myself, my emotions, when I saw and understood myself and my life differently. As the inside changed, so did the outside. It wasnt the other way around, and thats probably the lie never told by the diet industry. Curing emotional comfort eating with a disconnected body, was not going to be solved on a diet alone- though it was a bit of a start.
What about you and food? Other men, has food, been a part of your journey? and in what way?
One of the hardest things for me about rebuilding after trauma is to do it.
Its not a linear thing, but I find it fascinating that what I needed in the midst of dealing the traumatic situations was a calm cool head, the oft said ‘breathe’ and as Van Der Kolk writes about, to use breathing to begin to bring the intellect into play, when in an emotionally traumatic experience.
If part of the rebuild after emotional trauma is to be in a safe place, a calm one, then its fascinating that the rebuild requires a active shift.
Research suggests that creative practices (Cappachione, 1988) and physical practices (Van Der Kolk 2014) are keys to the re-make post trauma.
So its a doing thing.
I have to participate in my own trauma rebuilding.
Id rather learn the theory.
Im used to creating spaces to help others do this
Im used to watching from the sidelines
I watch, while others dance.
Watching, rather than being active, Hobbies that have included transporting, birdwatching, all stemming from a need to be observant of others.
Yet I still find ‘doing’ recovery from trauma practices difficult, because it involves parts of me that have been inhibited, restricted, shamed into non being.
‘We dont do that sort of thing’ (Dance),
‘Thats a bit weird and of the devil’ (Yoga),
‘Dont make a mess , we dont want to clutter up the kitchen with these drawings’ (Art and Creativity), dont be silly, dont be messy.
Its like to trying to de-concentrate and just do.
Id rather write a blog about why I find doing trauma remaking practices difficult than pick up a wax crayon. But its so that I didnt have to write this line, that the last week I have been picking up the wax crayons.
Thats the thing though, I have to let my head stop. Yet its what I needed to survive.
I need to just do. Let my body do.
I may have read about theory of trauma, but unless its a tick box exercise, Id avoid the exercises in even the list of resources in the menu above.
It was only in front of my therapist that I drew a picture.
Draw something on a sheet of paper. No – I cant draw
Go on – No – why, its pointless
Do it….No its silly
Its like learning to swear and get it out. Let feelings loose
Use crayons and scribble, let it happen…
Theres so many reasons why I find participating in my own healing difficult.
So many excuses not to, because theres other peoples to think of
But also, so used to being the observer to other peoples existence, the soother of others pain, concentrating to stay safe, being told not to feel, easily distracted by the safety of helping others, and having my brain engaged in debates, or the empathy and response patterns of social media.
It means me being selfish with my time. Investing in myself as I reparent myself.
My remaking after trauma and through it involved my participation.
Just doing it. Like there Nike Advert.
Im glad my therapist recommended this book: ‘Recovery of your inner child’ by Lucio Cappachione to me. Because, although it contains some writing, it also has many exercises to actually do. Things I had to do. Myself.
Things I had to do and feel. Do and respond to.
Im not sure its possible to theorise my way out of trauma. Or to watch others. Or just to talk about it.
Remaking after trauma is a participation thing, that I have to do.
What about you? Are you in that mindset struggle to ‘do’ the practices of self care/healing? Do you have strategies, things you tell yourself? Do share below:
James Ballantyne 