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The self-healing
of the brain
by Sieglinde W. Alexander
A few weeks after I
finished over 800 handwritten pages of childhood memory, my first
comprehension of how my abused childhood has influenced me, I finally was able
to feel. When I say understand I mean finally connected I found words for what
I feel. For over 43 years I reacted instinctively without knowing why. My
action and reaction was mechanically.
Through my writing I
removed the blockage that had shutdown my brain at the time of abuse, and
froze the memory in time and space. The moment I became conscious I observed
how my brain self generated sleeked healing after years of repressing pain.
My husband out of the
house most often the day, he was still working for state of California, I
could divide my time between writing and remembering. Slowly and not aware of
I retrieved from daily activities. First I was not aware that I’ve been
disinterested in my everyday life.
About three months
later my handwritten pages were typed and revised them again shortened
chapters and take out material I found not very enlightened at the moment.
Finally, in 1993, single scenes of each memory were lined up and the first
draft of my manuscript was ready. A newly found friend help me with the
translation from German to English.
Every time I worked on
the manuscript the scenes repeated like in a movie, and me playing the key
part. When alone I felt hopeless, I struggled with the pain, and start
sleeping sometimes for hours throughout the day. I had to switch quickly when
my present life had a need on me, after all I was newly merit.
Being trained in
childhood to perform, act normal, fulfill my duties,
on a daily base I ignored the symptoms and neglected the longing for peace and
quiet. As the childhood ingrained pattern
commanded me, I continued with what my daily chores and ignored the
overwhelming feeling to be left alone. I began to visualize the house with a
ten foot wall around the property far outside away from people and noise.
When the pain became
unbearable throughout the day I locked all doors and retrieved in my bed. I
had no problem falling asleep although I was woken up shortly after by my own
screaming. This was beginning of vivid nightmares related to my childhood
which continued often in a weakening stage.
It was a Friday
evening when my husband came home from work and shortly after dinner left
again for choir rehearsal when I felt for the first time the enormous power my
brain had over my body. I only remember from this time on that when Alex, my
husband, left at 6:00 PM I stood in the kitchen behind the counter. He told me
later that I was still standing at the same place when he returned at eleven
PM . Concerned he brought me upstairs to the bedroom.
My brain, like a dam,
had released emotions poisoned by early
trauma. Thoughts and emotion flow joined like water into the finally opened
channels and the vital energy like water nourished the emotionless dessert in
my brain. Now, the progressive energy awakens more and different areas of
thinking and feeling and in a vital movement my brain connected the loose
ends. The right and the left hemisphere finally connected. For some reason I
know that was a self healing process, although the memory was overwhelming and
the related pain of abuse seams unbearable, but it was not.
My already trauma
overloaded brain had shut down, but not to die. Instead this incredible organ
regenerate, defragmented und defrosted the layers of years old unconnected
feelings and pain. I saw in lively pictures how loose ends of neurons
searching and found finally their matching plug-in and came alive. With every
connection they made automatically another gate opened to new channels with
many more desolate areas of lifeless were brain cells withering like plants in
the desert.
The feeling of
becoming whole came like a message and the wish that it will not stop until my
mental desert was blooming again, like I know it was before the abuse
destroyed it.
In this cosmic brain
movement of recovering I’ve found validation for original feelings, past and
present reality, and saw the origin of the wounds and how they were inflicted
by abuse. I felt the fear of terror, the pain of helplessness, while I
realized it is a part of a whole picture, a whole person,- me.
I don’t remember
anything about what has happen on this weekend. All I know Monday I found
myself sitting at the psychologists office hearing my husband telling the
therapist that I would not like to eat nor like to leave the bed. When I asked
her, my husband said, if she would like to get up my answer was, “let me be,
let me die here.” I understood his concern but I was very upset that he had
interrupted a very important healing process that was going on in my brain on
over the weekend. Now weaken, feeling mentally and physically over powered by
the two people sitting in the same room. Defenseless I accepted their
solutions to see right away a psychiatrist for my own good and protection. I
didn’t need this kind of help, I didn’t won’t their interpretation of healing,
but I was not asked. It was better for me to become NORMAL again, so I was
told, otherwise I would hurt myself. What an irony I thought. It was not me
who is hurting my self, it was years of childhood abuse who damaged my life
and now my healing is prevented by antidepressant. Remembering the
psychologist words, “I would feel saver if she would take this medication,” as
he told my husband ignoring my presents, as if I was not competent. Yes he had
done his duty, saved his position and released himself from further
responsibility by drugging me, instead of helping me healing. This was the
year another part of my life began this time in emotional numbness inflicted
by antidepressants and violently interrupted the self healing process in my
brain. I decided in 1999 to feel again and get of the poison medication that
altered my life in another way.
Frequent active dreams
have replaced now the intense experience of this recovery and healing. I never
again had such close encounter and inside of a phenomenal. What would have
happened if the healing process would have not been interrupted, -we don’t
know. Sure the possibility of a beginning schizophrenia was given at the time.
Nevertheless was it not my life and my desission how I live it. Which power
authorizes another human being to influence or dictate how I must continue a
live?
What is the perception
of normal? How and why can Society regulate how a human must act, life, think
and feel. Was it the regulation that empowering the medical profession and
allows them to feel above human race, powerful and superior enough to admit
medication with out regarding the individual’s needs and wish?
Was it not the little
knowledge we possess that limits us and our understanding how healing could
take place if we allow it to happen, instead of condition humans into our
limitation? Is it not a deep fear of failure, that we interrupt a healing
process we know very little of? Was it not the illness in reality this
psychologist has saved instead of me, and hindered my recovery from a
traumatized past?
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Haunting Shadows from the Past
