{"id":48857,"date":"2023-05-16T11:06:18","date_gmt":"2023-05-16T11:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=48857"},"modified":"2023-05-16T11:06:23","modified_gmt":"2023-05-16T11:06:23","slug":"escaping-the-childhood-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2023\/05\/16\/escaping-the-childhood-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Escaping the childhood prison."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was brought up in absolute chaos.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mom suffered from severe Borderline Personality Disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was also a narcissist, addicted to alcohol, and very often she was extremely depressed and very anxious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She absolutely hated life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My dad was an alcoholic too, and he also was a raving narcissist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never felt safe and had no clue what the meaning of love was, because everything in our household was conditional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rules of life changed constantly, which was extremely confusing and scary, and the way my parents treated me created a vast sense of worthlessness in me that is still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like my parents, I became an addict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like my parents, I can be viciously envious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like my parents, I have crazy mood swings (although not nearly as many as I used to have).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like my parents, I tend to feel weirdly superior as a coping mechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like my parents, I’ve been disappointed in almost everything, including myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like my parents, I can be incredibly black-and-white, judgmental, critical, and harsh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there’s so much more shit that happens inside of me, and so much that I never really acknowledged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the many therapists I encountered in my life heard the stories about my childhood, they were absolutely stunned by the severity of the madness, but I always responded in a very nonchalant way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Yeah my mom and dad were pretty fucked up, but that was just the way it was, and I’m fine, haha!’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only I’m not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not that I believe I’m fully broken and fucked up beyond repair, but I can be very dark and wildly disturbed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As long as I can remember I’ve had periods of deep sorrow and anxiety, loneliness, and depression, topped off with a sense of crippling uselessness, and I still have them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially after a period of raving enthusiasm I can seriously collapse and get lost in exhaustion, victimhood, and the idea that I am not good at anything, or even an intrinsically bad person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never really talked about it a lot because it felt like a weakness, something I shouldn’t be having as a ‘very spiritual person’ or a ‘successful transformational coach’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I realize now that I don’t need to hide that side of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My childhood was an absolute fucking mess, every day I’m reminded of that fact because of the gazillion habits and traits I developed, and sometimes it’s all still quite overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s a part of me as a human, something I have to live with, something I need to accept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve survived my parents, and I survived hundreds of long periods where I felt absolutely horrible and hopeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now and again it still happens, sometimes I still fall into that dreadful no man’s land, that painful fog, and I’m owning that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t see it as something being wrong with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not running away from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s how my life has unfolded, it’s the result of how I learned to look at the world and my place in it, and it’s simply there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m a good person, but I just never really believed that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @callumskelton, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was brought up in absolute chaos. My mom suffered from severe Borderline Personality Disorder. She was also a narcissist, addicted to alcohol, and very often she was extremely depressed and very anxious. She absolutely hated life. My dad was an alcoholic too, and he also was a raving narcissist. I never felt safe and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[99,102,97,96,117,100,105,115,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48859,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48857\/revisions\/48859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}