(Trigger warning about growing up with domestic violence)
For 15 years, I found myself trapped in a relentless cycle of physical and emotional abuse between my parents. I spent my childhood protecting my mother and living in constant fear of my father. Strangely, I never considered my childhood traumatic; I believed it was normal to ask my friends if they feared their dads. This secret burdened me for a long time – concealing the bruises, losing sleep at night, and allowing anxiety and panic to consume me until it overflowed like sticky, black sludge, devouring everything in its path.
Throughout my childhood, I constantly placed myself between my parents, a young girl attempting to pry her father’s hands from her mother’s neck. Even though I was the youngest, I played the role of the adult, mediator, and counsellor, striving to maintain peace for everyone’s safety. But I had no one to turn to for my own well-being, and these early experiences still affect me in my daily life. I’ve struggled with my relationship with myself, as I was taught to neglect my feelings, believing that showing emotions meant I would be hurt. Growing up, I didn’t have my needs met, except when I was sick. Despite our outward appearances of wealth and privilege, my family lacked the core needs of love, safety, and connection. This is why I’ve developed a complex belief around money and success, as I’ve come to understand that material wealth doesn’t necessarily fulfill these fundamental needs.
Most of my adult years have been dedicated to learning how to be the parent I needed for myself, creating a relationship of self-love, nurturing, and daily self-care. This is something that does not come naturally to me, and it takes a huge amount of discipline and work to tend to myself, and being able to drop in with myself to understand my needs and feelings is a daily struggle.
I’ve noticed the patterns, stories, and beliefs I’ve inherited from both my parents, a painful inner critic capable of tearing me apart in seconds, a gift from my father who raised me to believe love had to be earned through accomplishments and criticism. My mother gifted me worry, fear, shame, and mistrust, as she was emotionally absent most of my childhood. She cared for us physically but was often angry or crying. She would constantly make us choose between her and our father or threatened us with our father if we misbehaved. She’d panic when he would return home, making us scramble to tidy up, prepare his dinner, fetch his whisky, and serve him. She would talk to me about all the things he did to her, seeking comfort, I was often her mother as she broke down.
School offered no refuge; I faced bullying, struggled with the material, and often felt confused and displaced. I dreaded going to school, the stress it caused, and the isolation I felt there. As an adult, I still experience that stress when studying, doing assignments or tests, my body dysregulates, and my brain switches to survival mode. I struggle to absorb information and become overwhelmed and anxious. I’m still working to understand this part of myself, its origins, and what it needs. I think it might be my father’s pressure to excel, or face shame and bullying, drilled a fear of failure in me.
When we moved from South Africa to Australia, I was at the age of 7, things deteriorated further. We became more disconnected and isolated from our support system, family, and friends. None of our family had left South Africa before. Starting in a different place intensified the violence at home, making my father’s temper and emotional abuse as violent as his physical actions. In reflection, I realize this move perpetuated the patterns of disconnection, isolation, and separation that lies within our family’s history.
I spent most nights that they would fight, waiting for my parents to fall asleep before I could. I’d even make a makeshift bed outside their door during school nights, keeping watch without their knowledge. Noise still makes it difficult for me to fall asleep; my body panics, relapsing back into old, trusted survival mechanisms.
I’d often pretend to be sick, to get out of school and I was also just generally an unwell child. I held a deep belief that I needed to stay home, encase my dad would come home and harm my mother while I was at school. This was my biggest fear growing up, that he was going to hurt her so badly or kill her and hide her body and I would never see her again.
Mornings consisted of waking up anxious, as I lay in bed, uncertain whether I’d hear yelling or whistling, not knowing which version of my father he would be that day. I’d experience what I called “bad feelings” from a very young age. I always had a sense that something terrible was going to happen at home. I still carry this hypervigilant awareness, waves of dread or fear washing over me, paralysing me at times and sending me into a hypervigilant survival state. I can become extremely panicked and stressed by the smallest of things, the moment I do not feel in control of my home surroundings my body will go into a fight and flight response, I often stay here until I breakdown or become sick.
Getting my dog, Gina, was my number one resources during my childhood. She offered me an escape, companionship, and the unconditional love and safety I so desperately craved.
I despised the coverup of the happy, perfect family we presented, particularly when guests visited. We’d stage scenes of an ideal family with fine China, elegant cutlery, and classical music, complemented by my father’s elaborate stories. He played the part of a showman, projecting confidence, humour, and intelligence while concealing the terror he unleashed behind closed doors. I learnt how to adopt his masking abilities, though I used mine to hide the parts of myself I dislike, my trauma, sadness and anger. As I grew older, I experienced the same slips where the mask would crack, revealing what lay hidden beneath.
The shock of my father’s first (known) affair marked a significant turning point in our lives. For the first time I witnessed my parents’ showing affection to each other, I watched as my parents tried to repair their relationship, sitting side by side, holding hands on the couch. All I felt was disappointment in my mother and her weakness for forgiving him, given all my dad had done. I didn’t understand what was happening and their attempts at affection made me sick and angry. This triggered the first episode of my long journey with depression, a period when I finally submitted to the weight of it all.
I remember telling my mum I thought I was depressed, and her dismissing it “don’t be stupid, you’re too young to be depressed.” So, I sat by the pool at night with a knife in hand, hoping to end it all. I was only 12 years old at the time. I’m still uncertain about what pulled me out of that state, but I think I had started to make a solid group of friends around that time, they provided an escape into their normal lives and homes.
One of the most challenging aspects of reflecting on all this is that I loved my father. I loved the funny, gentle, and kind side of him. We shared a strong bond, we laughed, joked, and teased each other. I inherited my sense of humour and playfulness from him. I always wanted to impress him. I was the one forced by the rest of the family to enter his office when he got home and change his mood, to make him laugh.
When I was 14, we moved to a new house and suburb, hoping for a fresh start and a change in my parents’ marriage. But my mother discovered my father was still having an affair, so they began sleeping in separate rooms. Their mind games and mutual hatred became an addictive cycle. Eventually, my father received a job offer in Sydney and left home when I was 15. I watched my mother collapse into a lifeless, angry mess. My protective relationship with her turned into one filled with anger and resentment. We fought constantly, and the anger I felt towards her during those years, was more than I ever had my dad.
After my father moved out, I experienced a newfound sense of freedom I’d never known before. I was no longer controlled; I could wear makeup, decorate my room, use nail polish, choose my clothes and jewellery, and colour my hair without being criticised as pathetic trash or a waste of time and money. I could go out! I was finally free, and for once, I didn’t care what was happening at home. I wanted nothing more to do with my family, and that’s when our family started to completely fall apart.
During my parents’ separation, I found a distraction in my first long-term relationship. It became my escape, a place where I poured all my energy and attention. Those initial six months were pure bliss, and I relished being able to escape to his family home, I was finally apart of a family that felt safe, surrounded by adults who loved each other.
When my mother and I got into a fight, and she hit me in front of him. He offered me a place to stay, but while staying with him and being in the dysregulated state I was in we got into an argument. My trust issues and the absence of positive relationship models guided me to repeat the patterns I was shown, and I hit him in the face. I still remember the immediate shock and remorse I felt, and still do. From that point on, toxicity and control crept into our relationship. My happiness and security I was seeking so desperately became a burden to him, and he began pulling away, which caused me to go down a path of even more destructive behaviours. I can see after learning about attachment styles how I was searching for love and connection, but if the people I cared about started to pull away or not prioritise me I would punish, blame and try to control them.
The combination of a toxic relationship, my parents’ separation, our family’s breakdown, and the childhood trauma I carried finally took its toll, and my body gave in. At the age of 17, I fell seriously ill with acute pancreatitis. For over two years, I didn’t have the normal life of a teenager, I suffered violent episodes of sickness, and received warnings about the risks of cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses. This health crisis forced me into understanding the relationship I have with my body and my health, I had to learn how to somehow manage my stress and anger, while creating a state of healing for my body.
During this challenging period, my sister moved back home and became my anchor. She was studying naturopathy and played a vital role in my healing journey. My relationship with my boyfriend finally ended. My sister became my primary support as I grappled with sickness, exhaustion, and brokenness.
Unfortunately, our close relationship also meant we experienced extreme highs and lows, swinging from being inseparable to intense fights. One particularly heated fight ended with me punching her in the face after she scratched and attacked me one afternoon. This marked the end of our relationship for many years. My brother also moved out of our home due to our frequent violent conflicts, as we all mirrored the modelling we had observed from our parents.
As soon as I turned 18, I moved out of home and found my escape in traveling and running away as soon as things became difficult. I struggled during these years, getting into fights with anyone who tried to control me, I would fight with bosses and leave most workplaces on a bad note. I would fight with close friends, moving in and out of people’s houses. I was completely disconnected from my family and wanted nothing to do with them, I would spend Christmas with friends and distracted myself with partying or seeking out the next place to escape to. When I was home briefly in-between moving to the next destination mum and I would have horrible fights, I would speak to her just like my dad would. Trying to put her down and break her, I had so much anger and resentment towards her. After I started studying naturopathy, which triggered of enormous amounts of stress and overwhelm in my system that I was constantly sick and struggling to cope, I moved back in with mum. We moved to the Mornington peninsula together and tried to reconnect. It was chaos. I blamed her for everything and all I had was resentment and anger towards her, I was the one stuck with pain and struggling and she was fine. I had given up my whole childhood to keep her safe, and she never once protected me. Her attempts to mother me or be there for me as I was becoming an adult only infuriated me.
I found a group of friends during this time that I finally for the first time in my life felt completely accepted by, they opened my eyes to a new world, and this was the turning point for me to turn towards everything I had been running away from. As they had trauma like me, they were broken just like me. We all began a long journey of trying to understand our childhoods, we experimented with psychedelics, partied a lot and tried to understand our emotions as we went through waves of depression. I met my current partner through this group of friends, and all the things I had been running from came back and hit me like a ton of bricks. I watched as I started to fall into all my unhealthy coping mechanisms, my triggers and patterns unravelling themselves at an alarming rate. He was like a rock during those times, I was a wave of insecurity, jealousy and fear crashing over him, again and again.
It wasn’t until I reached the age of 26, after moving into a household with my partner and another couple I was close to, that I truly began to recognize how my childhood experiences were affecting me. It was the first time I had lived with males since my dad, and it triggered a deep descent into a very heavy depression. I was riddled with anxiety, my protective mechanisms rearing their heads as the parts of me that didn’t feel safe started to act out, searching for some form of acceptance. My thoughts consumed me, turning me into a vortex of destruction. I started to struggle in my relationship, and our housemates eventually moved out because they couldn’t cope with being around me. This cycle of chaos and destruction persisted, no matter how hard I tried to escape it, always lurking in the patterns I had carried since childhood, waiting for the right triggers to set it loose like a wildfire.
After two years, multiple housemates and finally coming out of my depression, my partner and I decided to move to Tasmania, I was secretly and unknowingly to myself seeking an escape as people began to discover the real me behind the mask I wore, the fun, carefree, bubbly persona had finally cracked. And once again, without me knowing, I was perpetuating the long history of separation and isolation within our family once again.
Living together in a new place with just him, my trauma started to take a dark turn. I became completely dysregulated, alone, and yearning for love, safety, and connection. My friends and community were no longer there, leaving him as my sole support, my safety person. I turned controlling, argumentative, and passive-aggressive, punishing him for any time he went out or did things independently. Constantly questioning his love for me, becoming hyper fixated on our sex life and how much time he spent with me. Our relationship really started to suffer as we started to fight and argue, I was trying to get my needs met by criticizing and blamed him for not meeting my expectations, wearing him down with my years of testing. I would start massive fights only to end up dreading him leaving me and expressing how sorry I was and pulling at him to resolve our issues. I was a textbook of an ambivalent anxious wave, what I didn’t realise that slowly during the years we had spent together, my actions were turning him into an avoidant attachment. Which meant I just would push more and more, and he would retract more and more.
Finally recognizing I really needed help, I started seeing a kinesiologist/naturopath who employed Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. With two sessions a week, I began noticing some subtle and significant shifts in myself. I grew less reactive, re-establishing a relationship with myself that I had long neglected during relationships. I delved into self-help books like “How to Do the Work” by Nicole LePera and Stan Tatkin’s “Your Brain on Love.” This new information opened my eyes to the painful patterns I had perpetuated since childhood. I reached out to more therapists, creating a strong support network.
Some of my friends had taken the Awakening Group course, and I had always wanted to do it, I was just doubtful of when I would be ready. Feeling more resourced and ready to confront myself, I enrolled in the course, bringing me to where I am now.
“What is possible when we truly feel safe?” Dr Stephen Porges
Creating my day from a big-picture perspective made me confront my negative thoughts and fear-based beliefs. My mind had been so active in the morning that I hadn’t given myself a chance to consider what I wanted to create. This related to the anxiety I felt as a child when I had to be hyper-vigilant about potential dangers. I held resistance to this work, and even when I tried to create my day, an inner voice would quickly dissolve my desires. Deep down, I held onto the belief that if I expected something good, I wouldn’t be prepared for when something bad happened. This is my internal mother archetype that I carry, that parents me most days. She likes to seek out the fear and worry in everything, always assuming the worst. I know she does this to protect me, but it also greatly limits me.
Chuck Palahniuk’s quote resonates: “What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can’t decipher.”
Learning about ACE scores and toxic stress in “Healing the Wounded Healer” was impactful. It was my first time looking at my ACE score in detail, understanding how childhood trauma and stress had affected my brain’s chemical changes. I became aware of my ego defence mechanisms and got to dive deeper into my attachment styles, realizing how much they shaped my relationship patterns. I have found attachment style very helpful within my relationship, I had always sought others to regulate me, that it was their job to make me feel safe… but now I know that I need to regulate myself first, before seeking out others. Or I can (attempt) to communicate what is going on for me so that my partner knows what is going on.
Dr. Joe Dispenza aptly said, “Nobody changes until they change their energy. If you change your energy, you change your life.”
The work of Byron Katie and the simple yet potent idea of meeting reality as it is has helped me to come into a state of balance within my own thoughts and beliefs, I know I still have so much work to do in this area. My mind is like an Olympic sprinter and is very good at critically pointing out all the wrong others do to me; even if it is the tiniest of actions, I will create stories and beliefs that keep me stuck in these protective parts.
Learning to stay in my own business has helped me enormously within my relationship. I never realised how much my thoughts were focussed on what others were doing around me. “If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.” – Byron katie.
Physically speaking had to be one of my favourite modules we did all year, learning EFT has been life changing for me. I have started doing it daily, sometimes multiple times a day and have seen such incredible shifts within my thoughts and nervous system. This is a tool that I know I can use to help with my stress and reprogramming my brain. Going more into self-care and learning the importance of looking after ourselves and bodies especially if we have experienced trauma in our developmental years. I know I still get panicked about becoming ill because of my trauma because this is something I do experience. But the EFT is helping me with these stressful thoughts, and I am implementing more self-care through nutrition, movement and seeking more support than I ever have.
Effective communication remains to be the subject I have struggled with the most, I can see clearly throughout my life all the time’s my communication has failed me. How I am either passive aggressive or aggressive in my communication. The only time I can actually communicate my needs and feelings is when it has nothing to do with me as a person, if I have to stand up for myself or express myself, I become extremely anxious, if I have a problem with someone, I push the blame and judgement completely onto them. I learnt this from my parents, my modelling was fighting, blame and criticising. I don’t think I ever once was introduced to healthy communication. Even simply identifying what my needs are and feelings has been a challenge within itself.
Family constellation therapy was a big eye opener for me, I have always turned away from family, rejecting them and all the pain that has come with family. Only after witnessing the importance of family dynamics and the systemic issues that are passed down from generations have, I come into a place of reaching out to my family. I am more connected to my immediate family than I have ever been. I have begun researching into my family history and identifying the patterns that have been unconsciously continued by each generation. I still don’t know much about my family and don’t have much connection with my family In South Africa, but I have started reaching out to see if I can build a bigger picture of what has occurred. I am still struggling with forgiveness for my dad and respecting his place in the family. As I have chosen to not have a relationship with him, but hopefully with time I can find forgiveness and accept him as my dad once again.
Being able to gain insight from my genogram within creative counselling was a great tool to identify dynamics and patterns within my family, especially ones I have never picked up on before. I found all the creative visualisations to be potent in rebuilding relationships with the parts of us that are lost. IFS and parts work must be one of the most impactful methods of helping to heal trauma I have encountered. Looking at the reparenting visualisation is something I would like to work with more, as I know I still can often revert to treating myself, exactly how I was raised. This inner conflict within myself and all my different parts has been a big journey, I have spent a lot of my life pushing away the parts of me that I did not like, rejecting myself repeatedly. I can see this inner archetype through both of my parents, especially my mother. I know that parts work is a long journey for me, one that I am still on and will continue to explore for a long time.
Love sex and relationships was a big one for me, I have always struggled with relationships in my life. At the start of the relationship, I am good, carefree and fun. But the moment I realise I have deeper feelings for the person, I start to test and manipulate them. Seeing how much they love me. I was deeply jealous and insecure, always believing that everyone was better than me and that one day my partner will see that as well. I had trust issues and always feared people cheating on me or hiding things from me. I put my partners on pedestals hoping for them to heal me, to regulate me, to distract me and pull me out of my pain. Even when I was coming to a more calm and regulated state I would still criticise and make judgements of my current partner and how much he would do or didn’t do, only recently have I learnt this is a belief I have inherited from my dad. Our worth and love was determined by how much we helped him, if we did a good job and did jobs around the house, we were shown love. Without even realising I have been doing this to my partner, giving him love and connection only once he has done jobs on my own to do list. I found touching on secure functioning relationships hard, because this is all I want. To be in a secure functioning relationship, but instead of looking at what I was doing I became fixated on all the things my partner wasn’t doing. I had a big turning moment during that weekend in Melbourne, my hyper fixation on becoming a secure functioning relationship with my partner was pushing me further from him. I was looking at everything we didn’t have rather than coming to a place of seeing what we did have, which is something very beautiful. I can see very clearly the habits I still carry that do not contribute to us having a secure functioning relationship. Putting my partner down to others, complaining about him to friends, not understanding his needs and feelings. I know I still mirror my parents and the relationship modelling I was shown, I don’t communicate my needs or feelings in relationships but instead become silent and expect him to read my mind. When I am stressed, this is when I start seeking out chaos in my relationship. Just like my dad did, pointing blame on to everyone else because he was feeling out of control. I am working hard to change this, to take responsibility for my actions. Sometimes it’s hard when I am in a very anxious and overwhelmed state. I do not see things clearly and I forget almost all my tools and resort back to very unhealthy habits of blame, anger and resentment. I am slowly unwinding this from my nervous system.
I became quite overwhelmed with the idea of emerging as a counsellor; I know I still need to really work on regulating myself so that when I am faced with others trauma I do not fall into a dysregulated state. I struggle with becoming dysregulated very easily, little things can set me off and sometimes I don’t come back from this hyper-aroused state for days or weeks. My mind likes to fixate on the worst and becomes addicted to that thought quite easily.
I know have a lot of work to do in this area.
I am also someone who very easily attunes to what someone else is feeling, sometimes before they even feel it. So really knowing myself, my regulation tools and how to take care of myself is extremely important for me.
Boundaries is also something I need to work on, we were never shown clear boundaries as kids, so I know my habit of wanting to people please and for people to like me will bite me in the bum a little.
I know going forward having a very self-care plan, a range of different supports and others to turn to for guidance will be key points for me if I am to peruse being a counsellor.
“We hope this story is inspiring to others, to give hope, to support your vision of what you may only glimpse is possible” TAG team For more information about the course described go to: https://awakening.com.au/course/certificate-of-holistic-counselling/
