Find a Happy Place, Find a Happy Place

Mega-emotion day around here. I had to have several conversations with Squeaker about how she has been treating the other kids. Talks like these always bring up a flood of emotions. Today it was tears, anger, frustration, major attitude, hatefulness, anger, fear, and yet again more tears.

For the record, I am not all that comfortable with over-the-top displays of emotion. Which is funny as they are a major occupational hazard for foster/adoptive parents of traumatized kids. Also kind of funny considering I felt like a bit of an emotional freak when I was a kid. I told Squeaker tonight that I was a lot like her when I was around her age. I cried a lot...when I was sad, scared, embarrassed, or angry. I was depressed a lot. I had (well, have) a hard time focusing. I was agonizingly shy. I hated meeting new people. I was afraid of new situations and afraid of going to school because I might do something stupid, which I did pretty much daily...and actually still do. I should probably point out that I had a very good childhood. I have wonderful, loving, Godly parents and terrific siblings. I just have one of those quirky little brains that doesn't want to balance it's chemicals right or something. With a great deal of painful effort I have gotten over most of these things. But my comfort zone is pretty small and I'm outside of it almost all of the time.

So ,despite my discomfort, I really do understand a lot of the emotions that Squeaker is going through. I know her mixed-up emotions are coming not only from mental illness but also from her very abusive history. The physical abuse was bad enough but the reports on the emotional and verbal abuse she suffered made me cringe when I first read them.

Needless to say, we spend a lot of time in messy, chaotic emotional overload when working through past and present issues. In some respects my instinctive desire to distance myself can be helpful because my feelings are not easily hurt by hateful comments that seem inevitible from traumatized kids. There is much I could just let slide in order not to deal with the constant barrage of emotions. But for her sake, I must jump in with both feet and muck around in it with her. It stretches me too because I must get over myself and my reactions in order to help her. I'm not all that good at it but I empathize and hug and correct distorted thinking when I can. She reveals more of who she really is each time and each time I tell her I love her no matter what. And we reclaim lost ground and sometimes take a few tottering steps towards healing.

And I feel uncomfortable and stupid but I psych myself up to do it all over again the next time, because inch by precious inch we're somehow moving forward.