Understanding Complex Relational Trauma
Also known as Traumatic Loneliness
“To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefore unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.” ~ Jean Vanier (Becoming Human)
For much of my early life I was tormented by the plight of insatiable loneliness which threw me into compulsive acting out with substances and people. Being ‘raised’ by a schizophrenic mother and a malignant narcissist for a father ensured that my experiences with bonding would be steeped in annihilation fears. It was only the temporary quiescence of the inevitability of death that offered me respite at those times when I felt most broken and most alone.
Through a daunting journey spanning decades of therapy and sundry healing modalities I’ve come to recognize that the primary source of my pain was deeply rooted in a loneliness so traumatic that I had no Self to grab onto, along with a tragically primitive idea of love.
Being a chronological adult with unmet infancy needs is debilitating. I desperately latched onto whatever and whomever would offer some relief from my devouring abyss of…
