Blocking

     Blocking.  The word leads me to think of football.  In football one way blocking is used is by the offensive team to protect the quarterback, the heart of the team, if you will.  Blocking is meant for the survival of the quarterback.  Survival from trauma and injury.  I use blocking to survive from trauma and injury too.  I am an exceptional blocker, and if surviving abuse was a well known sport in this country, I believe people would wear jerseys with my name plastered across their backs.
     In the addiction world and the abuse world there is talk of a gigantic elephant in the living room.  Family members walk around it, blocking the part of the brain that admits the animal's presence.  I believe I could almost have a calm elegant dinner while a train wreck hurled train cars all around me.  I can be told something I don't want to hear and the minute the messengers lips stop moving, I'm asking, "What?  What did you just say?"  Blocking is a sibling to denial.  I heard what was said and it is already stored somewhere deep in my brain, but to admit it, would be to allow the reality to traumatize my heart.  The word trauma has lost some of it's meaning so let me tell you it is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.  It is emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may be associated with physical shock and sometimes leads to long-term neurosis.  Blocking and denial are a way our minds protect themselves from pain and damage. 
     If you trip, your hands spring out to catch you.  If you see an object flying toward you, you duck.  We slam on the brakes to avoid car accidents and we run when danger is chasing us.  This is the brain also protecting us from trauma and injury.  Everyone accepts this.
     People tend to judge more harshly when it's someone like the parent of an abuse victim or a husband of a cheating wife.  Why didn't they see what was going on?  We all saw it.  The difference is there was no emotional damage to our brains when we saw what was happening in someone else's life.  This survival skill is used when a loved one dies.  Shock and deniall are the first stage of grief.  With a death we are forced into the next stages, because we have to admit that person is no longer with us.  With ongoing abuse whether it is physical, sexual, emotional, or matrimonial (cheating spouse) we can comfortably stay in the first stage and deny it, because the next stage is pain and pain hurts.  When I finally decided to accept every bit of it, I went straight into the stage of pain and bounced back and forth between it and anger.  This is where my mom is in her recovery from my abuse, bouncing back and forth between pain and anger.  Even though they abused me, I have to remember they abused her daughter.  She has her own healing to walk through.  Her decision to move into the stage of pain has helped me to heal. 
     Please say a prayer for my mom and all the other parents in this world who are feeling the pain of their hurting kids.


"We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey". -- Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933)