When Giants Shrink

I have a lot of traumas to work through.
Childhood emotional and physical abuse.
Religious abuse.
Losses that were never grieved.
More than 20 moves in 23 years of marriage.

Today, I was working with my therapist on one particular area that has been troubling me this week.  I was remembering some people that frightened me, and who I was still seeing through the eyes of a scared, abused, neglected, bullied, and intimidated child.  My last interaction with this person was in a formal confrontation as a teenager, and has loomed in my periphery as a picture of them as someone to be frightened of ever coming in contact with again.

As I gazed into the review mirror of my mind, I began to recognize that this person was doing what was expected from the position held, and in the manner expected.  As I stand off to the side, observing, I see myself...nervous, determined, nauseous, intimidated.  I also see the others in the room...some I know and care about, and one that scares me.  It is that one that has grown in my mind to appear to be a giant...but as I look closer, the air of the years is released, and the child I was is now an adult, older than my puffed-up giant was then.  In my mind's eye, as I grew, this other person shrank.  As they shrank, I was able to see the situation through a more adult lens...recognizing expectations on both sides, and the inability of the adults in the situation to recognize the needs and hurts of the child (me).

As I walked my way through this painful memory, I started recognizing others who have become giants in my memory.  They have grown to take up space in my head that is not theirs, through the traumas they have visited on me over the years.

I'm thinking it is time for some giant-slaying to happen....