Someone asked me today, if in addition to the common thread that I have found in the lack of maternal nurturing and IC, if trust was also an issue that comes up in the condition. I asked what she meant. Trust for a specific person or persons or in general. Interestingly she replied an overall trust of everything and everyone including myself and my body. And, I thought, well, yes, I suppose that IS true. Generally I think the lost of trust in one's own body is profound in a situation like IC. One cannot trust that her sexuality will work the way it is supposed to, that his or her digestion system will break down foods the way it is designed to do, that she will be able to sleep wthout getting up countless times per night, etc... IT is exhausting to think about all the things that cannot be counted on. However, as one starts to make the changes necessary to begin the journey down the road that restores health slowly you CAN start counting on things again. One by one the things you can count on far outnumber the ones that you cannot. I giggle sometimes when I hear the same comments over and over again from people when they are in treament. Somone will say that they will never be able to eat a particular food again and eventually they do eat it--no problem. OR they will say, if I get no better than this, I can live like this for the rest of my life, no problem, and then they go the rest of the way.
All of that said, I can correlated trust issues in this way. I am uncertain without much furthur pause if I can make a stronger correlation of trust that go as deep as the nurturing issue. Perhaps if we feel that we were not adequately nurtured by our mothers that is a fundamental trust that is not well establsihed from a young age. I am not sure those two things go hand in hand or not.
If any of you have comments on this, feel free to comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Comments
Common Emotional Components of IC
I am looking forward to reading your dissertation in the future, but the mention of non-nurturing mother as a thread in IC certainly could apply to me. The lack of mothering and the trust issue seem connected in that as an infant, one has a natural trust in the fact she will be looked after, but as a child grows and recognizes her needs, she also recognizes they are not being filled and thus feels the pain of a broken trust?....just a thought.....
Common Emotional Components of IC
I am looking forward to reading your dissertation in the future, but the mention of non-nurturing mother as a thread in IC certainly could apply to me. The lack of mothering and the trust issue seem connected in that as an infant, one has a natural trust in the fact she will be looked after, but as a child grows and recognizes her needs, she also recognizes they are not being filled and thus feels the pain of a broken trust?....just a thought.....
Lolo
Yes, I think you hit it on the head. This is so true, it IS a fundamental expectation, that, when broken, shatters a person in perhaps the deepest way possible.
Nurturing, etc...
As I get older and older and meet more and more people, I hear some really messed up stories about family life, etc. In fact, my husband seems to be the only person I know who had a fairly normal life... I mention that almost everyone has a messed up family because for so long I played the victim of a really really... REALLY messed up family and then I realized, I wasn't alone. That is not to diminish myself or my pain or anyone elses, but what it helped me with was to feel normal. I think a lot of pain both physical and emotional can come from the feeling/reality of isolation. I think it is when we realize we are not alone or put ourselves in the company of positive individuals, a lot of pain can subside. All that being said, I had a very non nurturing mother who did not have a good mother herself. At 14 my parents were divorced at my threat to go take my sister and live with my aunt if the abuse and fighting did not stop. My father gained full custody of my sister and I. When I was a child, my mother was very unstable ( I am sure she had mental illness and possibly IC) My sister has/had IBS and then I came down with IC after having my second daughter. I remember being very badly constipated as a child, so much so that my father had to give me suppositories (my mother was too afraid to) and I remember going to the doctors at 7 and having leukocytes in my urine. I have no doubt that my unstable childhood led in part to my IC. My parents were always screaming and too wrapped up in their pain to help me or my sister have proper diets, come to school looking presentable, etc. I basically raised my sister. I realized that because of my own IC, I was too wrapped up in my pain to take care of my own children which is why almost 3 years ago, after looking at all of those depressing websites, I said to myself, "I don't have time for IC". I found Matia and I realize that IC is just like having a large gash in my leg that needs to heal. It is not (in my head) a horrible thing, but rather something that needs to be healed so I can move on with my life. Hope this helps!
Jeannette
Your continued expressiveness helps everyone! Thank you for sharing your experiences with such rich detail, feeling, and thoughtfullness!
response
I know this was posted a while back but I was reading it todayand it made me think. I never thought of my mother as non nurturing--she was very gentle, somewhat over protective, took care of us when we were sick, etc, so in those ways was very nurturing. It was my father who was angry all the time and scary. But when I think about it further, my mother was very depressed during my childhood, esp when I was very young. She would spend hours alone in her room and I would entertain myself. I was often afraid for her, she would get emotional and say things like she feared she would black out, she would get horrible migraines and throw up all day, my dad was always packing a suitcase and walking out who knows where. I was so worried about my mother, I used to ask her how she was all the time, and after a while she began to confide way too much in me. She claimed she didn't have anyone else at home to talk to. I used to have recurrent dreams of fire and being the only one who could save my family since my bedroom was on a bottom floor. So I guess in some ways I felt like my parents couldn't be totally trusted to be stable and that I had to take care of myself in some ways. Just some thoughts I had reading this. But are you scarred for life? You can't stay a victim forever. I"m not sure what to think. . .
ICnot4me
You know, that makes a lot of sense. If your mother was not being fulfilled by her marriage and was stressed on top of that, how could she fill her children up completely? You cannot draw from that which you do not have. And, confiding in your children about another parent is a big "no no". This is not healthy for any of the people involved. Although, I certainly understand your mother's reasoning and the need to turn to someone who loved everyone involved. When I hear stories of this sort, my heart cries for the things that could have been. The people that would have experienced things differently. But, then I think, we are all on our paths in life. Life sets out before us whatever it is we supposed to get from it. Whether you refer to that as God, nature, it is that which we are presented with. And, from that we grow. It is the understanding that we are all doing the best we can with what we have and learning to not judge or be cruel with another's feelings or emotions, but learning from all of our experiences painful or joyous. And, yes, I think we can not only recover, but can actually gain immeasurably from those experiences.