Terrified And Terrorized

There is a difference between terrorized and terrified. As a child I was terrorized by one individual in particular, and terrified by the household politics in general. Consequently, I spent the majority of my time feeling terrified of - well, just about everything. As I grew bigger, I answered back, so the direct abuse lessened and finally stopped altogether.

By this time I had internalized the feeling of being terrified, and made it a part of my way of looking at the world. I didn't realize this until I had carried it around as baggage for decades. I remember standing in the kitchen as a small child, my bowels turned to ice, while the craziness whirled around me as the giants did their dance of victimization. I didn't know what it all meant and there was no one to ask.

Every time I thought, did, or said anything I would automatically slip on the goggles of terror and look through them at whatever was in front of me. I soon developed a mask of pretend so that no one would see this aspect of me. In short, I kept acting as though I was still being terrorized by bigger and stronger forces.

The realization I was doing this came by virtue of some other self-work I had undertaken. One morning I woke up with an awareness I was still acting terrorized. It was easy to connect this with the constant, vague yet intense feeling of waiting for the axe to fall, for what I loved to break, fail, die or go away.

It took a while to grasp what I had done to myself all those years. I put incredible amounts of energy into masking and managing this agenda. Now I'm free of terror. Fear still comes up, and when it does I know I have another aspect of myself to accept, honor and bring home to my heart.

Terror is a horrible thing to experience. Every cell in the body screams a silent scream, insides are turned to ice, it hurts to breathe, thoughts seem laid bare and one weighs a ton. Each second is bringing the crushing blow that never arrives. No one needs to pack this kind of stuff around. I don't, and you don't.

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