Hi BB, I just want you to know that I've been following this thread and all of it I can relate to! Thank you for being so brave to be so honest with your feelings...you have given me much to ponder...mlc

Hi BB, DF, monte & mlc

Thank god I don't have to think up posts. As the queen of cutting & pasting on this board, here I go:........

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I'm not sure which is worse...being in a place of complete vulnerability to my P and grief.... and frequently emailing,

or is it better,

numbing it out and just getting through the days as best I can, forcing myself to do the simplest things, and other times, not even bothering to force myself. I know my kids suffer, either way, and my marriage, too.

BB, I so understand the above post. I don't know about you but the GUILT of not attending to my family - and hence repeating family history - is too awful for me to comprehend. I have to stick with the first option you suggested b/c I was obviously struggling so much in the first place - before therapy - which is why I turned to therapy. I just didn't expect to keep struggling with my life whilst in therapy!

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I wonder if he's now charging you as a bit of a deterrent? So that you stop and think before you e mail him if it is totally necessary.

I agree with DF - but I think it's a little cruel - although having said that, when monte wrote:

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I go through cycles where my whole day/week revolves around receiving a reply to an email.

I thought either way the proces seems cruel.

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I too want to love, instead of waiting around for people to love me. But i've discovered that to let other people love me properly and for me to love them fully. I have to love myself enough first......I also have to allow myself time, to nurture myself and be kind to myself and the little child that is hurting inside of me.........because thats where the hurt is coming form. Treat your inner child as you would treat one of your own children. Dont ignore her pain, try, even if its for a minute to recognise her and love her.

DF - that's it.

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For me the key is knowing that my T will actually never be able to give me what I so desperately want from him. (ok, so I have the key…now I need to use to unlock the door…not done that yet). Hmmpph. Feel like kicking myself in the shins when I say that.

monte - that's it too.

I mean we have the answer but how do we find the courage to move forward?

The answer it seems is easy but also very painful and blunt.

I think it is that WE need to step up for ourselves. Because WE want too. It means moving on beyond a point of blame. It means taking ownership for me (or you!) in the here & now as well as my inner child from the past. Our Ts can help us, but we can never be little kids again. We can never have our childhoods over - the past has gone. We carry it with us - we can be absent parents - or we can step up. But the courage to heal our inner childs seems so hard. We don't want to do it alone, and it seems that we find it so hard to give to our inner child what we did not receive (even though most of us somehow manage to give it to our own children anyway). We keep punishing ourselves instead of soothing and validating ourselves and our inner child about our past experiences and it's impact on the here & now. The answer seems so easy and yet so damn hard. This is the bind. Apparently we can't do it alone - we need, as humans, to do this in a relationship with someone else - which means we go to therapy - but in someway we put ourselves (at least initially) through hell in the hope of coming out the other side.
As AG said in another recent post:

http://psychcafe.ca/eve/forums...=183102686#183102686

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As I walked deeper and deeper into those longings, I finally came to realize that the list was everything I wanted from my parents and didn't get. That the pain of not getting what I wanted from my T was so intense because it evoked all the grief of what I didn't get from my father and mother. Some of those things my T could provide but so many he couldn't. But, contrary to my intuition, it turned out that talking about what I wanted, even if I coulnd't have it, and having those feelings understood and accepted, healed me.

It just seems so cruel that in order for us to move forward, we need to AGAIN experience that not only could we not get what we wanted from our parents, but whoo-hoo we get to feel it again and find out what we really wanted in childhood we can't get from our Ts either. But in order to understand this point with our T's we get to feel all those things we longed for as kids first - and it's so very painful.

And then we grieve (when's the fun bit coming?! ) - and then we move forward b/c we can now at least have the courage to nurture our inner child & ourselves.

Does that make sense? Boy, do I feel the wall going up again as I write this. The answer is so seemingly simple yet so excruiatingly painful. I think it's about finding the courage to keep moving forward - in baby steps - to (hopefully) set us free in the future. Hopefully someone (AG? ) will come through with a successful journey story - because can you imagine if we are all on the wrong path with this whole idea of needing to attach then grieve then nuture our inner childs & adult selves?

Good night - it's very late here in Australia.

I'm OK

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It just seems so cruel that in order for us to move forward, we need to AGAIN experience that not only could we not get what we wanted from our parents, but whoo-hoo Confused we get to feel it again and find out what we really wanted in childhood we can't get from our Ts either.

This is the heart of the dilemna. The truth is that we never stopped feeling these things or the experience of deprivation, it just hasn't been conscious. But it has been the spur to keep us looking for something our whole life that is impossible to find. My T once told me that facing this grief would probably be the hardest thing I've ever done. But our other choice is to be never satisfied and always hunting. The good thing about facing the grief is that you actually heal and can let it go. Which allows you to go looking for things you can get. And you're right it is simple, but that doesn't make it easy. It's a lot like disciplining your kids, you can do the hard work up front and have it easier in the long run. Or you can ignore bad behavior and keep on paying without end. My T actually talks about how insane this sounds, you mean I have to go dig up these incredibly painful emotions so I can bury them again? It doesn't make a lot of sense until you experience it.

And I'm working on that successful story. But I've done enough healing and whole heartedly trust my T, who is seriously gifted, enough to believe this is the right path.

AG

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"How long is a piece of a string?"

This sounds very ZEN. A relative of "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

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Like, life will just start to fall neatly and comfortably into place and I will float away from my T, almost imperceptably, on a cloud of nice stuff.

You mean it doesn't happen this way? *pouting*

SG

thank you BB, DF, monte, for being so honest about your feelings. I can relate to the endless loop of waiting for email, feeling ignored by my T and the extremes of positive and negative emotions about him and therapy in general. I hate being attached and I'm afraid it will never stop being so painful. I have a 4 year old who gets his blanket out of his room everytime something gets stressful and I feel like that only my blanket is a person with their own life who I get for 1 hour a week.

I hope there is a successful end for us all.