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Musings on care, vulnerability and ambivalence

MallardMallardMember
When I've had a session that concentrates on unmet need, core pain and my vulnerability then I can guarantee I'll be flooded with feeling afterwards. It's not completely unbearable but it does take front and centre and the feelings colour all my thought processes and interactions. I've never really sat down with the intention of defining what I feel before, probably because it is so conflicted and until recently there was some kind of internal ban on examining it in any great detail.

Today though I feel driven to name some of it. Maybe it's a way to feel more in control; if I can define it, it can't rule me perhaps? Or is it because I feel more able to examine this particular dynamic with a more compassionate head than I have been capable of in the past? Whatever the reason there's strong push to get it down on paper. I hope it's okay to share here.

I am experiencing a strong yearning to be taken care of right alongside a deep, deep core feeling that that's the last thing I want, that I shouldn't be pursuing care as a goal, that I should scoop up my hurting, miserable baggage, carry it off somewhere quiet and solitary and cope with it on my own. That tension is perfectly balanced; neither feeling wins out. They are so intrinsically related that I rarely experience one feeling more powerfully than the other. At times I'm not convinced that the two really are separate, or they have been intertwined for so long that I cannot look at them individually no matter how hard I try. I think I'm trying with limited success to describe what the ambivalence that runs through every cell I possess looks and feels like.

Tied up in the yearning is a sense of closeness and intimacy and a feeling that I am actually cared for but it is intangible and hard to see clearly. I think it's real...at least I'd like to believe it is but I worry it might vanish. This is newer than the feelings I have just described and not something I've ever experienced with any reliability, at least not at a core level. I feel awed in a way that I am feeling it at all, muted as it is. I feel like I want to stretch out and bask in it but I know from experience that doing so is like trying to sunbathe on a British beach; I'll feel the sun on my skin but it won't really warm me. It's not enough. How can it ever be enough? I'll never be able to shift the chill from my bones this way. I'm torn between rejecting the sense of closeness completely and trying to chase after it and take in what I can, disappointment and all; after all it's not as if I'm ever going to experience the kind of perfect care I crave. It's a reality I alternately rail against or sit in sad acceptance of. I know that repair does not come from getting what I didn't have. I'm not sure if I'm ready to set down the grief that accompanies that realisation though. I live in fear that my need is so great that accepting even the smallest amount will just make the gaping hole in my soul larger, not smaller. That the only way to keep it from swallowing me and everything around it whole is to starve it, not feed it.

There's a queasy wrongness associated with feeling cared for. It distracts from what should be a pure, positive feeling. There are two strands to this; the first is a sense that I'm chasing after something I shouldn't. The care I wish for is not for me; it never was. It's faintly blasphemous to even consider that I might reach out and accept what is being offered. I wouldn't know how to anyway. The second is very quiet at the moment but I know it's likely to increase in volume as the week progresses. At some point I'll be assailed with the notion that I'm too vulnerable and that the only way to protect myself is to pull away from this disconcerting sense of semi-connection. I cannot afford to contemplate allowing it in. It can't co-exist alongside the defences I've built without weakening them.

Part of the problem I have with pinning down my experience is language; I want to describe how I feel but any attempt can only ever be approximate. I've said before that what makes dealing with unmet need so difficult is that it defies description and that makes communicating with it and about it really, really hard. I don't think words actually exist in any language that really encapsulate what it means to have missed out on a key developmental experience, which makes sense since what this links into is in all likelihood pre-verbal. I'm not sure I've really done it justice but it will have to do for now.
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Attachment GirlAttachment GirlAdmin
(((Mallard)))
I absolutely agree that you are struggling so hard to articulate this because its about your experience of relationships when you were pre-verbal. What you are describing sounds very similar to things I have felt as I have worked through my attachment issues. And I have often felt frustrated at my inability to put these feelings into words, no matter what I say or how I struggle to describe it, I never feel like I am doing it justice. I once told my T, that this felt more like tidal pulls than feelings.

I have a post that described some work I did around the "want to go towards/have to run away" feeling, I thought might be helpful. I included a quote from it below:

quote:
I explained to BN what I had went through after leaving the last session. That I rarely left our sessions not feeling better but this had been one of those times. That I was struggling in vain for a sense of connection. I told him that I had talked to a close friend and finally connected that these feelings were memories. That I was experiencing what it had been like to be torn between wanting so desperately to go towards my father for care and comfort and love, but being so terrified of being hurt and abused. I described it as being poised on a knife-edge, precariously and painfully balanced, with the need for love and closeness drawing me in one direction, balanced as powerfully with an opposing imperative to move away in order to stay safe. That to move even an inch in either direction, towards or away, was to court disaster and a plummet to my destruction. But that I was struggling to realize that while my need for love and closeness were legitimate and healthy, the danger was no longer true. I told him that it was very difficult to talk or express this (I do want to make it clear that this in no way flowed or was even this clear, I started and stopped and made a lot of futile gestures. There a lot of people in my life who would have paid good money to actually see me speechless for so long. Smiler). That I didn’t really want to talk; I just wanted to sit and experience that I wasn’t going to be abused, that it was safe to be there.


Love is the Answer

Thank you so much for taking the effort to write about this, I know how difficult it is, but it really helped me to know I am not alone in feeling this; its so hard to articulate that you can feel very isolated.

AG
L lieseMember
((((MALLARD)))

I totally relate to the feelings you expressed. I often get that sense of not really knowing what I'm trying to articulate but what I thought you did a great job of expressing yourself. Sometimes, to me, it feels like the feelings are coming from behind me but I can't see them yet. There's something over on the left and something on the right and somehow I need to pull them to the front so I can see them at the same time. I do think that eventually we will be able to feel it and see it must more quickly and be able to recongize what it is and process it.

I'm starting to think that the feeling cared for feeling isn't the end in and of itself. It teaches us how good it feels so that when we aren't being cared for, either by others or by ourselves, we are able to recognize it. There is also a sense of safety and security in being cared for that allows us to drop our hypervigilance so as to free up other parts of our brain and focus on the present.

Wanting to run away serves a necessary function as life isn't always going to be safe. We need to be alert to danger. Other people aren't always safe. Life, in general, isn't always safe either. Through the process of feeling both the need to get close and the need to protect, I think we learn how to bring those needs to the forefront so that we can be aware in the present exactly what and who triggers those feelings for us and if they are really dangerous. This way we learn to get our needs met and also when we are in a bad situation.

Oftentimes I think we have a good reason to feel fear with our therapists. Even though we know they are safe, we are the ones being vulnerable. We are the ones sharing our feelings - which puts us in a very powerless position. We are dependent upon them. Every single time we go in there and open our hearts and minds to them is a risk. We don't really know how they are going to react that day. We might have an idea based on their track record. But, maybe they are cranky that day or stressed out and we are feeling at our most childlike that day. The risk is real and so is the fear.

I don't think that any of us want to remain in a situation like that forever, one in which we make ourselves more vulnerable than the other. If that's so, then that sense of alarm is not necessarily something that we want to work on making go away. Toned down, yes. Appropriate, yes but not gone.

I don't know if you read Schopenhauer's Porcupine but Schopenhauer was a therapist around the time as Freud? He was struck by how porcupine's try to huddle close to each other to get warm but prick each other with their spines if they get to close. When that happens, they move away again and then when they get close, they try to move close again. That came to mind for me immediately when I read what you wrote.
Attachment GirlAttachment GirlAdmin
Pengs,
The quote you pulled really hit me. I thought this was an excellent description of the dynamic I had with my father. I would need closeness and care and safe touch so I would move towards my father to get that only to be abused. I believe that I dissociated in order to keep the part where it could feel like my needs were being met, and so I could continue to feel safe moving closer. But on some level, I knew my experience was that moving closer led to being overstimulated and overwhelmed and feeling even more isolated. So I learned to be ashamed of the needs that drove me towards my father, because it felt like not having those needs, or keeping them to myself, was the only way to stay safe.

So I think the strong yearning to be take care of was our healthy longing as a child, but the feeling that we should cope with it on our own is about remembering how dangerous it was to try and get those needs met.

These feelings of what a relationship is like and how I experienced my needs and seeking care for them was embedded on a very deep level. It's what drove me away from intimacy for decades.

Mallard, I think you did an incredible job of giving voice to these feelings, I know it resonated powerfully with me.

Pengs, I'm sorry you get this.

AG
True NorthTrue NorthCo-moderator
Mallard you described so well exactly the things I have been struggling with lately with T and it reflects the conversation we had just this week about being able to accept that I have needs and to be able to accept that he can meet some of them for me... yet that is so terrifying to have them met. If I allow myself to feel how it feels to have that happen, to have someone be so attuned to know what I need and then offer it and I dare to take it... well that is very scary because I am not sure I deserve it or that I can really "keep" it. Is it mine?

Then... how do I cope with all the feelings that get stirred up when the realization of all that I have missed or the true effect of all the deprivation had on me? Like you I know there is a huge pile of grief just hovering ou there waiting to collapse on me. And right now I'm walking the thin line between feeling the warmth of my T's nurturing and trying to avoid the grief.

Not sure at all where this is headed. But I am sensing the comfort of knowing that my T will be there with me through this even if it's painful and sucky.

Hugs
TN
MallardMallardMember
Folks, I really appreciate your posts. I know I'm sort of an infrequent poster, although I do read here a lot. I seem to go through long periods of wordlessness and then flurries of activity. And I think they mirror the way I seem to process and move forward in therapy.

I definitely seem to plateau then enter a phase where stuff seems to get unstuck, usually through me disclosing yet another agonising bit of transference. Bleh. And then things calm again... and round and round we go!

quote:
I described it as being poised on a knife-edge, precariously and painfully balanced, with the need for love and closeness drawing me in one direction, balanced as powerfully with an opposing imperative to move away in order to stay safe


AG: Interesting that you also highlight the knife-edge quality of these feelings. I notice that the language we have used is similar too; where I've used 'perfectly balanced' you've used 'painfully and precariously balanced'. I suppose it makes sense that regardless of the difference in backgrounds, there are many commonalities shared by people dealing with the legacy of having developed a disorganised attachment style. I could never figure out why I was so messed up. When I think of Robin Shapiro's definitions of long-term clients. I fit more into 'horrible attachment, relatively light trauma'. I could never figure out why I took a nosedive into batshit crazy and my relationships were all lessons in how not to connect to another person until I learned more about my beginnings; I spent the first 8 weeks of my life separated from my parents in a special care baby unit. It was the late 70s and no one knew about attachment. My parents were allowed in once a day for a couple of hours. Once I was out, the separation and my mother's own screwed up attachment meant that bond didn't really form and it set the pattern for my early years.

Ms Control, I'm sorry you struggle with these sorts of feelings too. It was a real eye-opener for me when I realised just how much of the way I live my life has been set up to 'help' me avoid my feelings.

quote:
Today I question myself that I may be making up and believing excuses for feelings toward my t leaving to avoid admitting my real feelings.


This has come up for me countless times. I've gotten a bit better at going "Ohhhhh, hang on... this is where I do X to avoid Y..." but I get how excruciatingly painful it is to wade through all the conflicting emotions. I get frustrated with myself too - learning how to identify, interact and co-exist with my feelings in my 20s and 30s because I didn't get some of what I needed to do it early on. I feel clumsy. Like a kid learning to eat with a knife and fork for the first time.

Feel like this is becoming epic... so will continue in other post!
MallardMallardMember
(((Liese))) I think what you wrote here is really insightful.

quote:
I'm starting to think that the feeling cared for feeling isn't the end in and of itself. It teaches us how good it feels so that when we aren't being cared for, either by others or by ourselves, we are able to recognize it. There is also a sense of safety and security in being cared for that allows us to drop our hypervigilance so as to free up other parts of our brain and focus on the present.


I've been puzzling over the "so what?" element of feeling this stuff, especially actually feeling cared for in the context of the therapeutic relationship. I think where I have been up until recently is experiencing feeling cared for without a corresponding drop in feeling hypervigilant.

I like the porcupines! I have definitely run into this, less so with current T but definitely in the early years with Mr Mallard. I used to call it poking each other with our metaphorical spears, which is very porcupine-like. Smiler

(((Pengs))) Sorry you get it too, especially the feeling of 'wrongness' associated with wanting someone to share some of the burden of taking care of your stuff.

And I am thinking of building my own special decontamination facility given how often transference and care seems to be coming up. Eeker
starfishstarfishMember
Mrs Mallard

Thank you so much for writing so eloquently and for expressing so perfectly how I often feel. I am at the moment digging deep into looking at shame issues in my sessions and I am constantly battling with needing to share and be helped, but then feeling the need to run and hide my head in shame. The push pull is exhausting and confusing and I feel cowardly for never getting it right.

my T cares for me; I know that, but there is a vulnerability that comes hand in hand with disclosure and whilst T has never been anything but totally accepting and affirming of anything I say, I cannot get past the fact that any minute she will see me differently and vanish like a caregiver has done in the past.

For me, pre verbal experiences just 'are'. They don't have words but carry emotions that resound so deeply inside I am sure others must sense and feel them Frowner That need to be cared for and nurtured, hurts so much; you have done it great justice Mrs M in just sharing it here Hug two

fishy
skylynxskylynxMember
I feel so much for you, too, Mallard, and all of you in deep therapy having such contrasting feelings. I'm trying to understand. Those conflicting wishes and fears are what the therapy is, really. The struggle goes on until it eventually merges and integrates and you are at peace. That's how they explain it, anyway.

I've been reading a lot on the modern school of psychoanalysis, attachment disorder, and Inner Child. I found help in reading "How Psychotherapy Heals" by Dr. Chessick. I'm also ready the books of Winnicott, Bolby, and Balint on the web. They clearly describe Transference conflicts and how Dynamic Relationship therapists have a more empathic way of dealing with dependency needs. I'm going through all this transference agony, too, and it does help to know what to expect in therapy.
Attachment GirlAttachment GirlAdmin
Skylynx,
There are two other I think you would find both interesting and helpful, judging by this reading list: Attachment in Psychotherapy By David Wallin and The General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis et al. Both do an excellent job in explaining attachment theory and the need for dependence in therapy for a time.'

Mallard,
The similarities really stood out for me too. My T calls it the "hellish bind" of healing attachment issues. I think your feelings make so much sense based on the history of your hospital stay. Thanks again, I always find your posts both enlightening and good food for thought.

AG
MallardMallardMember
(((Affinity))) I'm sorry you are stuck in the same thing. I can only imagine how hard it must be to experience all this with the added complication of ET as well. Hug two I have experienced ET before years ago with a different T and it felt like I was losing my mind but thankfully at the moment that's not coming up for me with current T. I'm not sure why but I suspect it's because we're working through what is very obviously maternal issues.

(((TN))) Wow, I think you hit the nail on the head with "Is it mine?" I think that's a question I have asked myself as long as I can remember about all sorts of care. It's partly why I wound up in couple's therapy; I find it really hard to believe that care is offered sincerely. Or, I believe that accepting care somehow diminishes the person offering it. I know intellectually that's not true but it's a really pernicious belief that still pops up. I am glad that you have your T by your side as you walk through this. Hug two

((Fishy))
quote:
They don't have words but carry emotions that resound so deeply inside I am sure others must sense and feel them


Yes, that is how it has been for me too. I think the wordlessness is part what makes the feelings so powerful. I used to think of myself as a gaping bit of nothingness with legs. The pre-verbal stuff did and still does at times feel like a black hole that cannot be described but wants to pull everything in, so my job is to make sure it doesn't by putting up walls between myself and others. I used to think "How can people not know or sense that?" I am sorry you are struggling with the bind too. You are right about it being exhausting. I actually went to bed in the middle of the day after my last session, knowing that I had a tonne of stuff to do - I figure it's what was needed so I'm trying not to go all busy, effcient duck about it. Roll Eyes

((Skylynx)) I love your screen name Smiler I've done a fair bit of reading around the subject too and I agree that it helps you understand what's going on. When I went back to individual therapy after nearly a 10 year gap it really helped me make much more of an informed decision about who to see. Much as I hate feeling pulled around by transference, I am glad in a way that I know what it feels like so I can recognise it in the future. What you say about integration makes sense. I do think that I'm more integrated than I was, which is helpful because I was so very split that half the time I had no clue why I was behaving in a certain way and there was no communication going on between all the various 'fragments'!

((AG)) I think I need to get that David Wallin book. Have you ever come across any of Crittenden's writing? She worked with Mary Ainsworth and has come up with the idea of a continuum when it comes to our attachment strategies; taking things further than the 4 original 'categories'. I have only dipped into her stuff in a very superficial way and while I think her ideas are really interesting, I don't find her a natural writer so it's hard to keep going when there is easier stuff to read!! Thanks for your comments - I always find your posts really insightful too.
Attachment GirlAttachment GirlAdmin
Mallard,
I have heard of Crittenden but never read her work (based on what you're saying its not a huge regret right now Smiler) I do think that Wallin's book can be tough going at times. He is professional writing for other professionals (my T was reading this book at the same time and told me he considered it post-graduate level) but I just kind of waded through the stuff I couldn't get because when I did get it, I thought it was brilliantly insightful about the experience I was having in therapy. There are also some really good you tube videos of David Wallin speeches and interviews that are good to listen to. He is an engaging speaker and simply radiates compassion. I think you would find him a lot more accessible. Smiler

AG

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