yaku,
I am so sorry you're hurting. The attachment really does seem very pointless while we're in the middle of it, doesn't it? I mean I can't figure out how it's a good thing that I feel like a child and want T to be the person who meets these child needs for me, and I should express the needs on top of just secretly having them, so T can tell me no, there are boundaries, and she can't and won't be meeting my needs? grrrrr. I really hear you. It hurts deeply.

I do hear that through it there is another side.....One of healing. I know there are people here who can explain how it happens much better than I can. AG?????

I wanted you to know you are *not* alone and I know many people here share your pain in this.
(((yaku)))

Please try to be gentle....you deserve kindness.
sea

Hi Yaku... I'm sorry you are in so much pain over this. I do understand that sometimes the kindness is harder to accept and sit with than the cruelty because we are more familiar with the cruelty and negligence than the kindness and caring and it hurts when we cannot return it in the way we would like to.

What I wanted to point out is that you do really need to talk to your T about what you want and feel you need. I know you believe that he will say no and this will kill you... but it won't. There are some things you "may" be able to get from him if you ask or you may be able to get a negotiated form of what you think you need. But, the other side to this is where I have found healing and that is when your T says "no" but he allows you to discuss it and talk about it and he HEARS your feelings about it and allows you to grieve what you cannot have. This is HUGELY healing in some strange and inexplicable way. I don't know why but it is. At least for me.

For example, with my current T, he will not, under any circumstances, allow me to bring him food gifts. He knew I did this with my oldT and he feels it was me taking care of oldT by feeding him and he tells me I am not to take care of HIM, he takes care of me. As this was a big thing for me to bring oldT certain special things I would cook that reflected my heritage and who I was, it hurt me very much to hear that my T would not allow me to do this with him. I felt that he was rejecting me and my culture and it made me angry. But we talked about it off and on over time and I came to see that it was a VERY loving thing he was doing for me. He did it not to hurt me but to take care of me. It would have been easier to accept the gifs/food and enjoy them or even throw them away than to tell me I was not allowed to bring them. But he made the more difficult choice, but the choice that was best for ME not him.

Now when I cook those foods I think of my T and I smile and feel very warm. Because even though I cannot bring him what I want, I feel very much cared for and loved and protected. And ultimately that is very connecting and very healing for me. I went back and told my T that I felt this way while I was cooking and his warm smile was a huge reward for me and made me feel better than if I had brought him a truckload of food.

So, I encourage you to talk to your T about your needs and listen to what he has to say. And grieve if you must... he will be there to support you and care for you. And you may also be surprised in that he can accommodate some of your requests as well and that would also be great. From this comes healing.

Good luck
TN

Hi Yaku...

I'm bumping this because I really want you to see it. Because I want you to know that asking for what you need and getting a no may also be a good thing for you... or at least not the end of the world. But making your needs known is important and important to discuss.

I know you are struggling lately and wanted you to see this post.

Sorry if feels so awful,
TN

Thanks TN. On the one hand, I do make my needs known. T knows all the needs and feelings regarding him that come up for me. On the other hand, that is different than me directly asking him to do it in the moment. That is where I cannot seem to get myself to act. But T does, absolutely, know this experience that's going on inside of me, that he is drawing out of me. I'll give you an example of a list that made it into my journal (I won't include the opposing list of my parent part's abusive response to those needs to keep them in check).

-I want to be able to reach out to (text) you any time I want, whenever I am struggling, or even just because I need to know you’re there.
-When I’m tired and overwhelmed, I want to sit next to you and have you tell me explicitly that it’s OK to feel comforted by your presence.
-I sometimes get the urge to hold hands when we’re praying.
-When I am very upset, sometimes I feel a desperate need for physical contact, like a reassuring hand or hug.
-I want to greet you warmly, like with a handshake, to show you how happy I really am to be there.
-I want to part in a connecting sort of way, to have you walk me out rather than sit there as I leave, a pat on the arm.
-Sometimes, I feel like curling up on the couch in your office.
-I want to move the coffee table out from between us, so you can roll closer to me if I am in distress.
-I want to see you smile at me. I want to know you’re happy to see me.
-I want you to be proud of me, to like and respect me.
-I like it when you praise me.
-I feel playful and want to tease you.
-I randomly feel like playing catch during a session.
-I want you to be protective of me (like when you say you are angry about bad things that happened to me).
-I sometimes want to text you simply that I miss you.
-I want to matter to you, to hear that you really care.
-I want to have something to offer you in appreciation of our connection.
-I actually love being called Kiddo.
-I need you to stand up to the Evil Projection Dr_ that my caretaker invented by reminding me that you are kind, supportive, generous, accepting, available, caring and feel called to help me.
-I want to know I can depend on you to be there for me without “cheating on” God.


On this list, the things that he has always done are:
-Allowing texting.
-Praising.
-Correcting my projections.
-Smiling, seeming happy to see me (but I can barely look at him, so hard to "receive" it).

The things he has done inconsistently throughout therapy, but sometimes has done:
-Called me Kiddo (but he hasn't done it since I responded very positively to it over a month ago).
-Protective statements.

The things he has done a bit since I sent this to him:
-Saying he likes me in round about ways, like yesterday's "I think you're great, really!"
-Toned down the God stuff a bit when I am very much in kiddo mode, since I experience it as a rejection.
-Acted a bit silly last session, even more friendly, and I could tell he was trying to invite me to be more child-like, although he didn't verbalize it. Like...I could imagine seeing him be this way with a little kid.
-Was trying to be playful with me last session, but unfortunately at an inappropriate time (when I was in a lot of pain near the end of a session) and in a way which was actually slightly irritating. I think he was trying to engage with a very young part when I was feeling more pre-teen and he was making me re-experience a bad childhood therapy experience.

However, the stuff I am most desperate for (especially when I'm in a lot of pain, on the verge of tears, but can't cry, cannot even form thoughts enough to speak or ask) is the physical proximity and that is the stuff I sense the biggest barrier to. I'm sure there are other needs I haven't verbalized to him too and it's not that he is unwilling to meet all of them.

The real problem is that it just seems to make me need and want more from him. I feel like it will keep escalating and never end. What is that about? Why can't what he's offering ever be enough? How can my deprivation be so deep that it feels untouched by the kindness he extends and his attempts to connect with me? So...I really feel like it will never change. I am fundamentally too needy, unreachable. Maybe my parents figured that out early and then learned what I have discovered, which is that rejection, neglect and abuse are the only successful responses to it, the only things that do not just increase my appetite.

Thanks, BG. Cross-posted. And, thanks to Seablue too (sorry for the delay, I got distracted). I'm feeling really understood here.

I just...can't stop wanting things I don't get to have and it's infuriating. The more I receive, the more I need. I feel disgusted by it.

(((YAKU))))

You are NOT fundamentally too needy, too unreachable. Wipe that thought right out of your mind. You reserves are wiped out and you need to replenishment. That will happen but it will take time.

Yaku, I know how painful it is to feel so needy. I left my T Monday at 1 and by 5 p.m. was posting here in pain, wanting more of him and knowing that I can't have it. I didn't sleep up and woke up in total and complete stress in the middle of the night. And, then, somehow was able to let it all go yesterday, remembering that T told me he is committed to me. Then the awful thoughts started again this morning.

It seems like a building process to me. I'm starting to really trust him, maybe internalize him but the old demons keep rearing up. I have to learn coping skills, I guess, for the times when the feelings are so intense, I can't stand it. I'm glad I'm going twice a week. I know you have your phone session and it's probably not financially feasible to go twice a week, huh? That really helps me a lot, that second session. I don't know how I would feel if I could text him often because not being able to forces me to separate from him. It might cause me more problems than it solves.

And, so I'm guessing that you are not really getting the emotional support you need in between sessions. Have you thought about group therapy?

((((YAKU))))

Liese, thanks for your empathy. It sounds like you get how I feel. I'm not sure I can believe that I'm not unreachable, since I can remember having these feelings, fears, disgust with myself since 12-years-old, maybe earlier. And despite a number of teachers, counselors, friends, eventually pastors caring for me...I can't stop wanting to replace the experience and just get to have a dad who stays permanently until I'm ready to let go (and I feel like I may never be). And T can't be that. And the kids don't want to mourn that. So what's the point? Ugh.

I would love to go see him twice a week, but he is only in my area Monday and Tuesday, he works two hours away Wednesday and Thursday and I think mostly does phone sessions, court-related stuff and paperwork on Fridays. Financially, it's also not an option right now, no. Same thing with group therapy. The cheapest ones that apply to me that I've found in my area are at least $75 a session. I may join a church community group, but I kind of don't want to go into one of those in such a needy state, be a drain, make people I barely know hate me, because I have nothing to offer in return right now and will be very rejecting of their care, since I have trouble trusting/receiving.

The texting sometimes helps, sometimes makes things worse. It does help him know where I've been at all week, so at the very least, I don't have to waste 20 minutes of my session trying to remember what my week was like so I can update him.

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm probably being ridiculously resistant to helpful suggestions right now, because internally I'm feeling hopeless and helpless and like everything is pointless and I guess I just need to kick and flail in those feelings a bit...and then move on if I can?

YAKU,

Maybe T can be at least some of what you want. You can see him until you are ready to leave him, right? He can't in a real sense be your Dad, but he can give you some things you really need.

I know how brutal it feels, Yaku. When it hits me, it hits like a ton of bricks and I feel as though I have no control over the intense pain. I can't even tell you how I was able to let it all go yesterday but I felt so grounded all day and it was wonderful. Today I'm suffering again but not as badly as I was Monday into Tuesday.

Maybe those are flashbacks? Do you get flashbacks?

I get flashbacks, yeah, but none about my childhood really. The only things I have that are flashbacks about my childhood, I'm not even sure are actually memories. Intense, scary stuff that I don't remember EVER happening and have no evidence to support (besides the knowledge that this person was a nasty piece of work and continued to harass me in creepy ways during later childhood) and no one could corroborate for me. I can remember pretty well, for example, the day my dad and step-mom used a therapy session I had for nightmares related to watching Puppet Master 2 in fourth grade to tell me I was not welcome to live with them, because my step-mom was "done raising her kids." I don't remember being sad or angry, just a bit confused about why her being done raising kids had anything to do with me living there, since I didn't really need her to do anything for me. And, then I remember having a sense of doneness about depending on them or seeking those relationships. I still visited him on some weekends for a couple of years after that, hung out, played sports, but he became a different guy in my mind, I think. I wasn't upset. I didn't long for him. Intellectually, I understood that I was seeking love from older male figures, because I was missing it from him, but I didn't think of my dad and feel like I missed him or wanted him at all. My mom, I never had that "letting go" experience, because I never really connected with her. My dad's mom was more of a mother figure and when he remarried, I lost my regular time with her (because I was forced to visit him on the weekends, which usually consisted of helping out at the cafe that him and my step-mom ran and then doing homework/watching tv alone in my room). I think the loss of my grandma (she died of cancer when I was 16) is the only loss I have ever had any conscious pain around.

Anyway, that's probably way too much information. It may be that I was just never securely attached to either of my parents. My mom was unstable (as in, it has been reported to me that she had severe postpartum depression with me, left me crying for hours in playpens, had a severe mental breakdown that I don't remember around when I was six, objectively probably severely neglectful throughout my whole life and became emotionally (and somewhat physically) abusive during my teens. My mom and dad split before I was one, were back together around three, were split when I was four and five, I think (when her boyfriend effed up our lives), back together (though he was just taking care of her) when I was six, he slept in my room for a year when I was about seven-and-a-half, because they were living together, but split up, then she stopped coming home and left him for my step-dad around when I turned nine. He left for good at that point. So, from the middle of third grade, when she stopped coming home and dumped him to the Summer after fourth grade, my mom remarried, my oldest sister moved back from her dad's house (she moved there, because my mom's boyfriend abused her and my other older sister--he's the creep I'm referring to), got a new step-brother my age, had a new baby sister, my dad moved in with my step-mom, then married her (giving me two adult step-sisters, I stopped seeing my grandma very much, and then was told I could not live with my dad. In fifth grade, my mom and step-dad split up and he and my step-brother moved out. But my mom was pregnant again (maybe his kid, maybe not, but he has always raised her). So they moved back in for sixth grade, broke up sometime in seventh grade, my step-brother moved to his mom's in 8th grade. My mom regularly violently fought with my oldest sister, kicked her out, started doing the same thing with me, but I didn't resist, so I didn't have it as bad, really. She dated dozens of guys who were in and out of my life when she wasn't with my step-dad (or eventually my little brother's father who she never married). I feel like it's going to sound like I'm complaining here, but I'm actually trying to make a point.

You know what I felt during this period? Mild confusion. How do I please these new people coming in and out of my life? What are their expectations? Acceptance. My step-brother is here? OK, let's be friends. My step-brother is gone? Bummer, oh well. I don't remember being attached to ANY of these people or having any sort of real sadness about them leaving. I never connected with any of them in a deep way. Even my own older sister, who I spent much of my childhood with. I just remember rolling with the experiences. The only time I've EVER experienced this sort of pain was in wanting love and attention from people I knew I should not want it from, which were usually "safe" people like teachers. T says I'm dissociated from my feelings, but eight months of therapy and I still feel pretty apathetic.

I don't know where I was going with all that, except to say that they don't seem like flashbacks to me...

Funny, Yaku, how you describe your reactions to all that as being detached. That's how I feel/felt about certain childhood events. My brother axed his bedroom walls while babysitting my sister and I and it was just the way he was. I had/have no emotional reaction. I think I went out of my way to avoid his anger and it almost sounds like you did too and that's one of the reasons we ended up being pleasers?

Well, I guess I was thinking in terms of an "emotional" flashback not necessarily a visual flashback. We haven't gotten to the point yet where we can really handle them. Or it just could simply be the pain of separation? I'm starting to think that they are emotional flashbacks as I let myself trust and need T more and more, like feeling the good, positive feelings which I've avoided for so long, which is what trauma survivors do, brings on the emotional flashbacks from the trauma. I don't think it's depression. I'm going to try to pinpoint T down on this. He did say recently that I'm crying a lot because I'm finally letting myself feel. Of course, it could totally be different for you.

UV - sweet for you to call me Kiddo. Wish my T would do it again.

quote:

Reading through your posts, it's not hard to see you used intellectualization and rationalization alot as a child and are still trying to do so.

Oh, no, I've been seen! Yeah, I call my "executive" part the intellectual or observer. That part and my caretaker part are responsible for at least 90% of how I interact with the world, usually. There are parts of my personality like playful/humorous parts that are pretty cooperative with nearly any state too, though. Ugh, I still feel embarrassed admitting how I divide myself up.

quote:

It might not be that you are having such a difficult time needing him, it may be that you are allowing yourself to feel yourself needing him.

Yes, this makes a lot of sense. Feeling myself needing him is terrifying and no amount of rationalizing that his consistent behavior has proven he has no intention of abandoning or harming me in any way seems to help...I just cannot manage to feel safe. And when I start to feel safe, I panic, because safety is unsafe (it will be stolen from me).

quote:

It's not uncommon at all for someone with a childhood such as yours. My T calls it love hungry.

I've had so much struggle around this for so many years. It's funny you call it love hungry, because I've described my past coping mechanisms as purposefully "starving the brat" into submission. I wonder if even therapy with an attuned, caring T is capable of satiating such an appetite...or at least teaching my system to recognize real hunger and fullness...like learning to listen to your body and regulate your eating. And, here, turmoil inside going, "NOOOO! I don't want to do it that way. I need him to give me love, not teach me how to do with less!!!" When those feelings/thoughts pop up strongly like this, I literally just feel like going to sleep, almost every time. It's exhausting! It's especially tiring when the abusive states fight back by telling me how awful, disgusting, etc. I am and how much T hates me for this neediness. I guess that's normal to be worn out, taxed, when ways you're not used to thinking and feeling keep pushing to the surface.

quote:

You always had these feelings, Yaku. When you use rationalization, the emotional parts get disavowed/dissociated. So when the need feelings/flashbacks seep in, it gets scary and overwhelming.

You might be feeling trapped now because you are still trying to compartmentalize as it's all too overwhelming to emotionally experience that intense need. These feelings, while transference, are actually 'flashbacks' in themselves. The content, the actual 'memories', are not as relevant to your healing. You are doing alot of work, really doing good.

The compartmentalization is like being 'in between', hence feeling 'trapped'. It takes alot of time and sessions working thru these feelings over and over and over again to integrate, and you seem to be just where you are supposed to be at right now.

Try not to worry about whether or not you have memories, whether they are proven, real, however you may think of them...the affect states you experience ARE the memories you need to work through. No need to question yourself in that regard, ok?

I can kind of get this, but I feel like I don't really understand how it "works." How will this help me not make these feelings about T? Or if that's not necessary, how will I manage to stop wanting him if I keep just allowing myself to identify him as this caring, parental figure? I mean, ideally, I get it...I will grow up. All kids move away from their parents and eventually their parents pass on. However, it's such an elongated process compared to what's going to happen with me in T. The idea that I will be needing him this intensely how and somehow have to force myself to "grow up" and separate myself from him in a year or even two seems impossible. The only reason I say a year or two is that my H freaks out when I suggest it could be longer or I might want to see T once in a while after. So, I try not to project my therapy experience much longer than my family can "deal with" right now.

I still don't understand how I could have completely dissociated all these sorts of feelings, like to the point of not having almost any memories of being angry or sad when I was very young...a few of being scared. But, like I said, probably 99% of my memories that involve negative emotions are just confusion. Also, it bothers me that a very high percentage of my childhood memory content are just generalizations that I've made or timelines that I have pieced together from knowing where we lived and who was living with us in certain school grades. It bothers me that I have almost no important event memories, and just a few single instance memories, at all. I always thought I had a good "record" of my childhood, but it's more like a puzzle I put together from information I've been given by either outside sources or later memories of those people and places. Like...for example, how could I not notice, even at six-years-old, that my mom had a severe mental breakdown for several months? Although I know my sisters moved away to their dad's and I remember some chatter about their dad not giving my mom his proper phone number, I don't remember them leaving or really the period of them not living with me. I remember driving to meet them to pick them up for visits, but I don't remember having that bedroom to myself at all, but I did for at least a year. The memories I have from around that age are my first day of school (bad memory--confusion and anger at myself for going to the wrong classroom), having a baby chick poop on my hand in Kindergarten, accidentally calling the K teacher "Mommy" and feeling humiliated, telling the teacher I needed a "Caca brown" color to paint my hair in my self-portrait (WTF), my guinea pig dying under suspicious circumstances. Out of all those memories, only the last one involved my home and either of my parents (my mom). The rest of that period is filled with "in general" stuff, like knowing that I went to upper level classes for academics and back to K to learn to socialize with kids my age. It's really confusing and bothers me that I spent less than six hours of my day in school, yet a majority of my memory content is there and this is true through my early teens. I guess I just need to get over it...but I feel kind of, I don't know, robbed.