Hi - glad you're posting! I don't think we've met, so nice to meet you.

I guess, I have kind of felt like I'm approaching what you are describing, but am perhaps several steps behind you. I am having several issues that I'm starting to re-remember, if that makes any sense. Like, the actual event narrative is the same, but the "me" in those stories is completely different. Whereas I thought those events were meaningless points on the continuum of my life, now they seem significant, painful, frightening, etc. I usually cannot maintain it for long, before I sense some part of me is fighting back against letting them mean anything. Sometimes, it feels like being torn. Sometimes, like my skin doesn't fit and something is trying to get out of me. Trying to describe it right now, I am tingling and aching, so due to this triggering, I'm afraid I can't really give you much more input. But, I can totally relate to how you feel! -Yaku

Yaku, Yes thats exactly what its like, especially the seeing past events and always having dismissed them to suddenly have a narrative put to them, it kinda of takes ones breath away.

Thanks.

Hi FreudsFly,

I think that I WANT to get to the point where you are. I've only been back in therapy for about 3 months, and I am struggling a ton. The defenses I built up from childhood (infancy, actually) were definitely to protect me and sustain my survival. Now that I'm an adult, living away from my family, I don't need them anymore, but am so scared to be without them because I don't know life without that protection.

Congrats on getting to where you are - as much as it might stink, it sounds like it's the right place to be heading and moving through!

Freuds fly,

I can completely relate to what you are talking about! my defenses are just starting to dismantle a little also. I can relate to what you are saying about being independent in the midst of difficult circumstances. I grew up that way too, and really didn't think that there was anything wrong with it. Now I'm realizing otherwise.

I'm not sure that there is much we can do to prevent feeling the pain/sadness that we were shielded from. I'm worried how I wil continue to react, since emotions are difficult for me to face.

Hang in there, you aren't alone on this at all!

Reassuring to see others too understand this process.

During a recent session yet again I brought up the subject of T's couch, in the yrs I've been seeing her I have never laid down on it.

We have never spoken in depth about this, just made casual jokes about my reluctance to lie, not that T has ever said I should.

When this came up recently I got quite aggressive about people who do choose lie down and T said for the first time that actually its better if I don't lie down as its important for me to know there is someone else in the room with me, as my past abandonments as a baby and being left lying alone for hours obviously play a big part in this.

When I heard T say that I felt so validated, and also felt relived that I was being accepted for who and how I am, and that there was a known reason for my reluctance to lie. But the sentence about it being important for me to know someone else is in the room triggered some painful feelings, I lately everything that I've put in place of my lifetime to avoid feeling that existential loneliness has begun to loose its pay off, which has left me with the feelings of aloness without the normal get out clauses I've normally jumped too. The mourning phase as each defense "dies" can be paralyzing and I have to keep journaling to work my way through it and remember this is a process and not a feeling I will be stuck in.

I can see how things like FB etc have been a great tool in avoiding that basic abandonment depression, but as I pass through each loss I feel better for it and the loss of coping mechanisms become a relief.

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But the sentence about it being important for me to know someone else is in the room triggered some painful feelings

Oh, I know this one so well. I am still debating asking T to sit on my side of the room, or otherwise just be close to me. I keep feeling like if the answer is no, the abandonment that I can't even remember, because I was too young, will be so strong, it will feel like death.

quote:

Originally posted by yakusoku:

quote:

But the sentence about it being important for me to know someone else is in the room triggered some painful feelings

I can't even remember, because I was too young, will be so strong, it will feel like death.

Yes I know that fear, and have been told that its already happened, that it felt like death but it won't feel like that now, but the repetive fear keeps telling me otherwise and prevents me from seeing what is on offer if I take the risk.

Well, I took the step of letting him know in a journal entry that I WANT to discuss these attachment feelings and my inner Kiddo's desire to have him be closer. Now, I most likely can't escape it. The way I am looking at it now is that there is no way out but through. Either I can stay in this injured place and try to repress and ignore it to the best of my ability, disconnecting from so many other things (and relationships) in the process...or I can push through these death-like feelings and hope that there is a light at the end of the very dark, crushing tunnel I am dragging myself through on my hands and knees.