OMG. You are describing me. I have a really bad problem in this area and despite all the work that my wonderful T has done (I have a thread on her somewhere) that it isn't helping me feel anything. I tell her it is like going to a restaurant and eating excellent food but having not sense of taste and smell - you are eating for the sake of it but not experiencing it.

I have terrible object relations too and lose my T immediately I leave her. This is really debilitating for me as well.

I think for me the first issue is that I had to turn off all feelings for everything for so long in my life as they were too painful so that now, I am numb and immune to feeling anything good. I dearly want to feel good things. I have a wonderful T who sits near me and I know she cares but I don't feel it.

The problem when you shut all the bad stuff out and be numb to feelings is that you also shut all the good out.

somedays

Yikes! You're describing li'l one and I, too! Object constancy is a huge issue for us. The only thing I can offer here is it has really helped that T has been constant. She's there every two weeks and we can email her or leave voice messages whenever we want. She has a picture of herself on her web site that really helps us so we know she still exists when she's not actually in front of us every day.

I wish I could offer more but please know I hear you and really understand how it feels to be alone even when you're with someone who clearly cares.

The Kid

Ahaha. (this is a cynical laugh, at how I have the same problem and no solution, so I am laughing at myself, not at you, really not)

This is very precisely my current problem. I just "freeze" when someone, T or other, is nice to me (love being the worst, but 'being nice' is low level love). It feels too much, I can't deal with it.

I do not want to hijack your thread and I have no proper answer (and I have a question, is there anywhere on the forum where I can ask a question about this "blank/freeze" feeling toward SO? It is not directly therapy related, even though it is of couuurse a good exploration field for therapy).

I have this issue with LOVE. It's one on the top of my list of many. This is the hardest though because I struggle with wanting to be loved, but in turn, feel all of the same ways you have expressed here. The emptiness, the aloneness. Feeling SO much love for other people, but being unable to fully believe that anyone could ever love me. My T and I had a conversation about this today and she said that I need to learn how to love me, because how can other people learn to love me if I can't feel it inside for myself. (Yes, that hurt.) I took it totally in that way I immediately take everything "what? she doesn't love me then, right? If I don't love me, then she can't love me!" My brain goes there.

Intimacy is hard. I thought that I was in an intimate relationship with hubby when we married, but I didn't realize that it really wasn't that intimate until recently when I started opening up more and more. Slowly I am letting him in more and more and feeling emotionally safe. I think emotional safety for us who have experienced trauma is crucial. If I don't feel it, it's hard to even allow myself to get close enough to have a meaningful relationship. So, maybe emotional intimacy will lead towards being able to believe in the gift of love from others.

Accepting love has been a journey for me. Love in therapy is a topic that confuses my heart more than any other. I absolutely can say that I love my therapist. She's been through so much with me, but I struggle because while I know that in a very human way she does love me, it wont be in that pure love form that is developed in life among friends, lovers, and family. Love is a confusing word for me because when I heard it as a child, I heard it as a question. It was said to fill an emotional void that my parents couldn't fill in their own hearts. Maybe this is why I have such difficulty accepting it because I am trying to learn the meaning of the word.

So, maybe we can help each other out and walk through this learning process of what LOVE really means? I know I could use some help understanding the definition more clearly.

Hi AH

I can really empathise with the inability to hold onto love and feeling like there is a bottomless void.

I can honestly say that this used to be a source of heartache and seemed hopeless and inevitable but there have been some huge changes in this area in the past 9 months or so

The bottomless void I strongly believe relates to a deprivation of love, nurturing and protection in childhood. When our early experiences of love are inadequate or traumatic, incoming love is twisted by our internal filters to keep the love out, leaving one isolated. We learned it wasn't safe to trust and be emotionally intimate with our parents and there is a part of our personality invested in making sure that never happens again because it is so painful and destructive.

So there are two key things here. One is grieving the love we never had as little ones that we desperately needed and definitely deserved. It is an enormous, heart wrenching, soul destroying grief that often takes people to the edge of their sanity. It can go on and on and feel endless and futile.

However as you grieve and let go of what you never had, you are more open to taking in what's available in the present. I learned what love actually is from the way my T has loved me. The paradox is the closer and more loved we feel by T and others, the more unresolved feelings and trauma is uncovered. It's like our mind knows we now have the inner and outer resources available to process these experiences.

As for filling that inner emptiness - I have somewhat healed this by the unconditional acceptance, care and love of my T who has loved and accepted me in a way nobody ever has. I will forever be indebted to him. And just in this last month I've been able to trust him in a way I never thought possible and the flow on effects to my marriage have been astounding.

Hugs xx

Yes to this! I went some way towards fixing some of this in therapy, or at least laying the foundations for healing, and then had an absolutely disastrous experience in a relationship (long story, too much to go into in one post) and it massively compounded the issues I already had. It was so perfectly tailored to maximise my already pretty messed up state that, even though I don't believe in that stuff, I wondered whether I was the butt of some great cosmic joke or conspiracy.

I literally felt like I had a black hole in my soul and that nothing I poured into it from myself, from others... nothing could rectify the terrible wrongness that was there.

It was so powerful that I sometimes used to wonder, walking down the street if people knew. That I was carrying an absence, a vacuum around with me.

"Love is a confusing word for me because when I heard it as a child, I heard it as a question. It was said to fill an emotional void that my parents couldn't fill in their own hearts. Maybe this is why I have such difficulty accepting it because I am trying to learn the meaning of the word."

Gosh, Ainsley, this is very powerful. I think those of us that have been on the receiving end of conditional love and approval do often end up feeling a void because love was a lot of the time about what we could give to others, not what could be received without conditions attached.

GE, I too found that the grieving had to happen before I could feel even the smallest amount of care from people close to me. I remember so clearly the day I "Got it". I was sitting in bed next to Mr Mallard after yet another post-argument conversation about feeling loved and suddenly realised that I was expecting him to provide that perfect care that I never had and the realisation that he could never provide me with what I didn't have as a child just hit me like a ton of bricks and the pain of that realisation was immeasurable. Worse, I didn't want to let go of it. I wanted to rail against the unfairness of it all and tell him that he just had to try harder - and maybe it would be enough.

I think that's the hardest thing really, working through that realisation when it initially can feel so hopeless. For me, it wasn't a graceful letting go. There was no zen-like moment of acceptance. Just ground gained inch by painful inch.

The only thing that helped was going over it, again and again in therapy, each time a little bit deeper, and there was some couples work Mr M and I did which helped us understand each other better. Because I was so obviously nuts, we didn't realise that his stuff was also contributing to the dynamic we were in.

I too can get so frustrated and sad about not being able to really feel good in a direct sense of the word, let alone feel love from people. I’ll explain: while I’m an expert at feeling bad, feeling good doesn’t come to me without a conscious effort. It’s like walking along the beach at sunset, hand in hand with a loved one. I’ll go “oh, there’s a beautiful sunset, and the sand is warm under my feet, and the sound f the sea is soothing, and holding hands is nice, and, and, and…” and only THEN will I feel some hint of a good feeling. Feeling the love of someone else, let alone accepting it, works more or less the same way for me.
But with my T, I have been making progress in this area. It took some time to build the necessary conditions (trust, containment, constancy) . I very recently rendered myself immensely vulnerable with her and it was in many ways a strengthening process as well as a healing one that is making me more able to feel – deserving of – love. It’s such a subtle shift I have trouble laying a finger on it – and I get scared it might disappear again (!), but I feel a bit more stable, like I’m finally creating a bottom so the love doesn’t just go to waste again. I’m convinced that having the courage to show me at my most vulnerable and being met with understanding, recognition and unconditional love was the right combination to make things shift. Having a wonderful T helps heaps but you need to dare to expose yourself to let their love in and that is excruciatingly hard when you’ve been very much hurt before. It’s a painstakingly slow process though and I can understand you feeling this way with your T’s absence coming up. Don’t give up, girl. So many of us here struggle with this, we’re here to help.