Posted by vwoolf on February 18, 2005, at 3:51:13
In reply to Re: Good to see you » vwoolf, posted by sunny10 on February 17, 2005, at 13:58:15
You know Sunny, I've spent the last couple of hours thinking about what you wrote. I get really angry when people tell me to take care of myself. It feels as if they are trying to minimise all my hurt, and "make it better" with some trite formula. I have even shouted at my T when she suggests a massage. She keeps telling me to try and understand why I am getting so cross about this, but until now I have refused to examine my motives. But strangely your post, together with a book I found yesterday, seem to be penetrating the fog somehow, although I don't promise I'm actually going to manage to do anything about myself.
The book is "The Inner World of Trauma" by Donald Kalsched. I have only just begun reading it, but on the first page he says:
"I have had a number of individuals in analysis who, after an initial period of growth and improvement, reached a kind of plateau where they seemed to stagnate in therapy and, instead of getting better as a result of the treatment, seemed instead to get stuck in a "repetition compulsion" of earlier behaviours, which left them feeling defeated and hopeless. These were individuals who had suffered traumatic experiences in childhood which had overwhlemed their often unusual sensitivities and driven them inward. Often, the interior worlds into which they retreated were childlike worlds, rich in fantasy but with a very wistful, melancholic cast. In this museum-like "sanctuary of innocence" these patients clung to a remnant of their childhood experience which had been magical and sustaining at one time, but which did not grow along with the rest of them. Although they had come to therapy out of need, they did not really want to grow or change in ways that would truly satisfy that need. To be more precise, one part of them wanted to change and a stronger part resisted this change. They were divided within themselves."That feels very much like me. It's as if I am protecting the only sense of myself that I have. To try and "care" for myself in the way everyone suggests, seems like a real betrayal of this incredibly intimate, personal me which is separate from and different to everyone else, even though it is sad and melancholy and angry and thinks in terms of pain and blood and sex and death. If I give this up, I will no longer have any "me" left. I can't do that.
Sorry, Maybe this is too deep for here, but it has helped me to think and write about this. I will definitely take this to my T. I don't know how she will resolve this, but it clearly is at the bottom of a whole lot of things.
Thanks so much for keeping after me. I probably will get there in the end - I'm just a bit dumb and stubborn.
poster:vwoolf
thread:458175
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050211/msgs/459740.html