Posted by Pfinstegg on November 11, 2005, at 20:22:50
I haven't been posting lately here, because therapy has been so hard for the past year that I hardly knew what to say about it. But now things are, for the moment, anyway, so much better. I feel I can really say anything to him, - and I do! I also have begun feeling truly and securely attached to him. I know he won't abandon me, and.somehow, the attachment seems to go both ways. He has always been extremely warm and understanding, and such a gentle, yet intently focussed listener, but now I feel that we have a so much deeper sense of mutual trust. Just today, I told him that I felt I had "improved" in that I didn't keep giving things to him- like photos and writings. He said, " but you give me such a lot- by being my patient". I was so thrilled that he would say something so wonderful! And this is after a year of very intense, often negative, rage-filled transferences- what he calls "traumatic tranferences"- which he expects with people who have been abused. I have really been just AWFUL to him for a whole year, and he has never taken it personally- just always remained very warm, accepting, and interested in having me go even further into my rage and hate. Now these feelings have calmed down quite a bit; I'm sure it's because of his having remained so accepting and understanding through it all. I think I've sort of taken his view of me inside me, and am feeling much kinder and more accepting of myself. It's taken more than two and a half years of going every day to get this far, but it's SO wonderful- just beyond my ability to express adequately.
But, I haven't gotten to the real subject of my post, which is that a part of me is certain that my father molested me when I was six years old, and another part of me is equally certain that it never happened. (The six-year old knows it happened, but the adult thinks it never did). It comes up vividly in dreams, in drawings with the art therapist, and in many sudden slips of the tongue in my analyst's office. But the whole thing is kind of like Schrodinger's Cat in quantum mechanics- both dead and alive at the same time. Learning to accept that all of me may never know makes me very uneasy, but my analyst says that memory is so complex, and still not very well understood, and that I need to keep becoming more comfortable with the concept that my different ego states in fact may have differing memories and experiences. He seems to especially like it when he sees these different ego states appear in the same session, trying to share information and feelings with one another. We both hope that all of me will eventually know, but that's still in the future. A very long way of asking: is anyone else having an experience like this?
poster:Pfinstegg
thread:577897
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051107/msgs/577897.html