Posted by Daisym on March 24, 2006, at 0:18:44
In reply to Re: making a friend of your younger self.. » Pfinstegg, posted by Racer on March 23, 2006, at 21:43:16
I've read through all the responses and there is something deep and profound in each response. I think each person has found their own path to healing, though we blaze trails for each other along the way. Sort of like why I need to work with a male therapist and you can't even imagine it.
I have said often, through mass tears, that I don't want "this" to define me...I don't want to be "the woman whose dad abused her." Worse, I don't want to be a "survivor" or any other positive euphemism you hear applied to this. I don't mean to disrespect anyone who embraces these titles. I just struggle really hard with having any kind of relationship with myself around this. I guess that is part of what I'm trying to do in therapy.
I flinch still when my therapist says things like, "Its called rape" etc. He is calmly angry at my father in a powerfully scary way. The younger parts really believe that if he had the opportunity he would defend them completely and in fact he defends their grief and anguish from 'me.' Because I don't want to be an adult who was an abused child. And I surely don't want to still be that child who is hurting. And yet I'm both these things.
But -- the most confusing part is that I also want to completely be this child who is hurting. I want to be recognized as a child who was abused -- I almost typed that in capital letters. I want the truth acknowledged, I want it to not be my fault and I want to rage about it. And God help me, I want to make that list that Mel made. It is a horrible list, and I put my therapist through the ringer when I begin to do this, over and over again. But I think I'm proving to myself that it all adds up to "bad enough" to justify a lot of therapy, a lot of anger and a million tears. I owe my therapist about a hundred boxes of Kleenex.
I don't believe that you ever really get over it. I think it quiets into background noise and when you react to something you can say, "oh, right, that is an old fear." I think you work it through on one level and then when life circumstances stir it up again, you work it through on the next level. I'm guessing that is why those of us with this in our history bounce in and out of therapy, or just stay in it continuously. We learned really early that we can't trust our perceptions, after all, weren't we pretty sure that we weren't making mountains out of mole hills, and yet weren't we constantly told that we were? So we need someone else to ask, "is it OK to feel this?"
I don't know, Racer, if my reply is any help at all. As you know, this is a HUGE struggle for me. I feel like I don't know who I am, if I have to be this. But I do, don't I? And so do you.
poster:Daisym
thread:623482
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060312/msgs/624048.html