Posted by littleone on September 24, 2006, at 21:15:33
In reply to Re: Just saying hello! » littleone, posted by Pfinstegg on September 23, 2006, at 22:39:14
Firstly, I’m so glad you were able to work through this and come back to babble. You’ve done so much hard work with your analyst. I love hearing about your journey.
You said you were originally comfortable with babble, but then later became overly sensitive to it. Was this triggered by what you were working on in your analysis? It always amazes me that I’m mad at my boss because I’m actually mad at my T inside. Or I’m upset with babble because I’m actually upset with my T. How my mind works at diverting the feelings to a “safer” target.
>> “let me contain all of your different parts”
I often hear the word “contain” in relation to therapy, but never really understand what it means. Is your analyst saying he’ll emotionally hold all of your different parts, or is he saying he’ll keep the space (ie his office) safe for all your parts to express their needs, or something else altogether?
>> He is encouraging me to learn more and more about the feelings of my younger parts, and to befriend and console them myself.
You’re right, this is very hard work. I’m not very good at this (yet). At the moment I try to learn about them by listening inside (which I still find very difficult) and journaling. Occasionally I’ll draw. Do you have other techniques you use? I suspect your intensive analysis has helped you a lot at listening inside.
I understand what you were saying about your ability to comfort your parts, but it did kind of surprise me. I thought that from having kids of your own, you would have learnt this with them. Are you saying that your analyst taught you better ways to comfort?
I tend to comfort my parts by making it okay for them to do child-like things (eg reading kids books or colouring) and I have a comfort book that soothes them. Often putting new things in my comfort book is also very soothing for them. I’m not sure, but it sounds like you might be providing comfort by making your parts feel listened to and understood and accepted. I’m interested in how exactly you comfort your parts.
Your talk about needs was very interesting. So you’re saying that when it’s an unmet childhood need, then it is overwhelming and not healthy for babble/friends/etc to meet it. This type of need should be worked through and resolved with your T. But that all people have other healthy needs and it *is* reasonable to ask for these needs to be met by friends. Is that kind of what you’re saying?
I guess I kind of get confused by whether a need falls into the unmet childhood needs bucket, or the healthy needs bucket. Eg I know one need would be the need to feel accepted, but it seems like that could fall into both areas. I guess you could say that if it is too intense, then it’s probably the unhealthy type. But say it was a healthy level of need, if it kept getting refused, then wouldn’t it become very upsetting? Sorry, the whole needs thing confuses me so much.
Was it scary when you first tried to ask for things from family/friends? I bet it would have been nice to (mentally) hold your analyst’s hand as you tried that. What sort of needs do you ask family/friends to meet? Do you mean like if you’re upset about something, you talk it over with them?
I think it’s a big step forward to be able to believe that you should be given to (and to actually accept things given to you). I feel like doing a little happy dance for you.
poster:littleone
thread:686042
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060911/msgs/688864.html