Posted by sunnydays on November 13, 2007, at 16:11:16
So....
My therapist and I have been talking about attachment a lot lately. About how my mom most likely has borderline personality disorder (he hasn't met her, but he said that everything I've said about her just keeps reinforcing the absolute classic picture in his mind of someone who is borderline - extremely inconsistent, prone to getting extremely angry and hostile, having an affair, etc., etc.). But the point with all that is that somehow somewhere I attached to my mother, my dad being very absent and just sort of checked out. He and my mom were married and everything, he just has never really been a huge factor in my life. So naturally, since a child needs a parent, I attached to my mother.
My mother has been extremely emotionally inconsistent with me and he was talking today about something called object relations theory, and that it talks about a notion of permanence, and that I didn't get that feeling of permanence from my mom. I used to beg her to stay home, but she would leave and go out. And my mom fluctuates between being in a great mood and things being wonderful and really wanting me close to her, to being extremely hostile and rejecting towards me.
So my T thinks that because I get, at least a little bit and in a limited way, some of the things I really want and need in a relationship from him, that the little girl feelings have transferred onto him somewhat. And that I have gotten attached to him, and so that I really feel safe. But that since the early experiences were so inconsistent for me, it's hard to trust that relationships don't always end and people don't always go away, and that's why I miss him so much.
I understand that to a point, and it all makes a lot of sense, but we were talking about this part of me today that still doesn't want to believe that my parents weren't good and to give up on the fact that they won't change and be normal (therapy is NOT helping them, it's making them, if anything, more entrenched in their ways). And it makes me so sad.
I thought there was a question somewhere in this post, but I don't know what it is. I guess just, does this make sense to anyone else? And how do I get it to really sink in? Today my T had me take notes while he explained it because we've talked so many times about it and the times I need to remember it most, when I get frightened he will leave me, it slips out of my mind and I can't grasp it anymore.
So comments and help and suggestions, and even just some comfort for the little girl in me that is so so sad would be appreciated. Sorry I haven't been around much lately. It's just been hard to think of anything to say.
sunnydays
poster:sunnydays
thread:794882
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20071105/msgs/794882.html