Posted by FindingMyDesire on October 17, 2008, at 23:19:03
This is soooooo long. It's really a personal journal entry but I HAVE to tell someone!!!!!! I can hardly contain myself right now.
I am on the brink of something big. I have been feeling it coming as my feelings about everything have intensified to a point that I can hardly hold. It feels like my insides are just going to come out because I just can't be in my skin right now.
I feel more for my therapist than I could ever describe in words - more love, attachment, need, desire, want than I can handle. At the same time this suffocating shame is taking me over. My internalized homophobia is wreaking havoc on my thoughts. My acknowledgment of my sexual desires makes me think I have some serious pathological problem. I blame my gender issues for my losing two pregnancies in a row. I am flip-flopping from self-hate talk (I just want to disappear) to self-soothing loving talk, sometimes from moment to moment. All of this happening at once cannot be a coincidence.
Therapy on Thursday was really good. I talked about some things in my life that don't feel quite as big or pressing as the above - new work relationships and some parenting struggles - but I was talking to her with a sense of trust I have just begun to feel - just in this week.
Maybe the bad stuff is backlash for the attachment and trust I feel?
Thursday night I started thinking about my past relationships. I wanted to remember something in particular and couldn't so I went to the basement and emerged with two boxes full of journals dating back to sixth grade. (I started writing when I first started having crushes on girls.)
I started reading them in order and just couldn't stop. I got to the ones that started around 14 years ago - when I was in therapy before with a great therapist that I share the occasional holiday card with now. I was super attached to her. I had remembered that. She was fatherly-like to me. I had remembered that. I knew at times I had been crushed out on her. I knew that we worked through some good stuff and that when I left she was encouraging me to be ready to "grow up" and settle down in a way. I had remembered that.
What I cannot BELIEVE, what I can hardly admit out loud to myself, what makes me question everything - not in a bad or good way - just EVERYTHING, is that for a good portion of those six years in therapy I was writing the SAME things I am writing now about my therapist. THE SAME SH_T!!!!!!!!!! I could literally compare page by page (except my hand-writing was so bad then - why do they even teach cursive?) Same lack of trust, same crush, same love, same attachment, same questioning of her, same pain, same worries, same self-talk - ALL OF IT!!! The only differences were that I clearly had more of a child-father dynamic with her and with my current therapist (who is extremely attractive and more of a peer) - it presents as more romantic and erotic. BUT EVERYTHING ELSE is the SAME.
So this shocked me and made me feel so cliche. On the one had this makes me feel like now I REALLY don't know what is real and what is projection! On the other hand it has given me more insight than anything else. This REALLY means something. I am doing IT right now. Whatever IT is. I'm amazed I don't feel more hopeless, like, geez, can't I figure this out after 14 years? But it's not like that. I have been pouring over books to understand my attachment to my current T and that's really not going to tell me anything about ME. What tells me something about me is reading in those journals over and over the SAME story - with my teachers, with my bosses, with my lovers, with my therapists (only they know what's going on and try to help). I do the SAME things in all of these relationships. All the time. My whole life.
Thursday I was trying to explain to my T why I'm reading books and she was trying to explain how every T is so different in their approach and that she thinks it would be better if I tried to come to her with my questions and that she would talk to me about her methods and approaches and try to help me understand what I'm going through. Then she said something to the effect of the therapist-client being "sacred". That it was "SPECIAL". I listened and nodded and got distracted by my thoughts, "Yeah, it's special alright. I am so in love with you and I can do nothing for you or to you to manipulate you into loving me a certain way. I'm just attached and in pain while you sit there kind and patient and unavailable."
But this morning I woke up with a thought as clear as day. It must have been the journal reading, the detailed accounts about my father's criticism, and this conversation with her. My dad always told me that we had something SPECIAL that no one would ever understand (so don't bother telling them about it). That he knew me better than I knew myself. That I needed him and he did not need me (or anyone). That he understood me like no one ever would. And I believed him. We had a secret connection - almost psychic we said - that no one could ever take away. Only HE TOOK IT AWAY whenever he wanted to and sometimes without warning and usually when I was feeling the most love for him or attachment or I relaxed or I expressed joy or I needed him. Out of the blue he would say, "I guess I was wrong about you. You aren't special. You haven't learned a God damn thing from me..." When I would cry he would abandon me further saying, "You brought this on yourself. You are going on your own trip." And he would just look at me in disgust or hang his head as if he could not bear the disappointment.
Gee, I WONDER why I'm having ATTACHMENT issues with someone who sees me and who I love and who I need and who says we have a SPECIAL relationship????? OMG!!!!!!! I'm so clear on this right this minute I'm giddy!!!!! I see my T tomorrow. I'm sure none of this will surprise her. I've told her some of that stuff about my dad before, but I TOTALLY GET something about it now. I GET something!
Whew. Thanks so much for reading if you made it this far.
FMD
poster:FindingMyDesire
thread:858044
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081005/msgs/858044.html