Attachment And Touch

[Pencil]

Managing basic lack from childhood by yourself with yourself is impossible.

This sentence absolutely confirmed what I knew - that one can't borrow money from yourself when you're broke. Therapists like yours - who tell you to be your kidney donor / money lender - just amaze me. Sorry, but that is my stance.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Here's my take on this. I'm not saying you're wrong, rather this is a part of "self-soothing" that was perhaps overlooked.

A lot of trauma work involves learning to do things for ourselves. We need to learn self-soothing because it is something that normal people learned to do as young children. It is a huge part of affect management.

If you completely dismiss the idea of self-soothing, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. Why? Because we need to know how to calm ourselves and regulate our emotions in the absence of external things (people, objects, etc). That is, we need to be able to control ourselves using only what is between our own two ears. This concept is pushed heavily in trauma treatment. Why? Because if we learn to depend on other people or even objects to calm us, then we learn to depend on the external world to regulate our internal thoughts and emotions. This can backfire because it's inevitable that soothing person or object won't be available at every moment of distress.

I am not saying that you won't benefit from an external nurturing relationship with someone. Rather, don't dismiss the self-soothing concept because it has a very important place in healing.

 

[Pencil]

don't dismiss the self-soothing concept

Your post may have been addressed at Hope4Now, but I'd like to comment on this.

I'm good at self soothing - the fantasy world is probably a mechanism of this. A psychiatrist once pointed out to me that I have iron control over my emotions and behaviour. I'm big on an internal locus of control. It is very difficult to push my buttons. I am extremely self-reliant - I lived in almost total emotional and social isolation for 9 years. I made a conscious decision to end it - so I now act, think, feel accordingly.

This thing that we are talking about is very difficult, or rather, impossible, to explain. It lies outside the scope of affect regulation.

On the other thread (to which I posted a link) the issue of boundaries came up. This is also not about boundaries.

 

[Hope4Now]

@Hashi. Thanks for saying. It is not good with my mom today. Nothing she did or said today...in fact she was perfectly lovely generally. (Mild dementia is a mixed bag...some things good some awful). She just triggers me at a visceral level by both her voice and presence. It's worse when she acts like she used to, but it doesn't seem to matter. She just makes me want to run 100 miles away but I can't as I am the only one in her life and am responsible for taking care of her (though thankfully I strong armed her into an assisted living place so I don't have to do EVERYTHING anymore). How's that for a classic example of the fight/flight/freeze model?

 

[Hope4Now]

@Pencil and @Solara on self-soothing. I completely agree with you solara--we need to learn to provide safety and solace for ourselves. That is the point of trauma therapy. But when some really primitive/core piece is missing from the system...and then the system is complicated by all sorts of other trauma (because when the foundation is missing everything has the potential to be traumatizing ...and I do mean everything)...the ability to self-soothe becomes nearly impossible. Like a quest for the holy grail.

@Pencil you say you have iron control over emotions and behavior and that it's nearly impossible to push your buttons. I am exactly the same way. I am known as the steady one, the one nobody can ruffle. I think I have only lost my temper a few times in the past several decades. I'm the one that steps in at crises and delegates and soothes (e.g. Fatal motorcycle accident, friend's suicide, father's death, just to name a few major ones). I'm the one that takes care of others. Have been since I was very young.

If I ever had a problem with affect management it was that I don't express my emotions and over time I started to feel numb and disconnected because they were so overwhelming. I definitely do have a problem now as of past couple of months as I seem to be falling apart and have to run away to be alone like a wild animal when I'm freaking out)...

I think I'll never be able too be on completely without solving this deep need we are discussing.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am extremely self-reliant - I lived in almost total emotional and social isolation for 9 years. I made a conscious decision to end it - so I now act, think, feel accordingly.

@Pencil I am interested in what you mean this. Are you willing to share your story? I have all kinds of reasons for asking, but certainly understand if you'd rather not go there.

 

[Pencil]

because when the foundation is missing everything has the potential to be traumatizing ...and I do mean everything

This is partly why I isolated. I find life a traumatic affair, generally, but 11 years ago few things happened.

One was a pscho-synthesis / postural integration woman whose fiddling with my body ended in me cutting myself really badly (something I've done only 3 times). She sent me to her therapist, who said: 'You need a symbiotic relationship, in the absence of which only God can help you.' His word rang true for me, although they may sound harsh and irresponsible to others. The whole thing was traumatic. After that I was in an extremely abusive relationship. I didn't last long, but both the relationship and the breakup were ... traumatic. Things were just handled very badly, by myself and everybody else.

This is obviously just two things - and behind those things is a backdrop of abandonment, neglect, severe physical violence. At that stage I didn't understand the separate child I have inside. The child is triggered by attachment and loss issues, and was obviously engaged directly in the postural integration.

The isolation was a result of me withdrawing completely, like a wounded animal - to heal and calm the child. Then I was simply too afraid of people / life to join the world again. To me it was like living on a raft on the open sea - miles and miles of peace and silence.

 

[Pencil]

It's like the need to be held close for long periods of time so that I can relax and connect with something in myself that isn't usually accessible to me.

That nails it.

And that is why you can't reparent yourself. For me, the adult has to go. I think the vast majority (like 99%) of therapists simply have no idea of what we're talking about.

 

[Pencil]

Link Removed

This is a place to start. Look for articles by Dan Siegel and Allan Schore.

I have a massive crisis in my life that I now have to deal with. As from tomorrow I'll be offline for an indefinite period. I hope this thread has interesting posts when I get back. I'll pop in again later today.

Take care.

 

[Hope4Now]

@Pencil thank you for this. I am so sad to hear you have a massive crisis and will be off indefinitely. I wish you strength and hope and an awareness of the love that DOES exist around you. I hope you get some support in dealing with the crisis. Please come back!!!

 

[Hope4Now]

The Neural Self (P Rich).pdf This is a place to start. Look for articles by Dan Siegel and Allan Schore.

So do you suppose that what we need is to find some very safe person with positive loving energy who would be willing to hold us in whatever way we need for some period of time, without talking or any expectations, but just being there together? Attuning? And doing this on a regular basis?

I've done enough research on brain plasticity to know that the right intervention, provided at the right intervals over the right period of time, actually does change the brain structure. Maybe there is hope.

 

[Hope4Now]

I'm just going to keep posting and hope you'll come back when you're ready.

'You need a symbiotic relationship, in the absence of which only God can help you.'

Yeah, sometimes I think "God" or something like that is the only way. That's when I get into the black hole of suicidal ideation. But then I have a pretty strong core of wanting to keep living or I would have acted long ago. My hope factor is pretty persistent. That's why I'm here.

The isolation was a result of me withdrawing completely, like a wounded animal - to heal and calm the child. Then I was simply too afraid of people / life to join the world again. To me it was like living on a raft on the open sea - miles and miles of peace and silence.

This is one of the things I do in fantasy all the time. Just not in reality. But since I've started coming apart at the seams, doing this to calm the child just sends me into more crisis. I have multiple consciousnesses that exist simultaneously. For 50 years the one that I show to the outside world has been dominant. On one level I am highly functional in the world of people...a great boss, a responsible and involved community leader, a generous volunteer for serving people in the nearby shelter, a loving spouse, mother, and daughter, a skilled conversationalist, a great writer and artist, nobody would ever have a clue as to what's going on. Now that the proverbial "s*&" has hit the fan (and it is just getting worse day by day) even my husband is pretty shocked by the parts of me that I have revealed either purposefully and carefully, or by accident. At another aspect of consciousness I am a very very young child. Pre-verbal I think. Just one raw aching vortex of constant need. At yet another and very painful and disturbing level, I am a cruel task-master of myself who tortures and abandons. There's more, but those seem to be the three.

I was asking about your years of isolation because I have this compelling urge to FLEE my current life, and curl up in a blanket in some remote place until I can heal. It is so powerful that several times in the past months I have actually taken the car and started driving to I don't know where. I crave the silence. The isolation. Then something pulls me back. Maybe the profound desire not to abandon the people I love the way I was abandoned. I would hate myself for that. Maybe some core self that is guiding me and of which I am only vaguely aware. Something in me knows that I must find a way to connect and be physically close to at least one person on the level we've been talking about. And something knows I must stay in therapy with this therapist because even though he isn't yet giving me what I need, I think if I can get the courage and words to ask that he might. He is open enough to the touch thing that he went for a weeklong training on it a couple of weeks ago.