Needing Options Other Than This

[digger]

see her next Wednesday.

Is seeing her before then an option?

 

[Justmehere]

They sometimes do things that are kind and sometimes horribly abusive, but the very worst is when they respond like it was a horrible problem for the doctor to call them at 6am to tell them he didn't hunk I would live. They wanted him to call at a reasonable hour. The doctor say he had never seen such a reaction. A reasonable hour to be told your daughter is about to die.

I lived. I wish I had not.

I see friends with families and I ENVY them. I work with kids in foster care, and I know there is life beyond family - but even those kids build their own families... I suck. I have no one. No one at all.

I'm crying so hard my whole body is shaking. I can't even handle talking to my therapist.

 

[Justmehere]

Is seeing her before then an option?

It might be an option to see her before Wednesday. She is visiting family for thanksgiving, and doesn't get back for a few days but still want to call and check in on a plan to get through this and all that is racing through my head is my family screaming at me that I ruin everything. Everything.

 

[digger]

I think talking to her if you can make yourself do that would be a good plan. Can you think of times in the past where talking to her when you felt in crisis has helped, even a little bit?

 

[Justmehere]

I like the idea of writing a letter to my therapist or a letter to them that I don't send. I feel like I have so much inside of me. So much to say they would never hear. Maybe I can write it and tell my therapist or something.

My therapist is texting as I type. She has helped before but I'm so freaked out. She has helped before...

 

[digger]

She has helped before...

Keep holding onto that and repeating it to yourself. It is hard to keep in mind when we feel so beyond help that there are things and people that can help us. Let her try if you can. She is not going to expect anything of you (like she is not going to expect you to be calm right now)

 

[Sammyiam]

Justmehere,

Please know that we are here for you, I know how difficult family can be and all the feelings that go with it, I am also struggling with family at the moment, all the feelings that go on inside our head are just so dam cruel. They go round and round and just keep getting so mixed up, you just can't make any sence of them. I was raped once in my late 20's and my husband rang my mother to tell her what had happened and all she said was a grunt on the end of the phone and then she said oh I wonder if that's not the first time and hung up nothing about is she ok anything and never ever mentioned it again ever. Your family can be so hard, but please you are so much better than them, don't let them beat you just. Your therapist sounds really nice please let her help you, she is offering to be there on the phone, talk to her please for all of us just talk to her, put your guard down (which we all have so wonderfully made ourselves) and talk tell her, tell her what's going on if she is there for you, please use her and get some help. We all are here for you as you have been for so many others in their time of need. We can and hopefully all be their for each other, we all go through times where we need help. Take the help she is giving you please even thou it's hard.
Please take care

Sammy

 

[sun seeker]

Justmehere, I am so sorry, my heart goes out to you reading about how hard it is with your family. I can relate all too well to how painful it is to be treated badly by your family yet not be able to imagine building a life without them Caught between the lion and the deep blue sea in a way. My situation is similar in some ways and I haven't resolved it though I've been working on it and keep trying to think of ways. Feel free to PM me if you need some more support.

 

[City Slicker]

You are doing so much right now to get through this. As others mentioned, you don't need to be any way other than how you feel in order to speak with your therapist. You mentioned she has helped before, let her in so that you have an ally close by. We are here and I know we are far away and have never met but sometimes in place of the family we wanted and never got, we make 'mini-families' all over that end up making one big family/community. You have done that here. I am in awe of what you have created here in this group.

You are going to get through this.

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

I see friends with families and I ENVY them.

Maybe your friends are more valuable than you think :-) I can understand why you'd want appreciation from your family and it must really hurt to have them shut you off suddenly like that... but maybe it would be better to turn to people who actually want to talk to you and are not blaming you?

Sending you lots of good vibes and hugs!
I also think you will get through it. Your therapist sounds pretty cool. :hug:

 

[Eleanor]

it's so hard to lose them and have no family at all ever.

Hang in there @Justmehere. If it were not CLEARLY better to be without them, you wouldn't even be considering it. And the last part of the quote is... catastrophizing. All my experience of you here shows that you are a loving compassionate person. The kind of person a great many decent people would be happy to have in their lives. And there are two kinds of family - the biological and the chosen. And Chosen Family is generally a cut above. So get through this and then ask for better people in your 3D life as well, I'm sure there are folks whose presence would be a gift to you, as yours will be to them.

:hug: if you accept them.

 

[Justmehere]

Thank you so much for the support everyone. I'm pretty shaky right now, but I did talk to my therapist. She was very understanding of everything, including the fact that I didn't really want to talk to her. She told me that she thought part of my healing involves learning to "lean on your therapist" for a little while as I go through this. She kept telling me, this is just for a finite time, "you will get to a point where you won't need me anymore, and right now, it is ok to reach out." It is ok to ask for help. I cried, a lot.

I felt so upset for calling her and not being able to handle it all better, and so broken. She told me that she went through a time where he had to lean on her own therapist, and she didn't like it ether - but now she doesn't need to do it anymore. She said, I just touch basis with my supervising therapist when "I need a little support in my job." (My therapist only works with trauma survivors and works hard to stay very healthy herself. She supervises others in her clinic, and gets supervised too. I get really hesitant around therapist types because I had a neighbor who was a trauma therapist who was vicariously traumatized by their job. But they never asked for help until it was too late. It makes me safer to know she has support if her job ever got too hard, and she knows it helps me to know this, so it wasn't too weird of self disclosure, I think. I don't know. I don't much care right now.)

We did some very brief somatic experiencing work over the phone - which usually brings a little relief. It did help. Mostly, she validated what I was feeling and kept telling me that I'm not alone in this, and it gets better. She kept telling me I won't always be alone - it's just for a season right now, as I heal. She told me that many of her clients face being alone on the holidays. It's very hard "for most everyone" but "it will not always be this way."

I told her that my family's acts to scapegoat me every holiday season feels so mean. In the past, I have seen their attempts to scapegoat me as hurtful and wrong, and dysfunctional. Sometimes I have seen it as deserved and taken in the scapegoating too much. Saying "this is mean" and "this is not appropriate way to treat a human being" - that felt almost empowering to say. It also felt like I was a little kid when I said it. I melted into a pile of tears.

My therapist told me that this isn't only about losing having family, it is also about gaining something, my healing. She told me the pain is an expected and common part of getting out of a "sick family system that is hurting you." She told me that getting out of the system, taking back my self from them, will hurt very bad, and it will eventually free me up to more healthy relationships.

We talked a bit about how much it just hurts. I told her how far I had gotten towards harming myself. She wasn't mad. She said she was very glad I contacted her instead. She said it doesn't surprise her that it hurts to a life and death degree. It hurts this bad because as a kid, I needed my parents to be there. It was life or death as a kid. Kids internalize their parents messages in order to stay connected to them, because they depend on their caregivers to live. I'm not a kid anymore, but I'm processing through those kid losses, so it might feel like I can't live without them, the pain is too great, and that death is the only escape from the pain. "You were stuck as a kid. You are not stuck anymore, but you were then. So it makes sense that as you process these losses, you might feel like there is no escape and death is the only option." She said this is normal for the kind of processing I'm doing and how I was hurt as a kid.

She kept telling me that every week she sees me change and grow, and that I will get through this and it will get better. I think she was trying to help me find hope to hang on.

We talked about ways to cope with the pain, but she quickly told me that I have more coping skills than most her clients. I pushed to do some planning to feel safe anyhow - and she supported me in it. She told me that she felt I needed to learn to connect with people more when the pain is so great, and to keep being kind to myself, help the hurt kid part of me to hang on, and that when (not if) the really dark desperately suicidal thoughts come up, to be kind and remind myself that as a kid, it was life and death to stay connected to my parents, and now, it's gonna hurt so bad at times that it is going to feel like death would be better, but I don't need to die. If I hang on through it, there is a much better future ahead...

I told her I didn't know how to take all of this in. She said, "that's ok. We will keep working through it." I made some plans to structure the next few days with connecting with a few friends and doing some distractions, and she said that if it gets worse, to just text her and if I can't stay safe, go to the ER and wait and she will contact them as soon as she can to tell them how they can help me "ride out the pain and grief." We did talk about writing no-send letters to my family, and to my hurting self. Sounds weird and yet makes sense somehow to me.

One thing I like/hate about my therapist, she doesn't have quick fixes, or really any fixes to the pain - but a path through it. Maybe. She says this will get better, and I'm not sure. I hope she is right.

I'm home, I'm fighting tears and tremendous pain, but much thanks to everyone here, and my therapist, I feel like I have some options to try to get through tonight. Thank you deeply.