Attachment And Touch

[Hope4Now]

I deserve compassion and I will give it to myself."

I like the mantra. I try to tell myself this, but I seem incapable of doing it for myself. I need to do a lot more work on the part of myself that hates my inner child.

 

[BloomInWinter]

Once I wrote down every single thing I hated about the child I was, I could see all the names I was calling her. It was pointed out to me that I had become just another abuser to her in her life. That hit me hard.

I never want to abuse anyone. I guess somewhere along the way, I had decided I deserved abuse and I internalized my abusers voices and kept carrying on their abuse for them, even though they were no longer in my life.

My therapist also told me my mental abuse of parts of myself is a form of self-harm, and that I wouldn't begin to really feel better until I stopped it. It turned out he was right.

We are under no obligation to carry on the abuser's words for them against ourselves.

 

[anonymous]

I haven't read all the responses here.... but I have touch issues, too.

Thankfully, through an unexpected relationship, I was finally able to truly feel again, which was (frankly) incredible... because I had *no* idea that I was numb beforehand. But, at first, I was really honestly confused about what was going on. I always knew that all I wanted was someone just to hold me and let me fall asleep (and then safely wake up), but that being my deepest longing felt so pathetic and needy and childlike that I rarely mentioned it.

Like someone said above, the "right touch" goes "deep" done to the bone almost and is the very best thing there is.

 

[Bereft 'n Burnt Out]

@Hope4Now Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for starting this thread, which I read some time last year after this need started surfacing, again for me, and I do so hope you and others who have contributed to the thread ~ namely @Pencil & @Bedbug ~ because I have so connected with all you have put and I am currently in a desperate, desperate place with trying to get this very need met :cry:

I am most recently (since May 2007) a childless parent ~ a childless mother ~ whose only child, my beautiful 23 year old daughter, was killed in a Road Traffic Collision (she was hit on a pelican crossing near our home and suffered catastrophic head and brain injuries from which she died the following day. This just ripped my world totally apart...

Prior to this I knew I was a Survivor (of both child sexual abuse/incest ~ not perpetrated by my father, who was very honourable and loving...I was just too scared and traumatized to go to him for that love until I was much, much older and it almost felt like too late :( ~ but, by my mother and maternal grandfather...I won't go into detail other than that). I am sure you can imagine that has left me with immense problems, which includes this huge aching vortex of need to be held and gentled. I am currently in my 3rd lot of bereavement counselling with an absolutely brilliant counsellor (they all are at the specialist centre for bereaved families they have near where I live, except this one is very special) and he has stripped me right back to the core and is supporting me through all the earlier trauma's I have experienced (he's also an experienced trauma counsellor as well as a specialist bereavement counsellor) and as he said himself when I first started reacting to him like he was going to hurt me (I had 2 previously emotionally and psychologically abusive therapies back in the early 1990's, with the first therapist ~ a psychiatrist and psychotherapist ~ only interested in putting pressure on me to extract the details of when I was raped by a Dr colleague whilst I was doing my Nurse training and then getting-off on pressing me for explicit sexual details :wtf: and the 2nd therapist actually getting a hard-on when he was 'holding' me and I was disclosing abuse details :sick::yuck::wtf:) and eventually started telling him why, "That is as far from how I work as you can imagine: I work from a place of love and from my heart and that is not only the way I work but, the way I live my life ~ I hope you can feel that from me." I can, I CAN....

He's also very expressive, with his hands and with his eyes: I have seen the love in his eyes ~ pure love from the heart and soul, with absolutely no sign of passion, voyeurism, etc. ~ and have felt 'held' by his eyes as well as his hands when he has made gestures of holding me. He's also reached out and taken my hand on more than one occasion...yet he will not meet this one aching need I have to be physically held, very, very gently and soothed...to tap into that something else that goes beyond words...

Yesterday's session with him ended particularly badly...I'm getting angrier and angrier with him :banghead: but, turning it in on myself...I feel hollow, profoundly unlovable and unreachable and just want to get under a blanket and hide. Please, I hope you can still be available for this thread...I need dialogue with someone to find a way to get this aching need met...In hope...

 

[Pencil]

There really are therapists who do physical holding. My advice would be to stay with this counselor while looking for someone who could provide you with what you know you need more than anything.

I'm so sorry for what you are going through.

 

[Pencil]

I am curious to hear more from you (and others too) regarding how your inner child/children insist on your attention and what that looks like in your life.

Hi @Hope4Now , I completely missed this, sorry. Will get back here if you still want me to respond.

 

[ms spock]

I didn't lose a daughter like you @Bereft 'n Burnt Out but it was by the use of and then the promise of touch that a very abusive psychologist manipulated me from when I was 15. So what you talk about with abusive therapists I relate. I had a few too. I understand the nameless dread and the feeling profoundly unlovable and unreachable and I get wanting to hide.

 

[Rumors]

:( tough subject. Kudos to those sharing. I am learning a lot.

 

[Bereft 'n Burnt Out]

There really are therapists who do physical holding. My advice would be to stay with this counselor while looking for someone who could provide you with what you know you need more than anything.

@Pencil Thank you ~ I feel I need to stick with this one and either try to work it out or end the counselling in a way that I don't feel further damaged or grieving another relationship. I couldn't work out if the need cannot be met by him: hard to explain in my current state but I'll try...

1) Apart from the 2 abusive therapies back in the early '90's, I also had bad psychiatric care (a month as an in-patient when I was going through the worst of the worst in the 2nd therapy, couldn't find an escape or the strength to escape and felt so unsafe in the therapy I was actually regressing outside the therapy increasingly, which was putting my then 8 year old daughter at risk, not just me...I was admitted to the psychiatric ward after being taken to A&E in a severely regressed state to a 3 and half year old) and I've found it extremely hard (an understatement) to build-up trust in ANY therapeutic relationship, which is apart from the obvious issues of trust in relationships that all Survivors have. I have worked so hard on that issue with this Counsellor, as has he. He has been very sensitive to this, my fragility, asserting my strengths, etc
2) My [abusing] mother died 3 months to the date before my daughter and the last contact I had with her before that was approximately 3 weeks before she died when she had been hospitalised: I visited her in the hospital and my 2 older sister's left with my daughter and her boyfriend, leaving me to spend a little time on my own with our by then frail, 91 year old mother...she had dementia but, I know still recognised all 3 of us...As soon as my 2 sister's were out of sight, my mother having followed them with her eyes, she started saying she wasn't comfortable and when I went to see how I could help get her more comfortable, she grabbed my arm and pulled me close to her face and, looking at me with pure hatred said in truly venomous/hateful tone "Just get out, just get out. I don't want YOU here" ~ Believe me I knew she was talking to me.
3) Fortunately, at the time, I was in a wonderful Counselling at the time at a local Rape and Sexual Abuse Service, which I had been in for about 15months: the counsellor I had there was female and very nurturing; she built-up trust gradually with me; she held me; we did a lot of work together; and my mother's death was the catalyst to go even deeper on the work with my mother's abuse of me...very slow and painful but, I finally felt as if I was beginning to get some sense of freedom from it all...Then my daughter was knocked down...on the day I was due to go for my counselling...
4) Obviously, I couldn't/didn't go and I was never fully able to resume that counselling as, although my counsellor was also a qualified bereavement counsellor with a different service (both voluntary sector services), her role was as my counsellor at the RASA Centre. She did though offer me 3 or 4 supportive counselling sessions with her in the 3 months immediately following the death of my daughter ~ one the following week when I was absolutely all-over-the-place, numb, in shock, not knowing what I was doing or saying ~ and so that we could end the Counselling in a 'nice', gentle way: we both stood in the back yard of the centre letting off purple balloons (3 ~ 2 from me, which were for my late dad who had died 4 years previously and m precious daughter, and 1 for my daughter from my counsellor...she had a daughter herself only 2 or 3 years older than mine) to which we'd tied messages. It was very beautiful and we had shared tears and lots of hugs over it.
5) As the police investigation and resulting 'proceedings' (the driver was never charged with the death of my daughter, only ever careless driving/the summary traffic offence of going through a red light...so I never got justice for my daughter) were coming to an end, I felt an intense need to hang onto something and that was when I went back into Counselling at this wonderful and unique specialist centre of excellence that we have near me for bereaved families. Had a lovely [female] counsellor but, all I wanted to do was talk about my daughter and didn't reveal anything much about myself: she actually said at the end of that that she really had the essence of my daughter but, she hadn't a clue who I was!
6) A couple of years later, I went for some more Counselling with the same counsellor who also arranged for me to be seen by one of the other senior counsellor's (a male counsellor who I already knew from a bereaved parents support group he'd previously facilitated and also a bereaved families therapeutic break he'd been on and who is also a bereaved parent himself) who happens to be a qualified EMDR therapist, too. He conducted 1 90 minute session of EMDR (the most gentlest form of therapy for trauma going) with me to turn off the 'tape' that had been running constantly round my head for the previous 3 and half years surrounding the trauma of my daughter's death* (*most bereaved parents, particularly mother's who form the strongest bonds with their children, are probably suffering form of PTSD regardless of how their child died and with any sort of sudden and traumatic death and severance of that bond proving to be particularly so..it is truly every parents worst nightmare*) Towards the end of that treatment, a couple of things came up: 1 from the earlier abuse by my grandfather; and the other which related to the 1st abusive therapy/therapist. I shrugged, even laughed them off, and came out of that EMDR session feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted.
7) For a while, I seemed to function or be 'adapting' reasonably well: there are no norms for any bereaved parent. Then only a month after I'd passed the 4 year mark without my precious daughter, I was shopping in a local supermarket when someone roughly brushed past me and knocked into me. I turned to see the driver who'd killed my daughter walking away, seemingly without a care in the world with a female companion, laughing and joking and no sign of a "sorry" for bumping into met brought me to a standstill, knocked me physically sick :sick: Ironically, by that time he was the age my daughter was when he plowed into her.
8) From there, it's been all a bit downhill, and the trigger for me to go for further Counselling was the death of my brother-in-law who died 2 years ago yesterday: the first death in the family since my daughter; the factor which again changed our whole family dynamic; and which finally got me to the point where I realised this was about ME and not just my daughter's death.
9) This counsellor has offered me integration and hope of some measure of peace...I can't explain...and I do trust him..he is the one person who I have let near to my core/has got to my core and I just cannot go through this with another person/counsellor/therapist..it's like you've said before elsewhere on this thread how do you express something as primal and deep as this goes???

I do also have access to other forms of complimentary/healing therapies: a wonderful, much trusted therapist who is multi-qualified (including cranio-sacral, massage, hypnotherapy, reiki, body and breath-work) and whom I've been seeing for over 20 years (now almost retired so, only occasionally for CS or a gentle massage as I'm now riddled with arthritis and have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue); free regular reiki or crystal healing at the bereavement centre I go to; and a lovely homeopath. None of these have worked as deeply as this counsellor, though, and with the death of my daughter has brought this need to the surface even more. That's the top and bottom of it for me.

I'd be interested to know whether/if/how any of you have managed to resolve this.

 

[Bereft 'n Burnt Out]

Thanks you @Ms Spock...it's comforting to know you're not alone, especially when it comes to this form of abuse where one is desperate for healing but is then met with further damage :( I make no apology now for putting my current counsellor through as many hoops, hurdles and tests as I deem necessary for my safety to make-up for the shortcomings in a profession which is all too quick to close ranks if you even dare to question their practices or techniques. I hope you're able to do the same after that lot. :hug:

Thanks for the Kudos @Rumors ~ a nice/my 1st and probably only birthday present :)

 

[Chosen]

How did I miss this thread when it started?

I, too, feel this deep ache and longing. My T has not and will not hug me until we "terminate" in May/beginning of June, and it will only be a goodbye hug.

However, I've recently been adopted (unofficially) by someone who is the safest person ever for me to be around. This person gives me hugs. The few times I've been able to put my head on this person's shoulder...wow...healing, powerful, instantly connecting to the deepest part of my heart/soul, giving me so much peace and calmness. It's amazing. Sadly, this person doesn't feel comfortable allowing me to put my head on their shoulder due to societal pressures. But now I know that there is that kind of healing touch out there...it just takes time to find it, and to find a person willing to be part of it.

 

[Bereft 'n Burnt Out]

I so feel for you Noah and everyone else who has this need...here's one to help infuse some hope into you all...copy/print/share as many as you need to pass around to whoever needs informing...including maybe your T Noah?...a [probably brief] hug when you get to say "goodbye"...gee thanks for [more] crumbs :O_o: