Ten-foot pole topics...things I can't engage with even though I KNOW I have to...
Newborn part and other infant parts from pre-adoption.
The bedroom when I was three and exploded into lots of parts (except it comes in various forms of flashback).
Sex and sexual relationships.
My self-destructive parts.
I'm sorry you are having such a rough time with this. I think I posted somewhere else earlier that you might be pushing yourself too hard/too fast.
When I most desperately need help it's hardest to ask.
Yep, me too. This is an important skill folks like us need to learn. Not only to reach out, but to be quite specific about what is happening that makes us feel like we need help.
It's an emotional problem, and a trauma problem, and the trauma feels so big that when I get into it my body is completely flooded. So obviously I'm not ready to work on it yet. But I can't put life on hold until I'm ready, and I get triggered all the time, and I have no idea how to get to where I will be ready. Any approach I can think of feels like being thrown in the deep end.
I'm familiar with inner child work, but can't seem to get enough distance to be the adult in this situation.
What you're doing/ is not inner child work. It's way deeper than that...parts work. Some of the parts are inner children. But this is different from inner child work as it is commonly known.
my attachment issues come up when I get to a certain level of closeness with people.
Mine too. Most of the time I don't care. But when I get particularly close to people (i.e., show a good bit of who I really am) and they're not there when I need them (because of their own stuff usually), or they move, or they let go of contact for whatever reason, I get to feeling quite abandoned and parts of me start saying "See, you idiot, don't let anybody close ever again." But then I do anyway. And it happens. It always happens in big ways (like actual leaving forever in one way or another) and in small ways (like times of disconnection or lack of availability). For lots of my baby/child parts, there's no difference between big ways and small ways. In their world, disappearing is just disappearing. No sense of future possibility. I am learning very slowly to show them that even though other people may not always be around for them, I can. Me. My SELF and even my grown-up parts. And they are slowly learning this. How? Because of what my therapist is modeling for me. My brain is ever-so-slowly rewiring itself, and I am beginning to see that I am not alone in the world unless I want to be, that I can reach out to people and often they will be there for me--perhaps not in as thorough or intense a way as some of my parts wish, but there in a good enough way. And that I can, increasingly, be there for myself in a way that I could not be when I was a baby or a child.
I become absolutely terrified that if I make one small mistake, one false move, they will either abandon me or die.
Yes, these are child parts stuck in past traumatic experiences. Because this certainly has no basis in your current reality. People who are your friends are not going to die because of something you say or do (unless of course you actually murder them), nor are they going to abandon you because of a small mistake or false move. People do sometimes withdraw a bit from me if I get too intense or weird, but I am learning that they just need some space to deal with their own stuff. It's not that I have to change, unless they tell me that something specific I have done hurts them. But 99% of the time, it's just that they get busy or need their own space, in the same way that I need mine.
Meaning, is it actually urgent, or just feels urgent?
This is a great question. And I love the stuff you talk about in the latter posts.
I read somewhere that the important thing is to turn up, it almost doesn't matter what you talk about - it's about letting the relationship do the work, and I can see where that's working for me. It's very very slow, and sometimes doesn't feel like we're "working", at all in the traditional sense in therapy, but we are. There are times I've not been able to say what I've needed to and times I've wanted to peel my own skin off but I keep going.
Yes, I think this is actually true. I like it better when I feel like I am making progress and working on specific things. But I'm learning to see that it is just the consistency and duration of the relationship that is the most healing thing for me. And the therapeutic relationship--which is quite different from any other relationship I have ever had. And freaks me out on a regular basis. See squirrel video I posted in a new thread called Disorganized Attachment.
the head f*ck that is therapy/the therapeutic relationship
:roflmao::roflmao::roflmao::banghead::banghead::banghead::bag::ninja: I LOVE your description.
My higher brain obviously gets hijacked when this issue comes up. Where are the smaller pieces here? I really want to know because that would be the place to start, but I haven't found any small enough.
There are bazillions of smaller pieces. Like the attachment work you are doing by keeping coming back to this forum, and the relationships you're nurturing here. Like continuing to show up to see this therapist. Like posting this thread. Like the work you are doing with your child parts to help them feel safe and to soothe them (THIS is really great work even though it feels so fragmented and crazy to you...keep doing it. And let these parts see that YOU are managing their care--you, in your body, are wrapping up in blankets, clutching your bear, giving voice to the tears or whimpering or whatever comes out. YOU are drinking tea or walking barefoot in the grass to keep yourself present so you can provide your child parts with compassionate care.
The flooding stuff can begin to abate to just blending when you can find some little part of your brain to acknowledge that you are somewhat in control of the choices you are making for self-care.
Kind of like if your house was burning down, it would take all your energy. That's what dealing with this issue is like. I can dimly appreciate that my house is not actually burning down and that this is a conditioned response, but the conditioning is extremely persistent and in my face.
Yes...this is the difference between flooding and blending. Or some might say switching and co-consciousness. Whatever words you use...the KEY is that dim appreciation of the difference between actual here and now external reality, and the wildly confused internal reality that is your parts.
Trust is SO terrifying for me, I can't imagine what that would take. I almost feel like I'd have to be in a hospital to make it safe.
Yes...I have some quite determined parts of me that feel the same way. Unfortunately, hospitals don't work on this kind of stuff. There is some place called STAR that does a 10 day program I think and one of the tracks is attachment. It's the only one I've seen like that. Hospitals are all about stabilization. The problem is, they mostly stabilize you by stabilizing your medications, and teaching you distress tolerance/containment skills (if they're good hospitals). That is, safety skills. Which are REALLY important if things get to be physical and you're struggling with the urge to self-harm in any external way. What hospitals SUCK at is relationship building, or practicing said safety skills while approaching traumatic material. Nope. This is what long-term psychotherapy is for. And not CBT. Because CBT gets only at distress tolerance and thought and action behaviors. Not at the real gut-wrenching, soul-stretching, heart-breaking work that is relationship.
I'm not sure whether it is possible to work through it at the same warp speed. But then, my own inability to trust ANYONE to be there for me consistently gets in the way of building a therapeutic relationship.
No. Can't do at any speed. It takes infants years to develop fully secure attachment with a good-enough parent. Probably will take us twice as long because we've already been wounded and are mistrustful, and we know too much about the way the world works. But it is not impossible.
You see, you yourself talk about how often your trust has been betrayed. But guess what? You're still here. You survived. You are still reaching out for friendship and support. That alone shows how strong and open-hearted you actually are. What stops you is not your inability to trust people. What stops you is your fear of what might happen if they go away. When you were little, abandonment was life-threatening. Now, it's not. Now it just hurts like hell. And the trick is to get your parts to see the difference. YOU...your SELF...are strong enough to weather a hell of a lot of betrayal and abuse and abandonment. You already have. Your wounded parts just don't know that yet.
In my case I did feel absolute terror for a while and had to fight feeling both over attached and wanting her close all the time, both at the same time. I needed to know she could be responsive enough to both those parts of me because I couldn't talk about my fear of her abandoning me and couldn't trust her either.
Yep. Sounds so familiar. It is so great for me to hear someone else's experience with this!!!
