Justmehere
Sponsor
I need help figuring out what is going on with me. Or maybe I don't. I don't know. Any feedback or thoughts would be very welcome though. Maybe that is wrong to even want that.
I feel lost in a sea of confusion right now, and maybe the obvious is staring me in the face. I don’t quite know how to write this post any shorter than it is, and it is a VERY long post. I’m sorry this is quite the mini-novel.
I feel like a freak. I feel like a selfish jerk. I feel like a child who needs to grow up. I feel frustrated. I feel like a mess. I feel so ashamed about the feelings coming up for me in therapy and with my therapist. I want to run and hide. So here I am doing the opposite and verbally vomiting this all out on the internet. Ugh.
Right now, I feel like posting this is keeping myself from doing more self destructive things… so I’m going to post it anyhow. Please forgive my long winded rambling.
Last week in therapy, we stirred up the trauma of neglect by my father. My father was physically abusive as well, but we have been focusing on the other abuse that was life threatening to a kid. The neglect was strong enough that I was a “failure to thrive” kid. Thankfully, I pulled through and I’m working on thriving now.
In addition to neglect, there was a lot of active denial of self by my father that my therapist has called “existential abuse.” My father sent a lot of “don’t be” messages as a kid. I can’t even write about much of it or I start to feel very unreal.
One example: my father would often tell me I when I was feeling emotionally upset or scared as a kid that I didn’t exist. He has even said this to me as an adult, in front of other people. When people ask him now if he has kids, he says he has a son. I am his daughter, but I really don’t exist to him.
When someone says to an adult they don’t exist, it’s affects them like any crazy weird insult does. But when it happens to a kid, its different. My therapist has spent a lot of time trying to help me accept that this was damaging to me… and now we are trying to process these events.
Last week in therapy, we started off talking about my anxiety around wanting connecting, relationships, in my life. I want it, but it makes me scared. As we processed the current struggle to not feel scared in relationships, the “don’t be” and “you don’t exist” messages from my father came up, and it stirred up some pretty intense dissociation around feeling not real. I know I’m real, I know I exist, I just have no feeling that I exist when I am in this state. It is TERRIFYING.
Today my therapist said I walked into the session looking like I had seen a ghost, and I was very numbed out. As we talked, she helped me ground out of the foggy surreal feelings. Then I felt this feeling that I call being “feisty." She had me sit with it, describe it, engage with her in that place (which I pushed back on doing but was part of me being feisty.) She kept asking if I felt misunderstood, and I said no, because if you showed that you understood what I'm experiencing, it wouldn’t really resolve this.
I kept feeling like I wanted to organize everything in the room but that I didn’t care if anything was actually organized. It felt like a distraction, and outlet, for the feisty feeling.
She asked if I wanted anything with her, asked me to make eye contact, asked what does this feeling want? (like how panic usually wants safety.)
I could only say that the word “respond” kept coming to mind.
She kept asking what kind of response I wanted. I didn’t know and I became very frustrated. I wasn’t really mad at my therapist, but I kind of was, but for no reason that I could identify. My therapist said that’s ok, it’s all part of the work of processing the trauma and the feelings that come from it. She asked if I wanted to do anything, if my body needed anything. I wanted to rock, cry, curl up in a ball and hide. I eventually let myself curl up in a ball on her couch as I visibly fought back waves of tears and and aimless frustration.
We worked on ways to ground and handle this feeling outside of therapy. She said, “I need you to leave the “respond” feeling here, leave the “feisty” here, as much as you can. I need you back in the drivers seat.”
I felt lost at the time she said this.
Now, after the session, I feel like maybe “respond” is all I want. I want it in a massive way. I don't want attention though. But response.
Weird thing is, I now have this twisted urge to contact all my abusers, tell them how terrible are…
I think maybe I am trying to pick a fight with a grizzly bear just to feel real. I am messed up. I’m not seeking to be abused (or get in a brawl with a grizzly bear) but maybe the abuse is a response, to the child in my adult body that lacked any response so often that I felt like my father was right, I was not real.
Or maybe I'm really really selfish. Or stupid or...
I feel like crap.
I feel lost in a sea of confusion right now, and maybe the obvious is staring me in the face. I don’t quite know how to write this post any shorter than it is, and it is a VERY long post. I’m sorry this is quite the mini-novel.
I feel like a freak. I feel like a selfish jerk. I feel like a child who needs to grow up. I feel frustrated. I feel like a mess. I feel so ashamed about the feelings coming up for me in therapy and with my therapist. I want to run and hide. So here I am doing the opposite and verbally vomiting this all out on the internet. Ugh.
Right now, I feel like posting this is keeping myself from doing more self destructive things… so I’m going to post it anyhow. Please forgive my long winded rambling.
Last week in therapy, we stirred up the trauma of neglect by my father. My father was physically abusive as well, but we have been focusing on the other abuse that was life threatening to a kid. The neglect was strong enough that I was a “failure to thrive” kid. Thankfully, I pulled through and I’m working on thriving now.
In addition to neglect, there was a lot of active denial of self by my father that my therapist has called “existential abuse.” My father sent a lot of “don’t be” messages as a kid. I can’t even write about much of it or I start to feel very unreal.
One example: my father would often tell me I when I was feeling emotionally upset or scared as a kid that I didn’t exist. He has even said this to me as an adult, in front of other people. When people ask him now if he has kids, he says he has a son. I am his daughter, but I really don’t exist to him.
When someone says to an adult they don’t exist, it’s affects them like any crazy weird insult does. But when it happens to a kid, its different. My therapist has spent a lot of time trying to help me accept that this was damaging to me… and now we are trying to process these events.
Last week in therapy, we started off talking about my anxiety around wanting connecting, relationships, in my life. I want it, but it makes me scared. As we processed the current struggle to not feel scared in relationships, the “don’t be” and “you don’t exist” messages from my father came up, and it stirred up some pretty intense dissociation around feeling not real. I know I’m real, I know I exist, I just have no feeling that I exist when I am in this state. It is TERRIFYING.
Today my therapist said I walked into the session looking like I had seen a ghost, and I was very numbed out. As we talked, she helped me ground out of the foggy surreal feelings. Then I felt this feeling that I call being “feisty." She had me sit with it, describe it, engage with her in that place (which I pushed back on doing but was part of me being feisty.) She kept asking if I felt misunderstood, and I said no, because if you showed that you understood what I'm experiencing, it wouldn’t really resolve this.
I kept feeling like I wanted to organize everything in the room but that I didn’t care if anything was actually organized. It felt like a distraction, and outlet, for the feisty feeling.
She asked if I wanted anything with her, asked me to make eye contact, asked what does this feeling want? (like how panic usually wants safety.)
I could only say that the word “respond” kept coming to mind.
She kept asking what kind of response I wanted. I didn’t know and I became very frustrated. I wasn’t really mad at my therapist, but I kind of was, but for no reason that I could identify. My therapist said that’s ok, it’s all part of the work of processing the trauma and the feelings that come from it. She asked if I wanted to do anything, if my body needed anything. I wanted to rock, cry, curl up in a ball and hide. I eventually let myself curl up in a ball on her couch as I visibly fought back waves of tears and and aimless frustration.
We worked on ways to ground and handle this feeling outside of therapy. She said, “I need you to leave the “respond” feeling here, leave the “feisty” here, as much as you can. I need you back in the drivers seat.”
I felt lost at the time she said this.
Now, after the session, I feel like maybe “respond” is all I want. I want it in a massive way. I don't want attention though. But response.
Weird thing is, I now have this twisted urge to contact all my abusers, tell them how terrible are…
I think maybe I am trying to pick a fight with a grizzly bear just to feel real. I am messed up. I’m not seeking to be abused (or get in a brawl with a grizzly bear) but maybe the abuse is a response, to the child in my adult body that lacked any response so often that I felt like my father was right, I was not real.
Or maybe I'm really really selfish. Or stupid or...
I feel like crap.
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