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Abandoning Self

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. My go to is dissociation, so there is that. I may even go as far as shielding myself entirely from things, but is that what she even means?
Dissociation is a form of self abandonment? Because we leave ourselves. We're not there advocating our bodies. We're gone. In a form of protection, but it leaves us vulnerable and we're unable to communicate our needs. Hense abandoning ourselves.

Maybe that’s part of the abandoning my “self” part.
I think you have it sussed here.

It's totally understandable. If it was scary to express yourself previously as that resulted in XYZ, then the safest thing is to abandon your needs, switch off, dissociate, going into alters. So survival. But not helpful in learning to be 'you' and understanding what you need as an independent person.
So maybe it's working through this fear that you project onto your T to find the way to express yourself, your needs and your feelings. As that fear, T is suggesting(?) is from the past and not from today?

Sounds like your exploration of this is going to be really healing?
 
I grew up in a family where dad was military, and mom ran the domestic show. We all did what mom said, even dad!
Ditto!

Some of my siblings still do. Some (like me) don’t.

My dad? Gets all sparkly eyed / it’s one of the things he loves & adores about her.

***
ETA… Something you may already know? Military brats are an entirely different subculture, with different norms, than the general pop, as well as from any of the other cultural/subcultural/ethnic groups one also belongs to.

- One example of which? Compartmentalisation is taught/absorbed from infancy onward. (Because of the frequent moving, often jumping continents/climates/cultures).
- Another example? Again, because of the moving an avg of every 6mo-2years, military brats often spend about a decade trying on different personas/personalities, in all of those different places. Kids who aren’t moving have other people they grow up with -apart from family- telling them who “they” are, in 10,000 different ways day in and day out, year in and year out. Even during their adolescent/teen “rebellion” years where they’re actively trying to define themselves for a couple/few years… they simply don’t have the time (a few years, rather than a decade), nor the built in ability to compartmentalize, nor the whole new -everything- amongst people who don’t know them; to switch in and out of wholly different versions of themselves. Much less learn to do so fluidly & either completely, or in part.

There are positive and negative and neutral aspects to both.

As opposed to populations who ONLY compartment, or shift in and out of personality/persona due to things like trauma. It’s an added baseline/element that can make working with the trauma side of things both harder (if ignored) and waaaaaaaay more effective/useful when taken into account.
 
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