Justmehere
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(I'm not sure where to post this, so I will just post it here. I'm sorry if it should be in a different area. Please feel free to move it if needed.) Thanks for letting me post this weird and kind of embarrassing subject matter.
My therapist is trying to encourage me to have more compassion for myself, including the seemingly endlessly angry side of me. She recently told me, “It’s like you have a dislocated arm, a bleeding head wound, and pneumonia…”
It reminded me of a story my family tells about me as a small child. They say that when I was 2, I had a temper tantrum at the grocery store and pulled myself so hard to get away from my mother that I dislocated my shoulders. My mother says, “yeah, you were an intense child.” She said she held on because she didn’t want me to run off and get hurt.
My mother never physically abused me later on in life, and my memories of my own experience of myself as a child fit with this. I was intense. My mother alternated between being intensely abandoning and neglectful, and downright overwhelmingly enmeshed, and I sustained significant abuse by my father and another family member. By all accounts, I was extremely well behaved at school and at friend’s homes, but at home and with family, I acted out a lot. Home was where the chaos and trauma was. But at school and friend’s homes, it felt easy to stay in control of myself. This was so much the case that in high school, my parents let me live at a friend’s house because I behaved better there.
The grocery store incident is one of many stories like this from when I was kid. I have only told my therapist about two of them. I haven’t told her about this one at the grocery store, but based on the others, she said, “it’s like your family has been telling you that you are a problem since the day you were born.”
She is right, my family hammered into me the message: You are a problem.
She wants me to know “in the very core of your being” that I am not the problem. When she said this, I told her, “but I am.” I didn’t want to argue it, so I tried to figure out if it really even mattered enough to argue it. I asked her, “Why? Why does it even matter? It doesn’t make me feel any better or change anything in my life.”
She looked at me, awfully baffled. She said, “Well, I guess it matters because it’s my job to help pull you out of misery.”
When I try to lean into the idea that “I’m not the problem,” I’m not reassured. I don’t feel better. I feel tremendous anxiety and despair. I don’t understand why. It’s nice and helpful to have the validation my family was abusive and terrible. I believe I am not responsible for his happiness, even though family told me I should make him happy so he wouldn't hit me. It helps to understand my father had untreated/managed PTSD and his own pain behind some of his horrible abuse of me.
But when it comes to what my role was, it terrifies me that I was not the problem. Intellectually, I understand it and somewhat accept it, but yet, on a physical level, it freaks me out in a very core, fundamental, and intense way.
This makes me feel really crazy that I am thinking and feeling this way.
I saw a previous trauma therapist before this one, just before I moved here, who noticed how self-hateful I am. He explained that my thinking was very “trauma bonded” thinking. That I have taken on my abusers messages as my own, and I am pretty fearful to let them go. I’m not sure if my reaction to my therapist is another version of that.
When I thought about the idea that I am not the problem, I become so despairing. I have had problems and I have acted out. I have yelled and screamed at people I have cared about. In my mind, that was abusive. Ok, no, it was not the same as hitting someone, but still. I have started having nightmares about this and in them, I go around telling people “I am a perpetrator. I should be dead.” In one nightmare last night, I dreamed I was in therapy and she was again telling me, “you are not a problem.” I responded (in the dream) by screaming at her, “I hate you. Don’t take this from me.” I walked out and I carried out a plan (a really weird plan, being a dream and all) to commit suicide. It was such a strong and vivid dream, I am shaky from it.
Something really core about me feels very shaken up. I'm wondering if I am crazy - and that brings up new despair. I also wonder if my belief that I am the problem is a defense mechanism against pain of the reality that I couldn't stop the abuse.
I just can't shake it. I am a problem. It feels as real as the sky is blue.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Either way, thanks again for letting me post this weird and embarrassing topic. This matter has been overwhelming and getting the better of me. I am hoping that if I can keep trying to sort this through, I can somehow face my therapist and this issue again.
My therapist is trying to encourage me to have more compassion for myself, including the seemingly endlessly angry side of me. She recently told me, “It’s like you have a dislocated arm, a bleeding head wound, and pneumonia…”
It reminded me of a story my family tells about me as a small child. They say that when I was 2, I had a temper tantrum at the grocery store and pulled myself so hard to get away from my mother that I dislocated my shoulders. My mother says, “yeah, you were an intense child.” She said she held on because she didn’t want me to run off and get hurt.
My mother never physically abused me later on in life, and my memories of my own experience of myself as a child fit with this. I was intense. My mother alternated between being intensely abandoning and neglectful, and downright overwhelmingly enmeshed, and I sustained significant abuse by my father and another family member. By all accounts, I was extremely well behaved at school and at friend’s homes, but at home and with family, I acted out a lot. Home was where the chaos and trauma was. But at school and friend’s homes, it felt easy to stay in control of myself. This was so much the case that in high school, my parents let me live at a friend’s house because I behaved better there.
The grocery store incident is one of many stories like this from when I was kid. I have only told my therapist about two of them. I haven’t told her about this one at the grocery store, but based on the others, she said, “it’s like your family has been telling you that you are a problem since the day you were born.”
She is right, my family hammered into me the message: You are a problem.
She wants me to know “in the very core of your being” that I am not the problem. When she said this, I told her, “but I am.” I didn’t want to argue it, so I tried to figure out if it really even mattered enough to argue it. I asked her, “Why? Why does it even matter? It doesn’t make me feel any better or change anything in my life.”
She looked at me, awfully baffled. She said, “Well, I guess it matters because it’s my job to help pull you out of misery.”
When I try to lean into the idea that “I’m not the problem,” I’m not reassured. I don’t feel better. I feel tremendous anxiety and despair. I don’t understand why. It’s nice and helpful to have the validation my family was abusive and terrible. I believe I am not responsible for his happiness, even though family told me I should make him happy so he wouldn't hit me. It helps to understand my father had untreated/managed PTSD and his own pain behind some of his horrible abuse of me.
But when it comes to what my role was, it terrifies me that I was not the problem. Intellectually, I understand it and somewhat accept it, but yet, on a physical level, it freaks me out in a very core, fundamental, and intense way.
This makes me feel really crazy that I am thinking and feeling this way.
I saw a previous trauma therapist before this one, just before I moved here, who noticed how self-hateful I am. He explained that my thinking was very “trauma bonded” thinking. That I have taken on my abusers messages as my own, and I am pretty fearful to let them go. I’m not sure if my reaction to my therapist is another version of that.
When I thought about the idea that I am not the problem, I become so despairing. I have had problems and I have acted out. I have yelled and screamed at people I have cared about. In my mind, that was abusive. Ok, no, it was not the same as hitting someone, but still. I have started having nightmares about this and in them, I go around telling people “I am a perpetrator. I should be dead.” In one nightmare last night, I dreamed I was in therapy and she was again telling me, “you are not a problem.” I responded (in the dream) by screaming at her, “I hate you. Don’t take this from me.” I walked out and I carried out a plan (a really weird plan, being a dream and all) to commit suicide. It was such a strong and vivid dream, I am shaky from it.
Something really core about me feels very shaken up. I'm wondering if I am crazy - and that brings up new despair. I also wonder if my belief that I am the problem is a defense mechanism against pain of the reality that I couldn't stop the abuse.
I just can't shake it. I am a problem. It feels as real as the sky is blue.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Either way, thanks again for letting me post this weird and embarrassing topic. This matter has been overwhelming and getting the better of me. I am hoping that if I can keep trying to sort this through, I can somehow face my therapist and this issue again.
