Justmehere
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I'm not sure where to start this thread. I'm quite mixed up and I could use any outside input.
My mother has untreated PTSD. I survived abuse at the hands if my father as a child. She says now she thought things were not so bad because she grew up with worse. She did. Which is remarkable, because what my brother and I had to deal with was pretty bad as it was. She didn't do much when we were getting abused.
My mother often loses time, has no affect, denies she is sad even when she is sobbing... It's generally very hard for her to be honest or real or in touch with her own feelings or state of being.
As an adult, I can be in tremendous pain and if I tell her anything of it, she will respond in a very flat manner. If I said mom, there is a gun to my head right now, she would respond in the same tone and flatness as she would if I said the weather is nice today. She would say to both things, "oh, ok." Sometimes she might say, "oh that's too bad" but with the same affect an. Tone as if it was a very mundane thing.
This drives me nuts. I didn't realize how much it really upsets me until today.
I don't talk to her about problems anymore... I used to. Tonight we spoke on the phone, and I said "oh no, I think I lost something really important." I explain what I lost and how essential it was. I started to get teary. She was just flat in response. I told her I needed to go, rather abruptly, and she sounded unphased.
I got off the phone and I was filled with anger, not really at her. But some kind of self directed anger that was so intense. And familiar.
My therapist last week said something that was tremendously validating and was really attuned to me. Tonight, it struck me how much my mother is not that way and has never been that way, and it has really deeply impacted me.
Sometimes as an adult, I get really anxious about making sure someone hears me, knows what I am saying. It is this internal subconscious drive to have even that fact that I spoke at all somehow validated. When someone disagrees with me, it's end tally not triggering. But if someone responds like I did not even speak, I become extremely anxious. It is a pattern I am just realizing and putting together on the pay few months. I knew something was making me anxious, but not what. I knew that someone reflecting back what I said or somehow showing me that they heard me, even if they adamantly disagree, is weirdly calming. Now I think I am beginning to put together why. My mother, my key attachment figure, was never really "there" for me emotionally.
But my therapist was really there for me last week - and it made a huge difference.
I have been in tears facing some of the loss behind this. There is so much pain, generations of it. In the middle of my grief, I want to quit therapy. I am feeling moments of anger at my therapist. There are no angry thoughts, just this image of wanting to yell at her that I will never talk to her again. "You can't do this to me" is a phrase that keeps coming to mind - but it makes no sense! I feel like I have lost my mind and all reason and logic.
Can anyone help make sense of this? I will talk to my therapist about it, I'm just confused. I'm trying to not listen to the part of me that wants to yell at my therapist and quit therapy. I know that attachment and transference matters are involved in all of this, but I'm so inside of this, I can't make heads or tails of it all. Sorry to ramble on so long.
My mother has untreated PTSD. I survived abuse at the hands if my father as a child. She says now she thought things were not so bad because she grew up with worse. She did. Which is remarkable, because what my brother and I had to deal with was pretty bad as it was. She didn't do much when we were getting abused.
My mother often loses time, has no affect, denies she is sad even when she is sobbing... It's generally very hard for her to be honest or real or in touch with her own feelings or state of being.
As an adult, I can be in tremendous pain and if I tell her anything of it, she will respond in a very flat manner. If I said mom, there is a gun to my head right now, she would respond in the same tone and flatness as she would if I said the weather is nice today. She would say to both things, "oh, ok." Sometimes she might say, "oh that's too bad" but with the same affect an. Tone as if it was a very mundane thing.
This drives me nuts. I didn't realize how much it really upsets me until today.
I don't talk to her about problems anymore... I used to. Tonight we spoke on the phone, and I said "oh no, I think I lost something really important." I explain what I lost and how essential it was. I started to get teary. She was just flat in response. I told her I needed to go, rather abruptly, and she sounded unphased.
I got off the phone and I was filled with anger, not really at her. But some kind of self directed anger that was so intense. And familiar.
My therapist last week said something that was tremendously validating and was really attuned to me. Tonight, it struck me how much my mother is not that way and has never been that way, and it has really deeply impacted me.
Sometimes as an adult, I get really anxious about making sure someone hears me, knows what I am saying. It is this internal subconscious drive to have even that fact that I spoke at all somehow validated. When someone disagrees with me, it's end tally not triggering. But if someone responds like I did not even speak, I become extremely anxious. It is a pattern I am just realizing and putting together on the pay few months. I knew something was making me anxious, but not what. I knew that someone reflecting back what I said or somehow showing me that they heard me, even if they adamantly disagree, is weirdly calming. Now I think I am beginning to put together why. My mother, my key attachment figure, was never really "there" for me emotionally.
But my therapist was really there for me last week - and it made a huge difference.
I have been in tears facing some of the loss behind this. There is so much pain, generations of it. In the middle of my grief, I want to quit therapy. I am feeling moments of anger at my therapist. There are no angry thoughts, just this image of wanting to yell at her that I will never talk to her again. "You can't do this to me" is a phrase that keeps coming to mind - but it makes no sense! I feel like I have lost my mind and all reason and logic.
Can anyone help make sense of this? I will talk to my therapist about it, I'm just confused. I'm trying to not listen to the part of me that wants to yell at my therapist and quit therapy. I know that attachment and transference matters are involved in all of this, but I'm so inside of this, I can't make heads or tails of it all. Sorry to ramble on so long.
