Separation Anxiety

[mamachick]

I feel the same way to a lesser degree, more like rightkindofme. My sisters have hated and abused me for years. My ex to be is mean and likes to watch me suffer. My daughters side with him because I wanted the divorce. My kids have drained me financially and emotionally. My therapist is the only stable and consistant human being in my life. Now my insurance has paid her all year and now is saying it is a mistake and I am not covered and has taken funds back. I am appealing the decision but in the meantime I am left in this cold world to fend on my own. I am afraid I will become very depressed. Because I appealed the decision because it was there responsibility to let me know this back in January, not take fee's back now, my ex says he will get fired because the CFO hates men and it will be my fault. He has my kids on the bandwagon.

I am not so attached as I need that voice of reason and help with direction. I have very little going for me at the moment and much hurt. One daughter thrives on emotional injury toward me and takes every opportunity to take a wack. So I isolate. I feel very alone and desperate. The ex to be is holding all the cards and I feel like his puppet. He is passive aggressive. I feel very lost right now and I am to the point of feeling like my kids and him are scheming to get me to crack. One is a manupulative lawyer that still throws fits like a 3 yr old and since he was never close with kids, he is loving it. He has been punishing me for years and getting daughter to hit and shove me. But I cant have therapy now because I am sure he interfered with insurance claims. Plus, I have no money to file for divorce.

 

[EvenStrongerNow]

((((Brat17)))) So sorry. How awful! So sorry.

 

[rightkindofme]

Oh brat I'm so sorry. That sounds really hard. :(

 

[mamachick]

Thank You both. I will survive this.
I am more concerned with MD because I can imagine the attachment that you feel. When we lack healthy people in our lives, it is worth having the paid therapist for guidance and easy to lean on. I can understand becoming that dependent because of how difficult it is to trust others. I feel for you MD. I am just glad your T is there for you and understands.

 

[mamachick]

Maddog-you have nothing to be ashamed about. I know the struggles with this, but please know, you have a reason to feel as you do regarding attachment. No reason for embarrassment. I think very good of you from all of your posts I read, and this changes nothing. You are strong and honest, and that will help you on the path to healing.

 

[Deleted member 20978]

Hey maddog --

I saw this post earlier on my phone, really wanted to reply. I haven't read others responses.

I just mainly want to say I relate to all of it. Have strong separation anxiety, which has been very hard this year as recent truama blew the lid off lifelong trauma and its all come up, abandonment (reality and in triggers) galore. I am recognizing that its childhood abandonment and neglect and abuse (where the abuse was about being abandoned), and that this all adds up to an attachment disorder (talking about me here).

I don't have too much constructive to say. I know that when I manage to reach out and ground with more people (which is not often in recent years), I have easier time with separation. Like, not putting all eggs in one basket. But my attachment disorder causes me to end up with all my eggs in one basket. I have this believe that getting real trauma therapy for first time in my life (maybe more EMDR) will help reduce the abandonment issues. But I have no idea. I know the stuff I've read says that exposure therapy and DBT are able to help people cope with abandonment issues and therefore separation anxiety. I've read a lot of stuff I haven't been able to try.

General emotional regulation skills and self-soothing are helpful, but again, that statement is theory and I don't know best ways to learn those skills.

Anyway I really relate.

 

[Abstract]

I have to say that when I got the closest to letting someone in - my last T - it terrified the living life out of me. That glimpse was both seductive and like standing on the edge of a cliff and feeling myself about to plunge over.

Good/healthy experiences (your therapist not leaving you and doing what he can to solve that one problem) can hurt as much as can negative experiences.

This is very true in my experience. It is healing pain but that doesn't make it any less painful. I think the comments about the terror of babies traumatised and neglected and the emotional flashbacks related are probably very accurate and insightful too Prime-No.

I am very grateful I haven't had the horrific experiences that many seem to have had as babies but I still seem to have big attachment and abandonment issues.

So many wise things said in the thread. Hugs to anyone that needs them.

 

[maddog]

I've just come back to the thread after 24 hours and am absolutely speechless and overwhelmed at everything that has been said, and all of your kindness and empathy. Somehow I just didn't expect it.

I want to respond to everything that everyone said, but just can't right now, but I think that one way and another you have all touched the absolute truth of this for me.

In particular, I know, and can actually very much feel, that this distress and abandonment grief come from a child place. I am aware of extreme and sometimes almost instantaneous emotional regression when these states strike and I want to cry and cling and engage in absolutely every childlike behaviour that my instincts know of. The absolute certainty that he is abandoning me and that I am at imminent and inescapable risk of harm and will die alone, is such a conviction that it cannot be touched by rational thought at the time. I just can't describe the intensity of the pain or how much I am unable to combat it.

Yes, now I have something to lose, and I'd never thought of it quite like that. Thanks T...! And that's so much of what I fear right now, and why there is still a huge part of me that resents the relationship and longs for the safety of aloneness that was all I once knew. How can it possibly be doable to have something so precious given that I don't know how to treat it properly... Sometimes I feel as though I don't want to breathe in his presence in case I do something wrong and destroy everything. Sadly, the pressure I place on myself to do and to be perfect as a result, is very counterproductive.

I think I like the idea, in theory, of having him give me something, but have no idea what, let alone how I'd go about seeking this. Actually, I am positive that I couldn't, and so while I like it in theory, I don't think it's ever something I could act on. I wish something would just spontaneously appear and be transferred from him to me...

I will respond more later, but just wanted to say... just thank you all so so much.

Maddog

 

[bell]

I am aware of extreme and sometimes almost instantaneous emotional regression when these states strike and I want to cry and cling and engage in absolutely every childlike behaviour that my instincts know of. The absolute certainty that he is abandoning me and that I am at imminent and inescapable risk of harm and will die alone, is such a conviction that it cannot be touched by rational thought at the time. I just can't describe the intensity of the pain...

This reads so familiar that it has me tearing up, @maddog. I cling on and I don't understand and just know that it hurts and want the hurt to stop. So I cling harder, which makes it feel better for about a second, then they go and it's a whirlwind of hurt and I feel like I'm dying. And then I feel embarrassed, ashamed, and humiliated because they're gone and I hurt so bad and act like an idiot usually.

And the fact that I'm 38 and do this from a very childlike part of me ups the embarrassment about a million times. Because each time it hits and I meltdown, it now seems to hurt worse sometimes because I can clearly see that it's the PTSD, and so then I try and separate the present from the past and it all just congeals in a ball of sludge that seems to constantly roll just out of my grasp.

Sorry, rambling now, but doing so, because this thread has hit very deep, but in a beautiful way, thanks for posting about this.

 

[maddog]

Thank you Bell, and you describe the cycle so painfully well. The image of a congealed ball of sludge made me cringe with knowing. The pain and revulsion of it all, particularly once the wash of shame and humiliation kick in, is almost intolerable at times.

I'm sorry I can't remember who it was, but someone above suggested that I think about the ways that T behaves towards me or the things about him that make me feel safe, and concentrate on nurturing those things in myself. This gave me a lot of pause for thought - and anxiety - but deep thought nonetheless.

More than anything, he treats me like an intelligent, capable, normal, likeable, totally ok human being, and has done from the very beginning. No matter how I behave, no matter if I am strong and making progress or floundering and falling, he always behaves towards me in exactly the same way. He is like Teflon when it comes to the shame and pain and self hatred that I must absolutely transmit at times. That sort of resilient, resistant emotional stability and unconditional validation are an experience that I should be used to from him by now, but which strike me absolutely every timeI am with him. They bring me a sense of stability and ok'ness that I can never, ever replicate or retain when he's not there feeding them directly - hence my analogy about being plugged into the power.

He likes me. Um, it's weird to say that, but I think he does - uncomplicatedly, without complexity or awkwardness or weirdness or anything. He just... likes me. I think he does. I feel it. That's certainly something he can give me that for now, I can't give myself.

He has an amazing ability to push me forward with a relentless energy and fierce faith in me, balanced with extreme empathy and compassion. It sounds like the impossible balance, yet somehow I feel he strikes it with me, almost all of the time. I guess this is the way I'd like to feel about my own journey. I'd like to be able to push myself hard and with pragmatism, but also find compassion and gentleness with myself in my struggles and setbacks.

He is also extremely normal. Honestly, sometimes I feel as though he was specially manufactured to be almost the stereotype of a so-called "normal" person, with a normal, not-too-perfect but just perfect enough life, personality, range of views about the world etc. Again, normality and any sense of it is something that I have no internal sense of.

And he lets me see that he's normal and imperfect, and there is incredible comfort and reassurance in that for me. Somehow it helps to dilute my sense of shame and defectiveness and makes me feel that maybe we're not so dissimilar afterall.

It's strangely vulnerable and exposing to talk about this, but useful I think. Not surprisingly, it draws my attention to the fact that he offers, and provides a reliable stream of, all of the acceptance and validation and stability that I don't seem able to find in myself.

I think I need to think more about this.

Maddog

 

[bell]

He has an amazing ability to push me forward with a relentless energy and fierce faith in me, balanced with extreme empathy and compassion.

This makes me so happy for you, @maddog!

And while I'm glad to hear that someone else understands "the sludge," I'm sorry that you know exactly what I mean, as it totally stinks. :/

 

[stephanie44]

I think your feelings are perfectly understandable. I have attachment trauma(my father) and have really been missing my T. She was sick last week and I have been sick this week. I called her today, crying, and told her that the little girl part of me missed her. I asked if she could send something to me in the mail(a card, etc...) and she said she would be more than happy to. When you are working on difficult issues, your T can be a real lifeline.