NovemberStar
Platinum Member
I'm facing some big stuff in therapy with my T lately. Two weeks ago a couple of things happened in our session and it really really triggered me. It took two weeks to be able to (email) her about one of the things; I can't quite bring myself to being up the other thing - yet.
Today's session centred around how I am so afraid of hurting her feelings that I will hide how I feel in order to 'protect' her. I was able to articulate how I have very black and white thinking about this - on one extreme I am so afraid if I tell her how bad I feel about something she has said or done (knowing it wouldn't be intentional) and not being able to shake the feeling that if she had a reaction, it was MY FAULT and I somehow manipulated her into having the reaction.
But on the other hand, if I shared my pain, and she had NO reaction, it left me feeling very threatened. I wasn't able to talk about this aspect yet - it's too raw. I'm glad I made a good start with being able to tell her how afraid I am of somehow 'manipulating' her or 'making' her feel things. I was able to tell her I don't it reply distressing, the idea that she can have a reaction to something I tell her - I can't shake the feeling it is very very WRONG - ie, IM wrong.
I was also able to feel my T I KNOW none of this is about my T and none of it belongs in the present. It is completely related back to my mother. I can see it so very clearly, that I have felt these EXACT same feelings before, triggered by something my mother did or said all those years ago.
I'm feeling so incredibly GRATEFUL my T knows I KNOW this is a past response and not personal - yet she doesn't invalidate my feelings by telling me 'that was then, this is now'. She is awesome at listening and reaffirming and checking out she is understanding me correctly.
Other things I need to talk to her about / work through:
I think I'm more afraid of her NOT having a response to ANYTHING I say than I am of feeling guilty and bad and ashamed if she DOES have a reaction. If she wasn't to feel anything from what I said to her, I'd feel she didn't care at all. And that very much ties in with my fear of abandonment. It's related to my learned responses growing up - I just know that with my mother, any interaction we had resulted in one of two ways:
1) She reacted intensely, made it all about her, which meant. My feelings came second - or they didn't exist at all.
Or
2) It was the opposite - she would have no reaction at all - no matter how much I was hurting, no matter how much I suffered, it had NO IMPACT on her at all. And if my suffering had no impact on her to the extent she could ignore me, then I had no defence against her leaving me altogether.
f*ck. Working through it all it is increasingly clear how much of my trauma attachment with my mother was at a very young age. How from a very young age it has really affected me. The feeling that I am manipulating someone else if they have an emotional reaction to me, in conjunction with the relaxation that NO amount of 'manipulation' protected me from her abandonment. That stage of development and learning is what a young infant responds on - young babies cry and express their pain SO their caregivers respond and don't abandon them. It is 'manipulation' in a vey basic way - for the infants survival.
Today's session centred around how I am so afraid of hurting her feelings that I will hide how I feel in order to 'protect' her. I was able to articulate how I have very black and white thinking about this - on one extreme I am so afraid if I tell her how bad I feel about something she has said or done (knowing it wouldn't be intentional) and not being able to shake the feeling that if she had a reaction, it was MY FAULT and I somehow manipulated her into having the reaction.
But on the other hand, if I shared my pain, and she had NO reaction, it left me feeling very threatened. I wasn't able to talk about this aspect yet - it's too raw. I'm glad I made a good start with being able to tell her how afraid I am of somehow 'manipulating' her or 'making' her feel things. I was able to tell her I don't it reply distressing, the idea that she can have a reaction to something I tell her - I can't shake the feeling it is very very WRONG - ie, IM wrong.
I was also able to feel my T I KNOW none of this is about my T and none of it belongs in the present. It is completely related back to my mother. I can see it so very clearly, that I have felt these EXACT same feelings before, triggered by something my mother did or said all those years ago.
I'm feeling so incredibly GRATEFUL my T knows I KNOW this is a past response and not personal - yet she doesn't invalidate my feelings by telling me 'that was then, this is now'. She is awesome at listening and reaffirming and checking out she is understanding me correctly.
Other things I need to talk to her about / work through:
I think I'm more afraid of her NOT having a response to ANYTHING I say than I am of feeling guilty and bad and ashamed if she DOES have a reaction. If she wasn't to feel anything from what I said to her, I'd feel she didn't care at all. And that very much ties in with my fear of abandonment. It's related to my learned responses growing up - I just know that with my mother, any interaction we had resulted in one of two ways:
1) She reacted intensely, made it all about her, which meant. My feelings came second - or they didn't exist at all.
Or
2) It was the opposite - she would have no reaction at all - no matter how much I was hurting, no matter how much I suffered, it had NO IMPACT on her at all. And if my suffering had no impact on her to the extent she could ignore me, then I had no defence against her leaving me altogether.
f*ck. Working through it all it is increasingly clear how much of my trauma attachment with my mother was at a very young age. How from a very young age it has really affected me. The feeling that I am manipulating someone else if they have an emotional reaction to me, in conjunction with the relaxation that NO amount of 'manipulation' protected me from her abandonment. That stage of development and learning is what a young infant responds on - young babies cry and express their pain SO their caregivers respond and don't abandon them. It is 'manipulation' in a vey basic way - for the infants survival.
