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Re: Choosing you (long reply) » Aphrodite

Posted by DaisyM on May 25, 2004, at 19:35:03

In reply to Choosing you, posted by Aphrodite on May 25, 2004, at 14:37:34

A -
You ask some really hard questions. The first time I told my Therapist about the abuse was 4 months after we started together. It came out with lots of feelings. But the prior 4 months had been spent making having feelings OK for me and giving me a vocabulary about feelings. And he told me over and over and over again that YOU CAN'T CONTROL FEELINGS! I really wanted to control how they came up and what they were attached to. So maybe you start with "just" feeling your feelings and not being the CEO in charge of your feelings. I'll also tell you that one of my first posts here was how to avoid getting whammied by feelings AFTER therapy, instead of during the session. It took me practice and my Therapist learning how to question me about my feelings to get past this. (He watches me closely, and gets pushy - "don't edit. Tell me what you're feeling" or "where did you just go, what just came up?")

As far as containment goes, I don't do it very well sometimes (like right now). It helps to journal or write emails. I channel the anxiety into cleaning things, or organizing things. When I have too much time by myself I can get overwhelmed. And I talk to my Therapist a ton, either on the phone or in person. We sometimes just do 10 minutes check in calls because he knows I don't have very many places to be completely honest about how I'm feeling. And it is reassuring somehow to know he is still out there if I did need him.

I discovered today that part of my anxiety is that he won't like me anymore once he knows all of the really ugly details. So I don't want my younger-self blabbing it all out. We talked about this for a long time, about shame and fault and guilt. And how it doesn't matter how many times people tell you "it is never the child's fault". That statement is really hard to believe when you apply it to yourself. And it *is* hard to feel all those feelings and know how hard the struggle was between loving your parents and hating what was happening.

Maybe you can tell, I intellectualized a lot today. I needed to understand some more of what we were trying to do and why it was important to do it. The intensity of yesterday's feelings made me feel bruised and cautious of bringing back the hurt. And I'm always worried about overwhelming my Therapist with too many hard sessions in a row. He did comment on this, and he said he was worried that I was shutting my kidself off again. So we have a plan for tomorrow, which includes not avoiding talking about some of the actual events, if I can find the words. And we talked about the holiday on Monday and what therapy might look like for the next few weeks. (meaning going lots and lots) I always do better with a plan.

wow, this got long. Sorry 'bout that. I don't even know if it is helpful. Keep asking your questions. There are lots of people besides me who can help you with this.

And yes, Babble is a huge part of my support team and totally counts! :)


 

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