Posted by AuntieMel on August 9, 2004, at 12:38:30
In reply to » (((GardenerGirl)))...., I'm No Polyanna, posted by 64bowtie on August 6, 2004, at 14:59:12
My cart and horse are chasing each other around a tree, so I can't tell which is first....
And, (thanks Dinah for the idea) I will start off by telling you that it is ok for you to be direct with me, and I assume it goes both ways.
This part interested me:
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Picture this! The client is 40 years old and wishes they could be forever young. Never mind the suffering and the drama-trauma of their youth, they want the fun and the care-free spirit they felt they had and now miss. I come along and burst that bubble from all sides, reminding them all was not very hunky-dory after all. I do encourage them to embrace those skills, attributes, abilities, and the power available to adults not available to children. Suddenly, the client can become ready simply by no longer being restricted by childhood ineptitude.
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BACKGROUND:I lived a childhood of constant emotional torture, with a liberal smattering of good tail whoopins thrown in. Fear was my driving force then, and isolationalism was my survival mechanism. And it worked pretty dang good at the time.
For years I stayed in contact with my father, because I knew I was the type to feel guilt even when I didn't deserve to, and I knew if I shut him out while he was alive I'd be racked with guilt forever. And, in a way that worked too. He was emotionally abusive 'till the day he died, but at least I don't have a guilt burden to go along with it.
I reached 'that moment' when the memories started losing their pain a couple of years ago, a few months after my father died. I was just driving along and it occured to me that my father was dead and I didn't care. I wasn't happy, wasn't sad, just didn't care one way or the other.
THE QUESTION:
So here I am, 50 and adult and I can't relive the care-free days of childhood because I never experienced them. And I'd never consider being forever young because I wouldn't want to relive that torture.
But I would like to have aspects of the childhood I never had. The fun and the care-free spirit that weren't there when they should have. The idea that I'm condemned to be forever an adult without the "protected" growing up experience to learn in is just .............. grim.
So, coach (and I'm not being sarcastic) just how can that be resolved?
poster:AuntieMel
thread:374592
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040805/msgs/375643.html