Posted by Daisym on March 16, 2007, at 0:32:16
In reply to Re: Looking into the Abyss » Daisym, posted by Honore on March 14, 2007, at 7:06:37
Maybe you feel guilty about your T's wife, or afraid that she could take him away-- but I think it's still you who needs to give yourself permission.
****Guilt - yes. Afraid - totally.She's a stand-in, maybe for your mother, but mostly for your own sense of blaming yourself for needing and wanting your T's love.
****Needing someone's love has turned out poorly for me on several occasions. And those little kid parts still want to be taken care of, just like they did with my dad. Hard not to blame myself for what happened then, given the intensity of how I feel now. Don't want to hurt anyone else with my needs, you know?
It's understandable that when you're with your family, you can't act "reasonably" and "generously"-- maybe you're reliving your childhood, and finally thinking that you deserve something different from whatyou had then-- indifference or insensibility to your pain.
****I'm hoping that I have more dignity and pride than to give into the rage that flares around people who knew me as a child. Rationally I know they didn't know. Just like now, people don't know how much pressure I'm under and so they aren't careful or sensitive with me. I get upset about that, but then again, isn't it up to be to let people know? Just like it was up to me back then.Maybe a death seems to demand some "better" response-- but how can it, when you haven't resolved the pain and hurt from all the other years? Maybe this is different, intellectually== but emotionally, maybe it feels the same.
****Agreed. Sucks, but it is true. Which is why I was better off without awareness of emotions. I want to reclaim my ability to not feel things.With a list like yours, I'd find looking into the abyss a bit of a relief. At least you forget your troubles and burdens for those few minutes. Not that it's worth it, or helps, over all-- but it's a kind of break.
Just know that that's what it is-- not really looking, but looking more to take your mind off a mountain of scary, hard things.
****My therapist is convinced that a great deal of my suicial ideation is an escape fantasy. I need to believe that I can maintain the ultimate control and I can get out from under that list if I have to. There might only be one way - but at least there is a way. When the possibility of suicide is taken away - such as when the reality of what my death would mean to my children breaks through -- I get severely depressed and withdrawn. I can't talk nor work, I'm just so destroyed by the thought of the pain being never ending. So it is a balance - he doesn't take away my fantasy but he doesn't let me believe too strongly that it is truly a way out. He wants to replace this destructive belief with some kind of hope for the future. For now, he is willing to hold the hope.Maybe your T's wife wouldn't like it if she knew-- but she doesn't and won't. Your T has made a commitment to you that's inviolable. He won't let her know, because he knows his abilities and choices, and how to sustain them. He won't let you down; and he won't let her down either. Sometimes that's a loss, but it's also what makes everything between you possible and okay.
***I was so struck by what you wrote, because this is what he said yesterday. "She doesn't know, so how could she be mad?" I told him I would bet she does know he has a clingy patient - how could she not? She might not know it is me, but she knows. He said she is equipped to understand it if she did, she is a therapist too. I said it only means that she knows how deep my feelings could run. He told me he can take care of himself and he won't let me hurt him nor our relationship. I believe him most of the time.The person who needs to know that, and to accept it is you-- he already does. If you do, too, it really will become okay.
***I'm really trying. I can do it for a few weeks and then bang! I'm nervous again. I guess the legacy of abuse and abandonment lives on and on.Honore
*****Thanks so much. You made me think a lot.
poster:Daisym
thread:740611
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070309/msgs/741490.html