Posted by lucie lu on November 13, 2008, at 8:07:49
Like many others on Babble, themes of attachment, abandonment, and related hurts and fears have dominated my therapy too. I am not there yet, by any means, although I think progress has been made over the past few years in particular. But progress, at least for me, moves with glacial speed.
I'm not optimistic that these feelings ever truly disappear. No matter how resolved we think those feelings are, we will probably always be vulnerable to sudden piercing shafts of grief or fear, and feeling small and helpless. Our T's are trying to show us that we are neither small nor helpless. Realistic attachment goals, I think, include being able to fulfill needs within myself to reduce the perceived threat of someone important to me "abandoning" me. It means giving up the fantasy of a life-saving Other, without whom we will be lost, in exchange for feeling autonomous and held securely within my own arms. And to remember that no matter what level of internal security I am ever able to obtain, those feelings are by now probably hard-wired into my brain circuits. Healing is never really complete, and I will always be vulnerable to those circuits suddenly being lit up by some stimulus, flooding me with old feelings of fear, grief, or anger. My job is to recognize when this occurs and have ways to right myself when I capsize. And finally, to be able to become attached to someone else in a healthy way. That is why it is so important in treating attachment-related issues to allow a deep attachment to our T's. Where else can we learn it? Who else would be so patient with us, so non-threatening except for the threats and "weapons" we endow them with?
As an analogy, I think of my old high school earth science classes and how the landscape is shaped by colossal and violent forces - volcanoes, glaciers, earthquakes. Those long-ago occurrences leave features like mountains and lakes long after the forces that shaped them are no longer there. But the landscape adapts. The lake bed remains but water fills it in so it is no longer a scar but an ecosystem. The mountain, a now-dormant volcano, produces soil and streams. But sometimes, in a heavy rain, the lake floods and there are mudslides. We can't prevent them, we can just pick up the proverbial shovel afterwards.
I think I'm somewhere between the earth starting to cool but before new life forms creep onto land from the sea :)
poster:lucie lu
thread:862771
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081104/msgs/862771.html