My Person

This is a long one, hang in there.

In response to my abreactive work on Thursday I had not only a cathartic release of a traumatic event but I also gained something so huge I may have difficulty trying to explain it. So I ask for some patience as I try to work this out through my blog.

I feel as though my entire life I have been searching for that one person to love me in a way that I haven’t ever been loved. I have been looking for a parent fill-in or something and it led me to way too many relationships with older females that ended in abandonment or boundary violations. When I was a child this was acted out usually with teachers. I would attach to one in a very desperate way and my entire little life would revolve around their every movement in my life. I would study their physical characteristics and body movements and try to emulate them. I would change everything possible about me to become like them so that they would want me. This ended in so many abandonment’s and scars that still hurt me today. As I got older I found that real people in my life would continue this pattern and I latched on to unreal people like TV stars or musicians. I would imagine that they would one-day rescue me or that one of their songs was meant for me. I gave my love to them psychically and received nothing in return but it was safe for me.

Once I was a teenager I needed more, and I turned my attachments back to teachers and then therapists which each time ended in them feeling smothered. None of them were healthy enough or educated enough to understand what was going on with me. They grew to resent my nurturance seeking and inevitably referred me or dismissed me elsewhere.  I have always felt that if I could find just one person that could love me the way I needed that I would survive and this was my survival strategy. Unfortunately my idea of getting people to love me was very distorted and extremely hurtful to me. I had no idea what it meant to be myself and I thought I had to be in crisis to receive attention and love. I imagined that if I was sick or small or hurt that I would be vulnerable enough for someone to care. People perceived this as manipulation and they became angry and resentful of me. Honestly, from my experience how could one expect much else from my interpretation of how relationships work? People ‘cared’ for me when I was sick or hurt like in hospitals or Drs offices. I had received more nurturance and care the month or two I was in children’s hospital more than anywhere else. Something had to be wrong to be loved.

I hit a turning point when I was 17 years old. I had been working with a therapist for about four years when she determined that I was too sick for anyone to care for. She said my diagnosis was incurable and she couldn’t work with me anymore. I fell to pieces and raged for a long time. I believed that my ‘illness’ meant no one could love me and that was the problem from the beginning. I resolved to stop trying, to stop looking for anyone to nurture me and I turned to punishing myself in ways that are unimaginable to me now. I lost my mind in some ways, living without a purpose or without care. Time began to turn into a long and knotted string with nothing of importance really existing. I threw myself into dangerous situations to try and trigger emotion only to find I was terribly numb, but I thought it meant I wasn’t human.

After a strange turn of random events I found myself sitting in a therapists office. She was young, had a lot of energy and took a strong and strange liking to me. I despised her for it and internally my world collapsed, in turn the mess my life had become had turned to ruins. She admitted me to a psych hospital, which is where I met Therapist. The admitting therapist terminated with me when she was accepted into the FBI. Here I was, a frayed blonde girl that acted half the time like I got it, and the next like a spoiled and defiant child. I had no clue what was going on around me and all I could do was try to keep just my nose above water. I think at this point I was so depressed that I given up on the idea that I as loveable and had deduced that I was at best, tolerable. I don’t remember a lot from the earlier years of my therapy with Therapist. What I remember is the fighting that we did on a weekly basis, the nights I spent feeling tortured on whether or not to call her because I was on a ledge and my general ambivalence about the relationship.

I’m not sure how Therapist saw me when we began and even for a year or two into the relationship. I should ask her. When we began our work together I was only willing to admit to any provider that I was working with that my father had abused me and my cousins had too. I refused to admit the horrors that I was experiencing still with my mother because it was so dangerous to my psyche to disrupt my dissociation. Therapist stayed with me, plugging away with a lot of defiance from me and she went above and beyond to find words that I would connect to. Eventually I found safety in her presence and I opened up enough to tell her about my mom. I don’t remember that day at all and I wish that I did. I doubt it was me that confided in her but all the same…it was a huge step. Our relationship progressed after that slowly and I think when I moved down here to Georgia it reached a point in which we established a rhythm and I began to really internalize her caring.

So when Therapist did the abreactive work with that young part the other day I realized I found ‘my person’. The person I have been searching for my entire life, the person I so desperately needed to help me heal and the ‘parent’ I have wanted so badly. I was relaxed from the amount of emotion spewed forth from the work Chase (the part of me talking in therapy) had done, but when I came forward Therapist was close to me and still holding my hand. I should have freaked out but instead I just felt loved and cared for. I saw her eyes for real for the first time and I didn’t realize they were that brown. I actually saw her whole face and while it seemed foreign it was still safely familiar to me. Maybe it wasn’t that I just saw her, I think I not only saw her but I was connected to what that meant. I have no idea what her reaction really was and I hope it was positive and that it did not freak her out too much. I sat there and tolerated it while at the same time experiencing the sadness that I will be leaving her soon.

I will have to say that this is the most sadness I have ever felt and I am HAPPY to be feeling it. I am so glad I am connected to the grief that I am choosing to lose a person that I passionately care for. The realness lets me know I am alive, that I am human and I am so glad to be a part of her life and to have her a part of mine. I am overjoyed that I found ‘my person’ and even though this is ending she will always be ‘my person’ and there will not be a true end to our connection.

Thank You

Thank you for all the amazingly supporting comments from David, Amanda, Vicki, Kate, Memyselfandwho, Paul, Bravehearts, Tiffany Sams, InkPuddle, and ClinicallyClueless. You guys are amazing and thank you for not only the comments but also continuing to prove my mother wrong and testify that I am worth it. The support and energy provided to me was key in me being able to do one of the most amazing pieces of work in therapy yesterday. You guys have become a really awesome part of my work and I cannot thank you enough.

More on that in another post.

Abreaction

(written Friday)

“Abreaction therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which abreaction is used to assist a patient suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder by re-living the experience in a controlled environment.”

And oh my gosh is it ever cathartic! Yesterday I did my first ever abreaction work and honestly I can say that I have never experienced something quite so intense but beautiful in it’s ability to heal. Afterwards I felt a sense of relief that I don’t think I have ever felt, my arms and legs felt loose and my mind was in a state of calm and comfort. Therapist was more amazing than I could have imagined, she was right there with me and held my hand.

Did you hear that ladies and gentlemen? Therapist held my hand!!!!! She held it and it was ok and I am ok. This was a HUGE thing as Therapist and I have the smallest amount of physical contact I can imagine. The most has only ever been a finger touch. (except for when she has gone hands on but it’s not like I really remember that) She held it and rub my hand with her thumb and gently spoke to me and I felt so safe and rescued. Not rescued in a pathological way but for once I felt her there in the depths with me, holding me in my fear and hurt and loved me while I struggled.

I am so thankful that I was able to do my first piece with her. She earned that space in my life and it will always be hers. It is tough experiencing something so healing and knowing that I will be leaving her soon. At the same time, she holds and will always hold the most important part of my journey. More on that another time.

I don’t know what I wanted to accomplish with this post except to encourage everyone. This work can hurt like hell but the moment I had yesterday proved it is ALL worth it.

The Funnel *graphic*

I’ll warn you now, this is going to probably be an overwhelmingly triggering post. Please be careful with yourself if you choose to move forward and read.

There are a lot of things that got the ball rolling for me needing to go inpatient, but the one that tips the ice-burg was my mother sending me an object in the mail from my childhood (and early adulthood) that she used to abuse/torture me with. It seems as though most parts inside have some experience with this object causing huge tsunami type waves of objection/anger/fear/sadness/fight or flight internally just thinking about it. I came to the realization that this small plastic object represented my mother and my relationship for what it was, it was the physical epitome of my abuse.

All it is, is a funnel. A small.yellow.plastic.funnel. is what my mother has used against my mind, body and soul and honestly, it makes me sick. This small object, costing less than a dollar created her empire of the step by step destruction of any boundary I ever had and there it was, sitting in my own home and striking down yet another boundary. I hear stories from people that say their parents had a special wooden spoon or paddle in which they would be threatened with but never actually hit with. In more extreme cases I hear about belts. In my story, the yellow funnel sat on the kitchen counter like a king on a throne, always there reminding me who was in charge. All my mother had to do was look in it’s general direction and I was immediately her slave. After the first time I was violated by it I would have fallen in line no matter what she wanted, she would have never had to use it on me again but she found great pleasure in possessing that much control over me. Eventually it became less of a punishment for me and more of a mind controlling action.

My mother would tie me to a chair, the same one each time, tape my head to the back, insert the funnel into my mouth and hold my nose forcing me to keep my mouth open. In the beginning she would put rotten milk and yogurt in the funnel but of course that progressed into the most vile substances you could ever imagine, and then worse than that. I was forced to consume things and to feel like the things inside of me, disgusting and trashy. I have developed so much shame around this, to admit the things I have eaten and this creates a lifetime of struggles with food and what I allow in and out of my body. Each time she put that funnel in my mouth she was showing me that I had control of nothing in my life, nothing at all. I was a child that had no boundaries.

I share this today because a small part of me is struggling so badly thinking they are as vile as what she put inside me. This little part is so hurt and so hostile I am hoping they can see this out there and know that we aren’t as bad as they perceive and that we are the same person after posting this as we were before.

Wild geese

I read the below poem and thought of all us survivors out there, especially those that I know personally and the ones that find me here on my blog. I thought it was important to share and I wrote a response to it.

Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
-Mary Oliver

A response:
We are all here learning that we to not have to be good, learning we do not have to drag on our knees forever repenting our pasts. We are learning to sit with ourselves, to be in our bodies and have a respectful and open relationship. We are learning to hear our minds with patience and empathy and yet the worlds we live in continue on during our pause. Amongst ourselves we are sharing our pain, our pasts and struggles. We keep our eyes open to the triumphs and small blessings. We fight with eagerness to regain our freedom and yet the world continues on each day while ours comes to screeching halts many times. Shopping stores are still open, our friends and families continue to go to work, the rain pours and the sun shines. Our minds and bodies work to purge the gritty undertones of the past and we look into the future with timidness like a child jumping into the deep end for the first time. We can paint our future any way we see it; with a fine brush and bright, sharp points or we can use watercolors watching them blend and fuse together with soft beauty. It’s out there, waiting for us, beckoning for us to rejoin where we came from and where we are meant to be.