I keep rewriting this. maybe overexposing myself. but i feel a need to get it out. i’m heading to my dark place and i’m trying to detour. i love my therapist, she’s amazing. and i’ve been with her for a very long time. i have some very severe mental health issues. we reach a place where there is a gap. where she has opened me up and then i feel dropped, excruciating pain, re-traumatizing, engulfing. sometimes it feels like … i can’t put it in words. there is a pain, a deep chronic, from infancy up…sexual abuse and neglect that leads to such a cavernous longing mixed with incredible danger and terror. she helps me in so many ways…but the design of therapy itself feels like a flaw. The time limits, the lack of being able to know more about her even though i am sharing my darkest, most shameful terrifying things. plus the feeling of being held and dropped, over and over and over again….
hard session today. my greatest fear is that she is giving all she can and there is no one better to turn to…and i am stretching all i can, to know my patterns, triggers, try to be in the current time and not the past, know my helpers, be open and brave, etc…and there is JUST THIS GAP between us… i can’t reach her, she can’t reach me yet we are both stretching. I fear i need so much more. i fear i cannot keep being open and feeling a deficit, an unmet longing. I fear i can not actually find healing with her. And I know she’s a really good one. I guess i fear there is no hope for me to heal…and i have stuff still to do. but this pain debilitates me. We’ve made a small binder full of so many things for me to do to stay away from killing myself…but when i feel the depth of this pain, and feeling of despair, i just ….nothing else matters. posting on here is in my binder of one way to try not to hurt myself or leave for good. thank you for reading.
hard session today. my greatest fear is that she is giving all she can and there is no one better to turn to…and i am stretching all i can, to know my patterns, triggers, try to be in the current time and not the past, know my helpers, be open and brave, etc…and there is JUST THIS GAP between us… i can’t reach her, she can’t reach me yet we are both stretching. I fear i need so much more. i fear i cannot keep being open and feeling a deficit, an unmet longing. I fear i can not actually find healing with her. And I know she’s a really good one. I guess i fear there is no hope for me to heal…and i have stuff still to do. but this pain debilitates me. We’ve made a small binder full of so many things for me to do to stay away from killing myself…but when i feel the depth of this pain, and feeling of despair, i just ….nothing else matters. posting on here is in my binder of one way to try not to hurt myself or leave for good. thank you for reading.
14 comments
You showed a lot of courage to write this. The shame must be very strong. I am trying to imagine this much pain, it sounds awful. I have a lot pain too.
thank you a1957, you’re right about the shame. thank you for trying to imagine the pain, you must be very empathetic. I am so sorry that you have a lot of pain too. We live in a very wounded world. thanks for the connect
I can relate to the whole not knowing if healing is possible. That’s what I’m working on in therapy right now, identifying realistic improvement. It appears to me that with limited time and resources, total recovery may be impossible.
It sounds like you’ve got a really great therapist though, which gives you the best chance you’re going to get on recovery. If some things are beyond either of your abilities, that’s not a failure, that’s being human.
Thank you heartlessviking. Realistic improvement is a great way to put it.
I did luck out with a great therapist… I try to remember that. Being human is hard.
I see common ground here. I am going to try to express it. I have been with my therapist going on 8 years. She is the best. She opens me up on events so painful I am afraid to even speak of them, yet I do, because she makes it possible.
I think she too has been through hell and back but I never ask about it, afraid of what I might hear. This world has done so much cruelty to so many, and my mother so much cruelty to me , that I want at least one close relationship that does not remind me of my past, this way I do not get triggered by her past at least.
You have a way of staying alive. I do too.
I fear I may never heal either. Yet, actually, I am healing.
My pain is beyond my words, but so is my healing. I am healing. But the horrors still get remembered and felt, even after 50+ years. Felt less intensely these days, and for shorter durations now, but when they come on it would be so nice to be off.
Now it is my turn: thank you for reading.
yes, I agree common ground. Your relationship with your therapist sounds beautiful. I imagine you are right too… it seems to me that therapists that can go to these places with us, can go because they know them as well. I like how you point out that we both have ways of staying alive. I just keep wondering if it’s worth it, yet i do find so much beauty and i feel a purpose…it’s just this damn deep pain and self loathing that thoughts can’t seem to touch.
I like how you say “yet, actually, I am healing.” My therapist says something similar when I say, I don’t know if I can do this. “We ARE doing it already.”
I also really like how you say that both your pain and your healing are beyond your words. Often true for me too…
I am 50, can still only remember snatches of my trauma’s…they got buried under a dissociative disorder. They come in night mares, body and emotional memories, more than narrative, and tons of “circumstantial evidence.”
I really appreciate your posts. Thank you for sharing. Feel less alone.
Self loathing was something I did a lot for decades. Seems self loathing and trauma go together.
Your trauma pain, it sounds like complex trauma, is wicked painful, deep pain. The mention of dissociative disorder sounds like the whole thing that happened to you was crazy terrible. Stuff like that my therapist coaxed out of me was done in the office only, face to face, it was terrible stuff and I literally did not remember until it somehow was safe enough (though terrible) to recall. When I did recall those things I have no words to describe it other than to say they would lose some of their grip on me. Each time I relived one of those events, over and over I would relive them, like maybe one second of something at a time, several times, they got a bit less grip on me, each time. Less shame was attached to them. I think that is what appealed to me about reprocessing those crazy awful events, shame reduction was the reward I craved. Oh I could tell she knew what kind of hell because she was never shocked in the slightest, God only knows what she went through.
Beauty and purpose, yes. I found a sweet spot on a river which I never seem to get tired of. There is other beauty I marvel at too. There is lots of beauty. My purpose I have found, or maybe more accurately, I already had two and found another, but just did not realize until recently that certain abilities I bring to bear are my purpose, rather I just thought I was doing what I did for no real reason, other than say necessity. Nope, they are callings, they are purposes.
Wow. You get it.
Yes, I have D.I.D… hard to handle sometimes, other times I recognize it as the gift it is that saved me. I also do not remember narrative stories of the pre-verbal abuse. My body and emotions remember…especially in getting close (symbolically not physically to my therapist…i relive it then without knowing what i’m reliving).
Thank you for sharing what it was like to recall that stuff, the horror. I am so sorry you experienced it. No matter how old I get, I still find myself shocked at what humans do to one another, not to mention animals and the earth. I so appreciate you saying that you have no words (i often feel that way) but that it loses it’s grip more and more. Less shame and self-loathing sounds amazing.
Your sweet spot on the river sounds lovely and your many purposes. This seems like an ability that you have also, empathy, communication, connection… I appreciate you.
Your reply is interesting. I am a bit tired this evening but will give communication a good effort. If I understand correctly, symbolic closeness is enough to get memories your emotions and body have to be relived. This sounds intense. You have a capable therapist. Mine does a version of this too. You have courage.
When I do yearn to depart, it is what people do to each other that makes leaving life seem classy somehow.
Empathy, I hope, has been in me for awhile. What has been recent is growing ability to communicate and connect. It means a lot to me that you have affirmed these abilities. I want to get into this a little further, why it means so much. I was the second of three sons. My mother had disdain for non-famous men and all boys. I was taught that nothing good existed in me. Thus, abilities like communication and connection that I often saw practiced by others, hardly existed in me, as I did not believe they really could. Group therapy has recently given insight into communication and connection. Your affirmation of these still growing abilities is huge, confirmation that I am moving in the right direction. Thank you. I appreciate you.
I’m sorry, i forgot to subscribe to comments and I had a busy week. Though i’m in the thick of pain again, spiraling a lot. So so weary of internal pain…and what people do to each other. (borrowing your expression)
I hear you on what people do to each other makes leaving life seem classy… wish i could stop thinking about that option. It feels like a relief and it also brings me a deep sadness to give up. I suppose i’m not yet.
For someone who was tired when you wrote that I definitely affirm that you have a strong ability to connect and communicate. I am so sorry you were taught that nothing good exists in you. That is brutal and cruel and so degrading. So sad. I know our parents hand down to us their own wounds, and can not give us what they do not have but it’s so tragic to hear of things ingrained in people in childhood.
That is great that you are in group therapy and get something out of it. Beautiful. Thank you for responding to this and not leaving me alone with it. And for your kind words about my therapist and my courage. I am having serious doubts about us (her and I and our work together ability) and I still value kind feedback. I hope you are enjoying your weekend.
I usually wait a day to reply to give time for thought, but given there was a time gap, I thought I would go with what comes to mind sooner than unusual. Internal pain is awful, so draining, so seemingly inescapable. It is a soul ache. Spiraling a lot, is this a shame spiral?
Thinking about departure gives me a sense of doing something about my pain. Yes, then I feel sad about destroying what is good about me.
My parents parents were true monsters.
I keep thinking I have a grasp on this idea, “….the feeling of being held and dropped, over and over and over again….” Then I’m not so sure. Would you be ok with sharing more about it? I understand if not.
Thank you for empathizing again, and getting it about the pain. I so relate to how you describe it, “…awful, so draining, so seemingly inescapable.” It IS a soul ache and yes, I suppose spiraling is a shame spiral and also a terror spiral… my feelings follow the fear of what is happening and what might be coming, what in my neural pathways is programmed to come next. As well as the shame, hating myself for being filled with pain and terror and struggling to just be, when really, on the surface I have a good life, love, work I love, etc… it’s really a reliving of the past…and not being capable of stopping it.
Since you can understand and name the pain so descriptively I sense you are too familiar with it too. Though I like being related to, I’m sorry that you know that depth of pain too.
Yes, departing is the same thing for me, it’s my escape route if the weight of pain becomes too much for too long. Just writing now, it feels like a huge fire or something I can not control, can not hide from… I need an escape route even if, hopefully, I never take it.
I am so sorry your parents parents were true monsters. Trauma and pain is certainly handed down. It’s so sad really, what people have to endure and then in order to cope, what they let themselves turn into. It’s not fair for a child…and so many children are not truly loved and honored and tended to as they should.
The feeling of being held and dropped over and over…and over and over… 🙂 comes from a very very young part of myself, that was not loved as babies are meant to be loved. I would be held and then left emotionally and physically …my mom even tells me these stories with pride. In her head the ghost of her mother was caring for me. I was also abused when my mom “left” me. By my father, I believe, so having my mom disappear also signaled that physical degrading pain was about to happen…at the hands of someone I loved and relied on. By left I just mean emotionally, and by physically, I mean in a room by myself with a door closed, crying as an infant. (Yes, LOTS of people experience these things and worse…)
This young part of myself, was buried deep within. I relive it with my therapist, as she listens, shows love, “sees” me and then at the strike of the clock she is “gone.” Of course the adult, mature me “gets” it completely…but for the young emotions that are stuck in that time, it feels as though a person loved a baby, then smiled, put them down on the street and walked away. The sense of danger fills me, the terror, the shame for needing… and then the shame for being an adult consumed by infant emotions that were stuck in me…and we just haven’t been able to get very far with it…in many years. I am losing faith and it would be easier to not have this wound wide open, longing for her…but i also can not bear the idea of leaving her. It ebbs and wanes, depending on which part of me is present and how close/safe i feel with my therapist that week.
That was a lot!!! Sorry, I write a lot sometimes. Perhaps it’s good for me to try and put it into words… I need to shift it somehow. As we’ve discussed there is still life to lead, beauty to see, things to experience, I know this to be true. And I also know that it feels like a raging fire is closing in.
I believe you can press the email thing, if emailing is better? But this is also good and also no pressure to keep it going.
I hope you found something to enjoy today and that you are feeling relatively free from pain at the moment?!
Thank you for reading.
I saw no less than five areas in your reply that I learned from or related to or got a deeper understanding. Emailing is, I think, a good idea.
“feeling of being held and dropped, over and over and over again….” I think I have the beginnings of a grasp of this. Utterly awful, making bonding so so strange, so much I can barely find words.. I sent you a brief email. I will keep an eye out for your email reply.
Outwardly, everything looks fine with me too. Inwardly it is hard going.