Going Back to Go Forward (10)

Two weeks of therapy have passed since my last confession. I'm progressing too fast now to write each revelation and heartache. I try to be honest and write my experience of therapy, rather than just my interpretation, but my experiences of therapy lately have been wounding. And my defences have so far prevented me from writing it down. It's too dangerous. I'm too afraid.

I ache, thinking of death most days, even when cradled in my husband's arms. Even when smiling, laughing, with a colleague.

I know therapy is meant to be hard. And I am making a lot of progress. But at what cost? I don't feel safe in there. I don't trust her. She's my shattered, frosty, bleeding mirror. And thanks to her, I no longer trust myself.

I deserve better.

Read on the NHS Choices blog.

Going back to go forward (9)

I arrived at therapy eager and ready to share how much ground I covered during the weeks she was on holiday. I pulled out a map of my ANP (apparently normal part) and EPs (emotional parts) and explained how I identify more with the EP-Sad: how it’s harder to integrate EP-Happy because I’ve spent so much time hiding and protecting it. I tried to talk about the music and how it helped me access the EPs, but I faltered when it came to EP-Happy.

There was a block, I was struggling, and we both saw it. I admitted that it was too overwhelming to cover, and we moved on to EP-Sad.

I tapped into an EP-Sad memory easily enough.

“And do you remember how you felt?”

The room clouded into a dark winter, chills whistling through the ghost-like trees, and the chair became splintered wood. There were lights on the other side of the small forest, and their laughter carried. My cries didn’t.

I remember how I felt. “Angry.”

A breath. Hesitation. “Lonely.” The room yellowed; I sat on a twin bed in a dusty loft, room bare except one tape playing Wilson Phillips over and over. “Except, it’s not lonely.” Everything dissolved around me. “It’s more than lonely.” My voice was a whisper. A deep, ragged emptiness was opening inside of me.

She named it. “Despair.”

I felt like the princess in Neverending Story, finally named by Sebastian. For a brief moment. And then I felt, well, despair. I felt despair into the night and into the next day. It was horrible. That might not seem like progress to you, but for me it was life-changing. Overjoyed.

My research into adoption revealed a world of children with experiences identical to mine – and a world of people whose primary goals are to help them. I read detailed accounts of a 7 year old’s day from the eyes of their adoptive parent and I crumble in familiarity. An 'A-ha!' moment.

My therapist asks pointedly about my marriage.  I smiled, because I had been expecting this question since day 1. How can I have suffered without attachments for so long and yet have attached to him?

“I love him.”

I love him, so why can’t I trust him? Why do I hide myself from him? Resist intimacy? Control everything?

Together, my therapist and I acknowledged how I specifically seek out the role of Parent to avoid facing my own vulnerability. Even my mother-in-law seeks me out for counsel and protection. And I’m afraid, if I give up those roles, I will be rejected. Unnecessary. Unwanted. Unloved. Alone. Despair.

We left therapy with a partially unanswered directive: in lieu of any other suitable relationships (and given that I am 30 years old), how can I parent myself?

Thanks to my adoption research, I already knew how to find that answer. Self-care.

I started by taking all of the photos of my parents and stuffing them in a drawer. I stood in the hallway, fists clenched, staring across an ocean, declaring to an empty house: “I am angry at you. I don’t like you. And it’s okay to feel that way.” It was unbelieveably cathartic, because it wasn't said in anger or hate. It was said out of deep respect for myself. I don't want to see my parents right now.

It was a tumultuous weekend. I knew what I had to do, and I was afraid. We sat together in silence, he and I, for several minutes. I explained what happened in therapy that morning. I broke down in my husband’s arms. That’s a foolish phrase. I cried in my husband’s arms. I expressed my vulnerability, my grief, my fear, and my despair in my husband’s arms. I didn’t break down. I integrated.

It’s a wall that still needs a lot of smashing, but I carved a window by accepting his love and protection of me.

Suddenly, a part of me desired his approval. No. That desire was always there. Suddenly, I respected that desire. I cared for that desire. I cared for myself. I respected myself. 

I’ve been able to keep the kitchen clean ever since. 

Read on the NHS Choices blog.