Building Self-Confidence 106

One thing I've learned in therapy is that saying something with feeling behind it is a completely different experience to just saying something. Before I started 'feeling' things, I didn't even realise I -- life -- could be different. The first few attempts to express emotion were pretty catastrophic. I became nearly psychotic and just barely coped. I can appreciate that someone less controlling than me would have completely broken down, but then again -- perhaps someone less controlling wouldn't be in the position where expressing one's emotions causes a psychiatric breakdown?

The problem in the beginning was that I had no other coping mechanism than dissociation and distraction. And therapy is having me fight the dissociation, so all that leaves me are books and video games. Not even the best game in the world can make deep despair go away. No offense Sony.

It took everything I had to get through that time. Ultimately, I changed therapists and made it a priority to find ways of staying safe. I was lucky that my new therapist was on the same page and concentrated on building up trust. So now we are at the same place that I broke down before -- expressing deep emotions -- but in the context of a healthy therapeutic relationship it feels completely different. I felt something I hadn't felt in years (and years and years): secure. Deeply sad, but somehow not at all scared or alone.

Outside of therapy, I used my meditation skills to hold on to that feeling of security and continued to juggle these new feelings without dissociating. It was going well until I panicked and all the balls dropped.

The cause of the crisis is still looming. It's hard to unlearn the automatic wish for death that follows the dark brew of despair, fear, insecurity and detachment. The instinctive grapple for control and avoidance would usually result in obsessive rumination or dissociation, but I've named my enemy. I've seen its face and know it’s time to think differently.

Like Candy experiences different alters, I experience emotions as 'not mine'. Even knowing the theory behind dissociative disorders, I still find it difficult to accept that I don't know everything in my head, muchless anything in my heart. My deeply controlling Parent filters everything. She's engaged with therapy, yes, but even therapy has to be on her terms.

I can see why my last therapist was so frustrated.

Both of them, in their ways, have asked me to just be me. I get what they are saying: let my Child out. Allow myself to express the emotions inside, even (especially) the ones I don't understand or approve of. My therapists want me to learn that life can be different: that they, unlike my parents, aren't scared of my feelings, won't be shocked or disgusted by them.

What will it take for my own controlling Parent to not be shocked or disgusted by my feelings?

Read on the NHS Choices blog.