My husband's broken bits aside, the reason I still have loads to work on myself is because of my dissociative disorder (or complex PTSD, if you prefer that label). I have only just formed a 'Nurturing Parent' part. The power balance between my Child and Parent parts, in combination with the intense work of therapy, has helped me to feel more secure and make decisions which reflect Eliza the Adult.
But it's not all Transactional Analysis and games here. There's still the whole business of me not letting my emotional parts experience life. They are stuck in absurdly young developmental periods. I've been working on the infant one's Big Request of a Responsive and Loving Mommy (a Real Mom), but the next most present Child part is waffling between two stages (latency <--> puberty). This poses different problems (and also explains my OCD). My latency Child is not interested in a sexual relationship with my husband. My puberty Child is interested in sexual relationships with everyone BUT my husband. My Parents are too controlling, and even the Adult Eliza concedes to moral obligations. For the time being, my Child parts are stuck in the latency period.
Grr. Argh.
The Adult Eliza emerges from a healthy balance between the Child and Parent parts. But having been operating from a defensive fortress of infantile helplessness for so long, being Adult Eliza is quite an unfamiliar, anxious place to be. It is scary taking care of myself. I'm forcing myself to take steps in days that a child would take in years.
It's an unfair process.
Being married makes it that much harder. I have much less freedom to discover who Eliza is, what Eliza likes, and what Eliza is capable of. I have debts, responsibilities, commitments. I cannot grow naturally even if I wanted to (and oh do I want to).
I'm still not entirely sure it will work. My Super-Experienced Psychotherapist (Number 1) didn't hesitate to express her disdain for my plans in supporting my husband's growth alongside my own. I concede her point: the majority of clients are in therapy because they can't support their own growth. And from her point of view, I was inexperienced. It is a waste of energy to help someone change who doesn't actually WANT to change. But neither of us appreciated my inability to accept 'Nigh Impossible' as a valid reason not to try. Erm, what I mean is: all the best advice suggests I should give up now. I say Fuck All The Best Advice! (In Glitter and Flashing Lights)
This feeling I'm familiar with -- drudging through a thick, complex soup of a life. All the weight of potential failure on my back; muscles moving me slow and heavy. This I can do.
Easy? Happy? Simple? Not so much.
I'm doing the best I can. It's just that my 'Best' usually means avoiding the easy route. When I see where I need to be, I do everything to get me there, and fuck the odds. Who needs odds when they have a relentless, obsessive, and brilliant mind? Odds don't apply here. Normal standards will never relate. This isn't a charmed life. I'm not a cat. I land smack on my back and still find a way to learn to walk again.
And this is part of Being Eliza. Surely Super-Experienced Therapist (Number 1) can at least give me that. This is authentically me, the bit I find easiest to hang on to.
The problem with my marriage is that (regardless of how we started), we've managed to get ourselves into the habit of being the Child to our partner's Parent and vice versa. We never meet as Adults. Children need nurturing. Parents need to nurture. Adults have sex. Guess what we don't have?
Strangely, I didn't introject my husband as a model for Nurturing Parent. I think that says a lot about how unhealthy our traditional Parent parts really are. Mine is Controlling. His does the chores. Neither fostered emotional authenticity. Well, mine tried to, in a controlling way. (That doesn't work so well with an Avoidant, btw).
Now that I have a Proper Parent (tiny though she is) inside, I can demand changes with a bit more confidence. I can face the prospect of losing my only external source of security, something which felt too painful to bear earlier this year. Believe me, I'd grieve. But I'm already grieving. I lost my Real Mom before I had a chance to learn what a Real Mom was. I've been grieving ever since. The desire to find a Real Mom overwhelms every other desire, and I'm Adult enough now to know that until I do find a healthy source for that connection, I will never be able to have a healthy, Adult relationship with anyone, nevermind my husband.
The back-up plan is self-parenting. Being my own Real Mom. It is likely my only option, as there are no valid contenders for this extra-special job opening (Advert pending).
Next week, my Therapist will ask how I feel about the upcoming ending and I will probably not cry, even though I've fought back tears f-i-v-e t-i-m-e-s (shhhh) in the last two days alone. I don't need an interpreter this time. My Child parts are pretty darn clear: why can't SHE be my Real Mom? Chances are, my Big Plans of seeking out a Real Mom in my real mom will fail, not least of all because I'll be operating alone, across 3000 miles. I need her (that ever-elusive Real Mom). In lieu of her (and with respect to therapeutic boundaries), I need my Therapist.
But we can't always have what we need. Sometimes, we are forced to make do.
It will be hard to support my real mom in learning to be my Real Mom, while I'm already supporting my husband to be a Real Adult, and especially as I'm so tirelessly working at becoming a Real Adult myself (so I can be a Real Mom someday with my Real Adult Husband).
I know my limits. It's a fraction of the joy, but parenting myself will have to suffice. We never know what the next year will bring. Maybe a Real Mom will present itself. Maybe it will be my real mom.
For now, the Adult Eliza is stuck negotiating all of these ('Nigh Impossible') needs.
Alone, in T-3 sessions.
this is hard going. will you look for another therapist after you finish? Someone who can see you for a less time limited period? I've read a bit about the therapist being like a parent and that this relationship is a key to healing, so it seems to me that you having to leave therapy now could do the opposite? Sorry, that may not be a very helpful thing to say :S
ReplyDeleteMy husband agreed to try three sessions of relationship counselling with me, so I suppose yes I am already looking for another therapist!
ReplyDeleteThe different disciplines of psychotherapy have very different ideas about how much a therapist should be like a parent to their client. Traditional (Freudian) psychoanalysis is very much about the blank slate, allowing very little in terms of connections, as it all should be about thoughts, feelings, fantasies... transference, and so on. I do see their point; it's necessary for both the client and the therapist to reflect on this unnatural relationship; she is not my parent, friend, or child. I do not know anything about her.
That said, I needed her to help me build a healthy attachment so that I could introject into myself a model of a good parent. This was paramount to my 'recovery' but also my ability to sustain my self outside of therapy. Heck -- it is necessary for my ability to engage in therapy! Hence, I disintegrated with my first psychotherapist (blank slate) and integrated with my second psychotherapist (relational model).
For someone with healthy attachments, they probably need more of the blank slate model. And now that I have a sense of containment within myself, perhaps I too would benefit more from a blank slate.
It is a good time to leave therapy, regardless, because letting this attachment grow would only make losing her more painful. The more I become dependent on her for a feeling a safety, the less I learn how to find it within myself. It is scary and uncertain, and my ability to nurture myself is so inadequate compared to her ability, but this is the next step.
Like a baby, I need to go through the process of 'weaning' and in doing so learn how to seek out my own connections in the real world with real people. It won't be as easy as therapy. In fact, it will be downright painful. But the steps I've already taken have shown me that I can do it. And if I become overwhelmed again, I know exactly where to find people who can help. =)
You have a lot of hope for your progress and this will help you to endure the inevitable pain that will come with learning to be your own parent. It's encouraging to read your posts where you see your future in a hopeful way.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting you put it that way. I didn't write any details about the 'Best Therapy Ever' session, but it contained an especially meaningful moment my therapist and I shared. She said, near the end of the session, that she had high hopes for me. I said, "I have high hopes for me." and then after a pause, "I've always had high hopes for me."
ReplyDeleteDeflection of the compliment aside, it is true. I've been relentless and full of hope that it will be better, as long as I can remember, even in the worst of times. I can empathise with most every feeling, but not the inability to find hope. There has to be a way; even if it takes me the rest of my life.