Posted by meeple on August 23, 2007, at 4:53:07
In reply to ok, Falls got me to thinking.....(poss triggers), posted by muffled on August 22, 2007, at 23:51:04
Hey Muffled,
Sounds like your therapist is very kind and compassionate and understanding with you. That must be fairly frightening if another human being hasn't really been that way with you before. Sometimes I think that when people respond to me like that it hurts more than helps because it just makes it more apparent to me that I really haven't had very much of that in my life. So, I guess it is understandable that you would struggle a lot with your therapist being so kind.
Shame is hard. I feel quite disgusted with myself a lot, and it sounds like you are too. Find yourself to be deeply flawed and unacceptable and damaged and repulsive in some way. One idea is that if our parents (or early attachment figures) aren't very responsive to us, or if they actively persecute us, then we grow up thinking that there must be something wrong with us. I wonder sometimes if that feeling will ever go away. Sometimes when people treat me kindly I just can't believe it. Can't believe that it will last, thats for sure. Won't take long for them to figure that I'm comtaminated and disgusting.
Sounds like you have a lot of tender feelings for your therapist. That you think she is a lovely person who has tried really hard to help you. That she has been patient with you. And you worry that you will contaminate her or hurt her in some way. And so, if you really care about her as you do, then maybe the best thing to do is to back off and leave her alone so you don't hurt her? I wonder if the part of you that wants to avoid her and leave her alone is worried about damaging or hurting her. Part of the worry might be that you don't deserve her niceness. Another part of the worry might be that you will hurt her and so in order to protect her you think you have to back off.
But... If you back off from her then that will probably hurt her more. I guess one could say that a short term hurt and failure to understand why is better than the long term hurt if you kept seeing her. If one has had experiences with the incompetent protector then it can be hard to comprehend a different ending where your therapist might be able to show you about competent protectors. It might be that your therapist is venturing out with you not having dealt with someone who dissociates so severely before. But then it might be that your therapist really cares about you and that that genuine caring is precisely what will be curative and healing for you.
I'm not sure how you will feel about this... But I'll give you a link to a page that has some really good articles. I'm not sure how you will feel about reading them, but the idea is that this is one way that treatment for your kind of condition can proceed. If your therapist feels a little lost it might be that she isn't so sure what is needed. The link might be reassuring to her because it might well be that it tells her (and you) that you are heading on the right track. And so... Persistence might well pay off in the end.
Anyway... I just wanted to say that.
xxx
Take care.
Miss you.
You and all the muffled ones...Sorry people.
Take care.http://www.johnbriere.com/articles.htm
(Scroll down to 'chapters' and you can download the following text):
Briere, J. (2002). Treating adult survivors of severe childhood abuse and neglect: Further development of an integrative model. In J.E.B. Myers, L. Berliner, J. Briere, T. Reid, & C. Jenny (Eds.). The APSAC handbook on child maltreatment, 2nd Edition. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. [click here to download]
poster:meeple
thread:777796
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070822/msgs/777966.html