Loss in any form is difficult, especially when you have not dealt with the past ones yet.

So I’ve had a few hours to sit with the concept of De leaving the agency.  I had cried about it (yup, actual tears spilling down my face. Not just tearing up, but real crying complete with gross boogers).  I was somewhat able to “talk” to L about it.  I have thought about it, and processed it, and moved past the anger (it was fleeting).  I’m in a weird flat place right now. If I think too hard or too long about it, I will cry again (have I mentioned I hate crying?).  So I’m concentrating on little things.  I’m concentrating on typing my words correctly (I’m sure there will be many mistakes, and I suck at proof-reading, always have).  I’m concentrating on keeping the dogs from going nuts because they are tired and want to get to bed.  I am taking breaks to take them outside one by one so I can finally put the boys to sleep.  I was concentrating on listening to my mom as she talked about how we may go about fixing the fridge.  I’m concentrating on the decision-making process of whether or not to start into Game of Thrones again tonight, or go with something easier, like Orange is the New Black, or Grey’s Anatomy or Dexter.  I’m concentrating on wanting to find a way to express myself either through art or writing, but certainly no more crying.

I’ve been able to formulate and articulate to L that this overwhelming loss I feel at the termination with De is really the compilation of losses that I have yet to deal with.  It goes back decades.  It’s disproportionate to the relationship because it is so much more than just this one relationship. It’s the loss of friends and family and memories and innocence.  It’s the loss of supports and home-bases.  It’s the loss of a sense of security.  And it’s the premature loss of someone I had expected to lose, but managed to trust anyway.  I am not good with loss.  I never have been.  Sure I can smile through changes, but the tears always glisten in my eyes.  This time they broke free.  I don’t know if was because of how worn-down I feel lately, the creeping depression, or the fact that De was the first (only) person to hear some really heavy stuff. I was prepared to walk away from this relationship at the time of my move.  I was expecting it to help keep me balanced as my stress rose.  Just last week I had asked her for more support.  This week it’s all going away much faster than I had thought.  It’s pointless to try to find another therapist for those last 6 weeks, so I guess I will have to just figure it out on my own (though I am toying with the idea of trying to get a referral to someone for those 6 weeks)… I know it will be ok, because it always is in the end, but right now it feels really shitty.

When she first told me, I couldn’t exactly speak. I was too busy trying to hold back the tears and the sobbing because I knew it was disproportionate to the situation.  My tears didn’t listen to my insistence.  They spilled down my cheeks anyway.  When she asked me to articulate what was going through my head at the moment, all I could muster was a half-whispered “whatever” through clenched teeth.  I was afraid that if I opened my mouth more than that to speak, I would either sob uncontrollably and loudly, or I would speak out of my fear-driven (and old) anger.  She challenged my “whatever” by saying that she knew this was hard for me, and she knew it wasn’t “whatever”.  All I could do was shake my head as more tears streamed down my face.  I couldn’t look at her, so I looked everywhere else in the office and just repeated “whatever” one more time.  We sat in silence for a bit longer as I looked everywhere but where she was sitting.  More rogue tears.  She asked if I could tell her what I was thinking, if self-harm urges came up.  I realised then that my head was frantically backpedaling in an attempt to halt all thought (much like pedaling backward on a BMX bike to brake).  There was a forced-stillness in my head.  Conscious thoughts had stopped.  All efforts were being diverted to stave off any melt-down beyond what had happened.  It struck me as odd that there were no self-harm thoughts or suicidal thoughts.  There just were no thoughts.  She eased into a verbal safety contract, and was able to joke around it, which helped pull me back into the room and back to functioning. When I stumbled over concepts as I tried to agree to what she was asking, she helped out by saying “Whatever you need to agree to to get back here in one piece next week is what we are going to agree to”.  In the past, she had always wanted specifics, but I don’t think I could have given those to her in the moment.  I think I recognized a bit of freedom in that change (and I think I just now recognized how the weight was off her this session.  It was familiar in that I had felt it after I had given notice at the group home, but still had to deal with the kids for 2 more weeks. I no longer cared about the strict rules of etiquette because I was leaving soon. I was able to be more genuine, and the girls had picked up on it with me.  I think that’s what I felt from De today.  It was a freedom from the pressure to be “perfect” in the role… It’s funny how some guidelines are in place to help us do our jobs better, but in the end we are burdened with the pressure to stay within the boundaries – we lose our genuineness…) but I digress.  We chatted about other things for the remainder of the session. She had asked something about letting “us” know if I ever figured out a way to apply my knowledge-base in psych to myself.  I think she was going to go somewhere else with that, but she stopped herself.  I talked about my complete inability to have access to both my emotional and intellectual sides at the same moment.  We talked about this blog, and how it had been born of the idea of being able to look at all of it over time (the more professional side of me when I am in a more emotional space, and the more emotional side of me when I am locked in professional mode).  I told her about an early entry on the concept of  “attention-seeking” and how it is not always as sinister-ly manipulative as the field makes it out to be…  I kept a close eye on the clock because I had brought my Wreck This Journal with me to show her.  With about 5 minutes left, I changed the topic to that.  She always seems genuinely interested in what I bring in, but this time there was something else again.  I showed her the piece with the prompt to “make a paper chain“.  She seemed excited about it.  It was weird because the excitement was different… I’m not sure how to describe it.  She said something along the lines of wishing she could show it to other people because it conveyed so much more than just words could. The way she said it made me feel like she was trying to make a point to someone.  I had wanted to tell her she could (I may have imagined it, but it looked like she was ready to get up and walk out of her office with the book. She scootched forward in her chair as she had said that about showing it to others), but I was caught off guard.  The words “you could” spun around in circles in my brain, but never made it to my tongue… We moved on to scheduling after she looked a bit more at my book.  She pondered the best way to fit in the second appointment.  I put my vote in for Tuesday & Friday citing my “OCD-ish tendencies” for wanting to space out the days a bit more. She actually laughed and said she prefered that for the same reason (more genuine-ness).  So I will be seeing her twice a week for the next few weeks until she leaves.  We will be figuring out the content of our sessions as we go.  She checked-in about the possibility of doing more Duckboy work on Tuesday, and would I be ok if she sprung it on me that day.  I told her I was open to whatever, but that I needed her to lead if it was the Duckboy stuff because I feel totally lost on what to do with it.  I think she was still deciding on how to approach Tuesday.  There are a lot of days between now and Tuesday, so my opinion may change, but for now I’m ok with pushing the assault topics.  I guess it depends on how far I get with this internal processing of her leaving instead of me leaving.  I may decide by Tuesday tha I really need to talk to her about some of this stuff and whatever else it will bring up.

rifts in the therapeutic relationship

I don’t know.  I think I’m too worried about the inevitability of being referred out, and the chaos of the holidays.  I put up walls after being inpatient, and I don’t know how to take them down.  I don’t feel comfortable getting into anything of substance with De (or with anyone).  It’s a really weird feeling, because I’ve generally felt like I could count on whatever T I happened to be seeing at the time…  there was a lot of care-taker transference before going inpatient tho, and I think to protect from the inevitable abandonment feelings, I have stopped trusting that she will be there when I need it.  On one hand, we are planning out the next six weeks and taking about beginning more intense trauma work come January, but then the next sentence is planning being referred out for more long-term therapy because the center generally only does short-term work to deal with the immediate crisis of assault (only, I can’t be in crisis, so I’m a bit confused)…

De asked me what I thought of what she had said.  I couldn’t find the words, because my head often needs time to process stuff like that.  She threw a couple of feeling words at me, and I was able to tell her that it was sad, not angry.  I was able to say that the sad came from getting so close to being able to process things so many times only to have the processes interrupted every time.  We talked about what “processing” meant.  I said that I did not expect to forget things, but just not handle them so poorly (and to not be so alone in so much of it)…  I told her that I was tired of having to keep building up trust with new people all the time just to get to a point of stalling.  I want to get through this at least once.  But I don’t know if I trust that I’ll be able to complete it with her, so I am not sure I even want to start.  I mean, yeah, I really want to start, but not if I have to abruptly stop again…  she can’t promise not to refer me out.  I get that.  But…  I just don’t know.  She also doesn’t seem to want to put any effort into helping me get that safety net we both know I need.  I’ve never had so little help when trying to get more supports in place…  I have always experienced that the provider helps secure services.  Having to fight for it all by myself is very overwhelming.  J (couple’s T) is willing to go to bat for me, but it’s disheartening that De (who insists extra support be in place before we start processing stuff) is unwilling to help.  I think that’s contributing to me feeling so lost in being able to trust her again.  I can’t even talk about this with her for 2 weeks because of the holiday.  Ugh.

I hate that this (not so) irrational fear of abandonment gets in the way of  anything and everything meaningful in my life.  I’ve shut down my feelings because I don’t want to risk destabilizing again over the next few weeks.  De dislikes that I’m not in touch with anything because she says it points to not being stable, or st a bigger risk of losing my sh*t when we actually start going through stuff.  I think it’s more that I need to have distance from the internal chaos before trying to face it again.  I’m afraid it’s all still there under the surface.  If I allow myself to see it at the moment, it will come barreling back.   I’m not willing to risk that right now.  So yeah, I guess things are a bit unstable.  I don’t want to let them get out of hand.  I want to be able to get through this stuff with De and not have to try all over again with someone else.  I don’t want to burn L out on me.  I don’t want to frustrate everyone in my life.  This all just sucks.  I’m feeling very defeated.

Jealousy and ::gasp!:: sex!

The topic of jealousy was addressed in couple’s therapy last week.  We talked about my lack of jealousy in intimate relationships.  It has a lot to do with how I see that reaction/set of emotions: as anger (and I have a huge aversion to anger).  Its not only that though.  It’s that I feel that jealousy is useless.  It causes a whole bunch of issues if it’s unfounded (which it often is), so I don’t expend much energy on it in relationships in the first place.  Yes, I’ll admit to jealousy of people who seem to have it together, of people who can keep their lives on track, or people who can make it through a day without thinking that the world would be better off if they just ceased to exist.  That I’m jealous of… but of someone choosing to leave me in a relationship?  No.  I’m difficult to live with, depressed, selfish, needy, lazy, and take way more than I give.  And this is not just my poor self-esteem.  This is the truth of the moment.  And it’s a truth I am not sure I am ready to change right now, not because I don’t care, but because I have not given myself permission to be any of these things until relatively recently in my life.  My history has consisted of doing nothing but giving to others and bending over backwards to please others even when I had nothing to give and was completely spent.  I have a history of ignoring my own needs and desires in order to make others happy (or keep them appeased).  So in the last 7 or so years (more so in the last 3), I have swung to the other extreme.  I take time for myself.  I throw little-kid tantrums to to get my needs met.  I am utterly selfish most of the time… and I feel incredibly guilty about it.  I’m at constant war with my “training” from my childhood, and the new information I’m given on a daily basis.  I have yet to find a happy medium.

The whole topic came about surrounding the concept of L’s crush on J.  J asked if I was jealous of L’s energy being put into someone else (or the concept of someone else).  I asserted that jealousy (at least the anger portion of it) was not something I ever really felt in any relationship.  It’s not that the relationship means so little, or that I feel so secure in the relationship that I have no reason to feel jealous.  It’s that I don’t feel I deserve to fight for it.  If someone chooses to move on from me, who am I to stop them?  I wasn’t worth the relationship in the first place.  I’ll be sad about it, but I don’t feel myself worth sticking around for.  J brought up a good point though.  She said that L was the one “disadvantaged” at the start of the relationship because she was the one pursuing me.  I was standoff-ish and non-committal (I had just come out of a 5-year relationship and my ex had been the one to get me the subscription to Match.com.  I did not yet feel ready to jump back into something serious, so I dated other people for the first 6 months I knew L).  She also brought up that a wandering eye in a relationship can often mean some needs are going unmet (to that I say: Duh! I’m still surprised that L has chosen to stay in this relationship, as it seems to be me doing all the taking while I battle my demons.  I would hate being in a relationship with myself…).  Jealousy is supposed to help signal that something is going unmet, and supposed to motivate me to work to meet those needs…  The thing is, I feel incapable at this time of meeting some of those needs.   How do you make emotional space for something you battle another aspect of daily?  How do you balance caring for others and caring for yourself if your needs happen to be on opposite ends of the spectrum.

And now comes up the topic of sex… This is a tough one for me.  I am torn between the teaching/learning that sex is a taboo topic, and society’s push to sexualize just about everything.  I’m embarrassed by it, and my struggles with it.  In a culture where sex is freely bragged about, all over TV, and “expected”  once you hit a certain age, I am hindered by the shame brought on from abuse.  Don’t get me wrong, it can be incredibly wonderful (especially with a partner to whom you are connected).  But it can also be scary as sin.  I have a history of molestation and rape… and the memories have come back with a vengeance since I moved back “home”… I don’t talk about it much.  I talk around it, but not about it.  It has always effected me, but it became a much larger obstacle in this environment.  I’m back in the same place where a lot of it happened.  I’m back in the same neighborhood, the same house, the same room… The memories and flashbacks came much harder and more often when we first moved back here, but they still linger.  I have put up walls around myself to stay out of that head-space.  I try my best not to think of any of it, but that means I avoid it with my wife also (talk about frustrating on her end).  The act of having sex still very much triggers me. I get lost in the memories, and I suddenly can’t tell if I’m with my wife, or with Duckboy. Time warps. I’m at once very young and 16 and 34. My body confuses the physical sensations. My head launches into the past… The use of names during sex creeps me out, but I’m not quite sure why (that may go back to me having trouble associating with my name at times).  I try my hand at changing the associations sometimes, but it’s difficult to do and does not always work.  So how do I explain it to my wife without making her feel unloved and unwanted?  I’m not sure… which leads to resentments and unmet needs.  It leads to her desperately searching for a way to get those needs met within the bounds of our relationship (toys are wonderful inventions)…  And it leads to a lot of fights.  Neither of us likes to make the other feel bad, so we walk on eggshells in our fighting.  We simply don’t talk much.  We distance ourselves and cry and feel abandoned… I hate it.  I wish I could change this about myself.  I wish I could be ok with having sex all the times it comes up.  I wish I could take those horrible memories and wipe them from my head.  I wish I didn’t confuse her touch with the memory of his… I wish I could be normal!  And I wish society did not place such emphasis on sex and sexualized behavior.  I’m glad we can talk about it more openly, but at the same time, we are barred from talking about the scarier side of everything, the uncomfortable stuff, and the issues surrounding any negative experiences.  Victims are still very stigmatized, and perpetrators are still somewhat exulted…

So I started working with De back in late August.  She is a therapist at the local sexual assault crisis counseling center.  Only, as much as I want to focus on the assaults and getting over the associations I have with sex, all the other stuff also crowds the exits and we are again left doing crisis stabilization instead of any meaningful trauma work.  I don’t know how to change that…  On Friday, De had mentioned trying a to start processing the traumas that I have experienced.  I had desperately wanted to jump into everything and start right there, but my fears got the best of me. While I want to share the details of the past, I wish that no one else would ever have to experience it or hear it. And I worry that, in the telling, I will come to the realization that my reactions are over-blown, I will be invalidated in my pain (It really wasn’t that bad. Others have had it worse. You call that trauma? You’re just a whiney little child! <–all things I have heard in the past at one time or another). Also, I have a history of falling apart completely when facing my past.  I have always lost complete control and become a huge liability.  I tried telling her this, but I am not very good at expressing things a lot of the time (and people seem to have a difficult time grasping the extent of my decompensation unless they witness it for themselves.  It's such a huge departure from my presentation when I'm "together" that it's difficult to imagine).  I tried to tell her that I am willing to try it as long as we can guarantee it can be done safely, but that my fears make me believe that I should do it while inpatient.  I came off sounding like I did not want to try it, which is completely wrong.  I want nothing more than to tackle all of this once and for all… but I'm terrified.  I don't trust myself.  I don't want to put my wife through that level of "crazy" again.  I don't want to cause De to resent ever having taken me on as a client.  I don't want people to think less of me (I have a desperate desire to be liked while still feeling completely unworthy of that positive association).

My fear of falling comes not only from my past, but also from the ever-present thoughts of suicide that haunt the back of my head.  Even if I don't have an active plan or desire to kill myself, the thoughts are always there.  To have that so close, and to think of tackling trauma issues outpatient (which can be incredibly triggering) is very scary… but then why am I seeing De?

(in proof-reading this post, I find I have not touched on what it was that I originally wanted to say, but I also have lost whatever that was… humpf.)