Brightheart,

Thank you for your words of encouragement. I am trying to view it as you put it so well here:

I don't think it's about assessing blame. It's about coming to accept and acknowledge what transpired in your past so that you may understand the whys of how it has affected you in the present.

You would be honoring and being true to yourself about your feelings and emotions.

Loving people also means accepting and allowing them their imperfections. We can love and be angry too for what was lost to us.

For some reason, i have had a huge struggle with getting my mind around this, but the way you have expressed it begins to make sense to me now. I never really thought about how my parents would want me to be true to myself and my feelings. Also, i have a big problem with black and white thinking. So it has been hard for me to see *both sides* of my parents at the same time. . .to hold that together in my mind.

For some reason, I have been very stuck in trying to understand, were they "good parents" or "bad parents?" I have difficulty in blending the two sides together. I actually think it is because i have dissociated self parts -- one of which holds all of my negative feelings, pain, and disappointment, and the other self part which views my parents and life in general in a sort of Candyland way, where everything is always good and happy and nice. Because of this, at any given time, i am either in a mood where i feel hurt, angry, and in pain and feel my parents were bad parents. . .or i switch to the other mode and tell myself all is well, good, and happy, and they were good parents and i was/am not sad or hurt or angry.

Yesterday on my session, my t asked me, "Can you love your parents and be happy for what they did right, while also being hurt and angry for the things that caused you pain?" It seems reasonable and logical when she says it, and my intellectual mind is like, "Yeah, that sounds balanced." But getting my emotions and my viewpoint to merge the two opposite planes together is very difficult.

Along with my dissociation problem, i was raised by a mom who was/is always happy, upbeat, smiling, and never shows any negative emotions at all. . .and a dad that was/is nearly always negative, critical, and depressed. They really embodied two extreme ends of the spectrum (extreme positive and extreme negative outlooks). So i believe, in a very real way, i've incorporated my two parents into different parts of my *self*, and that i have done this in some sort of compartmentalized way that causes me to only be able to see from one viewpoint or the other, rather than in a balanced way that combines both.

It really is a "dissociation" problem, and my t is working with me to try to find the balance. I have hope. . .