Pre-verbal: I finally got rid of a feeling of waiting forever for something to happen. It was like a feeling of depression, it was a definite sense - it would happen at work, or if I was waiting for T, or at home alone - just this very stressful feeling of the wait being dark and never-ending. And I never noticed anything unusual about it until it was GONE, which has been in the past two years since I stopped seeing my family of origin. But pretty sure that was the waiting for mummy, since even the old neighbor lady next door chastised her for leaving me alone and dirty in my crib too long, and that story was told many times. I mentioned it to my T - it is kind of nebulous, ghostly.

Photos: are very telling. Even the taking of them - I remember my mother hurting me every time she grabbed my wrist for a photo op - I guess we didn't hold hands very often. There are pics of my cousins hugging face-to-face with their moms or dads, but I am always facing away from the parental unit. At my brother's wedding (30 yrs ago), our family portait has me perched on the outer arm of my dad's chair, facing away, a position I unconsciously insisted on - I told the photographer this was 'my place'.

The David Wallin book on Attachment was very helpful to me 4 years ago - it seems like a lifetime ago now. I had no idea what was supposed to have happened in those early years, but reading that and a lot of stuff - klein, wallincott, bowlsby, basically buying out amazon! schore is great, so many names already listed elsewhere here - AND getting attached to T for those 3 hours a week, AND getting attached to people HERE for 16 hrs a day! - no that's not right, I SLEEP 16 hrs a day - anyway, life seems different and possible.

Anyway, just wanted to share my experience of what that nebulous stuff is like - because it's like, how do you know what you don't know? You don't, that's the problem. I don't know if I'm surprised or not that you're a mediator, Ygrec - I often served that role at my jobs. We learned to be super attentive to nuance and detail in order to survive.