It's not about his approval. It's about finally having the experience of having a reality check. About being ALLOWED to have feelings at all, and then also having someone that my feelings are okay and normal. About someone else seeing what happened to me and saying, yeah that IS horrible and how you feel about it is real and all right.

I guess I'm not expressing myself well. I don't know how to say what I mean. I grew up in a household where I was told what I felt and what I didn't feel, and if I tried to say I felt something different from what they wanted me to feel, I was told how wrong I was. As in, "you're not sad about THAT. That would be stupid." "You CAN'T be mad that happened; you brought it on yourself." Or my personal favorite, "Why are you crying? Where did you get that mark?" right after she had been just whaling on me with a belt. Maybe I'm just dumber than you guys, but I started doubting myself all the time. Did that really happen? Is that really how I feel? I did this checking procedure before I even allowed myself to have emotions about things.

So, in therapy, for the first time, there was another human hearing what happened and saying, "You GET TO BE MAD about that. That sucked and you DIDN'T bring it on yourself. You were eight. Eight year olds act like that all the time!" And I find that helpful. It gives me a place to air out my doubts and misgivings. a reality check on what normal is.