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I need to share what I wrote to my t today. I'm at a painful crossroads. I don't want to be alone with this. . .
R,
Thanks for the honest feedback. I understand your points. I think I'm just out of motivation and feel hopeless. I've tried so hard to get better, and have improved in different areas. But not with child parts. I don't feel like even trying to heal those parts of me anymore.
I'm not retreating from you, the way I have in the past. I'm retreating from my own hopes that somehow my parents will change, or that it's possible to have the sort of relationship with you that I want/need, or that damaged child parts of me can be healed. I'm wondering if I should take what I've gained from therapy, cut my losses, and call it quits. Maybe I've come as far as I can go.
I don't think I can allow child parts to be present in our work without wanting more from our relationship than you can provide. If I let them out, they are so starving, they will want to gorge on our relationship like candy. They won't understand the limits and will run into them constantly. Then they will be hurt, cry, feel rejected, etc., just like they have done before. I understand that they need to learn, but they keep running into the brick wall and getting bloodied. I can't make them understand that their needs are TOO MUCH for you or for me - just like they were TOO MUCH for my mom, for E., etc.
Child parts don't understand that you're not here to be a permanent parent. You're here to be a temporary teacher. I finally get it. But I don't want to tell child parts. It will be devastating to them. It's so much less than they need and have hoped for all these decades. It takes loads of acceptance, even for the adult part of me. I've had so much invested in our relationship.
Deep down inside, I think a part of me has always known that you didn't love me like a parent, that it wasn't possible, or even advised for the therapy relationship. But that hope kept me coming to see you. It kept me from facing the reality that I'm never going to get what I missed out on as a child. It kept me from throwing in the towel and giving up. I'm not sure I am strong enough to face all these realizations even now. I feel so much disappointment and so alone. I feel like I want to just crawl in a hole and die. I don't know if I can keep moving forward in our work.
For a long time, therapy seemed like a yellow brick road leading to a changed mom (or a new mom) who could love me and make up for what I didn't have with my mom. But it's not, is it? You're not the prize at the end of the yellow brick road. You're the guide. At the end of the yellow brick road, there is only myself. Not my mom, not E., not you. Only me. The yellow brick road is just a gigantic circle that leads back to myself. It's not the prize I'd hoped for. I don't even know if i want the prize. I'm feeling very dismal right now.
I know you aren't a big fan of deprivation. But I have to consider whether deprivation is preferable to the alternative - which is learning to live with small portions of what I need, while managing the cavern of empty, painful need inside me.
If child parts are starving for something they can never have, is it better to dissociate the need so that they will not suffer hunger endlessly? Or is it preferable to allow that pain, hunger, and need to surface in all of it's unbearable, endless-feeling, chaotic power, . . .and then attempt to meet that painful need with a small handful of grain?
The more I become aware of the amount of pain and need inside child parts, the more doubtful I am that there is a way to meet their needs or undo the damage the past has caused.
I feel ashamed all the time about how much I need from you. And believe it or not, I use every ounce of self-control not to be selfish, demanding, or manipulative. I hate it when child parts slip out of my control and say or do things that cause problems in our relationship. Just like my dad did, I yell at them for bothering you, just as he yelled at me for bothering my mom. I try to keep their needs away, or address them myself if I can. But in my heart, I think they need more than you, I, or any human can give them. I never stop feeling ashamed for how much pain and need they have.
I don't want to burden you with them. I don't want to burden anyone. I don't even want to be burdened with my own damaged parts.
I don't know where to go from here.
No reply needed.
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