hey.

> Some mothers can't distinguish between them and their child so when this stage starts they are furious and controlling about it. They see it as an insult, disobedience.

yeah, i think my mother was a bit like that. she had trouble distinguishing between me and her so i'd imagine that this must have been a hard time for her. i remember some things like... her insisting on feeding me even though i didn't want her to i wanted to do it myself. i guess it was partly about my making a mess but i think it was mostly about her terror of not being needed / being rejected by me / being alone in the world again.

she used to control me with shame. i guess that she controls herself with shame too. uses it to control others. its all she knows. i remember a lot of shame. a bit better at dealing with it now. but shame, yeah. i'm a little afraid (okay actually a lot afraid) of 2 year olds. unrestrained narcissism... i find it... repulsive. i guess there i'm reliving my mothers response to my unrestrained narcissism. shame is meant to curb it (and an infant does need to learn to restrain their narcissism) but it needs to be used gently against the attuned supportive background. i don't think i had the background. i remember lots of episodes of unrestrained / dysregulated shame. they still plague me now. catch myself feeling a bit grandiose at times... then the shame hits me real bad. hard to take appropriate pride in achievements and stuff.

> Not wanting to let him in. You see it as being a certain way in the future. What if it isn't? What if it's different from how you envision it?

he will leave. he won't be with me forever. at one point in the future i won't see him anymore. could be a couple of months... could be a couple of years... but either way i won't have finished up therapy (in the sense of not needing it). it won't be my decision to quit. it will be because of circumstances with moving to a different country / different part of the country... or maybe he has got something planned. i don't know. he keeps saying that one day i won't see him anymore. he has been saying it a lot since we had the 'dont' make promises you can't keep' conversation. i think it is about making sure i know he hasn't promised that he will be here for as long as i need him. he has not. he mentions it at least once per session. i'm not sure how to respond to that so i just ignore it (in the sense of remaining emotionally numb). i don't say anything.

i read something once about how in the healing process... the therapist (ironically) needs to do precisely that which was the source of all the pain. leave. he will leave one day. when he went for a month i got a little taste of it. it hurt. too much. i don't want to feel like that ever again.

he is not me he is not.