My last T described me as "narcissistically wounded and fragmented." She was a specialist in trauma and dissociation and helped, I think, with the fragmentation but not the underlying "woundedness", which is/has been like damaged, shut down, or something. I'm still working on it, though. Some of Heinz Kohut's ideas ring true to me and with those concepts I'm trying to allow what I hope might be an "authentic ego" to form itself.

There has not been an "aha" moment for me -- except, maybe, when I read some of Kohut's ideas, there was something I recognized there. Plus something I read long ago about the "ego-self" axis by Edward Edinger, building off of ideas by Carl Jung I think.

It's more like, there's something in there and I can't, haven't been able to let it "out". Except that it has sometimes been coming out more than it used to.

My last therapist had a tendency to shame me, which reiterated the family of origin. Maybe I shouldn't say "she" shamed me, maybe I should say that she had some behaviors that tended to generate shame in me and, of course, that was influenced by my history. The very kind of stuff which, along with trauma, helped to shut down the development of a healthy ego to begin with. Or something like that. Oh, well.

For me, it's been more than anything which trying to change just my thoughts can have much effect on.