Quote:
Originally Posted by Echos Myron redux
Being seen. That's what was new about this situation and that's where the shame spiral began. It makes me wonder about early messages that if my pain and my needs are seen, I will be thought less of. I know my biggest fear here is that he will think less of me somehow. That he won't like me anymore. For some reason it feels of paramount importance to protect his positive feelings towards me. I suspect this relates to my mother, whose unstable mental health became such a source of frustration for my father that my mother left the family home when I was 5. I think I rejected her on some level too. I saw her mental health issues as something that made her lesser. Although my father never said anything like that to me, I think that is how I interpreted the divorce. That she should be rejected.
Of course, as an adult I don't feel that way at all but somehow I expect the same rejection from others. I think I am left with what I must have felt when I saw my mother rejected by my father - "I must never show such weakness or neediness or my father will reject me too".
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This is so interesting... something I relate to very much with my own history and how I tend to present myself as an adult. My parents never divorced but my mom had so many psychological issues, severe trauma history, an inability to be independent, lack of ambition, and I think life-long depression. She was a loving and caring mom for my infant-type needs but also very anxious, and once I'd turned 4-5 years old, I felt she had very little to offer to me. But was sometimes quite intrusive and demanding of love, which I mostly rejected already at that age and continued to largely reject for the rest of her life. (This is something I would certainly do differently if I could go back with my current knowledge and awareness.) On the other side, my dad kinda represented a lot of the traits and acts I grew to value very much: high level of independence and self-sufficiency, ambition, curiosity, an innovative spirit and inspiring presentation, and a lot of emotional toughness to overcome adversities and to self-actualize. We became very close when I was around 4 and it remained that way until he died, with a lower period during my teens but that's normal. He looked down on my mom quite clearly and even talked to me rather negatively about her, mostly for what he thought as my mom's lack of ambition and not achieving much professionally, not having friends, not showing own independent interests etc.
My dad always challenged me to improve myself in seemingly supportive ways, not demanding or critical ways. He was never an emotionally very conscious and supportive father though, and I think he played a role in my generally prioritizing cognition, strategy, rational planning and interpretations over the life of emotions (there were other influences as well but I won't get into those now). Of course one cannot just deny or eliminate emotions (especially if someone wants to be highly self-aware, as I do). And emotional issues will surface whether we want them or not. Basically, that's exactly what happened to me in my 30's: my emotional issues and the consequences of denial/bad coping got seriously in the way of my otherwise high motivation and ambition to be creative, to make things happen, and to live a good life. But I would still hold onto that "together, tough, competent" image and presentation with teeth, hid everything else from most people - until it was no longer possible to hide it and the effects in my life were everywhere, very visibly.
Yet I would still want to be associated with the kind of men I started to like in my childhood and impress them with my intellect, competency, independence and ability to solve problems. I think this was, in large part, why my therapy with the two older males did not work for me. I just could not let go, was not honest, basically did not use therapy for a therapeutic purpose. I think it would have been more effective for me to work with a female T, no matter how aversive that might have sounded in the beginning. I rarely have the drive to impress females the way I tend to do with males. In part, this is also why I like this forum (with a high female bias in membership) and can express my challenges more openly. I now do the same (or much more) with select women in my everyday reality, and I often don't like it, but it's more helpful for my personal growth than my usual pattern of relating to men. It can be very rewarding and, of course, sometimes also humiliating and shame-inducing, to be truly vulnerable with some male friends as well, which I have been doing for several years now. But could not pull it off in therapy - I think mostly because I chose Ts based on a perceived professional competency level, not based on how emotionally supportive they would be (even if they were, I just did not use it). And dumped one of them quite soon when he had proven incompetent and insecure.
It's really not easy to let go of this darn life-long thing about wanting to present and image of what I like and value and hiding the rest. I think I'm doing quite well with it now in my everyday life but it can be a struggle and generates shame every now and then. Okay, this is a long post about me but things that this thread reminded me of and I thought to share.