I thought of something else my T said in the course of this issue of me feeling like I was broken, because I brought it up pretty often for awhile. It was prompted by some chronic pain that was making me feel broken too, and setting off trip wires of trauma related stuff I thought I'd resolved.

And he said that he'd witnessed many people improve (as he called it) relationship with their past, that he felt he had a different relationship to his past, and he didn't think I was different than most people.

I don't know why it's connected for me, but I think the distilled substance of me saying I was "broken" was just a basic question about self-- who have I been, who am I now, and who do I want to be. That this investigation into my self has been profoundly useful for me, and because my T encouraged me to see being broken as changeable rather than just reassuring me it would get better, I was able to explore this with an open mind. For me reassurance would have been an end point, but the somewhat uncomfortable place of unknowing encouraged me to move forward. So I guess I would say a lack of reassurance was an invitation to learn and talk more about it.

And I really dislike not knowing stuff. I work in a really small niche in a professional world (and have for 25+ years) where I have to be an expert. I love diving into research and figuring out what it means, I like facts and knowledge. As I look back on it, I see how a desire to learn more about myself and make sense of it really harnessed me into paying more attention to me rather than the things around me that were irritating.

From my perspective, the investigation into self has been very worthwhile. I think there's some cultural prescription against it that may be being modeled by our (as in U.S.) government. The party in power has been resisting the investigation into corruption on many levels, including defunding the ethics office, trying to interfere with say big inquiries in the past year or so. Some people, like politicians, just get all defensive about themselves, say they don't need to change or learn anything new about themselves or how they approach things. When I used to work in the juvenile abuse & neglect system, many accused parents used to defend their objectively terrible parenting (not saying that everyone accused was guilty) with denials and blaming of other people or the system (which is also terrible, but that doesn't really help you get your kids back). I'm not saying everybody needs to look at themselves or the only way to do that is through therapy, I just think that asking yourself this kind of large (resisting the impulse to say HUGE) question might be the beginning of something important, life changing, helpful. For me I would say that it brought me freedom.