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LonesomeTonight
Always in This Twilight
 
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Default Apr 25, 2019 at 10:53 AM
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anne2.0 View Post
I think the juxtaposition of these two things is very interesting, and very important. In the dream, being with your parents, even being brought into their "intimacy" (I realize you're not saying anything inappropriate happened here, dream or otherwise), was constricting. Maybe paying attention to that feeling is really important. Is it possible that not being the "right daughter" is the root of this feeling? I think this happens pretty often in families, where parents want to "box in" children, tell them who they are, how they have to be. Sometimes marriage does this, too (I, at least, identify with the constricting nature of marriage and trying to live up to who my spouse wanted me to be). Sometimes, just like animals caught in a trap where they chew their own leg off to escape, people do pretty extreme things to get away from the perception of being trapped in something they don't want to be in, or perhaps more deeply, trapped inside someone else's idea of who they are supposed to be.

We all need our freedom from something, even if it's something we box ourselves into. A mortgage that's too big, a relationship that doesn't quite work for us, our own ideas of who we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to do. The exodus or escape from whatever's holding you back in your life seems to be central to this dream and maybe the therapeutic theme connected to it.

Oh, I hadn't really connected the dream to what came later in the session, but that makes a lot of sense. I do think the "being the right daughter" is tied to the feeling, and T seems to think that as well. I also said that if my mother had given birth to a clone of her, maybe it would have been different, but T said she would have struggled just as much there, if not more. Which I think is accurate. The feeling trapped in marriage thing (and more so after having a child together) likely contributed to my being unfaithful. Like it was my attempt to break out of that in a way, if only temporarily. I mistakenly thought that could have been a solution, like, "If only I could get this out of my system, things would be OK." But it wasn't. Well, then again, as T put it, had it not happened, I might still be half-in, half-out of the marriage. I think I'm considerably more "in" now than I was at that time.

But I also often feel trapped by my own mind--anxiety, self-loathing, self-doubt, etc. Which likely goes back to messages from childhood. I feel like this T has the potential to help me escape from that, at least to some extent. I thought the sort of "extreme acceptance" by ex-MC was the answer, but now I'm thinking maybe it isn't. Because then I'm still looking to acceptance from another person, rather than from myself.
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