Quote:
Originally Posted by unaluna
Okay, i read the whole thread (thru post 20). I think it was Xyn who brought up the practice of "practicing" expressing difficult emotions with t but stated it would be without consequence. That was never my intention with the practice of practicing.
The goal of practicing, for me, is for the client to learn how to express and deal with uncomfortable emotions - say jealousy or anger - with another person AND not blow up the relationship. How to keep the other person's feelings in mind while you are expressing yours. And right, the other person here, the t, is not REALLY invested in this relationship - they go home to their own real life - but therapy is kinda like playing house - even five years olds know you have to play nice if you want to keep your playmate. There are always consequences. Who said it was okay to go nuts?
If this is not the issue, then please clarify.
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What seems clear to you -- what seems clear to you that 5 year olds know -- is not what dissociated parts of me knew. "I", the adapted me, the 4 or 5 year old or younger, learned how to play nice by keeping the dissociated parts, including anger, out of picture, out of the interactions.
So, then, I thought therapy was inviting them
into the room, into the interactions. I worked very hard to try to get in touch with, and accept the dissociated whatever-they-are -- feelings, demons, parts, what have you. And then the therapists couldn't tolerate them -- or their expressions, as best I could contain them and as best as they -- or the adapted I on behalf of them -- could find words.
I learned to tolerate my mother's rage, because I had to. I can numb out. Other people can rage at me and -- no big deal. Not so for their disapproval and shaming.
So, I thought I was "doing the right thing" when I expressed my emotions, at first primitively and later as civilly as I could manage, without the dissociated anger/rage or whatever it is going away (which I can usually make it do).
If your experience in life isn't like this -- and most people's isn't -- then, OK, I get it that you can't/don't understand it. Neither did my therapists.
But I'm 71 years old and if you are going to try to tell me I don't operate like this, well, go ahead . . .But it really doesn't make sense to me, finally, to accept your view of me and and how I must operate, because it is like how you and most people you know operate, over my own. I HAVE gotten that much out of all those years of therapy and self-reflection.
I asked the therapists for years for something like a "social play pen" where I could learn social interactions. Nothing, it doesn't exist.