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Originally Posted by Lrad123
My T generally isn’t the type to tell me what to do or how to feel, but he clearly keeps sending me the message that he thinks I perceive my childhood as normal when he believes it wasn’t. I guess you could say we sort of argue about this. This feels like such a stereotype of therapy to me - going to therapy to blame everything on your parents, and I’m not sure of the benefit of playing that game. I’m high functioning and have a generally good life. I’m aware that my parents had issues of their own, but they weren’t cruel or abusive and they loved me. Through talking about my childhood I’m aware that my parents weren’t completely in tune with my emotional needs, and perhaps made choices that I would not have made, especially now that I’m a parent and can think about how I’d do things differently. Last week I admitted that “maybe there was an element of neglect,” and he cut me off saying, “it wasn’t just an element. It was neglect.” He also has started to occasionally bring up a particularly difficult year in my childhood where I coped by watching a certain inspiring movie several times per week and bonding with my dog. I’m conflicted because when he says things a certain way, I can see his point that I was largely emotionally alone as a kid. My parents did not see me. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do with this now. As an adult, at this point in my life, how is this useful? Am I supposed to cry about it and be sad about it? Am I supposed to be angry? Because I just don’t feel like it. My father took his life when I was a teen and I feel like I’ve mourned that already. A few years ago I chose to have no contact with my mother for reasons that are complicated and this breaks my heart, but I felt like I had no choice and it’s honestly made my life easier in a way. What good does it do to go back now and pick apart my not-so-extraordinary childhood? Wondering if anyone has had a similar experience?
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I drank the psychologists' Kool-aid about my dysfunctional family for decades. Blaming the parents didn't help a lot.
What helped -- "helped" in a way I couldn't have foretold -- is that when my last therapist got triggered (by me) and reactively rejected me -- disapproved of and shamed me in ways like my mother, grandmother, and aunts -- it eventually triggered memories of horrible feelings that I had shut off from way back when, and that I had avoided feeling again through people-pleasing and various other things that I was not aware of -- despite the years and years of therapy. Going through the pain of all that, alone, because the T had rejected me, was h....l. But here I am, 3 years down the road, and better, hopefully.
I so hated and/or was afraid of rejection, or something, that I would do almost anything not to feel it -- all automatically, cluelessly, unconsciously. Or so it seems like that now.
It's not so much that I was abused (somewhat) or negected (somewhat) or not seen -- they hadn't been either, they didn't have a clue, experts saying they had a responsibility to do better and blaming them when they didn't have the response-ability to do better didn't help ME a lot. Maybe it helped some other people, I don't know. It just gave me a self-righteous, somewhat entitled victim-complex. Again, largely unconscious.
But there's a whole aspect to life and other people and maybe relationships that wasn't available to me because of the pain that I had apparently numbed out and habitually avoided.
I'm able to see, somewhat, now when I'm being a pain or demanding with my adult daughter. And able sometimes to make a shift in my attitude and improve things with her. Because she rejected me, too, several years ago, for several years, and I didn't like being rejected by her, either. There's just a whole complex of stuff with regard to relating to my female relatives that I was largely unconscious of, because I had cut off or numbed out the whole complex when I numbed out the pain. If that makes any sense, which it probably doesn't.
But regaining parts of my ability to feel and function and interact with other people -- that's what feeling the pain can eventually allow, I think and hope. Yes, feeling angry with relatives is a part of that, yes feeling sad, too. And then, at the end of that -- for me, there is also the recognition that I love and loved them despite the other emotions, too. I may not see them again (some are already dead), I may not have a relationship with them because that requires something on their end that they may not have, too. And/or maybe more skill on my end than I currently have. But -- I love them, and I know it (I can distinguish it from other feelings, because I feel those, too) and that's a big plus in my life. I hope it may allow me to participate and maybe contribute more to life and other people than I have been up until now. Time will tell.