[Mouse_]

So today is day 2 of my attempt to moderate my relationships. Its like something is missing where the daily contact use to be. What was the fundamental fear I had of not being able to control my friend/friends?? It's that they may decide to not come back. But when I use my adult self to answer this fear, the fear just turns to smoke, I mean if someone decides they dont' want to continue in a relationship, then what fool would I be to keep it going when its died? I can trace this fear back to hearing my birth mother choose her life over her children. I felt totally powerless over that, thoughts of, I wasn't enought for her, if only she really got to know me she wouldn't have wanted to leave me. Now I know it wasn't about me, and there was nothing wrong with me, it was her dysfunctional life that was being played out.

*sigh* I so wish we had the hindsight of an adult when chidlren, what unnesscary pain we suffer when we have no inner voice to comfort and console us? what a big world of mysterious shapes and monsters we lived in as children as things that effected us were done to us and we had nothing to protect ourselfs with, well accept dissociations and addictive patterns that developed.

Aha now I see how I am, in the big scheme of things I am exactly as I should be considering what I had to face. I am not flawed to the core, I am the sum total of my survival. Thats ok.

[mannaguy]

Touching & thanks.
Totally agree-considering: you are as you should be

same here.

There is way-(maybe you've done it)-to go back as your adult self in a vision-and visit your child self.
Sort of regression but you always have your 'knowing-wise' adult self to be there & support you..I do this with my T over the years.
i have to say its been the hardest part of therapy-cuz the angry child doesnt want to let go! And that child does live in me sometimes HUGE!

well heres to visiting with your child-which in a way you just did!

M

[Perna]

I don't think we basically change from being a child to becoming adults; we just get more "experience". A young child has nothing, like you say, but that's because they're not very old.

I remember when I thought my T had "exquisite" timing at the beginning of therapy but then, 20-some years later I was thinking about it and that had changed; I didn't need that anymore. If you only get the choice between good hamburger and dog food for dinner, the hamburger is pretty good but if you then get to trying steak, lobster, chops, etc. the goodness of the hamburger is just one of several choices.

Too, I had so many more experiences with her by that time the experience pool was diluted. A good new food tastes better the first time than the 20th time when it's no longer new.

[Rapunzel]

Mouse, you have excellent insight. That sounds a lot like what I got from T yesterday. There is a part of me trying to be competent all the time, and another part that is very good at bein helpless and incompetent. The two parts seem to hate each other. The way that I was raised, I got rejected for trying to be competent at anything. The choice that I was left with was to learn to be incompetent or be obliviated. So why should I hate myself for choosing not to be obliviated?

You are the way you are because you had to be, because you are a survivor. It's not that there is something wrong with us so much that we learned how to cope with the often unbalanced or dysfunctional environments we were raised in. What we do worked then, and we need to learn what works now in the new environments that we live in, which still might not be balanced but now we can do more to change the environment too.

[Mouse_]

Still haven't contacted my friend. I am hoping she doesn' t think I am using my silence as a punishment, its just i know I need to expereince myself very much at the moment. I sat with a woman at work this morning who came by to visit before she comes back to work again after having lost her husband 2weeks before xmas and when she talked about that empty hole inside she feels now, my stomach jumped, I knew what she was talking about, except my empty hole cannot be talked about because I lost my mother before I even had the chance to know her, and sometimes I feel embarrased to say "oh I feel like I am mourning also" but until today I didnt realise exactly that I am, because I felt I knew exactly how it was going to be for her. My not contacting my friend has also triggered of the feelings of loss, I see I've used her to avoid feeling that deep loneliness one feels during grief, no matter how old the grief its un healed its still raw. I keep going to reach out and write my friend but feel I've got this far I might as well continue it. Grief is a very hard emtion to experince, it makes life seem hostile and unfriendly, and unfamiliar, like you've lost your sense of place in the world. I read somewhere that loss is as important to us in life as is birth, we become different people throuh loss and life is a journey of dying and rebirth. I don't know where I got the idea that life should be jelly beans all the time, wow that really is a silly idea, me thinks my inner child holds onto that believe, which is somethign else shes held onto , youth, the last few days its like another part of me waking up and I suddenly realised I am not an adopted child anymore, I am an adult, I feel the small chld in me jump with surprise with that revelation. I told the adopted child in me yesterday that I am not going to get all the answers to my questions and she stomped for a short while then seemed relieved that she can stop waiting for them, it gave the yearning a kind of boundarie that it has been lacking. It eased the anger to know that somethings ARE our of her control., lifes a mystery.

[Mouse_]

So alas I caved in wrote my friend explaining how I hope she isn't thinking my silence is a punishment and how I know I cannot be in a healty relationship with her right now. She was as kind as ever and said no she can't just be all for me and that she wants me to do whatever it is I need to do. I think part of me was looking for signs of her being desperate for me, I'd never associated stalking with what i do, but until therapy I would have a an unconsoius process of selection of her would become my latest mental hostage. Normally women older than myself and those that I had awarded perfect mummy assets too. Then they would be in my mind day and night and I would dream up all diferent seniros of them caring for me. Since therapy this has become much more controllable and I can kind of give myself a mental kick when I feel it happening. At times like that it feels like a child happily playing with toys but being called for bed time, that last resistant push of a toy before knowing the game is up and one has to do the right thing. But stalking? Yeah I guess my friend I know where she posts because thats how we met online and I find myself reading her posts and feeling rejected that her words at to other people and that shouldn't be so my maddness tells me and then I feel angry at her because shes posting on these sites and I hate her for doing that. Or is it more that I hate me. What is going on in my head to think I can control another so? what do I think people are? only an object of my desire? unyet at the time it all seems so normal, its only when I look at my actions objectively do I see its not right. It seems that a small act of kindness is enought to hook me then I can't get unhooked. I don't want to be like this.