New Development: Completely Unexpected

I've known for a while that you can turn corners in therapy and see things you've never seen before or see things from a completely new angle. But I never imagined I'd come across the kind of shocker I encountered with T yesterday. I'm still trying to absorb it. To understand it. To change everything that needs to be changed because of it. Because of it a lot of anxiety just went away, like soapy water down the bathtub drain when you're finished with your bath. I don't know if I believe or trust that yet.

I can't tell you yet what it was because I don't know enough about the consequences. And I'm still pinching myself to see if it's real. I guess T and I will be talking about this new development for a while. You people out there may well have guessed this before, or known it or assumed it from many of my posts. It's just something I've blinded myself to all my life from the very beginning. Nothing weird and wacky, just something sad and personal.

The really wild aspect is not the truth of the thing, it's the fact that I've spent all my life and a heck of a lot of energy blinding myself to this reality. The mind is indeed wondrous. I guess we all get that feeling over and over. I'll keep you posted.

Wow it sounds like you are at a very important place with your T - I hope this new insight can take you forward to a better place of being - thanks for sharing, it is good to have hope - Soup

Hmmm. Something new and exciting and positive happened -- but we don't know what.

Sounds like you are on to something. Feel free to share.

Very eager to hear more from you on this!

You will, you will!

Drill, baby, drill?

Therapy is a wonderful time in ones life, where growth is the goal.

Hoping you grow from your wonderful discovery

This sounds wonderful, I can't wait to hear more.

I'm so happy for you!

This gives me hope. Thank you. Take your time to work it through.

Understand now, the force and shock of the discovery is not necessarily in what's been discovered, but in the fact that one's mind can, successfully, for an entire lifetime, block out something on the order of "2+2=4," the sun's shining in the sky, the idea that if you eat when you're hungry you won't feel hungry any more. That kind of stuff. That kind of incredibly basic stuff.

And if your mind enters into that game of hide and seek, it has to adjust all kinds of different attitudes and convictions in which, for whatever reason, the basic 2+2=4 plays a role. For example, I now realize (since Friday's session) that I have had a lifetime prejudice in favor of establishment institutions that seek in whatever kind of way to impose on the general public a particular mindset with regard to their existence or products. I begin with the assumption that there's a good reason for the status quo (which I now realize that in many cases is simply ridiculous) and look at attackers and their arguments with a very jaundiced eye.

The above occurred to me yesterday, when for one reason or another I was reading the Wikipedia entry for Critical Psychiatry, an anti-mainstream group that descends in great part from Laing and Szasz. Now I've always simply brushed away Laing and Szasz and stuck with the mainstream. And reading this article yesterday I could immediately see very positive, very respectable thinking under way in a very anti-establishment manner. This shocked me, as it would never have happened to me before. And when I thought about it, I connected the change in me to Friday's revelations.

So I'm wondering how this change, this news, is going to reverberate among and between all kinds of thoughts and attitudes and feelings I've had for an entire lifetime. The news itself is quite somber. The excitement and the positive aspect of the situation comes simply from my best realization so far of how the mind can twist you into a pretzel without your noticing anything amiss. I'm reminded of all those people who are trained to tie themselves into amazing human knots. Minds can do that too. And when you can step aside and get a view of your OWN knots, well, it's mindboggling. Take care.

I noticed that.

Yes, and here's the way it goes: I will work, support and cooperate with authority figures to project and impose any counterfactual mindset they may choose to propound, and banish from my (conscious) mind any knowledge of the reality of the situation. All that from an infantile development.

And how to know the 'reality'? Seems like more mental gymnastics. Fun, sure, but...

What infantile development?

The one I'll tell you about after I see T on Monday. The thing I discovered with her on Friday and that I'm thinking over now. That one. Take care.

By no means "fun." These kinds of mental gymnastics probably produce a very significant percentage of global human personal misery. And how to know the reality? Well, in my case I did indeed "know the reality," but I kept it in a sealed lead box in a safe in the dungeons of my mind and kept that knowledge from my conscious mind until now. I assure you that "reality" is by no means hard to know. On the contrary, it's hard to cover up, but that can be done and was done by me for my entire life. I'm sure this is a common situation.

Watch out for any backlash at taking "so long" to realize what you realized ("Ah, how many years did I waste thinking/doing That?"). Look for the positive spin on things having been the way they were for so long.

I don't think I can do that, Perna. I really don't think there's any "positive spin" I can put on this one. I can grieve. I can feel much freer now. I don't really know whether there'll be any "backlash." I'm too enthused and excited by chasing down and eliminating all the repercussive effects of this correction of a major mental block, which is going to take a good while. This is freedom. I'm just so happy to get out of jail. In a sense, this must be like escaping from some Orwellian, totalitarian state into a free country where you're allowed to think as you please.

I've said it before but I'll say it again. I think a respectable proportion of all of you will react to my "revelations" with groans and "Is that all?" First, what I'm going to say may well have been apparent to you when reading prior posts of mine. It wasn't apparent to me. Second, I'm sure many of you have gone through similar realizations yourselves, quite possibly at much, much earlier ages than I am now.

But to me the "astoundingness" of what I've discovered is centered not in the reality of the underlying fact, but in the psychological deformations (and life deformations) caused by repressing the underlying fact. Of course, I've known about the psychological phenomenon of repression since I was a teenager. In an intellectual way. Yet I had no idea at all of the sheer psychological power of repression and what it really feels like to have your life, and your mind, and your feelings bent entirely out of shape as the result of serious repression. And, of course, the more basic the repression the more it has huge consequences for every part of your life and self.

This is a first for me. So don't razz me as if I should have figured this out a long time ago.

Okay. For several months now, T and I have been piecing together the life story of my mother, bit by bit, stone by stone, with as much detail and nuance as possible. Friday morning, I arrived with the last serious load of facts and guesses. I shared them with T. The edifice was complete. Not only a lot of what I had gone through as a baby, but a psychological portrait and explanation of my mother. I sat there.

T looked at me and I looked at her. I raised my eyebrows at her. She looked at me and said "you first." And after being silent for a while I said "Mom didn't love me. She didn't even like me, or any of us." She had babies because that's what women were supposed to do. And we all had to put on a big show of a warm and loving family, which, of course, was entirely untrue. And this went on until her death at 86, during which time her husband died prematurely (because of her, says T), Peter went on heroin and stayed there, Don became an entirely unreprentant drunk, and Gil simply left the family and stayed away. Me, I had no substance problems (other than carbohydrates) but I lived in a far-away place in my head, from which I'd visit earth now and then.

T says that when I was a pre-verbal baby and wanted and needed all those usual connections with mother that are summed up in the word "love," she was spaced out herself. Not on drugs or anything. Her situation as a baby herself had taught her to dissociate in any circumstance where intimacy was required. All kinds of bad consequences ensued, which we'll be untangling for months, I suppose. But there's no doubt, to me at least, that it was this original problem-creating matrix that essentially formed me for life, including adult life. You don't know me as I am and always have been IRL. The persona I present here on PC is open and interactive and reactive. My real self is reserved, withdrawn, silent, without friends, always seeking to minimize (or avoid wherever possible) all human contact. I have never in my life shared things with others in the manner in which I do so here.

Well, what happened to me has happened, I'm sure, to many others. Both in terms of having been unloved children and in terms of repressing important things in a manner that completely distorts the personality and can ruin adult life. I wish there was something we could do to diminish the future risk that similar things will happen to innocent babies. PC is essentially an aftermarket repair shop. There ought to be a way to manufacture the product with fewer built-in glitches. Take care!

Pc may be an aftermarket repair shop, but what a shop it is. I don't know why people (including you) make a distinction between this and "real life." Seems real enough to me, and I may even speak for others in saying that your postings have helped me...really....in real life.

I'm not trying to minimize your pain, but we're taking the steps to deal with the damages that have been inflicted, and I think it's also fair to say that there are many like us who are seeking these answers and the roots of this pain. I guess Philip Larkin, the British poet said it succinctly enough: "They f#@ck you up your Mum and Dad, they may not mean to, but they do."

The realization that she didn't really like you.....is a bomb. It's hit in my life too. The realization in my case that my mom basically traded the emotional health of her children for financial security was a big grenade landing in my life. It takes a long time to sift through this....regardless of how much you "knew" for how long.
Take care of yourself as you come to these realizations...it's really exhausting, at least that's what I found.

I can relate to your "real" self being reserved, withdrawn, silent, without friends...always seeking to minimize (or avoid wherever possible) all human contact. And yet....here you are....in a forum...

Blessings,
MCL

Hey, Ygrec, so sorry for what the revelation was but so happy the way it has released you. I'm sure the repercussions will be many and your life will change because of this, but for the better! I suffer the same regrets of "why why why didn't I figure this out sooner?????" It's such a waste of time! So happy for you!!

PS - And the truth shall set you free .........

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Originally Posted by mcl6136 Pc may be an aftermarket repair shop, but what a shop it is. I don't know why people (including you) make a distinction between this and "real life." Seems real enough to me, and I may even speak for others in saying that your postings have helped me...really....in real life.

Internet is NOT real life. There are so many barriers between us, protecting us from things that frighten us or make us nervous IRL. I'm glad indeed if anything I've written here has helped you in any way, but being a PC member is like driving a cab with a thick, bulletproof plastic shield between you and the customer. While I can write things here that may help you, I could not do that IRL. Too much of my mind would be tied up in all kinds of self-protection. I'm very much hoping that I can redirect all that wasted emotional energy to more productive uses, including being in touch with others in the here and now.

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The realization that she didn't really like you.....is a bomb. It's hit in my life too. The realization in my case that my mom basically traded the emotional health of her children for financial security was a big grenade landing in my life. It takes a long time to sift through this....regardless of how much you "knew" for how long. Take care of yourself as you come to these realizations...it's really exhausting, at least that's what I found.

Well, T tells me (I saw her again this morning) that because of my mother's own early childhood, which I told T more about on Friday, she just couldn't get intimate with anyone, including babies. But T also says no adult can really grasp just how terrified and alone a pre-verbal baby feels when it realizes that MOM AIN'T PAYING ATTENTION. The baby can't talk or think. If it has any needs those needs have to be "sensed" by its caregiver. If the caregiver isn't "sensing" anything, and is consistently and always not paying attention, the baby is stuck in a very hard place, particularly for a baby.

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I can relate to your "real" self being reserved, withdrawn, silent, without friends...always seeking to minimize (or avoid wherever possible) all human contact. And yet....here you are....in a forum... Blessings, MCL

A very, very PROTECTED forum. A forum where I CAN'T GET HURT. There's a reason for places like PC, a very, very GOOD reason. Thank God it's here!

This is also probably the reason for my life-long fascination with Stalinist Russia, the personality of Stalin, the terrors, the gulags, the fear penetrating every aspect of every person's life. I've probably read more on the subject than any non-academic in the U.S. Why? Because everyone was forced to say that everything is wonderful when in reality the opposite was the case. No one could tell the truth or say any truth to others. The punishments for not so doing were the harshest in the world. I was raised having to say how wonderful and happy everything was, when of course at some level I knew it was anything but. My parents weren't Communists but the family could have fit into Stalin's domain with ease.