[elliemay]

The fact that if you are a survivor of abuse/trauma then most everything in your life - all of your behaviors, feelings, actions get attributed to that.

It feels like *me* as a person just gets written off because an event that happened years ago.

You know, even success in my *career* gets written off as perfectionistic qualities relating to wanting to please my parents.

My ingenuity, my humor, my empathy, my love of animals, and quiet. It's all just sequela of abuse. Right?

Along the lines of what Wikid said here - that's ********. I am good at what I do.

I am a person. I am not an event from my past. I can't be written off. I am not a set of symptoms.

I am not a virus whose behaviour infects all of my personal relationships.

All I can say is that my therapist better recognize that. I think I will tell him. Yeah. I think I will.

[feralkittymom]

I think he'll be pleased to hear it!

Doesn't articulating it leave you feeling stronger?

I totally get it! I tell my T all the time that I feel like I can't even tell her I'm tired or hungry without her somehow or another connecting it to the past.

"Oh, T I went to dinner last night"

"Tell me more about that, Jersey. I think it's because of your FOO"

lol. Okay-not quite that bad but I hear what your saying!

[WikidPissah]

oh yea sista, preach it.

I have some medical crap going on and have had to use urgi care a few times for incredible pain. (mind you, I almost never take medication). I was told that the pain was a manifestation of my mental health issues, and that people with a dx of PTSD should never be given opiates for pain. A holes. I am not PTSD. I am Wiki, damnitalltohell.

I hear ya. Its like the time T said i was probably gay because of my mommy issues. WTF ?????
Everything goes back to our past. Good luck telling your T and kicking his butt.

Wow! Love this. I can so relate. Go get him!

What strength and power comes through those words!! Woot way to go!!! I'ma tell this to my t too.

[mixedup_emotions]

Wow, wiki - I never made the connection that opiates would be a bit risky for those with mental health issues. Uh-oh. Too late for me, I guess.

...Anyway, I can very much relate. When I was attempting to end unhealthy relationships, they'd always throw it in my face or find a way to use it as a way to blame me for whatever went wrong....AARGH! SO frustrating....

[skeksi]

Do tell him!

I tend to do this kind of over-attribution way more than my T does. He has to do a lot of, "A lot of people would ______ X in that situation, too, skeksi. It might not all be about your abuse and PTSD."

I really like to hear that though, I think for the reasons you explain. To hear that I'm MORE than what happened to me.

[elliemay]

Originally Posted by WikidPissah

oh yea sista, preach it.

I have some medical crap going on and have had to use urgi care a few times for incredible pain. (mind you, I almost never take medication). I was told that the pain was a manifestation of my mental health issues, and that people with a dx of PTSD should never be given opiates for pain. A holes. I am not PTSD. I am Wiki, damnitalltohell.

The part I bolded is just about one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in.my.life.

Just dumb - and likely malpractice as well.

I'm sorry about that.

[autotelica]

Having "alexithymic" on my chart has turned out to be a curse, at least when it comes to my pdoc. It gives him license to tell me how I'm feeling and to attribute every physical symptom to anxiety. And if I dare to argue with him? Well, the very act of showing frustration demonstrates that I'm an "angry woman with issues"...and that I'm indeed riddled with anxieties and other kinds of emotions that I haven't properly dealt with.

But if I don't show any emotion, I'm characterized as having blunt affect.

I can't win.

[anilam]

Originally Posted by elliemay

The fact that if you are a survivor of abuse/trauma then most everything in your life - all of your behaviors, feelings, actions get attributed to that.

It feels like *me* as a person just gets written off because an event that happened years ago.

You know, even success in my *career* gets written off as perfectionistic qualities relating to wanting to please my parents.

My ingenuity, my humor, my empathy, my love of animals, and quiet. It's all just sequela of abuse. Right?

Along the lines of what Wikid said here - that's ********. I am good at what I do.

I am a person. I am not an event from my past. I can't be written off. I am not a set of symptoms.

I am not a virus whose behaviour infects all of my personal relationships.

All I can say is that my therapist better recognize that. I think I will tell him. Yeah. I think I will.

I used the thank-you button but for this post I wanted to thank you in "person".
I feel exactly the same but have never really been able to articulate it before. I know what I'm talking about tomorrow in my therapy. Thank you.

[feralkittymom]

Reading this thread has made me understand something. My first response was based entirely on my experience. Now I look at all the thanks on the OP post and realize just how widespread elliemay's experience apparently is, and how different my experience was.

My T never treated me this way, nor made me feel this way.

Of course, when I was confused about something, if there was a reasonable connection to be made to past experience, we'd explore it. But along with deep empathy for my experience, he always coupled it with a recognition of the strengths I developed--but had no recognition of-- to be the person that I am. I think it goes hand-in-hand with his being careful to not encourage regression. The degree to which I regressed was supported at the moment, but I was never encouraged to believe that it was a solution-- it was expected, yes, but not a goal to be pursued in order to heal.

I think it's what is meant by "neutralization" of emotions. It's a developmental process that begins around 1 1/2-2 years of age and continues through early adolescence. It's the growing recognition, acceptance, and experiencing of emotions not as 100% good or bad, but as a mixture of the two. And that experiencing one emotion doesn't negate the existence of its opposite emotional state.

And maybe this also connects to why difficult points in the therapy process never resulted in a rupture. And why our post-therapy relationship is able to be normalized.

I need to think about this some more. Thanks, elliemay.

[Anne2.0]

Originally Posted by feralkittymom

My T never treated me this way, nor made me feel this way.

This is true for me, too. My T knows that being my authentic self is a big deal for me. He sometimes references "how you came" versus "how you got" as a way to talk about the difference.

I am profoundly grateful for the way that I have transformed what happened to me into a way to help other people and do work that is meaningful to me. This is part of who I am, and an important part. But my history is just that, history, and it does not define me nor do I think that it is something that I have to reject or wish I could remove from myself like a tumor.

[feralkittymom]

Yes--"how you came to be/see/experience" rings true for me, too. And "getting over" an experience has always seemed an impossibility to me. How could I "get over" any experience that is part of me in a formative way without "collateral damage?" My total life experiences are enmeshed and interwoven, good and bad. And good not only comes from good, and bad from bad.

It is astoundingly difficult to embrace and respect what is felt as painful and hated, but I believe the greatest healing comes when we do just that. Therapy for me was the felt experience of receiving such an embrace, until I could internalize it for myself. It's an honoring of self and other.

[pachyderm]

Originally Posted by elliemay

My ingenuity, my humor, my empathy, my love of animals, and quiet.

It comes through in your messages, too.

[elliemay]

Originally Posted by feralkittymom

It is astoundingly difficult to embrace and respect what is felt as painful and hated, but I believe the greatest healing comes when we do just that. Therapy for me was the felt experience of receiving such an embrace, until I could internalize it for myself. It's an honoring of self and other.

That's *exactly* what I'm talking about. Honoring what happened to me as not pathological per se, but as what made me who I am.

There are some things I do blazingly well, because I had to, but make no mistake, they are considerable assets in my life today.

It's me people, not an end product, it's me!

Therapist just did not get it. I think he had his mind on the holiday break. I was his last client of the day.

To be fair, I was also thinking "Okay, one last thing [the session] and I get a break".

[elliemay]

Originally Posted by pachyderm

It comes through in your messages, too.

Pachy, you are such a gem. I hope you are doing well.

[feralkittymom]

Thinking about all of this--still a work in progress, to be sure.

But I think I'm getting closer to understanding what deeply concerns me about modalities like EMDR, and why I am so very glad it wasn't so popular when I was in therapy. (I'm quite sure that my T would not have supported its use, but there may have been pressure on us to adopt it.)

I experienced flashbacks, PTSD, dissociation: everything that is more and more being addressed through EMDR-type treatments. But for me, being forced to vividly re-live past trauma would seem like a re-traumatization so as to "rewrite" the felt result, and this time around, "win" the battle. De-power the memories so as to separate from them. But at what cost? How much of my self would have been sacrificed? I didn't want to fend off the memories, nor weaken them; I wanted to learn to embrace them in all their power to strengthen me.

By exploring the feelings of the memories and defusing their negative hold on me by accepting them for how they contributed to my development, I regained power. The embracing. I never felt the self-hate in therapy that so many here on PC painfully write about. Frustration, yes; self-hate, no. I needed a lot of help to recognize my strengths and to believe in them, but I was never led to hate the experiences that were very much a part of that strength. I also think that my life-long depression was a reaction to my powerlessness; it hasn't come back since.

Don't anyone misunderstand me as saying that abuse was "good" for me--nothing could be further from the truth. Simply that it was what it was--a series of cruel assaults on an innocent child that should never have happened, but did. But it was never about "who would I have (better) been had these things not happened to me."

Thanks for letting me think out loud.