[CantExplain]

I've been talking to my T about my feelings of rootlessness, and how this relates to the house and city I was brought up in. T suggest maybe I need to go back and see it.

Were you driven from your home as a teenager?
How do you feel about that?
Did you ever go back and look at it?
How do you feel about that?

[stopdog]

We moved around a lot in different states so I could not even find most of the houses I lived in until I was in high school. I have driven past it.

We moved all the time. Ive lived in something like 25 different houses. So i feel like i have never had a home.i have gone back to some of the houses just to look at them... I am not sure what im looking for...reliving memories,looking for answers, i guess. Trying to make sense of my past. Its usually bittersweet,a little hard.

[Victoria'smom]

Were you driven from your home as a teenager? Yes I was
How do you feel about that? I have mixed feelings about it. There were horrible bad time but I did a lot of growing and accepting people for who they are.
Did you ever go back and look at it? Actually my family still lives there. I've been "graciously" let back into their lives so I go there 1-2x a year. Less if possible.
How do you feel about that? It seems to get harder the healthier I get. I can't figure that one out?

It brought up a lot of feelings for me. I wouldn't do it again.

Can't explain((( (hugs))))
Is those something you feel like you have to do or want to do?

[elliemay]

I have visited the home of my upbringing. It was not easy. As an adult, everything in the house felt very small - physically small.

I experienced no grand moments of closure, no big epiphany about my life. Just a small crappy house with a few memories, good and bad.

I was not driven from my house. In fact, just the opposite. I kept trying to leave and getting hauled back (I'll *never* understand that, but whatever).

[Anne2.0]

My childhood home is no longer in my family. I wanted nothing more than to escape it and be left alone.

Then I told the truth, and I got frozen out for 10 years (as an adult, not a teenager).

10 years later, they invited me back. The power dynamics certainly shifted to my side. Now everyone mostly operates on a present-moment state and without resentment or reference to bad history. I am not close to my family of origin, but there is genuine connection there.

I have gone back to my childhood home. My father's beautiful rose garden and mini fruit orchards and the trees I climbed to get away from the ground were gone, replaced with ROCKS. Barbarians.

Have you seen the video of Miranda Lambert's The House That Built Me? The words and the music resonate with me, and I think they might with you too.

I too love the Miranda Lambert song...

I moved around a bunch as a kid, like someone else said about 20 or so places... but their is the town I spent my teen years in. I moved out of state at 18 and never moved back. I have been back several times to visit my grandmother and sister. It took me a good 10 years at multiple trips each year to tolerate the area. I used to feel like a giant door shut when I arrived and I was trapped in that miserable town.

I have just recently, within the last 5 years or so, have been able to drive past the few house's that gave me tremendous pain and the few houses where I actually felt "normal" like my grandparents and great grandparents farm house, without a tremendous emotional response.

It is true what they say, I think.... time does heal all things. They are just buildings and some even look way different ( My great grandparents farm land is now a sub division and the barns are mostly tore down and the house is redone with siding and more modern windows etc. ) I can still close my eyes and remember the happiness I felt there as a kid and I wouldn't want to lose that. The houses of pain, I don't tend to remember the feelings...I look at them more as regular old buildings that I never have to go to again.

I wasn't driven from home but I've been on my own since I was 15 years old.
they just both left one day.
My mother came back 3 years later.
I recently went back home for a visit.

I took pictures of my hometown places where abuses took place, the houses of people who abused me.
I honestly thought that they would trigger panic attacks, but my panic attacks are some outrigger more by how I'm feeling especially in my relationships.

It can be very scary though. I I'm trying to identify those parallel feelings that cause me to feel powerless and trigger a panic attack.
Hope this helps.

[critterlady]

My father still lives in the house in which I grew up. I've been back many, many times. It's harder now that my mother is gone, because everything in the house reminds me of her.

The only problem I have with going back is passing the house at the other end of the block. It's where the abuser lived with his wife and children. I spent many hours there, babysitting for his kids. And then doing other things.

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by button30

Can't explain((( (hugs))))
Is those something you feel like you have to do or want to do?

A good question. "Dare not do" is probably the answer!

[CantExplain]

Originally Posted by LolaCabanna

I
I have just recently, within the last 5 years or so, have been able to drive past the few house's that gave me tremendous pain and the few houses where I actually felt "normal" like my grandparents and great grandparents farm house, without a tremendous emotional response.

I'm afraid that if I went back it would be as you describe.
I have a fantasy of returning to something that probably never existed.

The fear and pain is that the house would not remember me - and of course it wouldn't.
If Paul McCartney went back to Penny Lane, they'd all come out to meet him. That's my fantasy.

That's helping to bring my feelings into focus. Thank you.

[ECHOES]

Anna Freud, who treated children mostly or only, I'm not sure which, wrote about a desire to 'return to the womb'. I think it is probably about the non uncommon desire for our lives to have been different, for a 'do-over'.

I wonder if returning to the 'home of origin' is a similar idea?