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I think I am completely screwed up right now. Maybe it's stress or lack of purpose or existential angst or even simple restlessness, but right now I just don't feel like myself AT ALL. I can't focus on anything; I can't sit still; I just feel very out of sorts and seem unable to participate in normal, healthy relationships the way I usually would. Like I've spent some time with friends and they will say things to me about their lives, and I know what I should say to be supportive, but mostly I just don't give a crap, so I just tune out or turn the subject back to myself.

I outgrew this many, many years ago, and it's very frustrating to be reverting back to childhood behaviors. I've been making a real effort to try to be "interpersonally effective," as old T would say, and engage in real conversations and be a friend to others instead of just focussing on myself, but I'm having a lot of trouble sustaining that for long periods of time. It just gets overwhelming to engage in conversations with other people.

Mostly I've been reverting back to some self-loathing/guilt/self-doubt that I haven't felt in a long time, with no apparent trigger. Suddenly I just really hate myself and feel like a useless idiot who is incompetent at everything, especially friendship. The only person who seems to like me these days is my brother (he's the only person I can put all my own emotional needs aside for and support without expectation); I just feel really disconnected from everyone else and like I'm not treating them right, no matter how hard I try. I just don't have the energy.

I saw T today. She thinks we need to go deeper into emotional stuff/memory stuff/family stuff. Boo. I know she's right, but I really just want to talk myself in circles about how much I hate myself, etc. and hear her tell me I'm being too hard on myself. Part of me has come to enjoy that, although I know it's an epic waste of her time and my money.

But I am 100% sure she's right. I know this because today I felt like punishing myself by going back on my computer and reading some stories I wrote six or seven years ago when I was twelve or thirteen that always make me feel so ashamed to read now; about kids who were abused by their parents who inevitably were loved and cared for and taken in by ideal mother-figures and were completely healed and blah-blah-blah...I used to write those stories obsessively, and I have about two hundred or so on my hard drive between ages twelve and seventeen. They make me feel so weak, but I think they gave me comfort, once, to imagine that for myself.

I'm nineteen now. I'm not a small, adorable little kid anymore, and there will be no good enough mother. Even though that hurts, I just have to accept that and be grateful for what I have. Still, it's a tough pill to swallow. I guess growing up always is.

I'm 37 and getting a good enough mothering experience in therapy. I've had help getting through from maternal figures prior. So, you can focus on nurturing yourself but don't nix the idea of ever receiving some solid maternal nurturing, it's definitely possible and not an all or nothing reality.

As for not feeling yourself- that's what happens to everyone when we're emotionally under the weather. You need some time to recoup, to work through, to settle.

I know how painful such stories are, as a writer. I've recently started going through my teenage writings (fiction and nonfiction) and it's very powerful.

I commend you for putting something so important on paper, it will be useful to you as the pain is transformed. You will be able to make meaning out of suffering, though I know that's hard to see sometimes.

Yearning growing up is tough but I hope u find some peace soon probably by working with T.

I think there can be maternal nurturing, but I think for me, it would just never be enough. I have someone now who nurtures me all she can in that maternal way that I crave, but that won't last forever, and even if it's not her and someone else in the future...it will just never feel enough. It never has. I've always doubted too much, and I'm just not a small dependent child anymore who can crawl into a mother-figure's lap and have her hold me and kiss it better. So yes, there can be nurturing, and I think for me there always will be since it's something I know I crave, but I have to learn to accept what it is I'm given instead of always yearning for more...that's the tricky part.

And as for the writings...well, mostly now I vacillate between shame and embarrassment and disgust at my own weakness...maybe as I get older, I will be able to find more compassion with myself, but mostly now I just feel so immature and babyish. T and I talked about this today and she says everyone has that need to be nurtured and loved, even as an adult, and that it's especially understandable given my experiences. But in my mind, that's not an excuse...I suppose I have very high expectations for myself, stemming from a belief that I can accomplish anything if I just want it badly enough...

And I think especially when I'm all needy and clingy and regressing like this, I'm just plain unlovable. For the most part, when I'm being my grown up self, I am witty and clever and charming and funny and perceptive...but when I'm acting like a five year old, it's just too much for other people to handle. It drains them. Understandably so.

Well, Rome wasn't built in a day. You'd like to be done, but sadly, are not. You can be unhappy with yourself for being imperfect, or proud of yourself for persevering....

And hopeful. Try to be hopeful. Those presumptions you have about it not being enough, they're based on the past, not the future which you can't predict.

Sorry you're feeling low. This too shall pass.

Don't forget that with work, our pain is transformed, needs met, in different ways than we might anticipate, but you'll be okay.

Healing is cyclical, so being under the weather right now is just that. Maybe indulge in as much of that nurturing as you can while you get your equilibrium back. And chocolate? Or whatever you enjoy.

About those stories...

When I was younger, I used to imagine myself having been adopted by whoever my paternal or maternal figures were at the time. I imagined what it must like to be their daughter, how much more they would have cared for me if they were my parents, and how much more they would love me. What I have come to understand is that those stories helped me survive what was emotionally destructive. I wouldn't have been able to tolerate what I went through without those. And yeah, they were obsessive. But they were also incredibly priceless "memories" I could pull up and focus on while being abused or neglected and they got me through.

When I was a preteen, I always imagined stories where I rescued people from burning car wrecks and such. I felt like I had to be an over-the-top hero in order to be lovable.

The stories serve a purpose, usually emotional survival.

I did that a lot too...but I guess my one mistake was when I had just turned thirteen, I gave one of those stories (about a character very much like a younger version of me who was abused by her parents and then was adopted by her loving, maternal French teacher) to my French teacher at the time...she ignored me completely after that, this woman who I'd been so close to and loved so much for four years. My mistake for thinking that she might possibly empathize with me. I mean, what did I think I would happen? I couldn't have believed she was really going to adopt me, right?

Anyway, that whole situation traumatized me to the nth degree. I haven't looked at that story in years; I still have it on my hard drive and whenever I scroll past it, I literally cringe and start to tremble a bit. A lot of those stories were just about being physically or emotionally hurt or neglected and then just finding this mother figure who would love me and hold me and kiss away my tears and just make it better...I know I was a child (and still am, emotionally, sometimes), but I hate myself for feeling so weak that I needed that. And for destroying a real, wonderful relationship with a stupid fantasy.

When I was little, I was obsessed with Matilda. By the time I was eight, I could recite the entire movie verbatim. I think it completely destroyed my ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. I used to dream that someone like Miss Honey would come and save me from my life...but no one ever did. But still, somehow, I was never able to stop hoping.

I did that too, actually, and interestingly enough, a lot of my stories had to do with "saving" the very mother figures I wished would save me. I sometimes imagined saving their lives, or sometimes I imagined that they'd been through things I'd been through too, and they were really able to understand me because their parents had hurt them too, and that somehow I was able to heal them just as I wished they would be able to heal me. It's actually funny to think about that - I imagined in equal parts them saving me and me saving them. I was very big on this hurt/comfort theme. Ever since I was maybe three or four, maybe even younger, I always was.

I loved Matilda so much! I also loved Annie and a TV show called 7th Heaven, because the dad in the show was so kind and loving and everything I wished my dad was.

Please don't be ashamed. It isn't your fault that the teacher reacted badly. Have you been able to talk to your T about this stuff?

I loved Annie too! And it was sort of my fault the teacher reacted badly...I mean, how else was she supposed to react? She talked to the principal about it, who in turn talked to me about it, called CAS, and told me I should stay away from the teacher because she was uncomfortable around me. (By the way, I loved this principal, so it wasn't like she was being mean by saying that...she loved me, too.) And I've talked to T a bit about this stuff, but not much...I know I should...I guess I just feel embarrassed and childish and immature about it.

I imagine a lot of us have done things like that when we weren't getting what we needed at home. I still remember giving my P.E. coach when I was 14 a thinly disguised story about being overpowered by my father, and a despair that left me planning my death.

I aim to feel proud of myself though, for trying to meet my needs however I could, for being resourceful and creative.

It's easy to cringe at those needs when we still feel them so sharply, but there's nothing really shameful about reaching out, and we were very very young. How would you feel about another girl who did that? Hopefully compassionate.

I used to write stories at that age too. I still have them (and I'm 52) although I haven't read them in a long time. I remember them though. My characters were always people that I wished I was at the time - smarter than me, prettier than me, happier than me, and they always had happy non-dysfunctional families. I see now that they were my way of escaping and making my world "normal" for awhile.

Mine were always about a kid who came from a family way worse than mine (so there would be clear cut bad guys, of course) and who then got adopted by a mother way more loving than mine (so there would be a clear cut good guy, of course). Interestingly, my characters were always much younger than I was at the time.

My parents weren't evil, just misguided. Sometimes I think that's even harder.

T actually says this all the time...I know y'all are right, but I guess I just have really high expectations for myself.

So do I- maybe you need to make one of your high expectations to be more accepting- have high expectations for being realistic about your progress.

Yearning, you are under some stress right now, so it's understandable that you can't be fully present for your friends. Sounds like you are depressed, too. Breathe. Be kind to yourself. Hugs.

I don't think it's depression...I mean, I've been depressed before and I know what it feels like, and it doesn't feel like that...maybe just despondence. And restlessness.

Ok, maybe not depression. What about anticipatory grief?

Of course that's part of it...it just feels like there's more to it than that. Like maybe the "anticipatory grief" is making me realize other things about myself and my life that I don't particularly like.

My parents found and destroyed all of my writings like that while I was in college and they decided to move. My mother cleaned out my room and found my notebooks and read the stories to my father and then burned all of my notebooks. Then, when I came home from college to clean out my bedroom, they told me what they had found and totally mocked me for the stories about somebody loving me like that. They told me I was not worth loving like that and it could never happen. I am 48 and always seeking that mother figure. I have tried to make some of my therapists into that mother figure, but it never got me what I wanted. Thank goodness, that some of my camp counselors from when I was 12-18, were quite a bit older than I. When I first met them at 12, they were 25-28 years old, and three of those women have remained mother figures to me even as an adult. They of course don't hug me and wipe away my tears and tell me it will be okay, but they have remained in contact with me, shared important events in my life, and taken a general interest in my life and my children. But, I am still always looking for the mother figure who will just hold me and love me....even now...when I am 48.

When I was 13-14, I used to have this picture as my desktop background that I'd photoshopped, of my brother and me when we were seven and five and these two people who I always wished would be my parents. My father saw that one time and he said, super-mockingly, "Oh, is that your fantasy family?" So, I get that.

As hard as it is Yearning, I think being aware that your family is unhealthy and having your writing reflect that is actually healthy in a way. Growing up I was told I was a lucky child and very loved. On the surface it might have seemed that way too, if you ignored my behaviors. Until very recently I thought it was something that was just wrong with me.
My stories were mostly about running away and taking control of my own life, and sometimes caring for younger siblings (I'm an only). It seems dangerous to me to have somebody who cares for me somehow...

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