Getting real.

I keep getting this sense that I have over dramatised my life? To be honest, at this stage of my recovery I'm not sure if I'm in denial? Or whether I'm able to trust more that T is really there for me and I can start to let go some of the dramatisation?

I know I was talking yesterday in T about how I had had a daydream of a time when I was about 9 or 10 and I felt how I emotionally alone I was and I visulised T sitting beside me and I felt how different my life would have been if I had had neurturing like T gives me.

I told T about this daydream and how I felt bad about myself at that age, so alone. T said it was easier to see myself as bad rather than my life.

I replied, that my life wasn't bad, difficult yes, bad no. T just sort of replied wiht a quite Mmmmm..

I just feel I want to get to a real level within myself. I mean what thoughts would I have alone on a desert island where there is no one to hear me? Would they be the same as now or would some drop away because I have no need for them? I honestly don't know.

Mouse, I can relate. I've also told t way back about a dream I had that included her comforting presence, and how different and manageable and good life would have been had I had her back then!
I do not quite understand what you mean by 'i felt bad about myself at that age...' You felt you were a bad kid? Or you felt sorry about your difficult situation?
What thoughts you would have on a desert island where there is no one to hear you? I think it would be an experience of aloneness and despair and overwhelming futility and disempowerment, rage, helplessness, sadness, deep psychic pain, angst. Because you'd be re-experiencing the alone-ness of your childhood.
If I'm way off the mark, I apologize.

Yeah I felt I was a bad kid coz I'd done bad things.

I was punished for having done "bad" things but they weren't bad, that was just a matter of interpretation by my stepmother. Don't forget you were in a rather "closed" world and the rules were different? Think of your kids at 9? Just run-of-the-mill kids, sometimes don't do their homework, sometimes are thoughtless (lots hasn't been learned yet) but not "bad"?

If I behaved badly why? Probably because my situation was "bad". And that shouldn't happen? My parents were good providers, my stepmother was home everyday, didn't work but that's not all life is about. What was it my 7th grade math teacher wrote about me? "Good ability, poor performance." That is sort of how I might have graded my stepmother sometimes?

no i did bad things. I allowed the neighbourhood kids to screw me.

I can so relate to this, mouse.

I often told t that no one goes through THAT MUCH trauma, and then asked him if I was a "trauma junkie". It really bothered me.

I look back, though, and realize that I was for a bit. That said, I had to be for that bit because even though everything might not have been huge trauma standing on its own, everything related to the traumas and connected it there.

I had to recognize the traumas (large and small) as being bad, inappropriate, wrongs done to me so that I could work through them.

I guess what I'm saying is that whether it's dramatization or not, it's necessary to relate it how it *feels*. If it feels traumatic, then that's the effect it had on you and needs to be looked at and worked with as such, I think.

I had to set down those worries and look at even the stuff that my intellectual mind said was "small beans" due to the larger picture. When I did, it was almost too much to get my mind around. I said time and again, it appeared as some horrid science-fiction horror novel where each chapter was the perfect "set-up" for the main events.

I wouldn't worry so much about "dramatization" because in my experience all of it was important to the healing. Once alot was worked through, then applied, it didn't feel dramatized anymore.

Good luck, hon.

KD

KD! Thank you you don't know how much you just helped me!!!

Mouse, you didn't wake up one morning and say, "Gee, think I'll let the kids screw me today; that sounds like a good idea." They were bigger/older/you literally needed the contact (my stepmother was physically abusive but I needed the contact, the "relationship" good, bad, or indifferent). If the there's nothing healthy we can use in the environment we have to use the unhealthy! That's why people die from drinking salt water on the ocean, they're dying of thirst and can't stand it. It's not something wrong with them, they're not "bad"! It's how we're made. We have to have relationships/touch, especially when we're young or we'll die. http://www.upress.umn.edu/HarmfultoMinors.html

((((((( mouse ))))))) you're on the right track. I firmly believe that.

I said: "...it appeared as some horrid science-fiction horror novel where each chapter was the perfect "set-up" for the main events."

To expand on that...when reading that horror novel, it doesn't make much sense to us if we don't read ALL the chapters leading up to as well as surrounding the big event, then the resolution, ya know?

Know that those "small chapters" are just as important as they feel. It will prove so as you continue on in therapy.

I had so many HUGE realizations from the small stuff...so much so that I can't express how important it was in healing.

Go ahead, "dramatize".

Love & respect,

KD

Thank you both, you've really taken a weight of my shoulders today!..I'm crying with release as i type this