The space, the place where disconnection is...

Is where my insecurity is. In that place, I am alone. And alone is uncomfortable. I want to close that gap---deny it's existence!! I want there to be no gap, no disconnect.

That place, being alone, is so uncomfortable, so I've tried to fill it up with food, drugs, sex, alcohol, cigarettes, being online... one thing after another. If I can fill it up then I can deny it is happening and the pain the goes with it... or so I think I can.

I can't avoid or deny disconnection; it's as normal a part of life as breathing. I waste time and energy on this insecurity that will never be 'cured' because disconnection is real. But if I can allow it and name it, then it will become a natural state and I can rejoice when/if reconnection happens.

Leaving T today caused my usual panicky feelings. It is about separation and it is about disconnection. Out of sight, out of mind. When I'm out of her sight she will forget me. My panicky feelings are my attempt to stay connected so she won't forget me, as if I could accomplish that.

This disconnection will lead to reconnection, but the place, the space, is lonely.

[Fuzzybear]

Great post ECHOES... I feel as if I've learnt more from some of the recent posts on here than I did with various T's..... kudos to you and all who share so honestly on the Psychotherapy Forum!!

I so relate to your post.....

[MissCharlotte]

((Echoes))

I love this post. I wonder what that loneliness is really. Is it abandonment? Is it a place we went we we were kids and left alone too much? Is it desire? Yearning? Or is it blank? Maybe the ultimate reconnection is to ourselves rather than waiting a week to connect with our T's. Do you think that there is an element of fear attached to this disconnect? Maybe, could it be a core fear of denial?

I don't believe your time spent on this is wasted because it is real, rather it is valuable because it is real. I congratulate you for taking the time to process what you are feeling. Just because we feel powerless over changing something doesn't mean we must deny ourselves the time to acknowledge, and explore the feelings attached to it. It's like a serious illness where one must always have hope and keep trying to reach a certain level of comfort, despite what the books say.

It sounds like you must feel so secure with your T and that is wonderful. Maybe writing is a way to stay connected to her. I know it's what I try!

Oh, Echoes. I just came home from T and you basically wrote the post for me. I am going through the panicky, separation feelings that you described. They started about 10 minutes before the session ended and they continue. The disconnect is already there because I don't know how to hold on. Don't know if there's anything to hold on to... if there is, I don't know how to grab it.

It's an awful discomfort, I know.

We also talked a lot about how I have tried to fill up that space-- similarly to you-- with men, clothes, cigarettes, self injury, fast driving, playing around with my meds, etc. But the space is still there.

yes it is still there. I wrote that, thinking I had a handle on it, but nope. Missing her awful.

((( fuzzy friend )))

Thanks for your kind words!

This is a great forum.

(( sister ))

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't know. Maybe. .. yeah, definitely fear of abandonment and rejection and hopelessness (will not reconnect).

Not sure about core fear of denial because I don't know what you mean by that. Can you explain that?

Do I feel secure with her..? Thinking... I do feel insecure whithout her, that I do know; I don't feel secure with just myself.

She asked me today to describe the 'good mother' fantasy I have about someone. I couldn't do it well because some of those things I fantasize about with her too.

((( ECHOES )))

Leaving T today caused my usual panicky feelings. It is about separation and it is about disconnection. Out of sight, out of mind.

I so get this. Especially with my T being out sick and everything. Even yesterday at P-docs I felt totally disconnected. Like if I disappeared, it wouldn't matter.

This is when it's easiest for me to isolate. I've been thinking about picking up the phone and saying let's just end T now.

[MissCharlotte]

When i say a core fear of denial I mean that at some point as a child my very existence was threatened/denied so much so that it became a core issue. It comes with the territory of intense loneliness, being rebuked and silenced and devalued so in essence the self is denied. Does that help?

[Fuzzybear]

wow. I can certainly relate to that

(sorry about the hijack )

yes sister it does, very much.

i wasn't wanted in the first place.. was just an attempt to get a boy to carry on the family name.. so strike one, born a girl. strike 2, an anxious needy girl, strike 3 a hard of hearing girl.

(((( Petunia ))))

Why not write to her? Send a card? Go out and go card shopping for a sweet or fun card for her?

Yes, I feel like I don't matter unless I feel connected. It can just plunge me into despair.

I talked to her the other day. I just don't feel connected. It was awkward. (on my part)

I think it has something to do with her trying to reassure me ten years ago that she had no plans on dying...and this recent illness scared me. What doe a Petunia do then? Runs away.

(I had just lost my brothers then and was highly paranoid in investing any of myself in any relationship)

I think it shook up all the old fears. And has become a trust issue again. It's kinda complicated.

[SecretGarden]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>

Maybe the ultimate reconnection is to ourselves rather than waiting a week to connect with our T's. Do you think that there is an element of fear attached to this disconnect? Maybe, could it be a core fear of denial?


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When I am feeling less depressed the deconnection is not so desparate and I am able to connect with myself. Yes there is a fear... abandonment and denial.. all seem to be in play....as in thinking about reconnecting and what to do til then... or how to reconnect in my brain at least to tide me over.

Good post Echoes...thanks.

[sunrise]

This is a really good thread, ECHOES. I am learning a lot from everyone. Sister, I really related to what you wrote about the core feeling of denial: "being rebuked and silenced and devalued so in essence the self is denied." Yep, I've sure had that.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
When I am feeling less depressed the deconnection is not so desparate

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SG, I feel there is some reversal of this for me, that is, when I feel disconnected, that is when I get depressed, and reconnecting helps me shed depression. I have ZERO connection in my marriage and never have, and after many years of that, I was depressed. I have connected profoundly and somewhat joyously with my current therapist, and voila, depression gone. Sure I used CBT methods with my first counselor and managed to improve my depression a bit, but the connection with my current T "cured" me almost instantly. We talked about that together and my T understands completely and is not surprised at all. He is a master at connection and I think has seen this before. (See below--my siggy--that's him.)

Right now, I am able to feel connected to my T outside of therapy. Because of therapy, I also have become able to connect with others in my life so much better: my sisters, my oldest daughter, and even my mother. Seriously, my mother is a root problem for me, but because of my experiencing connection in therapy, I have been able to connect with her now as an adult, in ways I never have before. These moments of connection with her, after all these years, floor me. Sometimes my T and I will have a "bad" session, defined really by a lack of connection. This will throw me into depression. It has taken me a while to realize that link. I am trying to learn to accept the times of disconnection with T as normal. It's hard to be connected with anyone 100% of the time. And those times of disconnection can deepen the feeling of connection when I am able to reestablish it subsequently. Like a joyous coming home.

[SecretGarden]

Echoes, I don't know if this is what you mean or just how I read your post, but today I was out with one of my twin daughters, aged 14. I took her out to eat as a thank you for her giving up her bedroom for my visiting friend.

I was feeling very consious of the "connection", that feeling where you "fit". I mentioned to my daughter about my friend staying and said no matter how much of a nice lady she was, there's nothing like that feeling you have between "blood" relatives.

No don't get me wrong, I know theres lots of dysfuntion between blood relatives, but what I'm talking about here is the healthy relating "to". I was missing that feeling with my friend, I was trying to find that connection, that missing piece, and nothing I could say or do or her say or do, could we bridge that connection.

Being adopted I think a lot of my anger/rage comes from also unconsouisly missing that connection I had with my birth mother in the womb. My adoptive mother maybe could have helped bridge the gap a whole lot better than she did, but she never, ever would have been that perfect connection.

Theres' that unspoken comfortableness with family. Funtional family connections I'm talking about here. But I'd not noticed it before, was so used to not "fitting" that it became a case of trying to get "it" from "whomever" not allowing myself to see it right here in front of me, with my family today. Maybe because it means I finally understsand what my mourning has been about all my life. What I actually did loose with adoption.

I think with our T's we are looking for that connection and it will never be like that perfect connection, but whilst in the session with them, we can somehow blind ourselfs to that fact, but once out of the session, we become very aware once again of the "gap". Its mourning this gap I need to do.

I've put as much into friendships as my family, I think because I've been so split of from allowing myself to feel the connection with my family for fear of loosing it again that I've almost tried to fool myself into making it not matter, not matter as much as friendships because friendships can't hurt me as much as loosing family.

I've often told my T that I feel as if theres a blind part that I won't look at. I think its allowing myself to fully immerse in that perfect connection I have today wiht my family. My old tapes are telling me that I will loose it, like I lost it in the very begining of my life, so I've never allowed myself to have it.

I think I'm about to reach a place where its safe to allow myself to accept the limitations of my relationship with T, because I am finally letting in the real relationships, my children, its safe to let them in.

Its a warm feeling, a feeling where everything makes sense. Where all fight and struggle to feel as if we belong ends. Part of me knew this was missing, getting angry at T because I wanted her to be "THAT" one, but she isn't, that one is a natural/spritual connection that comes through actually belonging to that person. We may not be able to choose our familys or even like them, but nature has made it that we feel at our most secure when its right. Maybe thats why when it goes wrong, its so bad??

Anyways this is what your post brought up for me.

((Echoes))

[MissCharlotte]

Mouse,

That was a beautiful post. I identified with much of what you said. It is indeed so hard to form functional family connections when all of our experience and modeling was dysfunctional.

When I was a younger mother I thought that the cure for this was to just do the opposite of everything my mother did. Now i know it involves much more than that....building the connections we are all talking about, intimate connections that are so hard to make and maintain.

Thanks.