last session was a weird one again... at one point i said that i thought i was being contrary. he disagreed... i didn't really know what was going on at the time... but i've concluded i really AM being contrary.

'In normal development, the stronger the bond between a mother and her developing infant, the greater the tension during the developing toddler's self-individuation. Much of the tension of the 'terrible twos' results from the toddler's need to assert individuality yet maintain a human connection. Mothers of healthy 2 year olds report feeling overwhelmed, as if they are being overrun by ruthless monsters. Even so, they admire and take pride in their children's budding self-assertiveness and individuality.

A mother wants to help her distressed child, but often finds herself in a no-win position. If she is calm and soothing, the child may become tyrannical; if she is firm, the child may feel betrayed and unloved. Her task at such times is to survive and to stay connected to her child without feeling destroyed by the child or retaliating and destroying the child. If she can manage to get through the year, a wonderful change takes place at age 3. The 'terrible two' transforms into a 'tender three'. Similar struggles are experienced between parents and normal adolescents.

Because some parents must have compliance, a child may be deprived of the opportunity to be a normal 2 year old. A mother might give the message that she is hurt or damaged by the child's pulling away, and the child comes to believe that self-assertion will destroy or irreperably harm the mother. The mother might feel overwhelmed and become punative towards the child, and the child comes to believe that self-assertion results in retaliatory violence. These children learn at a very early age either to be compliant, to be 'good' and do what is expected, or to withdraw and keep their distance. As a result, much of their self-assertiveness and self-individuation is lost.

In their analyses as adults, these patients will try to engage the analyst at this point in their development and to use the analyst to provide the experience of a benignly opposing force that supports active opposition and confirms a sense of individuality. Wolf calls this an adversarial selfobject function. In other words, these patients relive the 'terrible twos', and during this phase of an analysis, sessions are stormy; analysts struggle to keep their balance. The task of the analyst during this phase is, like the parent of the 2 year old, to survive and not be destroyed by the patient, and not to make retaliatory interpretations that make the patient feel destroyed.

Patients who were deprived of the opportunity to be a 'terrible two' also report painful experiences, such as humiliation, neglect, isolation, or physical abuse, that leave them constantly feeling small, weak, helpless, and afraid. Compounding their trauma is a lack of the attuned responsiveness from caregivers necessary to help the child process and overcome the painful feelings.

In their analyses as adults, these patients will subject the analyst to tests. Identifying with traumatising parents, these patients will sense the analysts areas of vulnerability and subtly provoke the analyst into feeling small, weak, helpless, humiliated, and ashamed. An example is the patient who, sensing my need to be helpful, started complaining that I was making her worse, not better. As a girl she felt abused and unappreciated by her mother, and now I began to feel abused and unappreciated by her. My feeling abused, however, did not lead to helplessness, but became an opportunity for analytic work...

No involved adult, in my opinion, can remain calm and understanding in the face of a healthy child's provocative behaviour, such as that of a normal 2 year old or a vigorous adolescent. And no matter how understanding analysts are, at some point they will become angry at their patients, and they will feel hopeless and defeated by them. It is too much to ask of analysts that they always remain calm and objective in the face of these provocations.

The successful analyst is one who can survive the onslaught. The temptation is to either be defensive and explain or justify one's position, or to make interpretations and explain the patient's motivations. Either tactic may lead to a disruption. Being defensive may make the patient feel anxious; explaining the patient's behaviour may make the patient feel criticises or guilty. Doing neither and weathering the storm, feeling hurt by the patient or angry at the patient and getting over it without feeling guilty or blaming the patient, sets the recovery process in motion.

Patients become able to allow themselves, in identification with their analysts, more leeway in experiencing a broad range of affects. They begin overcoming those identifications with their overwhelmed, traumatising parents and start identifying with their analyst's strengths. Patients realise that their analysts can get upset and recover by themselves without making the patient responsible, and these patients come to believe there is hope for them, too. They consider the possibility of being hurt and of recovering without having to feel small, helpless, and vulnerable. They can complain, express their painful feelings, and count on being understood and taken seriously. These new experiences help them to begin integrating and overcoming early traumatic experiences and to begin developing new organising principles.

Analysts who can survive these assults without either feeling destroyed or making interpretations that leave the patient feeling destroyed can use their countertransference feelings as opportunities for furthering the analytic process. In the past I saw these assults on me as evidence of underlying instinctual wishes needing to be tamed or neutralised. Now I see these behaviours as attempts to use me to complete an arrested phase of development and to master early traumatic experiences. In time the patient may become curious about these behaviours, and I will make an interpretation and explain my understanding of the process, but some patients will feel stronger and move on to new areas without needing an interpretation.

The analyst who is patient and understanding will sometimes become frightening to these patients once a bond has been established. As patients feel closer and safer, they may feel vulnerable to loss and disappointment. The more understanding the analyst is, the more anxious these patients become. They believe unconsciously that no pain means no connection. If they can experience the analyst as abusive, they feel hurt, but safe.

What can you do when your patient experiences you as abusive? Theoretically you remain objective and investigate your patient's experience, but practically, that does not work. Your patient knows you too well, and there will be some element of truth in your patient's perception of you.

http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Patien.../dp/1568215983

________________

I think its about... If I let him in... To fulfill the self-object functions... Then when he leaves it will feel like part of me has been ripped away. It will hurt too much. So I need to be seperate from him. He is not me. He is not. I don't need him.

it is hard. i'm really trying to understand projective identification. what i do to prompt the counter-transference. trying... it is hard.

one thing that is nice about time between sessions is that i get the chance to think and to come to some kind of a conception of what is going on. in sessions... i feel like i can't think fast enough. don't really understand what is going on.

found this this morning. cried. the second to last paragraph stood out the most for me (though i was interested in the earlier stuff too). the notion that... i felt close. and safe. and then all of a sudden he feels TOO close. i'm panicking a bit, i think. pushing him away. it is one of my patterns.

i think he feels like i denigrate him. i can be a bit dismissive of him, of his thoughts and opinions at times. i think that is how he feels. he is great at not getting defensive or retaliating. really terrific. but i guess it is up to me to talk about this somehow... not sure how...

part of me longs for him. just wants to curl up safely in his arms and go to sleep. another part of me is so very afraid of him. that he'll put me somewhere to go do other things and then the danger will be bad 'cause i'll be sleeping instead of being vigilant. that if i let him in then when he extracts himself it will hurt too much. that i'll break apart.

i don't mean to hurt him, just poke him a little.
poke... see what happens
poke... see what happens
i feel a little anxious
will i kill him?
will he reject me?
can't let him in
i run
will he chase me?
does he care?

i hate feeling like this.
so confused.

i think he got it at the end.
something something (content gets a little hazy)
'you won't let me'
something about him not imposing his views on me. that he doesn't mean to do that but even if he did
'you won't let me'
then he started talking about Yule or someone...
then kind of pulled himself up
'there i was saying i wasn't going to impose my view and now i'm telling you my view again'
and i was like
'well i'll tell you if i disagree'
and he was like
'yeah. yeah. you will'
i think he got in in the end.

yeah mr. you just stand over there.

'sometimes i think i'm just being contrary'
'no. no, you aren't'

maybe he got it after all.

i feel anxious.

[Gemstone]

It sounds like you had an emotionally draining session, but if he got it at the end then it was worth it.

I know what you mean about being better able to think in between sessions.

The article you posted is very interesting. I'm going to tag it and read it when I can better comprehend.

Hope you are feeling less anxious now.

[Gemstone]

What happens when the mother pushes the toddler away?

ak again thanks for great info and amazon link.

T and I have talked about this a little. Some mothers can't distinguish between them and their child so when this stage starts they are furious and controlling about it. They see it as an insult, disobedience.

I think this is where the idea about 'breaking a child's spriit' came from so long ago. It was considered by some to be very important to let the child know ' who's in charge' at this stage or all control would be lost. Many of us suffer from the resulting futility, fear, muddled identity, unloveability, core shame of not being able to be ourselves, experiement with our world, separate, love who we are.

It's so sad because the Terrible Two's are so inappropriately labeled this way. It could just as easily be the Thrilling Two's in acknowledgement of the curiosity and exploration of that age.

Not wanting to let him in. You see it as being a certain way in the future. What if it isn't? What if it's different from how you envision it? How will you know how it will turn out? Only by doing what scares you. Hard though, for sure.

hey, i'm not sure what happens when the mother pushes the toddler away.

winnicott (i think that is person) talked about 'good enough' mothering. the notion is that mothers aren't perfectly attuned to their infants all the time and sometimes they do act in a way that frustrates their infants real needs. if the mother is 'good enough' so that there is a basic background of attunement, however, then disruptions like that can be tolerated without major harm.

if the mother is often misattuned (e.g., often pushes the toddler away) then that can result in longer term harm, however. i would think that it might be a little like abuse in the sense that when an infant is upset it seeks out the mother to help soothe the upset. when the mother pushes the infant away the mother becomes the source of the upset. that could lead to 'push-pull' tendencies (insecure attachment). seeking proximity with someone you care about and then pushing them away (to pre-empt their doing it to you). or sometimes it is a little more like neglect so the infant kind of turns away from the mother. sometimes the affection is turned towards the father instead (what happened with me, i guess) or siblings or someone else. sometimes the infant just kind of numbs emotions and turns away from mother. avoidant attachment.

i guess part of it is about... whether the infant was always pushed away or whether they were only pushed away in a particular context. something that can happen during this time is that the infant goes away from mother because it is exploring the world. then it returns to mother for emotional 'refueling' but when the infant returns the mother rejects / pushes the infant away. if there is a particular reason why the mother is pushing the infant away (e.g., the mother felt abandoned / unneeded by the infant when the infant went exploring) then the infant will learn... not to go exploring. will learn that their own desires (to explore) are unacceptable to mother. sometimes this can result in clingy, insecure infants. thats how come when children have seperation anxiety usually it is the mothers seperation anxiety that needs to be treated and then the kid comes right.

hey.

> Some mothers can't distinguish between them and their child so when this stage starts they are furious and controlling about it. They see it as an insult, disobedience.

yeah, i think my mother was a bit like that. she had trouble distinguishing between me and her so i'd imagine that this must have been a hard time for her. i remember some things like... her insisting on feeding me even though i didn't want her to i wanted to do it myself. i guess it was partly about my making a mess but i think it was mostly about her terror of not being needed / being rejected by me / being alone in the world again.

she used to control me with shame. i guess that she controls herself with shame too. uses it to control others. its all she knows. i remember a lot of shame. a bit better at dealing with it now. but shame, yeah. i'm a little afraid (okay actually a lot afraid) of 2 year olds. unrestrained narcissism... i find it... repulsive. i guess there i'm reliving my mothers response to my unrestrained narcissism. shame is meant to curb it (and an infant does need to learn to restrain their narcissism) but it needs to be used gently against the attuned supportive background. i don't think i had the background. i remember lots of episodes of unrestrained / dysregulated shame. they still plague me now. catch myself feeling a bit grandiose at times... then the shame hits me real bad. hard to take appropriate pride in achievements and stuff.

> Not wanting to let him in. You see it as being a certain way in the future. What if it isn't? What if it's different from how you envision it?

he will leave. he won't be with me forever. at one point in the future i won't see him anymore. could be a couple of months... could be a couple of years... but either way i won't have finished up therapy (in the sense of not needing it). it won't be my decision to quit. it will be because of circumstances with moving to a different country / different part of the country... or maybe he has got something planned. i don't know. he keeps saying that one day i won't see him anymore. he has been saying it a lot since we had the 'dont' make promises you can't keep' conversation. i think it is about making sure i know he hasn't promised that he will be here for as long as i need him. he has not. he mentions it at least once per session. i'm not sure how to respond to that so i just ignore it (in the sense of remaining emotionally numb). i don't say anything.

i read something once about how in the healing process... the therapist (ironically) needs to do precisely that which was the source of all the pain. leave. he will leave one day. when he went for a month i got a little taste of it. it hurt. too much. i don't want to feel like that ever again.

he is not me he is not.

[Gemstone]

In my case my mother didn't want me, and my father didn't either. My mother had me because she thought it would save her marriage (it didn't). I remember her pushing me away often as a child. She was neglectful, and my father was horribly abusive so I didn't have anywhere to turn.

I don't remember as a toddler, but I know from relatives that she ignored me. If I was crying I would be locked in a room by myself.

In my case I have grown up trying to be a pleaser. I have the "everything is my fault and I have to fix it" mentality. For the most part at least, but not all the time. I grew up never being angry at them, because it was my fault. Anger is very difficult for me to deal with at all now. I guess it is kind of a narsisstic tendency too. Thinking that everything is your fault = everything is about you.

And shame, I was constantly told I should be ashamed. People or my father did horrible things to me so "You should be ashamed of yourself".

I don't know if this all goes back to infancy, but I guess I have some mother issues.

I hope you still have a long time to be with your t. It does hurt too much when they leave.

hey. our childhood sounds kinda sorta similar. my mother had been married already and had 4 kids from that marriage. my father had been married already but didn't have any kids. when they got married my mother had me. she said (to me) that it was for him. because he didn't have a child. he used to lament a lot about the family name ('cause i wasn't a boy). but really... i think they were just words and the situation was a lot more complicated than that.

my mother was quite good with babies, apparently. thats what my father said at any rate. my mother was great with babies until... they started asserting their own individuality. until... they were old enough to assert their preferences / needs / desires. at that point she simply couldn't cope. i always remember her as being invasive. but i think it was more complicated than that. basically, she used to cling to me when she needed comfort (which felt invasive to me) and she used to push me away when she needed space (which felt rejecting - though i don't remember this i just remember wanting her to get the hell away from me). thats probably because around that time... i shifted my attachment to my father.

my father didn't know what to do with me / how to be around me, basically. i remember him as being fairly fearful / ruminative. not much of a talker. but kind and gentle. intense emotion would produce an aversive response in him, however. he was averse to my mother... i don't exactly remember him being averse to me... but i remember always being calm and kind and good and well behaved around him. wanting him to accept me, i guess.

i think that what you say about your parents would have impacted on you quite significantly. sometimes the message we get is that it isn't okay to be authentic. to express ourself authentically. because when we did do that they rejected us or tried to get us to stop it by inducing shame or they abused us in other ways. so we can grow up with this sense that we don't have a core self. we don't know who we are. because we had to dissociate from / repress it as a child in order to get what care we could...

later... i guess the hope is that therapy will help you rediscover some of those feelings. and in expressing them hopefully your therapist can give you a different ending. then all of a sudden these other options open up to you. things you want to do that would never have occurred to you before. motivation and passion. those kinds of things. it can be so very hard, though.

i've realised that acting out is inevitable. i can try and think and think and think so i can express it verbally and not act out. but... acting out in inevitable. and... its okay to act like a two year old. its okay to disagree. its okay for me to disregard some of what he says. he won't be invasive. i think that might be what it is really about. he won't invade me. and he won't run from me or lash out and hurt me if i show him some of these feelings inside.

its hard because i guess they are very primitive to start with. because i've dissociated from them for so long i've never learned to regulate them into an adult form that helps me. very primitive and very strong. there is shame in that. i can understand that it is okay to feel pride in your achievements. but he said something... and i felt this unrestrained grandiosity... masked it. dissociated from it. felt shame (horror actually) and dissociated from it. but... i'm gonna have to feel it (act it out a little) and see that its okay. its okay to feel that way. and in accepting it in its intense form... i'll be able to shape it into something more adult. eventually. self pride. healthy self esteem.

its so hard.

It felt really painful to read what you said about him mentioned once per session that he won't be here for you forever. I would most likely do the same thing you do-- ignore it. Ugh. I have tried to talk with mine before about my fear of abandonment, the notion of not having him anymore, the fear that at any session he could say, "Well, I'm moving across the country..." But it became too real for me. We started to talk about it, but it was like he really did tell me he was moving or something... my reaction was getting that bad... had to switch the subject; never touched upon it again. So I can see what you would ignore it.

The thing about the therapist leaving as part of the healing process... I would assume that statement refers to a point in which the client has healed sufficiently? It's no longer part of the healing process if the leaving occurs when the client is still in need of the relationship. It has happened to me before. The therapist leaving before we even scratched the surface... felt horrible.

Hang in there, Alex. Do you feel like you are healing?

Shame is such a burden and I can't shake it. So heavy to lug around!

My mother also "force" fed me, told me what I liked and what I thought and what I felt, controlled everything including bodily functions. Any time I wanted something different or just wanted, needed, it was shamed. How selfish to want, need.

I am here because my father was the last male and wanted a male to carry on the name. My mother didn't want more. She had 2 by the first marriage and one by him. She did physical things to cause miscarriages several times and decided to rent a professional sander when pregnant with me. I always assumed it was an attempt to miscarry again, but it didn't work.

What I meant when I was saying about the future .. was that you don't know when it will happen or how you will feel at that time. If you and he part when you are ready, that would be very different from parting when you aren't ready. It's a scary thought right now because you wouldn't be ready right now. Could be something that will happen after celebrating much success and growth and healthiness, and at a time you are ready and comfortable with it... at least I hope that is how it goes for you.


ECHOES

my mother has said some "winner" things to me (said with sarcasm)...but i have many a time felt myself defending my mother.

she must have thought me an idiot sometimes. i remember once i was writing a story at a young age (somewhere in elementary school) and she said be sure not to be put things in parts of the world that don't belong there...like don't put a elephant in the middle of a big city...she said (assuming i thought that wild elephants roamed big cities, like say pigeons do). i remember thinking to myself (even being in 4th grade)...wow my mom sincerely thinks I'm stupid.

hey. yeah, thinking about termination is painful, i guess. to start with i couldn't figure why he said 'a couple of months' but then i realised that if i do this student exchange thing that i hope to do i really will be leaving in a couple of months. eep. i kinda thought... that i could keep working with him when i came back, however :-(

> I would most likely do the same thing you do-- ignore it.

yeah. i just can't see... what else to do about that.

> my reaction was getting that bad... had to switch the subject; never touched upon it again. So I can see what you would ignore it.

yeah. some things are just too hard to talk about / face directly.

> The thing about the therapist leaving as part of the healing process... I would assume that statement refers to a point in which the client has healed sufficiently?

no... that wasn't it. you know... i tried to find the quote via google and i can't find it. i'm thinking Ross might have said it somewhere or other (in his MPD treatment manual) but to be honest I can't remember precisely what he was talking about. it was just something along the lines of how, the therapist had to do to the patient whatever had been done to the patient to %#@&#! them up so bad. i think the notion might have been that the patient will reinact it. over and over lesser variations on a theme. then, eventually, there will be a reinactment. it might have been to do with carthartic reinactment or something. i can't remember. he is probably wrong. i just remember feeling very upset when i read it and the notion has stayed with me ever since.

i don't know if i'm healing. right now i feel that i'm hurting.

:-(

yep, shame is hard. sounds like we had similarly controlling mothers. hard to face / find oneself when one is not accepted for what one is. repress... avoid... dissociate... whatever we have to do to gain some acceptance. shame inhibits action too. if one is running around exploring shame will make one hang ones head and cease action. toxic shame (intense and frequent) results in less play behaviour. less role plays (part of figuring out who one is / wants to be) less exploration (and opportunity for positive experiences). shame can be so very hard...

there is a saying:

better to be despised for what one is than loved for what one is not.

i have trouble with that saying. its a bit like saying it is better to be left in the wilderness to die for what one is than given some semblance of love for playing the good kid and trying to conform of whatever we need from our parents in order to get it.

maybe the idea is that as adults we can become liberated from that. i don't think so. more likely to despise ourself for what we are which leads to depression and withdrawal and eventually despair. sigh. what a crappy world.

i hear what you are saying about parting when i'm ready. trouble is that that doesn't seem to be on the cards. it will end when i move (will have to after finishing up my studies over the next year or so). or if i do the exchange thing that will be a one year break at the very least. basically... i can't see us working together for more than 2 years. and could be... as little as 2 months. i guess he is putting in the reality check. i never really thought about it but i know he is right. we don't have very long together at all. not when you consider how majorly %#@&#! up i am.

he said something about how he hopes i get blah de blah blah to take with me when i go. something about how i can bring that stuff into my next therapy relationship. he knows he is only here for part of the time. it hurts. it hurts. it hurts so much.

sounds like she didn't take pride in your creative / imaginitive side. tried to inhibit / prevent it with reality constraints.

how do you feel about fantasy stuff now?

do you do anything creative like art or literature?

anything totally off the wall?

i sent him this:

> part of me longs for him. just wants to curl up safely in his arms and go to sleep. another part of me is so very afraid of him. that he'll put me somewhere to go do other things and then the danger will be bad 'cause i'll be sleeping instead of being vigilant. that if i let him in then when he extracts himself it will hurt too much. that i'll break apart.

he better not mention it or i'll DIE of embarrassment.

[MissCharlotte]

((((alexanda))))

So much of this thread is familiar to me--neglect, shame....I have no memories of my mother when I was a little girl--none. My earliest memory of her is when I was about 5 or 6. And that is a fleeting one. I found this post to be painful to read...it really resonated.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
one thing that is nice about time between sessions is that i get the chance to think and to come to some kind of a conception of what is going on. in sessions... i feel like i can't think fast enough. don't really understand what is going on.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

I was thinking about this statement because my T says that I try to understand things before I feel them. I thought that was an intuitive comment and that what I often do is avoid feeling the painful emotions that come up. However, I think we must feel in order to integrate the experience. Especially for me, with so few memories, I have to rely on what I feel as my source of information. The body does store these memories and we just have to trust ourselves enough to get to them. So, even though it seems like what's going on in session is too fast, we are feeling and that's okay.

I wrote my T a letter this week too. And I'm now wondering who will bring it up first when I walk in the door next........

((((sister))))

> my T says that I try to understand things before I feel them.

yeah. it can be hard. to engage with therapy so that one can talk / communicate in words on the one hand. to feel the feelings on the other. i find it hard to retain the balance so that i can do a bit of both. if i feel too much language goes out the window. if i numb the feeling completely then it can become empty words.

i think we do have to feel the feelings in order to integrate the experience. but i think we have to be able to communicate verbally in order to integrate the experience too. it is so hard.

i... couldn't think in session. he didn't ask me what i needed but i could see him trying to figure it out. i didn't know. if he had have asked me i wouldn't have known what to say to him. it was only afterwards... in remembering parts of the session and in remembering how i was emotionally responding that i've managed to organise my experience of the session into some kind of narrative. it can be so hard.

> I wrote my T a letter this week too. And I'm now wondering who will bring it up first when I walk in the door next........

i hope that works out okay. i think... i don't want to talk about what i wrote him. don't know why i sent it. because i've been avoiding feeling emotionally connected. because i wanted him to know that part of me wants it so much but that part of me is terrified. i sent him something else as well. trying to convey the fragmentation. it is hard to put in words. i told him that i wrote about it sometimes and he said i could send it to him. last session was weird. he was really trying to connect with me but i couldn't. maybe it goes some way towards making amends. i don't know.

i need to work. having nightmares about that (about having to give a seminar when i've only had 20 minutes to prepare and i had no idea what i was saying and people were very disappointed and mocking of me).

ugh.

need to work now.

[MissCharlotte]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
he was really trying to connect with me but i couldn't.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Alexandra,

In my letter to my T, I told him that part of what was happening in session was that I was pushing him away so I wouldn't get hurt.

Good luck with your work today.......

I'm sure you will give an awesome seminar.

I see how it is then, with one or the other of you possibly or probably leaving. That is so sad, ak, and I think I would have a very hard time allowing him in, trust, comfort, with that reality hanging over my head. However, I am in a similar situation and I think I will be the one to leave because I am sorry I moved here. That is on my mind nearly constantly. One minute I have to get out of here and the next I say, no.. because T is here I should stay. I don't know how it will play out, but I am going to try to take the risks I need to take to move forward, regardless. And I will continue if/when I move from here.

My mother is dead and still her voice lives on in my head. I am middle aged and lived for so many years with her ideas and opinions and likes and dislikes as my own that I have a hard time even deciding what I like or want sometimes. I spent most of my life avoiding her, ducking from verbal and physical blows, wanting to be heard and seen. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. Somthing very ugly, distasteful, unacceptable. She was nice to other kids though. I could never figure it out. How to be. What did she want from me?!

Do you feel like you've found who you are? I do not and it is part of my struggle.

Now I understand your situation with your T. Thanks for explaining it for me. Maybe you have before and I missed it.

Perhaps he said what he said to help the two of you decide how you can proceed with that inevitable parting in mind? I think you and he could spend some more time talking about it. What do you think?

[Gemstone]

It does sound somehat similar.

Both of my parents were married before they married each other. my father had 3 children from his other marriage, my mother didn't have any. My mother has told me she never wanted children. She doesn't like children. She thought that by having me, it would force my father to stay, but he didn't want any more children. Its kind of funny (well not funny ) because since my parents have divorced, my father has married someone close to my age, and he has a 1 year old with her (hes over 70).

I'm glad you posted this article. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. In therapy I've always (or the therapist has always) centered on more obvious abuse, and not the emotional aspect of my early childhood. I'm sure more than the very physical things have had an impact.

"sometimes the message we get is that it isn't okay to be authentic."

I relate to this. Being a "pleaser" I try to be what everyone else wants. Even now in my marriage now, I'm not always myself. I guess I need to learn to be myself, and I need to learn it is okay to disagree. I'm not really sure who I am yet though.