Intense (emotionally and intellectually).
Serious.
Ashamed.

Words that don't describe me...

Playful.
Flirtatious.
Spontaneous.
Fun.

I was bemoaning my lack of the latter. My therapist asked me... 'How come? How come you aren't more playful?' Then he said 'you don't have to tell me...' I muttered something about shock. About shock for sponteneity.

How come?

Google... Eventually I managed to narrow the search down to 'shame' and varients on that theme. Some article about three ways that shame can come about. Reading... Reading... Reading until something resonates... Doesn't mean it is true, of course, but reading until something resonates...

My mother and I were chronically misattuned. I withdrew from her. Didn't seek a connection with her anymore because all I found there was misattunement. Intense shame that all I found there was misattunement. She would seek me out at times and I'd actively turn away. Must be my fault. Must be that something was wrong with me. My father turned away too. Left me. Was never very emotionally (or otherwise) responsive to me. Turned away from me. Must be that there was something wrong with me.

Spent a lot of time by myself. Most of my dissociation is about being able to lie perfectly still for hours at a time. To sleep for abnormally long periods of time. To be able to stay in bed for a couple of days dozing and dissociating. To be able to sit still in my room. To read or to play silently. Unobtrusively. Spent much of my childhood trying to be a shadow so that nobody (so that my mother) would forget I even existed. Trying to be... A non-existent.

Not consistent with playfulness, flirtatiousness, sponteneity.

:-(

Too ashamed to even look at therapist. Too ashamed to even look at most people. Can manage it in easy going conversations but nothing much more than that.

:-(

(((((Alexandra)))) I'm sorry you're struggling. I can relate in a couple ways. I can't look at my therapist either, not yet, I feel if I look into her eyes,...I'd see,..something I didn't want to see. I have no clue what that might be...but it scares me. Me and my mother aren't connected either,..I feel....shameful around her,...and as you said misattunted,...I dont know what I can say that'd make sense....but I do care Alexandra...I hope and pray things get on track for you...I care...
(((((ALEXANDRA))))

[pegasus]

Hello alexandra k, good to see you around again.

Intense and serious, pretty much sounds good to me. Ashamed- is that really something that you need to own? Or was it something that was pushed onto you.

Playful, spontaneous and fun- that's a childhood thing for sure. As a child I wasn't allowed to have fun, maybe the same for you. .........but that can change, I do have fun now although I can come across as being acerbic. YOU are allowed to have fun. I don't know anything about the flirtatious bit though.

Anyway, it does get better. Take care.

Thanks Moonkin. I find it strange, but I'm able to do eye contact okay in my interactions outside therapy. I can even do eye contact okay when I am just getting started in therapy (ie, when I don't know the therapist very well). When I start to think about / feel / talk about harder stuff then eye contact goes out the window, however. My therapist said something to me last time about how a therapy encounter is quite unlike the majority of encounters that I'd have outside therapy. He said that most of my encounters are probably really very 'rationally' oriented (because of work, I guess). I suppose he is right. Therapy is much much harder. Little kid feelings etc.

> I feel if I look into her eyes,...I'd see,..something I didn't want to see. I have no clue what that might be...but it scares me.

Rejection?
Condemnation?
Misattunement?
Disgust?

Those are my fears, I guess. I think... I'd die of shame if I saw any of those things there. But I can't see how it is that I won't see any of those things there. So... The shame prevents me from looking. From looking and from seeing those things and from feeling an even greater shame / hurt.

He asked me once if I thought that he had responded to me in those ways. If he had judged me or responded in any of those ways. I said 'no' and when he looked unsure I said it again. Isn't about him, you see, about the past.

I feel a bit bad, however, because it shows that I don't trust him not to act in ways that my parents did. I think the idea is that you are supposed to look and find care and concern and compassion and empathy instead. That that is supposed to be healing. For me... Where I'm at at the moment... His responding that way so that I can hear those things in his tone of voice is healing enough. Maybe after a couple years of that I'll find the courage to look at him lol. Gently does it. I wish I trusted him more. I know he deserves it. It is just... Me... How I feel about me.

Hey Pegasus, nice to see you too :-)

I was reading a lot last night. Therapist asked me how come I wasn't more playful / fun etc. So I started googling to find something that might resonate. Ended up with 'shame' as a key word. I found this article that was talking about three different ways in which someone can come to feel really very ashamed.

One was to identify with the shame that ones attachment figure/s carry. If ones parent feels a lot of shame and does the projection thing (building themself up by belittling another) then one can feel belittled and come to identify with the attachment figure/s projected feeling of shame. I don't think... That that is what happened with me. Maybe that happened for you?????

I don't think my mother or father were ashamed of me...

They were... Very caught up in their own pain, I think. And... I couldn't save them from it. So... Feel inadequate, I guess.

Misattunement... I guess I thought that there was something very wrong with me that resulted in that feeling of misattunement. My mother thought it was my fault. I guess I thought... That it must have been. That there was something very wrong with me indeed. That I couldn't promote happiness all round.

It isn't something that I want to own... But attributing it makes the best sense of some of my behaviour (refusal to look at therapist, intense fear that I'll see disgust / rejection / condemnation, lack of initiative and playfulness and flirtatiousness and fun). I can't think what other attribution would explain all that... Of course I can attribute it to my Mother and Father... I can attribute it to their behaviour and their responses / reactions to me. But I guess I needed to internalise / be affected by their responses / reactions. If I own it... If I own it as something inside of me (however it got there) then I can take some responsibility for it and work on changing it, I guess.

> Playful, spontaneous and fun- that's a childhood thing for sure. As a child I wasn't allowed to have fun, maybe the same for you.

I'm not sure what acerbic means...
I'm trying to have more fun, too. I guess... I do have fun now. Happy moments with other people. I'm not as slapstick as others tend to be, however. Other people have fun showing off / playing up to cameras and the like. Silly dancing etc. I always feel a little foolish... Tend to watch rather than participate. I guess... Gently does it.

> I don't know anything about the flirtatious bit though.

Yeah. I guess there is a difference between overdoing it and having a little harmless fun with it. It is a way of expressing... Liking, I guess. I'm not really. This struck me because my current bf was saying to one of the other people here (who actually looks rather similar to me initially) that we couldn't be more different. One of the things he said was that I wasn't flirty at all. He didn't know whether I liked him / really enjoyed his company or not. It was weird how we figured that in the end... But, yeah, I see how flirtateousness can help in those kinds of social interactions. Fun. Enjoyment. Harmless. What do I fear? Rejection. Humiliation. Jeepers those negative emotions rule my life...

[MissCharlotte]

(((Alexandra)))

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Most of my dissociation is about being able to lie perfectly still for hours at a time.

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I so get this. I still can lay in bed wide awake but far away and fantasize just like I did as a chld. It was a coping mechanism then, not terribly helpful now.

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playfulness, flirtatiousness, sponteneity

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Why these characteristics? Are these what you aspire to? I don't think that intense and serious are necessarily bad characeristics. I share them too. The shame is something we can work on in therapy and then, maybe we can add a little bit of love or joy but I think we can try to love ourselves despite not seeing those qualities we think are loveable.

Our inner children may be hiding those other qualities and in time we can integrate them. I'm hopeful too!

Peace.



2 weeks 1 day till my next T appointment
1 week 4 days till I can call T </font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>

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Hey Sister,

Yeah, helpful strategy as a kid, but not so helpful now when there are so many positive experiences out there to be had and when there is much work to be done!

It stops for a time... If I go overseas or something like that. I wake up rearing to get into my day. But after some time... A couple weeks... Back to same old and longing to spend some time in bed ruminating and dozing and dissociating. Things picked up when I all but moved in with my boyfriend. He is a morning person and he would jump up out of bed and put some coffee on. Even on the mornings when I had to get up at 6am to get to therapy on time! His enthusiasm for the day was catchy and I didn't really ruminate. But now he is gone :-( And now I'm falling back into old habits :-( I guess it would have been unsustainable with him around, anyway... But then who knows. I often think that external structure is just what I need... Perhaps the best thing for me to do is to organise my external environment such that it provides the needed structure for me... Perhaps.

>> playfulness, flirtatiousness, sponteneity

> Why these characteristics? Are these what you aspire to?

I guess those are the characteristics that occurred to me, so yeah, maybe it is that I aspire to those. Not at the expense of my other characteristics, to be sure. I don't see it as making me smaller (replacing some of my current characteristics / abilities with different characteristics / abilities). I see it as making me larger. Expanding my reportoir (however you spell that) of behavioural responses. The ABILITY to be playful and flirtatious and spontaneous. So I have a decision whether to be sombre or whether to be playful, for example. More decisions. More variety. More capacities.

At the moment... I guess it does occur to me to be playful or spontaneous or flirtatious even... Though flirtatious is harder... Mostly in the context of a relationship, I suppose. Though... There are people here who I find quite flirty and they kinda flirt with me at times... It would be nice if I could reciprocate to show that I liked 'em well enough. At the moment I kinda try... Smile at them and stuff... But I don't really reciprocate. Get all embarrassed instead. Shame... The great inhibitor...

> Our inner children may be hiding those other qualities and in time we can integrate them.

I... Would like to think so. But to be honest... I'm thinking that my ability to dissociate consists mostly in my ability to inhibit movement. It isn't that there are inner children with those qualities (I don't think) it is rather that I don't have those qualities. Never developed them. Though... Maybe once the shame lifts... Maybe... The fact that I find something appealling about those qualities and that I do have urges to display them (but then feel the bite of shame)... Perhaps that shows me that there is some aspect of me that has those feelings that are associated with those behaviours. Just that shame is the great inhibitor... Hmm... I do think, however, that since I never got the chance to display those and have them shaped into their adult forms that there will be something childlike and... Repulsive about them. The repulsion is hard to explain. Maybe it is... The unrestrained narcissism of a two year old. Grandiosity. That is something that brings out the most shame for me. I guess my mother and / or father might have been similarly afraid of that stage and that is when shaming was used most freely? Perhaps... Worth talking to therapist about, I guess...

[Hopefull]

Shame is a very painful emotion. I have wondered about the eye contact thing too because I have noticed that the harder it is for me to express an emotion the more likely I will find that I read it (then I don't have to see T's reaction.) I have also seen shows on TV where the person doesn't want to see the person when he/she tells them some really tough stuff. I usually look at T unless I am expressing an emotion (annoyance with T) that is just plain extremely hard for me.
Firstly, different cultural groups will look into people's eyes less than others. Sometimes, refraining from making eye contact is a sign of respect while making eye contact may be seen as a challenge.
I feel more vulnerable when I talk to T. I suspect that looking into the eyes of T might make you feel more vulnerable. (I make eye contact on a more conscious level rather than sub-conscious because I don't like to make eye contact with other people.) I got teased in school and repeatedly accused of starring at people (starring at wall until person enters line vision and I continue to stare). Then he/she thinks that I am starring at them when I am hardly even percieving the outside world.
Eye contact might also deepen the connection between you and T. Maybe it helps you to distance yourself a little.
As for trusting T, that takes time. I tend to relate to certain people (men in authority over me) like they are my step-father. It takes time and a lot of effort to change ones automatic way of responding to others. It probably took you years to learn to dissocate in order to survive in your family and it will take a while to learn other ways to relate to people. I hope you hang in there and keep working at it. I am glad to hear that you can hear concern and empathy in T's voice. That sounds like progress to me. I remember the first time that I thought T cared about me. My mind played that line "____ cares about me." over and over again.

Hey Hopeful,

I think that not looking does help me distance myself a little. I have trouble regulating my emotional responses, and I think that I do try to distance myself a little in order to better regulate my emotional responses. To retain my composure. To be coherant. To be polite. To be pleasant.

I guess I worry that if I look... I will flinch. Or I will start to cry, tears silently rolling down my face. I think that if I look... I would feel intense physiological arousal. Expecting him to hit me or get angry at me or flinch from me... I get scared that if I look I'll get a strong urge to jump on his lap and throw my arms around his neck and / or to make a sexual advance and that I won't be able to stop myself.

Apparently infants turn their gaze away when they are trying to regulate their emotions towards baseline. I guess I'm trying to do the same.

Shame is a very powerful emotion. I've realised that it plays a really huge role in my life. Stops me doing things. Gets me to do things. Much of my life is driven by avoidance / fear of shame. My therapist says that I'm hypersensitive. I think he means hypersensitive to shame. To the perception of judgement or insult or disaproval. I guess I am. I don't want him to leave, you see. I don't want him to leave me :-(