more on fantasies

Just a short question.

Does talking about your fantasies lessen their intensity or make them disappear?

That was my fear when I shared the Little Girl fantasy with T. I think I actually said I didn't want her to take it away or make it go away. She assured me she wouldn't do that. .. But it seems as if it isn't there quite as much or with as much intensity. I feel sad about that.

Maybe it served it's purpose when I spoke about it?

Does this happen with you if you share fantasy with your T?

I think that it depends. Sometimes talking about something can mean that you think about it more... I guess the idea is that if you talk about it and that goes okay then you won't feel so embarrassed / ashamed / distressed when you are thinking about it, though. I often think that most of the power of fantasies is in the embarrassed / ashamed / distressed feelings that we have around them. If we don't feel that way about them then often the fantasies tend to lessen in frequency. (Kind of like how if you keep telling yourself 'I'm NOT going to think about oranges, I'm NOT going to think about oranges) then precisely in virtue of trying not to.... YOu find yourself thinking about oranges. Whereas if you don't care whether you are thinking about oranges or not... Then you hardly ever think about oranges lol.

Another aspect is that sometimes the longings / desires / what we get out of our fantasies... Is something that can be quite hard to figure. If we can figure what need / desire / longing the fantasy serves... If we can trace the origins of that need / desire / longing and see it as an understandable response (so we aren't distressed by it) then sometimes we can figure alternative ways of meeting those needs. Maybe there are things we can do to get them better met IRL (with the relationships we do have) or maybe... The longings simply won't seem so powerful as we understand their origins.

Dunno, though. Sometimes I think... That I need to grieve.

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Dunno, though. Sometimes I think... That I need to grieve.

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I like that...Yes it could very well be that too. I am trying to avoid having to grieve by having the fantasy and wanting to hang on to it. The fantasy as a defense.

defenses aren't to be sneezed at... often the initial phases of therapy (which can last like four years or whatever) are about building trust and about... building defenses. use of fantasy can be a healthy defence. so long as it really isn't interfearing with your life to the extent that you aren't doing things that you need to do fantasy is a pretty healthy defence really.

i have fantasies of my therapist holding me and rocking me. i guess that in my fantasy i'm really quite small. 6 months old or something like that... i fantasise about it... and sometimes i feel this really painful longing for something that never can be. but at the same time i find the fantasy strangely comforting... kind of painful but good at the same time. weird... its a way of dealing, i guess. i feel faintly comforted that he is there... in my fantasy, i mean. feel kinda merged and safe. i don't feel so alone. i think i keep thinking about it because i need to feel the feelings. it would be so much more painful if i really properly remembered the longings that i felt when i was a child... the fantasy helps make the feeling manageable. a kind of lesser version of it that i can cope with.

coping is good.

a kind of self-soothing, i guess.

i've actually heard from somewhere... that a 'diminished fantasy life' can lead to problems. that... healthy people have a diverse fantasy life and they use that as a coping strategy. maybe the problem isnt' that you fantasise too much... maybe the problem (insofar as their is one) is that you are stuck on a particular kind of experience that you need to process... such that you keep thinking it over and over... it will change eventually. i guess the repetition of it is your mind showing you that you need to figure it out. once you have... and have processed it some... it should pass (or have less grip) yeah.

My T shared with me that as I got/get better I wouldn't "need" the same fantasies/symptoms, interests, etc. and they'd go away but that other things would take their place and while it would be sad and I'd miss them, it would be moving on and other things would replace them so I wouldn't really "want" them, just the memory of them.

Think about when you're a kid and have things you love and think you'll never let go of and you outgrow them. I'm still trying to figure out what happened to running into the water right when you get to the beach :-) I thought the adults were crazy to want to lay on the sand instead.

thats cool perna.

maybe... my fantasies will progress... so i'll be a toddler... then a teenager... then an adult... then i'll have a chance of meeting them in the real world :-)

i hope so :-)

This is an off-the-wall question but did you ever climb up on your dresser in your bedroom when you were a kid and look at the world from there? :-) It's kind of the reverse of going back to your first grade classroom as an adult and realizing the chairs and everything that "fit" when you were that age are way too small now. Perspective changes in "reality" as one grows so there's no reason it should change in fantasy? Nothing can stay the "same" -- look at "Pleasantville"? :-)

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Perna said:
This is an off-the-wall question but did you ever climb up on your dresser in your bedroom when you were a kid and look at the world from there? :-)

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OMG I can't believe you asked this-- This is a memory I just shared with T a couple of weeks ago! Only mine sort of turned into a fiasco and I never did get to check out the world from the top of the dresser. Um, I was a weird kid and decided to try to get into one of the drawers rather than the top of the dresser. And I had a goldfish in a bowl on top of the dresser. So when I attempted to climb into one of the drawers, the dresser sort of began to tip over and the goldfish bowl sort of fell onto the floor and the goldfish was kind of on my carpet. My mom put the fish back in the bowl; he made it. She asked, "What happened?!" My answer, of course-- "I don't know!"

Sorry Echoes, that this really didn't have anything to do with your original question. I intend to answer that once I put a little more thought into it.