How?

((((((((((((Rap))))))))))))))

I wandered in again... and found your thread. Struggling with a similar issue with T, and just wanting to sympathize. I kinda wish you were online still.

Good luck to you. And thanks for these: </font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
1. The capacity to experience a wide range of feelings deeply.
2. The capacity to expect appropriate entitlements.
3. The capacity for self-activation and assertion.
4. Acknowledgment of self-esteem.
5. The ability to soothe painful feelings.
6. The ability to make and stick to commitments.
7. Creativity (I have to comment here, that I can be pretty creative, but he means the ability to replace old, familiar patterns of living and problem-solving with new and equally or more successful ones. I don't do this well).
8. Intimacy - the capacity to express the real self fully and honestly in a close relationship with another person with minimal anxiety about abandonment or engulfment.
9. The ability to be alone.
10. Continuity of self (one of my biggest struggles).

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

Gives me something to think about....


A

Aaaaargh. Now I'm trying to figure out where I was before I shut down and went into work mode, because tomorrow is therapy, and I need to know where I am. Two weeks is way too long. It's hard to remember, let alone to start feeling something again. I think T said last time that most people carry on a conversation, and when they return for another session they pick up where they left off and continue the conversation. I'm pretty foggy about what the conversation was about.

I can remember a little of it. I remember what I cried about two weeks ago. That's at least something, right? I cried because T said that I can't replace my family - I will never have the parents and siblings that I wanted. I keep trying to adopt people to fill those roles, and it will never work. We don't share the history of growing up together, and we never will. My family is never going to be what I wanted them to be. Even cousins and relatives that I either lost when my family moved away from them when I was 11, or relatives I didn't know I had until I grew up are not going to replace my family. I have a cousin who lives about 5 miles up the highway from where I am now, and I haven't called her, and I have been here almost a year now. I have a great-uncle who lives somewhere in the same area where I am. Contacting these people will not solve anything. They will not be my sister or my grandfather, and I would have unrealistic expectations of them and would reject them for not being what I want them to be, or I would be jealous because I think that they had the relationships that I wanted. It won't work. T said not to contact them. I don't have a relationship with them. My family might come here, to my cousin who lives just North of me's place, for a family reunion next summer. At least they are talking about it. They haven't ever followed through with anything like that before, so maybe it's an empty promise. How can I not get involved with that? But if I do get involved, how damaged would I be when they don't come? My father didn't even come to my wedding, and my mother would not have come to that if her parents hadn't dragged her along. My grandparents are gone now. What is left?

When T said that I will never have the family that I wanted, I tried to change the subject. I would have avoided feeling anything. T told me that I changed the subject and asked if I was going to respond to that. Tears started leaking out and kept coming slowly for the rest of the session. In three years, that was the first time that I cried in front of her.

Sky, please tell me how to recognize safe people IRL? There are a few that I think are safe, but I don't know how long they will stay around. Nobody ever stays in my life. If they don't disappear, I do. There are others that I thought were safe, and then they hurt me, and I closed myself off from them. I don't show it when I am hurt. I just shut down. Sometimes it takes me a while to realize that I am hurt, and sometimes I get hurt over and over before I even realize it, and sometimes they think I must be pretending to be hurt, because I didn't say anything before. Or is it me who thinks I must be pretending? Either way, I don't know if I can be vulnerable again. I'm tired of being hurt. But I'm tired of being alone too, even when I'm not really alone. I'm a porcupine. I don't let anyone get too close. I can risk more online because there is still enough distance to be safe.

((((((((((((( hugs ))))))))))))))))))

Thanks for reading, and for sympathizing, and for listening and giving me advice.

Love,
Rap

How did it go today, Rap? I read this earlier and was thinking about you all day. Hope it went ok

Not too bad. We continued the conversation as above, or repeated it. I have opposing goals. I escaped from my family of origen because I could not survive in that system, and then I won't let go of it. I try to replace it, or think I can fix it, or hope I can find someone who is connected to my family and more functional, etc. But I'm like them too, and I resist changing. I want to change, but I just can't do it all at once. It is all a tangled up mess.

And I didn't really feel much. I was sad, a little bit, and probably scared. When T asked what I was feeling, I felt like I was mostly guessing. None of this is really new, but it is overwhelming, and I don't have a lot of hope for finding solutions or changing. It's all too tangled up and I don't know what to do with it so I just shut it off and ignore it. It's hard to start paying attention to it, especially the part about feeling.

*** The next paragraph may trigger ***

And what do I really have to complain about? My family didn't do drugs or illegal activity or physical or sexual abuse (with one exception, but I wasn't involved or even around - it was long after my escape). How could this system really be responsible for a suicide and so many wasted lives?

because, hon, when it sucks, it really sucks. we can't compare to other's fams. it sucked for you - you needed to escape. now you need the fam you didn't get. but you can't replace it. it is tangled, and sticky... and it sucks. we have to learn to be our own fam - our own mom and dad and siblings.... i have been working with the book Growing Up Again. it's good stuff.

((((((((((((((((((((((hugs)))))))))))))))))))))))
kiya

((((( Kiya ))))))

Thanks. I looked up that book, and I'm ordering it. Sounds like something I need. And thanks for understanding, and I'm sorry that you didn't get what you needed either. I wonder if anyone did grow up getting their needs met sometimes.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
And what do I really have to complain about? My family didn't do drugs or illegal activity or physical or sexual abuse (with one exception, but I wasn't involved or even around - it was long after my escape). How could this system really be responsible for a suicide and so many wasted lives?

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

Something you needed then was lacking though, it seems. A dysfunctional family can appear to be an ideal family ... from the outside; but from the inside it can be a sad and very lonely place.

I think it's completely impossible to have ALL our needs met. Everyone alive has gone without something they really needed at some time, and that's hard. But there is a "good enough" experience you can have growing up, and some people do get that. Some people get most of their needs met, most of the time. That wasn't the case for you (or probably most of us here).

It's okay to grieve over that. It's ok to wish you had it. At a certain point, though, we just destroy ourselves if we don't decide to accept it and work with what we DO have. We can spend the rest of our lives trying to replace it, but will always find it's like putting water in a cup full of holes. As I understand it, when we reach a point where we accept what life handed us... then, we can take what's being offered and make more of it- instead of thinking we can get what wasn't offered 20 years ago.

Easier said than done, imho.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
And what do I really have to complain about? My family didn't do drugs or illegal activity or physical or sexual abuse

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

I think this is an obstacle you trip over a lot- comparing yourself to other people. You do it in two ways. Either you believe that someone has some ideal that you wish you had, and you become very jealous and depressed because you think they have something you don't. (Which really may or may not be the case... For example, with my sisters, it definitely isn't all you think it is). Or, you see that some people had certain difficult experiences in childhood that you didn't have, and you therefore minimize the pain that you experienced and the things you did go through.

We all have our own crosses to bear, and your life has not been easy for you. It doesn't matter if it was harder than someone else's, or easier than someone else's in your mind. There's no way you can ever guage that. What matters is that it was/is hard for you. You were hurt, regardless of how much or how little others may have been hurt. You were damaged, regardless of how others were or weren't damaged. You are left to figure out what to do with it now. That's what counts. Nobody else has the same struggles, nor the same strengths or resources. Let your measure be between you and you, nobody else.

You can do it, Rap.

Yep - my fam looked perfect from the outside - and i never could understand why ppl couldn't see what i was telling them. They'd just pat me on the shoulder and go away. "Teenaged angst" they called it.. Until my dad had blow ups at church or other functions. Suddenly they got it and sided with me, but that wasn't until i was nearly a legal adult. Now there's several people who tell me if they lay eyes on him, they're likely to harm him. Which is nice - they care from a distance. But it will never give me back a dad. He died to me when i was 10. Probably before, but that's when i gave up on him. a person can only kick a dog so many times before it hates that person. the weird thing is now, why do i feel guilty for hating him? how can he act so pathetic and wonder why i don't speak to him? how can he not know what he did? aside from the things that made me an adult far too young, he doesn't even remember the every day stuff - yelling, fighting, being emotionally abusive, kicking my pets, putting down everyone including his mom and making her cry. he thinks he's the best guy in the world, and a better parent. I just don't get it.

My family looked so perfect from the outside. Even to some within the family. My father commented recently on how loving my mother is. He thinks that controlling and nagging and running people's lives for them is loving. I wanted to throw up when he said that.

Comparisons don't work either. I will always either get jealous of what i don't have, or feel guilty for wanting more when there are people worse off than me. Either way, I lose.

I'm not doing well today. Just hoping to make it through 3 days of work this week, and then take it from there. I need to lose myself in something, somewhere, and take a break from my life.

Hang in there Rap - you'll get through. One day at a time, k?
kiya