[Mouse_]

I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the "parts" forum. But after T said what she said to me yesterday, I was thinking that there has to come a time when I finally allow someone "In". Why do I STILL NOT believe her when she says she likes me. When am I going to just accept it.

Then I was thinking of all the avoidence habits I have. Once upon a time it was booze, then drugs and now the %#@&#! internet. Why do I hide from what does exist for me in real life?

I remembered T saying once about the case study of a boy that had been adopted and how aged 3 he went around a room lifting all the womens skirts up. T said he was still searching for his birth mother, unconsiously.

I became aware of a 3yr old inside of me and said "ok stop it,enought already, you are never going to find your real mother and you need to accept that you've found as good as your going to get in T, stop all the obsessive habits" but then suddenly I am hit with a very, deep depression that I know I don't want to feel. All my life while I've been "searching" consiously and unconsiously, I've avoided the grief. I know until I face this my life will not change.

I'm afraid that if I let go all my habits, then the world as it is will not meet my needs. That I will be left yearning and wanting and needing for ever and ever. Then I thought about when your learnign to swim, and your holding on to the edge afraid to let go and swim. I need to do this now, I need to chance I wont' drown. But what becomes of the part that has been searching all my life? Where does that go? and will it listen to me?

Mouse I'm sorry I"m not answering your question but the bus will be coming soon, just know that I care...and I love you as a person ....

Dustin

((((MOUSE))))

Mouse, what an amazing way to capture the emptiness that so many of us struggle with. When I read your post it reminded me of my SI-- I always tell T that it isn't so much of a release as it is a part of me-- an attempt to fill the emptiness. I tell him that I can't stop because it would be like taking a part of me away. Then what will I have to hold on to?

I think it's okay to let go a a little bit and keep searching while your with T. It doesn't have to be one or the other... you don't have to let go entirely, nor do you have to stop searching/ find whatever it is you are looking for. A little bit of both can be okay, too.

[Perna]

Do it the other way; you'll be better and then you won't need the symptom-habits and they'll drop away. Trust me; had a "bad" one from when I was 2, "the" symptom that took me to therapy 1970-2005. Keep looking as long as you "can"/need to to support the little girl; it's like saying "stop crying, you have nothing to cry about" to someone who is depressed, to take it away.

[Shellbe]

one thing i found that has tremendously helped me.....
but just my opinion....

i have searched endlessly through endless people to find and replace what i probably never had. the faces became meaningless....i just wanted to hold something (for me, unconditional love, safety, etc...) that could give me what i lacked.
through years of therapy and reading, i have discovered that the "hole" inside of me can be patched, can be partially filled by others, can be somewhat mended. But i started looking on the inside for someone to heal me...looking to my own parts and strengths and my own maternal instinct...to give to me what i could not find and somehow did not get.....
in other words, i am slowly learning to comfort myself and fill that hole. I go to therapy and no doubt, she helps fill it, but it's more like she 's a model of what i have to do for myself. I understand that desire to stop looking. But it's really right inside of you. You have to slowly give yourself what you never had. It is possible.

I used to struggle with this daily. Now it is weekly. and once i accepted that no human could ever fill the void, it was a release....the hunt didn't have to be so crucial, it was inside of me. i just had to learn how to unleash it.

alot of words, i know, when you are hurting.
i know how you feel..............

Oh yes!! I totally agree with you Shellbe, very well said.


mandy

[Mouse_]

Shellbe, Yeah I know that....I know that at the end of the day its going to be me...I've known that since I started therapy..but with the added dimension of truely missing a humanbeing its just a bit tougher...I'm not sure are you saying your an adoptee also?...all the stuff I lacked from my adoptive mother is quite acceptable on one level to me...but to be frustrated with never ever having met the woman that created me..well thats a big hole...and one I need to learn how to mourn and let go....which is so much easier for me to say than do...I wish there was a pill I could just take that reduced the amount of yearning I have for her LOL!...I'll take 3xdaily after the meals...