[Omers]

I haven’t posted in a while because things have been strange and wordless but overall OK.
Awesome T is still awesome. I brought pictures with me to T of myself at various ages, one of my mother and I, and one of a great aunt and I. We spent a whole session on the picture of me, under 2 years old, on my mother’s lap. It is a large portrait of us and professionally framed. I remember it hanging up in the houses I grew up in. T couldn’t stop staring at it, he admitted he had never seen anything like it. I am on my mother’s lap but for all practice purposes we are not touching. Both our faces are devoid of feeling... unless perhaps that is what despair looks like... and it is, I believe, an 11x14” professional photo. All T kept saying was that he had never seen anything like it. The word “never” seemed to quiver with an odd tone. Last week I brought more pictures and told T about how I was reacting to my life at those ages and how the trauma had impacted the child in each of the pictures... even the seemingly normal one. We did not discuss the specifics of the trauma much but more the feelings and reactions I had to it at various stages in my development.
H wants to know when I will do “actual WORK” with T as he called it. I don’t know what to say to him. H wants to help but the more he tries the more he ends up reenacting my mother... I am really starting to believe I married my mother. But, H is too hung up on trying not to be one of my abusers to be able to hear what I need or what he is reenacting. H is angry that I am “gone all day” the day I see T and even more upset that I usually stay in my room the day after T (those two days are our “weekends”). But I usually stay away from H the day after T because he is either very triggering, angry or picking a fight.
Today I am sad, tired and worn out. I can hear T asking again and again “what do you need?”, “tell me how I can make this a safe place for you”. I think it is my struggle to deal with 5th grade me... the farthest one from who I am now. The “part” who above all others still does not trust T or wish to engage him. Next week T and I will either work on how to reach 5th grade me or why none of the pictures I showed him are a trigger for me and which picture is. The trigger picture is relatively current, I was dressed up for a date with H. H is angry that I find that picture triggering as it is one of his favorites of me. But then H doesn’t understand why I wear as many baggy layers of frumpy clothes as I can to T right now. H keeps wanting me to dress up for T and let T see how attractive I can be. *sigh*.

[Out There]

I'm resonating with you , my last session was trying to reach a young me too. And the part that doesn't want to trust or engage T , I so get that. It's hard work isn't it ?! Hugs