Couch 245: STELLA!

I truly think I'll be a "good enough" parent. I have extensively talked with 3 therapists and my ex-pdoc about it, and all agreed I was ready. Being in the middle of childhood trauma work isn't ideal, but when is ideal? I will have year of working on it. But I think that's the best part: I'm working on it. I'm getting to know my young parts and identifying what she needs and wants. And I will continue working on myself and also working in therapy when anything anything arises with having a child.

I also have some experiences that will help. I was raised in my mom's preschool. I helped with all ages of children. I also have my experiences with my 2 nephews and 3 nieces. That will help me with the logistical part of raising a child. And lastly, and I know it's not the same, I have experiences raising all 7 of my dogs. And each one I gotten better and better meeting their needs at different stages of their lives.

Bit again, I think the main thing is that I AM actively working on my issues, and will continue to do so.

I hope the blackout lifts soon

I think most people should not be parents.
Wanting a child doesn't make people qualified to do the job well. Wanting a child to me is just the very starting place. If one has a child simply because one wants one without looking at a bunch of other factors (including one's support system and, as one example, if one doesn't have a good support system and if one tends to fall apart at the least little thing -all the want in the world is not going to help raise a happy healthy child) surrounding it, seems to me to be a most selfish act. It seems that, to me, most people want to be parents either because they are trying to fix themselves or because society says married straight people should have them. Most parents, in my opinion, are well intentioned and yet we see how well that turns out. Just more little fodders to grow up and hand money to therapists to complain about their parents and keep the therapist employed.

I never had much of an urge to be a parent and I never wanted to be the one who actually gave birth under any circumstances.

Hugs if wanted, LT.

Y'know, this rings familiar to me "childhood issues that I hadn't resolved resurfaced when I became a mother." except for me it was after my son was a little older like preschool age, like when he started really becoming a person with his own opinions maybe? cuz I wasn't really allowed to think anything different than i was told when I was growing up maybe? not sure, but that was around the time depression started affecting me and my gp put me on prozac. And that worked until it didn't anymore, and the depression came back full-force, I had a messy breakdown while working one day, and I went to pdoc and got changed to Zoloft and then finally went back to therapy and started working on those childhood issues.

I wish I'd worked on my issues too, before becoming a mom. I might have been a better parent to my son.

eta after seeing other posts: I used to babysit when I was in high school, taught swimming lessons to gradeschool-aged kids, etc and I always enjoyed working with kids; it just felt natural to me wanting to be a mom. Regardless of who I ended up with - alone, with a woman or man. I just wanted to be a mom. I think I mean i KNOW parental/religious/societal pressures at the time kinda made the decision for me to marry h before i got pregnant. There was a big part of me back in 1988-ish well before i ever met h, that was trying to figure out how to just do it on my own without a partner at all - as I watched a couple single friends at the time have children - but I knew how hard it would be, also, seeing their experiences - and wasn't ready to be disowned by my parents for being an unwed mother - so I never pursued it.

What astonishes me is how unaware i was of having been put on this path of no interaction with mothers or children. I never babysat (except once, disastrously - no one was harmed, but i lied to the parents), never changed a diaper, even though there were plenty of babies around. Only got to hold newborns for a few seconds. It was always, go read a book.

Scarlet, i was gonna say that your dogs was good experience! I am mortified, 45 years later, at how little and how poorly i interacted with the kitten my h surprised me with.

I babysat a lot and I even worked at a couple of daycare centers while I was in college and Law School. The children seemed to like me well enough. They would run and grab and hug me and cling on me and drool on me and so forth. I even like babies – I'm not so keen on when they start talking but baby to about three I think it's good. But it didn't make me think I should be a parent. I've known too many people who've had babies to fix what they thought were their parents' bad parenting (not necessarily consciously) and who did just as bad a job with their own kids -again through no ill intention. Now granted, it was often a different bad job

Now that I'm thinking about it babysitting served several purposes for me - of course like I said I enjoy working with kids, but also, I was socially awkward so didn't date, I had friends I would sometimes hang out with but not like every week or anything so babysitting was also a way for me to be out of the house - and I had regulars that I babysat for every friday and saturday night, then sometimes on sunday afternoons for the people who lived behind us. I didn't so much like babysitting for that last family though cuz they paid less than everybody else and also expected me to fold laundry and stuff where nobody else did.

As far as wanting to be a mom - maybe subconsciously there was something in there too that I wanted the chance to do better than my parents did??

I need a 3-day weekend every week haha! I'm feeling very relaxed and rejuvenated right now. I took Thursday off cuz they offered VTO (voluntary, unpaid time off). I had to use 40 hours of paid vacation time while I was in the hospital last month, so my vacation time is currently depleted and I have to save what i'll be earning now so I'll have enough for my trip to visit our son in September.

The last two nights, H and I went out to dinner with H's work. That was the hardest socializing I've had to do in a long time. But I did it! And I'm proud of myself. H and I felt so out of place! They were all extremely nice and welcoming, but we clearly didn't fit in. They were all beautiful, in shape, and rich. They talked about botox and fillers and superstitions about celebrities. All of them drank. I really liked them, but I was so anxious. I did my best to talk and to engage. I did my wifely duties.

Well done Scarlet.

I'm sorry you felt uncomfortable though.

Something very strange is happening today and I'm not sure what to make of it. Earlier when we were on our family zoom call (myself, mom & brother) my mom mentioned that (trigger for weight talk) but the weird thing is what her comment has done to my head - it's always felt to me like the only time she ever approves of me is when this particular thing is occurring and now, instead of just feeling encouraged that someone noticed, I've got the munchies and I just want to eat everything in the house!! I'm not going to. I'm focusing on work this afternoon and as soon as I get off work in about 30 minutes I'm going to open up a word doc and get to thinkwriting about why this is! I'm waiting on a slow work program right now so figured I'm jump in here for a minute while it loads.

Gee, does anyone ever get healed enough to where this **** stops happening? I wonder.

Artie - yeah what IS that about?! I think with my mom, it was her way of not letting me rest. Of letting me know love was conditional and i was no where close to meeting those conditions. That she made this decision before i was born and was never going to change her mind. So.

So its not just a matter of, gee im going over my calorie alloc for the day. Its - this feels like a survival issue. And if i eat, then i will survive.

I have been having such a sense of peace this weekend, of nobody rushing me, of nobody criticizing me. Of peacefully enjoying fruit and coffee in the morning, and then thats enough.

Thank you! I feel really good about it especially now that I got through it. A little part of me is hoping there's a "next time". And maybe something I'd feel comfortable participating in besides a meal. They were at a Casino so we didn't feel comfortable swimming with them or gambling with them.

Speaking of casinos, h just left for a delivery to a hospital in Vegas, so he's going to spend tonight and tomorrow night in Laughlin which is about 90 minutes south of Vegas, at his favorite casino there. They sent him a flier with 2 free nights in July, so he's using them on the last 2 nights of the month haha. So, that means I have the house to myself (well, me and the cats) til he gets home Tuesday afternoon! woohoo!

Okay now it's time for me to go write and figure out why I want to eat everything rn. That self-awareness is good though, the recognizing that it's in my head and not actual hunger...

I'm glad you're having a peaceful weekend.

What I bolded - I've already started figuring it out. Of course, it has something to do with my codependency thing, it almost has to, right? And omg this is convoluted but here goes:

It’s about her seeing me. I don’t want her to look at me. I’ve almost never been enough for her in the past, so it's gotta be fake when she acts like I am. It's about me thinking something along the lines of "just go back to the expected acting like I’m not good enough which will happen soon enough again anyway and look at C (my brother) again. Let him dominate this call like he usually does and everybody stop looking at me."

Maybe I am still broken . SO glad I have my CoDA meeting in about an hour, I may have to talk about this a little when it's time to share. Eh, I'm going for a walk til meeting time.

Artie - just to ascertain. What you originally wrote got me asking MYSELF yeah wth was that. It just really resonated with me. I wasnt asking YOU. More like i was sharing the question with you?

Ya know, i only took the ozempic for 2 weeks, but it was like opening the door to shangri-la - i had never before known a world where i was. Not. Hungry. There was a different state of being available to me. I want to go back to that world. But without all the weird stomach beeps and boops. Geez it took me 6 months to get my pooping back to normal.

It doesn’t stop happening—you just get better at managing your reactions.

I think personally excess weight is linked to not feeling safe. Eating is just comforting and something we learn as babies. You were triggered, it makes sense that you would get the munchies. I think what you also shared in your last post is also relevant to this. That she also didn't approve of your relationship with first girlfriend.

Hope you can write things out, but I agree with @@, you learn to cope better.

Have you worked with a dietician before to target weightloss? They can help you find a way to eat better minus the hunger.

I am really struggling with my work around childhood sexual abuse. It is painful working with the brutality of what my life was like back then (even without digging into the specifics during sessions) but then the additional layer of the relational stuff between me and her feels dreadful. It's humiliating to want to matter to her, to want to ask her if I matter. On one level, I recognise it as a natural human need (and thank god that hasn't been totally knocked out of me), but I also feel degraded. I am already splayed open and then needing to ask if she cares about what she sees is nauseating. Maybe I will start a separate thread about this.

it's all good, i got that, but responding here seems to really get my thinking going so i did

that's a good point, thanks. another thing to add to my list of 'things artie just needs to accept'. I am getting a little better at managing my reactions anyway, at least as far as this time, I noticed it was happening and didn't go into the mindless eating like i would have in the past. I noticed and did what L would have suggested - wrote, went for a walk, & shared about it in my coda meeting last night. I made it through the day/night without lapsing into the old behavior.

RIP Peewee Herman and Sinead O'Connor

Two names you would not expect to hear in the same sentence... I'd heard about Sinead (and felt sad about it) but hadn't heard about Peewee. I didn't realize he was as old as he was.

Had my first appointment with my new PCP today who is female, first time I have ever had a female PCP. For most of my life I have had a male PCP and a female Therapist now it is opposite, female PCP and male Therapist.