Dear Seaturtle:

You are very welcome! “I haven’t heard the term ‘Hatch’ before”- it’s not a term (lol), it’s short for hatchling which means a baby turtle, When I say Hatch, I am referring to your inner child, as in Sea turtle (your screen name) being the adult part of you, and Hatchling being the child-part of you.

“I do feel like I am split in two“- join the adult part and the child part and you will be united as one: never have Hatch too far from your awareness. She needs your attention on a regular basis.. just like a real-life child needs regular attention from a parent.

I wrote: “Hatch keeps seeing her father in men and.. she keeps running away, or wanting to run away (from her father)… seeing her father in N“, and your response: “Yes! I was doing this consciously… Exactly.. I am trying to overcome this association between N and my Father“.

I wrote: “Hatch- for whom there is no distinction between past and present, is still living in her father’s house, still distressed, still wanting to run away“, and your response: “Wow, this spoke deeply to me. Could this be why I feel so exhausted all the time?“-

– Yes, it’s exhausting to keep (preparing for) running away because the hormones released when your brain is preparing to run away (hormones that increase heart rate etc.) cause physical exhaustion.. without actually running.

“I agree with your assessment of his use of the word ‘excuse’ not being abusive…  It just makes Hatch angry/insecure…When triggered I still believe Hatch sometimes and simultaneously want to argue it, like my adult-self/ME is buried so deep I can barely hear her anymore”-

– back to the point of being split into two vs being united as one: neither part needs to be buried while the other takes over. The two parts need to hear each other. When you get triggered, Hatch gets to be heard and she says: I am angry! I feel insecure! The adult part then looks at N as the cause.. while he is not. Do believe Hatch… but know that Hatch feels the way she feels based on her life-experience way before N ever appeared in your life.

I suggested redirecting your anger to whom it belongs, and you responded: “visualizing my father and directing anger to him?“- I don’t know if you can do it on your own. I tend to think that you will need the professional help of a quality psychotherapist to redirect your anger and then resolve it. And I am not a psychotherapist.

“In the end I want to be able to get rid of that anger all together”- You are already trying to get rid of your anger by referring to it not as this anger, but as that anger, as in the anger over there.

“In the end I want to be able to get rid of that anger all together, rather than just redirect it. Is redirecting it first then I will need to resolve that with him?“-

– This anger, your anger needs to be heard before it’s resolved. Every emotion and physical sensation has a message: thirst= I need to drink; hunger= I need to eat, tired=I need to rest; scared=I need protection/ comfort; angry= I am being threatened and I am preparing to fight against the threat. Question is.. who and what is threatening you: is it N or is it your father? (Remember, for Hatch the Past is the Present; the Present is the Past).

I wrote that the adult part of you can make Hatch feel seen, and you responded: “This is freeing in a sense for sure. however there are people in my life who do make me feel seen, why is this? My mom, sisters and two close friends (sometimes random acquaintances) make me feel seen when I cannot see myself, is it wrong to want this from  a partner? Or is there a reason that I don’t feel seen by him as I do others?” (the boldface in this quote is your addition)-

– I assume (and correct me if I am wrong) that you don’t always feel seen by others and that when you don’t feel seen by them it doesn’t trigger/ distress you enough to notice or overthink it, but when you feel unseen by N, it triggers/ distresses you a lot because it awakens Hatch’s hurt and anger. Hatch is trying to resolve her UNSEEN experience through N, so she’s very sensitive to what he says, what he does..

“My heart can’t imagine not having contact, but I can’t tell if that’s cause I feel bad for him or myself. It gives me a big sense of loneliness to avoid him. What are some techniques to hear hatch?.. Do you know of techniques, a book..?” – there are plenty of books and workbooks about hearing and communicating with the inner child. The late John Bradshaw authored such books (Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing your Inner Child). There are other authors, plenty of literature on the topic, enter “healing the inner child” into a search engine and plenty will appear.

“Is Hatch ever able to have a sense of time, past versus present? Is the goal to raise hatchling into an adult as to be in one mind? Or are we meant to have these two parts of us..?“-

-Hatch will always be a hatchling, this is why every old person still feels like a child from time to time (exclaiming something like: I can’t believe I am this old?!). The goal is not to raise Hatch, as in to no longer have an inner-child, but to get along with her, to give her the empathetic attention that she needs. These two parts (adult and inner-child need to co-exist in harmony.

“and are there more than hatchling and adult?“- some authors added inner parent to the mix. I am good with inner child and adult (the adult should parent the inner child).

“Wow this makes me feel terrible that I did this to her. Does this make hatch angry? Is there a way to willingly bring her to such family events I don’t want to miss and will inevitably interact with my dad? This visual makes me want to care for her so badly”- these are questions to ask Hatch. I am glad you want to care for her!

“So if it is hatch that cannot distinguish where to direct her anger, Adult can help her?”- like any real-life child, Hatch is afraid to direct anger at her father, afraid of his anger in return, afraid of what (in her mind) this big, powerful man will do to her when angry. She wants to please him, so that he’d be nice to her.

The adult part of you needs to communicate to her that you (this big-enough, powerful-enough young woman) can handle her father’s anger, that you can and will protect her.

“I was proud of myself for ‘forgiving’ both of my parents, was this in fact not forgiveness and just telling Hatch to be quiet?“- if forgiving=telling Hatch to be quiet, then your forgiving efforts need to be adjusted/ postponed.

“One of the reasons I wanted to choose this ‘forgiveness’ is because I did not want to hold a grudge on my parents, I wanted to love them and feel loved by them”- understandable: love feels so much better than anger.

“Will directing this anger back to my dad make me resentful and harden my heart?“- it will do the opposite: it will soften your heart and release or resolve your existing anger. But, like I wrote earlier in this post, I tend to think that you will need the help of a quality professional therapist to do this.

It is easy to type the words “directing this anger back to my dad” (congrats for referring to your anger as this anger vs that anger!), but it is not at all easy to do, and if you rush to do it, unprepared, it can backfire and hurt you instead of helping you.

“I wonder the difference between parents just being human and then seriously messing up enough to deserve their child turning their back on them”- focus on what Hatch deserves.

You wrote earlier yesterday: “I deny my own trauma even now, I don’t believe it was as bad as I think it was.. I see people growing in way worse situations then me and think I was blessed, but then I self destruct in my relationship and have crippling anxiety and start to believe I did actually go through something difficult”-

– there is a saying, the proof is in the pudding, which to me means that if you exited your real-life childhood with crippling anxiety, and you self-destruct, then your childhood was not a blessing, but a bad enough situation, bad enough to not deny, but to address. It’s not only broken bones and physical starvation that constitute a bad or traumatic childhood.. children are so very sensitive, they can’t help it: a parent’s repeated uncontrolled anger- even it is expressed in facial features and tone of voice alone- is enough to traumatize a child.

“My partner has told me he admires how I forgive my parents and can have a friendship with them after all that has been done. He doesn’t understand why his sister of 32 years old won’t speak to her parents at all. She tells N they traumatized her in more ways than one.. I.. fear it will distance me from N because I think his hatchling is purposely kept at 5% volume level“-

– Focus on increasing the volume level of Hatch’s Voice: hear her words, listen to her; take her side no matter what, no matter if N or your father agree or disagree. If the price for you (the adult part) to  pay for getting close to .. you (the child part) is distancing yourself from N.. then it will be a price worth paying.

anita