Dear Seaturtle and hatchling:

You are welcome and thank you for your appreciation and kind words!

“He complimented my physic, I will never forget him commenting how fit I looked in the ‘love-handle’ area while at the beach in Hawaii, I remember feeling odd about it but also satisfied that he was proud“- there was a touch of incest, covert incest, in his comment. So, you felt odd about it, a mix of odd and proud.

“Is the solution here also emotion regulation skills?”- practicing emotion regulations skills regularly makes it possible to come up with effective solutions to real-life problems. In other words, you have to lower your stress level regularly and feel confident in your ability to do so, in order to think clearly throughout the steps it takes to solve problems effectively.

“What type of therapy would you recommend?“- the type I had in 2011-13: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with a strong touch of Mindfulness.

(I am the one adding the boldface feature to the following quotes selectively):

“N is not aware that being at his parents house caused him to feel the same as when he was a child… I actually asked him this morning, how he has felt since the trip or reflected on how he felt back at his parents, and he just said ‘I enjoyed it and didn’t feel badly there this time..‘”- he said this time, meaning that at other times he felt badly… If that’s what he meant (without necessarily meaning to express it to you), then he is aware of feeling badly when in his parents’ home.

It may be that he told you that he didn’t feel badly this time because he didn’t want to talk about it yesterday’s morning.

“As I am really putting effort into how I feel and why, I have this feeling like he is not on that same path and I have a desire for him to be on it too. I want him to be aware of his feelings on that torn up path… I can’t help but crave the same self awareness“-

– it is unrealistic and unfair, really, to expect the same awareness from a person who had a different childhood from yours. Something about your childhood was positive enough to make it possible for you to have the level of awareness that you do today. Maybe he wasn’t that.. fortunate.

“My rational self, outside of the feeling, can see that he didn’t do anything wrong in the game situation…  a part of me, I am assuming hatchling, who still believes he can be nice enough to heal me”-

– Sea turtle (the adult part of you) thinks rationally, and hatchling (the young child part of you) feels and believes. CBT is effective when it comes to challenging the inner child’s emotion-led thoughts (aka emotional reasoning) and leading her into believing what is objectively true vs what she feels is true. Over time, hatchling will believe what is objectively true.

Sometimes what you believe to be true, really is objectively true; sometimes it isn’t.

“When I am in the emotion I can see it overpowering me, I can’t escape it cause I don’t yet have the tools, but I find myself searching for tools when I am in the emotion. I realize there is a lack of emotional regulation skills”- emotion regulation skills and Mindfulness skills (related terms) are the tools that you need.

“I am circling back to this, you mentioned much earlier in your last post, but it stuck with me. When you used the analogy of a fawn and her mother and abandonment = death, it got me wondering where exactly this fear of abandonment is from. These are my two hypotheses: My dad did was not really ever emotionally there. But as far as physical abandonment, he did move out… My mom was emotionally in and out…  she would get extra affectionate. But her wine self is almost like an inauthentic affection feeling .. Then when I moved out with my dad, I left her, so she didn’t abandon me?”-

– A fawn needs her mother’s physical presence and her mother to feed and protect her. Children need so much more than food and physical protection.. Children need predictable affection, approval, and gentle and clear guidance. And more. Because a child needs so much more than a fawn, and because people use elaborate languages (which makes life way more complex), there are many more ways to abandon a child than there are to abandon a fawn.

“I often felt free-er with my mom, but safer with my dad“- I didn’t know that you feel safer with your father… Would you like to elaborate on this sentence, the whole sentence?

“Are the messages sort of like realizations of the true reason hatchling is afraid…?”- the messages behind our physical sensations and emotions are simple, not at all complicated, ex., these: hunger=> need to eat; thirst=> need to drink; tired=> need to rest; scared=> need to run away or hide or fight; angry=> need to fight.

Here is what makes it complicated: when a child goes through a scary childhood, the child adapts to it so to minimize the stress level. We adapt by figuratively closing our eyes to what scares us/ minimizing awareness. Fast forward, as adults, our eyes are still closed and our awareness- blocked to one extent or another, often significantly.

anita