Dear DH:

You wrote above: “I know where the source of that hurt comes from and have already come to terms with it.” On a certain level you know and have come to terms with it… on a certain level. There are other levels you are yet to know and yet to come to terms with.

There are millions of connections between brain cells every day, many of those have been there for a while. When you learn a trivial fact, something about bees, for example, a new connection is made in your brain. It doesn’t unsettle connections already there. When you know now what you know about the effect of past bullying on you, that knowledge is worth an X number of connections (between nerve cells in the brain). When you heal, in the context of good psychotherapy, or otherwise, new connections are being made. But unlike trivial knowledge kinds of connections, these connections unsettle previous connections already there.

So new stuff is brought up in therapy, and as time and work proceeds, old connections are being undone and new connections made and a certain… re-making of the brain, connection wise, is being made. As this happens, you get to “know” on different levels you didn’t know before.

I think what you meant above, about feeling sorry for yourself, is that you don’t want to feel sorry for yourself, that you look down at feeling sorry for oneself and that is the part that turns you off about giving the child room to express himself. Is that correct?

anita