Dear Rachel:

Regarding your second post, the therapist you saw when you were 20, the intern, vs the therapist you’ve seen for 2.5 years: reads to me that the intern felt comfortable with you and genuinely liked you and that made it possible for you to feel comfortable and safe with him. The current therapist at times didn’t feel comfortable with you and you noticed it, and she doesn’t like you like the intern did, and you noticed that too. Therefore you feel uncomfortable and unsafe with her.

Here is the evidence that you noticed she is uncomfortable with you: “Sometimes I feel I scare her with the things I’ve talked about”.

Here is the evidence that you noticed she doesn’t like you: “For a long time I didn’t think she even liked me at all”.

Here is the evidence that you feel uncomfortable with her, too uncomfortable to express more of your feelings with her, but you did feel comfortable with the intern: “I wish I felt the same sense of safety that I felt in therapy before”- there is nothing more comfortable than safety.

She says the right words, but the emotion of comfort and liking you is lacking in her tone of voice/facial expressions: “she usually says all the right things I just feel a lack of emotional connection”-we connect to people we believe like us and are comfortable with us.

Of course you’d be blocked from expressing more if you feel that she is uncomfortable with what you already expressed. To feel safe with a therapist we need to believe that the therapist feels comfortable with what we shared and with what we will share, at least we need to believe that there is a good chance that she will feel comfortable with what we share next.

Regarding your original post: the key sentence to me is what you wrote about your ex girlfriend: “(She) rewrote reality for so long that I can’t see/feel clearly anymore”- key is that you regain your clarity, that you will be able to see clearly.

Your parents “screamed, shamed and criticized (you) constantly, who rarely offered any love”- this means that the young child that you were was scared and she believed she was faulty, wrong, bad, and responsible for what was wrong in the household, which was not true to reality. She also craved love.

As an adult you had a 4.5 year relationship with a woman who also screamed at you, shamed and criticized you, just like your parents. When you pointed to her a behavior she was responsible for and which was harmful to you, she rejected reality, didn’t take responsibility for it: “(She) played the victim whenever I called her out on her behavior”, and instead she attacked you, pointing the finger of blame at you.

Because you craved love, your life “became centered around catering to her and her needs, taking care of her… being her punching bag and her scapegoat”- a person desperate for love will do anything for it. pay any price.

Naturally you “became angry”, because when punched everyone gets angry. It is a natural reaction. But then, she blamed you for getting angry, for a natural reaction to her using you as a punching bag and a scapegoat.

Most recently she was “guilt tripping (you) over text, sending gifts.. asking me to take her back and acting like nothing happened”-

-“nothing happened”-something did happen, you were significantly harmed by her for a long time.

-“guilt tripping”-you are not responsible for her mistreatment of you, neither are you responsible for feeing anger following her mistreatment of you, it is an automatic and natural feeling that follows mistreatment.

-“sending gifts”-there is only one gift you need right now and that is seeing reality clearly. And because she “rewrote reality for so long”, better keep that re-writer out of your life.

What are your thoughts about what I wrote here?

anita

Dear Rachel:

You are welcome. Regarding your current therapist, I agree: “there’s a difference between learning about healing from a book/school and having lived experience”.

Likely, your therapist didn’t resolve her own relationship with an unloving and abusive parent, still in contact with him or her, maybe even living with the parent, still exposed to abuse. This is very common to adult children of abusive parents, including certified psychotherapists.

She probably, I am thinking, convinced herself that her parent is not all bad (“no one is all good or bad”), that her parent loved/ loves her “and just did some harmful things sometimes”, that it wasn’t really abuse (she wouldn’t call what your ex did abuse) and she convinced herself that her parent does care about her, therefore “she was sure my boss did care about me” (how could she possibly be sure, never having met your boss…).

“I just want to be known and seen on a deeper level and I’m just not getting that from her”-

A therapist who may very well still be engaged with an abusive parent can help a client only so far but not beyond it. For one thing, every therapist who listens to a client without interrupting the client and nodding her head in sign that she is indeed listening, that alone is helpful. But to get help  on a deeper level, I don’t think she is capable of doing that because she didn’t help herself yet.

Regarding your ex, I have no doubt that you should have no contact with her whatsoever.

You wrote: “she had haunted me with her horrible words… she just said ‘well, you  said stuff too'”-

– I understand that you are confused and feel guilty. I will ask you a question (and maybe more to come,if you are willing) in effort of helping you remove that confusion: what horrible words did she use (you can use *&** to disguise profanity, for example f*&*) and what stuff was she referring to in her comment?

anita

Dear Rachel,

You are rationalizing your emotional issues. The clue was in the fact you are very intent on ‘fixing’ yourself because you feel that there is something wrong with you, because you were told, again and again, that there is something wrong with you. Starting from your family to your past abusive ex, you’ve been conditioned to become the mood maker, the helper, the cleaner, etc. You were taught at a young age by your parents that if your desired for affection is to be reciprocated, then you must do whatever it is that will please them, even at their cruelest, because they are your parents and you desperately wanted their approval, their love, their care. You were taught that ‘love’ is conditional, that you must be something or do something for someone, for them, to love you. But the thing was, no matter what you did, they never once approved nor validate your right to existence. Your actions were met with scorn while your voice, your thoughts and opinions, were disregarded as nonsense. So you learned to be complacent, never overstepping, because that was the role your parents assigned to you. Because even if they were shouting at you, at least they were looking at you.

Now, you’re looking for a solution to the broken dam that is your emotions. Since your childhood didn’t afford a safe space to explore the human spectrum of emotions, it’s not surprising that you don’t feel much connection to your own emotions. It didn’t feel safe so you dissociated and you never stopped. Due to that, you, and many others out there, view your emotional distress as a problem, not unlike a math problem, to be solve so that you can move on. Because if you can just solve this one problem, then maybe you’ll actually be a normal human being for once, past notwithstanding.

Yet what they don’t tell you is that emotions are highly illogical. People feel first, then think later to which people will justify their actions in a manner that suits them. Emotions come and go, fluctuating from morning to night. You can’t guess what you’ll feel, simply that there will be something. And, your emotions will be with you till your last breath, so melancholia of a kind might be a frequent visitor in all your years. Why? Because even the veterans will tell you that no matter the emotions, emotions will always be one of the most self-defeating facet of human beings. In other words, it sucks. And it’s crushing due to fact that humans judge their life based on their emotions. So no, you can’t ‘solve’ your emotions. Emotions do not have structure, they simply exist inside you.

One of your objective should be to simply let yourself feel, both the good and bad. Since your childhood, emotions has been a heavy thing due to your wish for validation from your parents so you chose to sealed it since it was safer that way. But that is not serving you now as your past abusive relationship is any indication. Let yourself feel and to be okay with it. Let yourself name the emotions as they come, acknowledging them, accepting them for what they are. Let them be not a problem to solve but a human thing. It will be scary in the beginning, but with anything, making yourself do it is how the story/journey begins.

If, after 2.5 years, of seeing this counselor and not feeling like you’ve reached anywhere, that’s a red flag. Though it usually takes a few months of getting comfortable with a counselor, if you feel that even after those few months, your counselor is not listening to you nor helping you examined your life in a way that is eye opening, then it’s time to move on. A counselor’s job is to help their client reframe their perspective of their life, but if they can only offer words that sounds good yet does little to nothing, then you have a listening ear, not a counselor. You are not compel to stay with a counselor if YOU feel that they are not a good fit for you, you can move on to another person and continue doing so until you find someone who can objectively listen, compassionate, and actually help you understand your mental and emotional framework. When you look for a new counselor, look for a counselor that specializes in family dynamics. They should have a good understanding of ‘narcissistic parenting’.

But a warning, you cannot let yourself become dependent on your counselor.

Right now, you are desperate for any emotional connections because you’ve paint your identity in shame, guilt, failure, etc. So maybe a relationship with someone might indicate that you aren’t really as bad as you think you are because they need you for whatever it is you can give them. They NEED you so maybe that means you have worth, right? Nope, it’s an exercise in futility.

Because that relationship based on them needing you for your providing them whatever they need is a co-dependent relationship full of conditions of you doing X, they do Y in return. Because that is your identity, a shame of a failure, so what rights do you have to happiness? To a relationship of unconditional support and affection? To people respecting your humanity? Respecting your need and wants? Which would explain the case of your ex. To you, being shamed by someone who is intimate with you in any way (family, friends, lover) is normal; you’re accustomed to that abuse. That was your reality so anything else, anything different is foreign and scary. That’s why you dated someone who abused you, worked for someone who would use you. But that can’t be all to life, is there? Well, even though you are seeing a counselor, you yourself will have to make the resolve to open a lot of doors from the past and face them. But you’ll fall more times than you’d like as you revisit each decision that led you to where you are now. Without a support system, that’s incredibly difficult.

So you’re still looking for someone to depend on, to give validation that your existence matters. You don’t have friends to turn to to complain about this or that. To ask for opinions on this or that. To open up about your childhood and abusive relationship. To just hang out for the simple fact that you like these other human beings. So your counselor can easily become that ‘friend’ for you. But at the end of the day, your counselor is your counselor, not your friend. Their job is to help you make sense of your actions and emotions, not be a friend. They are your confidante, but not an intimate nuclear family. So be careful that you do not become dependent on your counselor in that way. Though it does help to discuss the boundaries of your professional relationship.

Being human, you will face situations in various stages in life where you question your values as a person. Humans are cruel to each other because they fear others, but most especially themselves. So they lash out in some form; some as abusers, some as people pleaser, some turn to an addiction. Humans are more fragile than they like to think. That doesn’t excuse their actions, but YOU have the choice in reaction. You choose how to response. The situation with your ex is a good example. You’ve finally said ‘no’ to her excuses, you’ve put your foot down on extending a relationship was more harmful than good. You acted on behalf of yourself and your emotional health. That’s a victory and a good starting point. You want hope and do have hope for yourself and your future. You are looking at yourself with a little light.

Now, the hard part, which is you keep going. You have to keep trying to wade through the muck with little litter of sunlight because life has an ironic sense of humor that likes to play human as the fool/jester in their tragicomedy. And human has the tendency to focus more on the tragedy than the comedy so that makes it all that much more difficult. With a future that seems bleak and a heaviness that does not dispel, you’ll want to quit many, many times. Life is not lived linearly so it’s best to not have expectations about healing linearly. You’ll have your ups and downs, with the downs so heavy you don’t want to get out of bed. During those times, you have to choose whether to actually give up or rest then begin again. And that’s hard, to keep going. So you ask yourself, what is your hope?

Good luck.

PS, saying ‘no’ is an exercise in and of itself so make sure to practice.

Dear Rachel,

Indeed, society is compromised of many individuals with their own thoughts and emotions which takes up form in their reality. But people tend to be narrow minded in that their reality is the most important one to them because it’s the only reality that they can look through to see the world. That’s why it’s easy to be self center and egoistic; after all, you can only see through your own eyes. That’s why there is discomfort when someone is different; they cannot see the reality of other people. Hence, conformity is more comfortable and enforced in many ways. The comfort lies in knowing, or thinking, that if people are controllable, their actions can be predicted, so less unknowing. Humans do not do well with the unknown, they fear the lack of control. That’s why people will try to control/manipulate your actions, like your ex, because their reality makes them fear not being in control so they will try very hard to make their reality conform to their thoughts, their desires, their needs.

Right now, it’s the age of technological advances. But because of the reliance on technology, humans are demanding more and more out of technology, which lead to ‘instant gratification’. Hungry? Order takeout. Need grocery? Order it from store. Bore? There’s Netflix. You can find almost anything on the web these days so why in the world would you have any problem, right? Or so the underlying meaning goes.

But that sort of thinking generated a ‘fix it’ culture. Since the web can connect you to something of a solution to your problem, you shouldn’t have much problem finding a solution. And that somehow crossed over to human emotions. That, and the self help industry amplified that. Example: Have a spiritual crisis? Look to that guru. So you don’t have an excuse as to not be feeling better would be the persuasive argument; you have a solution at the tip of your fingers, you just have to go on Google.

People are glued to their phone, scrolling through their apps, ‘connecting’. That is the norm of society in the developed world so you’re not alone. You’re merely doing what other people are doing because other people were taught the same thing. And now that the Internet is one of the few way people actually connect to other people, it’s getting increasingly difficult to learn how to be human with other human beings. That means that thing like vulnerability and accountability is really scary because they never had the chance to practice it through the Internet. But the Internet is taking over their daily life. So the conundrum of should versus would.

Then there is the ‘my reality is important’ therefore my needs trump yours then people are just plain selfish. But like you, that is what they learned during their own childhood. They were taught that being selfish is better than being a people pleaser so they operate on the conditions that the world revolve around them in some way. But those people were not taught self awareness; to question their own thoughts, actions or emotions. They are not taught to self reflect on the why, they were taught to simply think of what they might want and to go get it, other people not withstanding. And it’s frustrating, because they do not hesitate to use others to obtain their goal. They do not hesitate to demean and belittle others who are not like them, who is not them. Society may call it the spirit of competition, but society does not hesitate to shun those who has ‘lost’.

It seems hopeless, doesn’t it? Hopeless in that people are hurting each other every second of each day in some way or form. Hopeless in that people do not wish for connection, but benefit from each other. Hopeless in that it feels like the world had abandoned you. Hopeless in that you can’t seem to change your reality.

Well, it will be hopeless. Life was never meant to be all cheers and sunshine. Sunshine might be sunshine, but unless you can see it for what it is, you only have the abstract version of sunshine. Right now, you know hopelessness, frustration, anger, sorrow and all those muck that feels really heavy on your heart. Let yourself feel that, let yourself see it for what it is. Because you’ll likely experience them again some time in your however long life. But even though they are heavy feelings, you at least know you can weather the storm. You been doing so for many years of your life, yet you are still going. That’s a victory. That’s a victory because you still kept going even when all seems hopeless. And since you know what the storm is like, you can also know what happen when the rain stops and the cloud part for the sun. It’ll take awhile, but it’s not impossible. You know hopelessness, so you can move forward to know hope.

Meanwhile, get to know yourself. You’ve spent many years catering to other people, it’s high time you learn what makes you tick as a person. And once you have an inkling, go explore. Does your work allow time for a hobby? If not, starting out on the Internet might be better until you can physically do it in person. There’s a lot of forums/group you can join. There are also apps. You can connect and maybe eventually meet in person to form a human friendship. You have a lot of options, but you have to allow yourself those options.

Do you know about the MBTI? It’s a psychological theory of a basic neurological framework. It can get you started on understanding how you, as a person, see the world and how you would want to interact with it. Link to a test below.

https://www.idrlabs.com/test.php

I think you’re really amazing. You’ve been through years of abuse, starting from your normative year, yet you still made the decision to cut off your toxic relationship with your ex. When abuse is normalized, it usually take years for people to wake up and say enough, then actually leaving behind their abuser. That you did it now while also seeking outside help shows that you have enough awareness that your reality was harmful to your health. You did what felt right for yourself. For even if you go through therapy, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll always make the best decision for your health. You’ll make plenty of mistakes as you live, but you showed that you held yourself accountable for your own self, and that’s admirable.

Best