Finally Working in Therapy

Yesterday was T-Day. I used to think of that as Turkey Day (AKA Thanksgiving), but now it has a different meaning. Besides, I'm a vegetarian.

I like this new therapist. I've been seeing her since the end of November, on rebound from a five session run with a T who finally said she couldn't help me. (Full disclosure: I also saw newT for three sessions in June, but hadn't yet been able to disengage from oldT.)

She's older (a handful of years older than I) and wise (surely wiser than I) and compassionate (oh how I've needed that) and experienced (need that, too) and I can see her twice a week (as $$ allows) AND I can call her (sometimes just being allowed is enuf). Alas, she is going on vacation for three weeks in January.

She's one of those Inner Child Ts. I've never done that work, not specifically at any rate. Although I have always felt it was important to tell my story and for all my Ts to understand What I Came From. (or from which I came, if you're particular) Anyway, I've always felt all that early stuff was important - early attachments and traumas, etc.

I'm not one for (solely) CBT. I can't just practice a few things, change my behavior and feel better. It resonates too much with my crazy religious upbringing in which I was directed to believe I was perfect (e.g. no depression or headaches or viruses). If I experienced those "untrue" things, there was certainly something wrong with my thinking. I just needed to change my thought. How does one think that depression or headaches or viruses are untrue? Mind-fuck. CBT feels too much like that.

But back to Inner Child work. We've talked about the basics of my upbringing; nuances seem to fill the work like mortar in a stone wall. T keeps bringing my adult experiences back to the early abandonment, neglect and humiliation that plagued me as a child. I am stunned to find how much this moves me. I have cried at every session. I am not a crier-in-front-of-people. I've noticed the triggers that bring my tears are not hunting-knife-in-the-gut experiences. Instead, they are multiple tiny pin pricks - feelings long buried that I'd forgotten or dismissed or ignored. Feelings I thought were no longer issues for me. And in my recognition of those little connections between child and adult experience, I find myself shuddering with emotion, tears sprouting from my eyes. I still try to keep them in - holding my breath and tensing my abdomen. They come anyway.

T says we will figure out what happened and why. She says I will learn to parent my inner child and to give myself what I didn't receive. She says I will learn to take care of myself and know that I am okay. She says I will discover the wonderful qualities of my little girl and learn to restore and develop these treasures within. We even talk a bit about need and longings, and T tells me that these are normal feelings given my history. Need has been such a dirty word. It is my "N word." It is proof that I am bad. Just writing this paragraph brings tears as I ponder that perhaps there is hope, truly hope, for repairing the damage inside.

I finally feel like I am Working in Therapy.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.  -G.K. Chesterton

For you, today, I wish a smile in your heart.