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What I missed
Since I’ve been on the topic of how we work through our grief for that which we did not have, I thought I would share some particulars losses I ran into and what was underneath them. As I’ve worked my way through therapy and uncovered the feelings I had buried so long, I also uncovered losses I had not been able to admit, let alone grieve. This is a very personal list. I expect that some of this will resonate with other people and some of it will be not true for them or seem like a significant loss. These are mine, what I needed to mourn, and I again offer the disclaimer that not everyone will need to do this the way I did. But I am hoping by being more specific about some of the issues I faced, that the process might be more understandable, even if my reasons to mourn do not resonate with you. Continue Reading
Sorting the Past
In the comments after my last post, It’s still no, but still helpful, a number of questions were asked that I felt needed a longer answer than I would want to put in a comment and since they were all related, I decided to address them in a new post. They appear below:
Greeneyes: … how did on earth have you gotten through the struggle of accepting there’s so much we can’t get that we want? And how have you gotten through how painful the therapy boundaries are?
MetaMantraMe: How can we tell if we really are being denied something in the current time that we should be receiving? Or if it is, indeed, a projection of the unmet, and old, need from before onto today?
Liese: … when will we know that we’ve grieved all the losses from the past and that what is happening to us in the present is from the present? In other words, when will our feelings simply be about what is going on now?
It’s still no, but still helpful
I am back with the promised update on my last session with BN. (For background, see my previous post The Whole Story of the No.) It was an intense, difficult session but a very productive one and I left feeling better than I came in and with a much clearer understanding. And a lot of respect for everyone’s comments as they highlighted a lot of the material we ended up talking about. I do want to put up a language warning as both BN and I were indulging in order to convey the emotions.
It felt scary driving to BN’s office, but I realized something very important that also felt like a significant step forward. My fear was about how difficult and painful the feelings would be that were evoked by what we needed to talk about, not about the relationship. It hit me that through this whole thing I have not been worried about our relationship in terms of its ending or being damaged beyond repair. I trusted BN to handle any of my feelings that arose and any anger directed at him and I also knew whatever we decided, we could work through it. This level of security has been a long work in progress, and has been building very slowly, but it was satisfying to realize I had come this far. Continue Reading
The Whole Story of the No
In my post I HATE hearing no, I talked about BN saying no to something I asked for but didn’t go into too many details. Some of it was lack of time, but I suspect, gentle readers, that some of it was embarrassment. So now I’m going to tell the whole story, mainly because I am working very hard to understand what is going on within me and where I want to go from here. I see BN on Friday and I am struggling to discern if I am just trying to avoid loss or if this is something I can have in the here and now. I strongly suspect from the intensity of my feelings that BN gave me the right answer, but I’m not sure whether I am ready to give up the fight yet. But I’m getting ahead of myself… Continue Reading
I hate hearing NO
Hopefully, later I’ll write a longer, more detailed post on my session yesterday as a lot of really good work got done and important things happened, but right now, I really don’t care. All the understanding in the world, of why BN needed to say no to my request, of where the pain and grief are really coming from, of just how compassionate, gentle and caring he really was aren’t doing much in the face of the fact that it hurts and I’m angry at having to watch other people ask and easily get from their therapists things BN won’t do. I don’t want to be mature and insightful, I want to throw a temper tantrum and get my way. And its making me even angrier to imagine just how understanding BN would be about all these feelings if I contacted him. At times like these, the line between the past and present gets so blurry and I don’t know who I hate more, BN or my father. My only clarity is in being reasonably sure that my father has earned it while BN has done quite the opposite. I hate what rejection evokes in me. I hate that voice saying “see, I told you not to ask, I told you that you’d only get hurt” when I know it was the right thing to do. But circling back, right and wrong don’t feel important at the moment, just that howling inside as I remember what it feels like to not be able to have what I long for. Despite my utter and complete gratitude for therapy and the healing that happens there, some days it just sucks. I think I need to be ok with just acknowledging that this is really how I feel right now.
And yes, I am pissed that BN was gently trying to warn me I’d probably feel this way yesterday. Damn know it all!
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