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Dec. 27th, 2018 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
colebaltblueI ran 15 minutes over in my session with my therapist today. When I realized that I was over she said no worries, we were doing great work today and that it was fine.
Ugh.
It was not fine. I cried.
I am NOT a crier. Like we're talking multiple years between cries. I last cried when I was frustrated because I couldn't make my headache when I had meningits go away about six months ago. Before that? Who the fuck knows.
So I cried on Christmas Eve and I cried today in front of my therapist. It was the crying of a person who doesn't cry - the leaking of tears out of one's eyes against one's will. It was a lack of facial change, a careful modulation of voice, of taking a pause to suck down the emotion and to try to speak again without the eyes overflowing. It was losing that battle and letting them drip with just a dab of a kleenex as you tried everything to make them stop.
We talked about my relationship with my mom and of that core belief I have - I describe it as having the belief that people won't like me once they get to know me and if they like me despite knowing me it's either they haven't discovered the thing yet that will make them not like me or they need something from me and once they get it they'll go. She describes it as me feeling as if I'm unworthy of love.
Which is somehow, to me, much darker than what I described.
She asked about my dad - if he loved me unconditionally, if I ever felt not loved by him, if I ever doubted that he loved me. And I answered with an emphatic no. She got all emotional and told me that she was really happy for me that was the case. At my confusion she explained to me that she was really glad that as we worked on this belief of my mine that I'm unworthy of being loved that I had that to draw on - that experience and memory of being loved - to remember that and turn to that as I worked to reshape this belief of mine. Because ultimately, that's why I'm there, because someone remarked to me once when I explained to them how I was content with going through life merely existing because that's all I deserved that was a dark take on life and I deserved better than that.
Anyway. It was a rough session.
I told her about this journal and she was very proud of me for making it semi-public.
And when I got home I asked T if she wouldn't mind speaking to my mom about the way that she had family christmas with all my siblings who are visiting here and I wasn't invited and how upsetting that was not only for me, to not be invited to spend any time over the holidays with my own family but that in doing so they also excluded by wife and children from doing holidays with their family (aunt, uncles, cousin) as well. I don't think that was my mother's intention at all and I'm sure that when I point out to her the effect of what she did she will have a reason as to why she didn't ask us and will be quite frankly surprised at the effect of her decision because this is what she does, makes a series of assumptions and then a decision based on those assumptions and then is really surprised when I point out to her that none of her assumptions are correct and that the decision she made based on them was hurtful.
Ok, there's a lot to unpack in that paragraph above and I'm going to leave it there even though I really want to delete it and have a whole separate entry for it, but I know if I do I'll never make that separate entry so it's there just as it is and I'm gonna just walk away before this gets worse.
Ugh.
It was not fine. I cried.
I am NOT a crier. Like we're talking multiple years between cries. I last cried when I was frustrated because I couldn't make my headache when I had meningits go away about six months ago. Before that? Who the fuck knows.
So I cried on Christmas Eve and I cried today in front of my therapist. It was the crying of a person who doesn't cry - the leaking of tears out of one's eyes against one's will. It was a lack of facial change, a careful modulation of voice, of taking a pause to suck down the emotion and to try to speak again without the eyes overflowing. It was losing that battle and letting them drip with just a dab of a kleenex as you tried everything to make them stop.
We talked about my relationship with my mom and of that core belief I have - I describe it as having the belief that people won't like me once they get to know me and if they like me despite knowing me it's either they haven't discovered the thing yet that will make them not like me or they need something from me and once they get it they'll go. She describes it as me feeling as if I'm unworthy of love.
Which is somehow, to me, much darker than what I described.
She asked about my dad - if he loved me unconditionally, if I ever felt not loved by him, if I ever doubted that he loved me. And I answered with an emphatic no. She got all emotional and told me that she was really happy for me that was the case. At my confusion she explained to me that she was really glad that as we worked on this belief of my mine that I'm unworthy of being loved that I had that to draw on - that experience and memory of being loved - to remember that and turn to that as I worked to reshape this belief of mine. Because ultimately, that's why I'm there, because someone remarked to me once when I explained to them how I was content with going through life merely existing because that's all I deserved that was a dark take on life and I deserved better than that.
Anyway. It was a rough session.
I told her about this journal and she was very proud of me for making it semi-public.
And when I got home I asked T if she wouldn't mind speaking to my mom about the way that she had family christmas with all my siblings who are visiting here and I wasn't invited and how upsetting that was not only for me, to not be invited to spend any time over the holidays with my own family but that in doing so they also excluded by wife and children from doing holidays with their family (aunt, uncles, cousin) as well. I don't think that was my mother's intention at all and I'm sure that when I point out to her the effect of what she did she will have a reason as to why she didn't ask us and will be quite frankly surprised at the effect of her decision because this is what she does, makes a series of assumptions and then a decision based on those assumptions and then is really surprised when I point out to her that none of her assumptions are correct and that the decision she made based on them was hurtful.
Ok, there's a lot to unpack in that paragraph above and I'm going to leave it there even though I really want to delete it and have a whole separate entry for it, but I know if I do I'll never make that separate entry so it's there just as it is and I'm gonna just walk away before this gets worse.
