I have thoughts/fantasies to rip my face off so that there can be someone real beneath.
'Obviously' I won't do this. Or try to.
But the pain is so very intense right now.
I have messed up so much of my life through going about wanting to be loved in all the wrong ways, all the immature, non age appropriate, part of me is stuck at 5 years old kind of ways.
I see and feel this now, and it hurts like hell.
I need to change this, and I'm working in therapy. But it's not an overnight fix. I just need some support to help me bear this pain, and not run away from it, please.
This is a DBT thingy my partner told me about today, and I wondered if it might help. Its called a non-judgemental stance.
Basically the first step is to see and be aware of when you are making a judgement, past or present. To say, that is a judgement and when in an emotional situation, describe it in factual terms. The idea is to accept the emotion but minimise the intensity. An example would be when someone pushes in front of you in a que, you may normally say inside your head 'they think I'm worthless, not even worth acknowledging', but the idea would be to say, 'that person has pushed in front of me and they wanted to be further in the que, for whatever reason'.
Hey Katie, I just wanted to stop and say that I'd read and that I'm thinking of you. MissA's advice sounds really good and useful.
It would be tempting for me to sit here and say 'you haven't messed your life up' etc. (and, in my view, you have a deeply compassionate and mature side alongside the younger bits, which makes you, at times, more proficient at dealing with situations than a lot of people, due to awareness) but I hear that you need to be with the feelings just now, and that it probably wouldn't be helpful of me to try and push any of that away.
But I would like to say that, at the end of the day, you just want to be loved, and it's not your fault that at certain times it can come out in a way that's unhelpful for you. You didn't have the experience of feeling loved at times during your childhood so it's understandable that, as an adult, there's still a little girl inside you desperate to just... be a little girl, really.
I hope that's okay to say. I apologise if I have misunderstood, and am thinking of you still and sending hugs.
Thank you so so so so much, Laura.
And no, you've not misunderstood.
Your words and ideas have led me to understand a bit more... I think part of the problem for me is that there's become a kind of a gap between my awareness and some of the younger 'dysfunctional' behaviours [not dysfunctional for a traumatised child, but dysfunctional for an adult trying to find her place in the world, relating with people..]. The gap is what I've been led to become aware of, and so there's a hope of it becoming less of a chasm, and my awareness extending to meet it. No one wanted this child around, and so it makes sense that she'd reproduce those behaviours/attitudes in present relating, or, attempts to relate.
Part of me is shaken up every time I see that I'm 'in bits' in that way. "I'm not supposed to be in bits, I wasn't severely abused or anything." I worry that some people see me as a fraud. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I'm not.
I don't see you as a fraud, but do totally relate to feeling that way (I often consider my abuse to not be bad as I don't remember it). It's painful, isn't it. I just wonder if it's hurting you to compare your abuse to others', I can only imagine it makes you feel worse unnecessarily, but understand where it comes from (after all, when you're little and all the horrible stuff is going on, it seems that often the adults are very invalidating, so that kind of carries over when you're an adult, on some level you think 'well, if the adults didn't take it seriously, then there's nothing to take seriously'... but the adults were wrong) Plus I tend to think that minimising your own abuse does, perhaps on some level in your mind helps you not have to face the pain of it sometimes... but it's just replaced with another pain (the 'can my story be heard?' pain).
I just feel that the adult you does not need judgement or criticism for the way you've learnt to relate... and that the first rule of change is to accept, as it sounds like you're working hard to do.
Have worded that horribly inarticulately, but hopefully you get where I'm coming from :P
