wow.

So. Therapy this morning. Again, I am amazed at the things that come out of my mouth. First of all, I was just able to tell her everything that’s happened (our decision to get a divorce, my parents reaction, Matthew’s emotional unavailability, my polarized reactions to it all) and get some crying done. So it’s good to know that I am a real girl, with real feelings (which obviously, I realized last night, but was a little saner about it today). 

But then we talked about what is bothering me the most right now, which is this underlying theme of how I don’t feel safe anywhere. So she just asks me to identify a point in the past when I didn’t feel safe. And, well shit, there’s me at 10 years old and there’s the start of all of my issues, not only with safety, but with trying to fix things and with being an overachiever and never feeling like I’m good enough. How did she do that???? I was totally blown away and blindsided. I really thought, when I first arrived at the answer to her question, that I was just grasping at straws. But then I started listening to myself: 

When I was 10, my older brother (who is actually my half brother), who was 14, had his dad file for custody of him so that he could move to Plano and live there with him. In order to get custody of Jason, they had to prove my mom to be an unfit mother (which was total bullshit of course, but apparently that’s how it works). Mom lost it. She was distraught, upset, unhappy all the time. They went to court about it and she got even worse. She actually stopped fighting it eventually because all the court stuff was hurting her too much, so a few months into it, she just gave up. The twins (my younger brothers) weren’t even a year old. Just a year previously, I had been the youngest child. Suddenly, I was the oldest. But beyond that fact, my mother had changed. She was upset for a long time. After she moved past that, it would still be awful because every other weekend because Jason would come home and it would be like the prodigal son had returned. So it was all about my brothers, and I was kind of forgotten. I immediately started taking on responsibilities (Jason’s chores, helping with my brothers, etc). Obviously I wanted to help. Obviously, also, I wanted to be recognized and paid attention to. Dad took care of mom, and they both took care of the twins. It wasn’t like I was having to take care of my parents or anything, but somehow it was almost as bad as if that was exactly the case. I grew up. Fast. I took care of myself. I became super responsible, and made good grades, and avoided ever having to put my parents out of their way to take care of me. Still, I eventually turned into a regular teenager, fought with my mom constantly, and had a "mean girls" episode with my group of school friends. So I kinda swept this whole thing under the bed in my mind and just never thought it was that big of a deal (what had happened with Jason). 

But it explains everything. It explains why, when I’m upset, I clean and try to fix things. It explains why, when I’m otherwise perfectly happy, I seek out people or things to fix. It explains why I’ve always been (mentally) mature for my age. Why I am, outwardly, an overachiever, someone other people can hardly find things to be critical about, but, inwardly, I always feel that its not right, that I’m not good enough. Why I crave attention and recognition for things that I am good at. 

It explains why I’m attracted to these men. It’s two-fold really. I want to fix them (and I want their appreciation for that. I want to be loved and cherished for the value that I add to their lives). And I also don’t think I’m good enough for better men. 

Therapy is fucking nuts, man.

Anyway, she started explaining about how our brain actually puts things "in a box," and reorganizes it’s synaptic pathways to exclude the experience that we’re trying to block (because it was traumatic and our brain recognizes that we wouldn’t be able to cope). Mostly it went over my head, but she has tools for re-connecting those pathways, processing those traumas, dealing and moving past them, and replacing the negative thoughts we have about ourselves from those experiences with positive affirmations. Does it sound kinda crazy? Yeah. Am I game? Totally.