Finding the Center - My mother was abused too

Written by Pam

Page 3 of 6

1/16/99

A week or so before Christmas I went through a passage where I longed for death so much. I walked the labyrinth and what came to me was that somehow life means giving. That gave me a clue that made me think about something a priest had said about how God didn't promise me safety. I came to see that for me the two poles are:

death	life
impenetrability	openness
safety	vulnerability

In the session I had with my T the week before Christmas I felt I was able to symbolically choose to be open to him instead of curling up, and to find a way to express that.

We had a the best Christmas yet here. It helps when the kids get old enough to know what traditions they want, and we had our big meal with guests Christmas eve which took the pressure off Christmas day. Then we went to my parents up north. That worked out quite comfortably and the kids were very excited by snow and ice. I even got skating on a pond, which is what I had most wanted, though the ice was rough and my feet hurt. My parents were more closed off than ever about personal things and feelings, but I felt that I had said what I wanted to say (in the language that is most comfortable to them) by deciding, rather at the last minute, to go there.

I had a one hour session with my T the Monday after we got back just to let out the tensions from being with my parents (and I was glad I had planned it that way even though nothing dramatic had happened with my family). Then the next regular Thursday session I made a dramatic next step. I got a worse memory of abuse by my mother, and what came to me most strongly from the memory was the sense that I hadn't been able to protect any core of myself, that my boundaries had all been destroyed. I saw that as the destruction of the self, of the ability to love. But then I said "But I am here," meaning that I was in relationship to my T, sitting close to him in the position that symbolized my being open. I went back and forth for a while--how could I have been so destroyed and yet be here? Finally I came to a very deep realization that even if love and the ability to love is completely destroyed it grows back, because it comes from God it can still grow back even if it is wiped out entirely inside me. To believe that is to let go of a fundamental fear of being destroyed, a fundamental clinging to safety.

I was excited by what had happened, though I was nervous about telling the people I share things with. It did feel like a transformation. Then Sunday I got crosswise with my husband and I crashed, badly, froze up and couldn't talk (1-10-99). I got gradually back to functioning and decided that at least part of what had happened was that there was another aspect of the memory that I hadn't dealt with--anger at my mother. This past Thursday I went in to my T hoping to find a way to let out that anger. But first I wanted some acknowledgement from my T of the pain I had been through over the weekend and when I asked for it he didn't do anything (he said later in the session that he was just slow on the uptake). I got really angry and panicky, and though I tried to let out my anger and to use it as a lead down to the deeper issues I never could get out of the anger and panic. I did stay close to my T, not run away and hide, but I just felt worse and worse about myself. No reassurance that he could give me got through at all, and I left the session in great pain (1-14-99).

I did ask for an extra session rather than waiting a week for resolution, and we were able to work out to meet this upcoming Monday. For the first couple of days I had to stay away from knives (interestingly the impulse was very clearly superficial cutting, not suicide, I guess cutting is specifically anger turned against myself), but the panic and anger and pain have faded considerably today. I think actually what happened is a way I lock down anger, by combining it with panic over rejection, and close up so I can't hear anything. Maybe now that I have seen that so clearly I can find a way around it. I'm thinking of it as an separate part of me who needs acceptance and acknowledgement of what an important contribution she has made as a protector before she will agree to cooperate and take a different role so the anger can come out.