Posted by LG04 on February 18, 2005, at 2:41:52
In reply to Emotional Abandonment, posted by daisym on February 17, 2005, at 0:45:03
Daisy, i too am a survivor of csa and more. my abandonment issues are huge. i hope that what i tell you will give you reason to feel hopeful and to believe that you can work thru this issue. like just about everything else, i think it's something that begins to heal over time, with a safe therapist.
i coped with my fears by asking for constant reassurance. i don't know if it's the best way for everyone, but for me, i needed to hear not 10 or 20 but 500 times or more that my therapist could "handle" me and wasn't going to leave. and i needed to see if her actions matched her words.
i have asked my therapist endlessly in the past two and a half years, "are you sure you aren't going to leave? how do you know FOR SURE?" and "what if you change your mind or your feelings change or i get too needy or i tell you something that is too much to take?" and i ask her a lot, "are you with me on this? are we still partners in this? (i.e. you're not going to emotionally abandon me, are you?) I've probably thought of every way in the world to ask this same essential question. and then i'm sure it's happened and i call her crying and tell her what i think she is thinking and feeling about me and she tells me that i'm simply and completely wrong. (you know how it is, one moment of silence in a certain place or a weird sound in her voice and that's it, i know she is leaving, no other explanation).
and calling her just to check that she's still here and going ballistic when she goes on vacation (emotional AND physical abandonment) and being furious yet so relieved when she actually returns, and freaking out when i can't get a hold of her and i think it's because she's avoiding (i.e. abandoning) me and then she explains to me exactly what happened and i see that it had nothing to do with me. and asking her if she still loves me, over and over and over again...oh i could go on forever.
and with every new, horrifying detail of the abuse, feeling certain that this time for sure, it was too much. that she couldn't take it. that she now thinks differently about me (after every detail-revealing session i'd ask, "do you feel differently about me now? do you think i am gross? bad?") I've asked her adult to adult how she deals with hearing this stuff so i could understand how she manages to stay present. one time she really screwed up (emotionally) and that was very hard for me but she came right back again. she's not as perfect as your therapist sounds, but she's very real and able to go with me to places that i'm afraid would scare off even my closest friends. and she has proven time and time again that she's incredibly committed to our relationship. i don't know why but she is.
that's how i coped. and still cope. i check out every single insecurity i have with her.
and so, what i can tell you is how much better and easier it has gotten. i don't need her reassurances as much as i used to. and when i do, sometimes i ask but sometimes now it's enough just to hear her prior responses in my head. Her consistency, her willingness to answer my same insecure questions over and over again, her dependability and solidness...at some point, mostly just from the passing of time and seeing that she is true to her word, i started to believe that she isn't going to leave. (even after i moved away several months ago, b/c we still talk on the phone twice a week).a few weeks ago i told her something that i was SURE would change her emotional availability towards me. but it didn't. it was very very intense and she acknowledged that she needed time to process it but she reassured me how normal it was for what happened to me and that nothing between us had changed. i was amazed.
and then the miraculous happened. she went on vacation this week and though i was upset about it for various reasons, one thing i do know for sure was that she will come back and that her feelings for me won't have changed during the vacation and everything will be the same when i talk to her on sunday. and that she hasn't emotionally abandoned me just b/c she is on vacation and inaccessible for a week.
THIS IS HUGE. she was absolutely amazed when i told her how secure i felt leading up to her vacation. and so was i. it's a huge psychological shift for me. i always feel intense emotional abandonment when she is gone but this time, i'm really fine. and this is after two years of hanging by my fingernails counting the minutes until she'd come back from a vacation and crying so much while she was away and feeling furious that she wasn't available and that she was rejecting me and so on.
i have learned: she's not going to leave, emotionally or physically. if the relationship ends, it will be my choice, not hers. she has told me this countless times. she's simply not going to abandon me. and i can feel this carrying over into my other relationships as well. lately i trust my friends more. i have been telling them more details of the abuse. i have let myself break down in front of them. and guess what? they haven't left. if anything, they've been more emotionally available than ever.the truth is, most people are not like our parents, thank G-d.
your therapist sounds like he's willing to reassure you as many times as you need to hear it. so i encourage you to ask for it. for me, this was most important. sometimes embarassing, yes. but i needed to be that little girl who could ask for reassurance a million times, and she let me.
your therapist sounds consistent. he sounds emotionally available and healthy and responsible. i can tell from what you have written that he isn't going to abandon you. he will be right there with you, for the entire journey, with every detail. he's simply not going to leave.
and i truly believe, from my own brand new experience, that in time you will know this too.
poster:LG04
thread:459147
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050211/msgs/459728.html