child parts of me longing for my therapist and it hurts so so much

I don’t know what to do with the intense longing I have for her. Every day I want to connect with her to make sure she is still here. I want to share bits of my life with her so she thinks I am lovable and important. I want to reach out when I am scared, alone, anxious, or sad. I want to know she is here. My object permanence with her is nearly zero. After a huge rupture with her (about her abruptly creating very strict boundaries due to her own stuff/needs but — painful )— all of this and the longing is even stronger. I need a lot of reassurance. Or I feel like I do. And not just in words … I don’t know what that means. The rupture really wounded me. It took a long time to start to repair and I sat in a pretty dysregulated place for months feeling completely abandoned. I regressed. I have a lot of shame. I am detached from my needs. Old coping came back out. My attachment wounds are screaming loudly. And painfully.

We actively worked on repair for a handful of sessions and now it’s just background noise. Loud background noise (for me). Relationally we are getting to a better place but I don’t know how to heal the pain … or move out of the place where old defenses and protective parts came out during the rupture. I feel too scared to mention how much I’m still hurting - that my longing is intense. I don’t want to make her feel like she hasn’t done enough to make it “better” …. She has sincerely apologized. Owned her parts (because she didn’t do a great job holding space for the emotions her boundaries brought up in me)- and it created quite the enactment. Again, we have talked about it and she has apologized. I trust in her words. She is human. But something is still missing, hurting, aching. It feels like it is HER.

She is trying to get me to try things now that teach me to not “need” her like I had. That hurts too. I don’t know how to need people. It never feels safe. I know really really well how to not need people. But I do need her …. :( I realize how pathetic this sounds since I am friggin 34. Have my own kids. I am not a child. But I have young clingy desperate and needy parts of me. The attach cry for help parts. Except they aren’t crying out to her - just internally for her — to me —and I reject them fully. They always got me hurt. I honestly wish they would just cry out to her so I could have a little break from the pain. But that feels terrifying. I need to contain it …. them. Right?

And I have to just sit with it all…. week after week. I have to feel this desperation coming from these little parts of me that ache for her like I did as a child for my own mom … and my own dad. I didn’t even know how I longed for this type of relationship (I know it’s a “professional” one but obviously a very vulnerable and intimate one) …. And I rationally know she isn’t and cannot be my “mom” …. But god it hurts. SO SO much. And I do know she cares about me. It’s not about that.

After almost 3 years you would think … hope … that I could grow the hell up. You would think after two grown ups apologize and look at what happened I could feel some sort of attachment security. You would think that I would realize that I don’t need anything from her like I feel I do…. I just have trauma from childhood that is raging alongside us. I carry a load of shame for how I feel.

I love her to death. And maybe though I actually do need her? In ways… I do. she is my therapist, after all.

I need to stop wanting her to be the mom I never had though. I need this to not be where the pain is. I need the little ones to quiet down. If I could erase this part of me I would. I would bury it far far in the dark hole it existed in before I met her. Back to the place where I knew I didn’t deserve safe connected mothering love. There is comfort in familiarity. There is the illusion of safety when I stay in the box where she can’t fit anyways.

Except I would miss out on the other side of this. The place where I know I long for her because I’ve allowed myself to believe I matter enough to be loved. That is huge. And I would miss out on a hell of a good therapist who has seen me through a lot of shit and is still willing. That matters a lot. A part of me says how lovely it is to have someone to miss so much…. How lovely it is that I feel safe enough to allow that part of me to even see the light of day let alone attached to someone again. I am very willing to work all of the way through this. To use it as a catalyst for amazing healing growth. But I have parts of me that are hesitant and scared that I’ll always just feel the desperation. And I feel so alone in it.

AND IT HURTS SO MUCH

I just don’t know if I can tell her how much of it is because she reminds me too much of what I didn’t have - and can’t really have.

——- maybe some of the intensity is grief. 💔

And here is where I tell myself “she doesn’t care about you. She would find this entire post to be utterly completely pathetic.” To get myself to detach. To not feel this weight. To not need at all. Protective persecution at its finest.

Ugh. Help. Any advice? Compassion? Tools? I’ll take it all. Be gentle, please. This is a very vulnerable place that I’m in. ❤️‍🩹

in TalkTherapyby Perfect_Cattle_2153

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24d

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Brokenwings33

24d

I know when people say you are not alone it doesn’t always help me, but I could relate to a lot of what you wrote.

I still haven’t worked my way through it all so i am definitely not an expert. One thing that did stand out to me though was when you said you would erase that part of you if you could and bury it in the dark hole. Can you imagine visualizing yourself at the age you were experiencing this longing the most, and tell them you want to shove them in a deep hole or erase them? How do you think your child self would feel hearing you say that?

I think this pushing the part away narrative causes more pain in the end. Believe me, I still get the feeling that I wish some traumatized parts of me were gone, but the whole reason that part is so traumatized is because I was forced to shove it down as a kid. I know it’s so hard, but try to have compassion for that child part when it feels the longing. It’s normal to long for the attachment we never had as kids, and it is a very long and painful process to grieve that loss.

Someone commented on one of my recent posts about how maybe continuing to experience this longing is easier than accepting the loss. That hit kind of hard. I don’t think I’m consciously trying to not feel the grief, but I guess I could see how maybe the longing, while painful, is more familiar and easier for our brains to cope with than accepting the loss and fully grieving it.

Mindless-Ostrich-882

19d

Could that be what is so difficult for us is the grieving and allowing it. When I start to feel it I most definitely push it down. In reality its screaming. Childhood was a loss, there is no way to go back. I am thinking it is grief thick, heavy, black, sad, punitive and depressing. Almost as if a black hole and the sense of fear going there for losing control. I am right here, I need to say to T.

Brokenwings33

17d

Yeah, I’ve heard it’s it’s pretty common for childhood trauma survivors to feel like their grief is a huge black hole that will swallow them up if they let themselves feel it. That probably was true back then when there was no one to sit with us in the pain. I think it helped me a bit to actually visualize the black hole morphing into my 13 year old self who is the one that ultimately gave up on the longing back then and started shoving it down. Somehow we need to work with that part and get it to accept other coping methods than shoving it down or fantasizing about someone coming to save her.

Maybe why I’m still experiencing this longing is because I still don’t feel like mine will sit with me in it but instead try to talk me out of it. Which unfortunately feels just as bad as being ignored as a kid.