keep on keeping on

we're really excited for you birdsong!
& we get that its a big deal, a big step, but it feels really positive & good. we're sorry your T is so neutral about it.

That's very exciting! Congratulations!

I think you can tell the T how you feel and that more active engagement and support would be better for you. Neutrality isn't usually the best approach for people with attachment disorders. This is why you have such a positive connection with the clinic T. He's able to safely provide unconditional positive regard--appropriate warmth and excitement.

She might explain why she responded that way, and have a good reason why she feels that's the best approach, but it's probably worth bringing up and discussing.

Anyway, congrats again!!

we are going to try to change our way we communicate with her. I listened to the recording of last session and it made me realize how weirdly I communicate. I keep trying to say things without actually saying them. And I totally did that when I shared about the project. I tried to make it sound harmless because I still expect her to attack everything that is good in my life because I really struggle not to see her like our mother or grandmother. all the women in our life were not safe to share big and important things with. So as we change communication I hope to address the thing about her responses.
My best guess is that she is trying not to overwhelm us. not to get too close, since we communicate so much distance ourselves. but yes, she keeps a different kind of distance than the clinic T. or it at least feels like that to us. it really is time to address the mother issue.

The clinic T is so predictable. great enthusiasm, encouragement and always a little bit over the top with the way he cheers for us. It is slightly dysregulating because it gets a bit overwhelming and we tend to start shaking. But it is also reliably good, supportive and the kind of response you would expect from a good parent. I am glad we get to write him every now and then. Nobody cheers for us in just the same way. Having a father figure express trust in our abilities means a lot.

we talked to our T about our communication and all that. damn. that ended up being one of the hardest sessions we ever had. more open, getting more feedback from her too which is helpful. but it also triggered a lot of shame. we are so broken. our personality is so messed up because of trauma lessons. I think we are actually making small progress but this is hard.

we fnished writing the first draft for the third section of the book. 10 sections planned. it is good to make progress like that.

I'm glad you heard back from the clinic T and that he's such a good, enthusiastic supporter for you.

And I'm also glad you're tackling communication issues with your regular T, although it sounds very difficult.

Hooray for already getting to the third section--that sounds like really good progress.

body work therapy was intense as always. It was super interesting to see that we really have different stress responses and sometimes one parts solution for them triggers stress in others.
we are working on showing boundaries. it was born in the idea that we need to work with the concept of missions to change beliefs. Old missions are accomplished, it is finished, we have different goals now and they come with new behavior to reach those goals. protecting against the mother is finished. when we started to express that boundary some inside went into freeze mode. so we had to use baby steps to allow one part to express the boundary and then immediately show the other part that it is ok and help her to calm down. tricky business but also really cool and exciting.
we got to the point where we had a moment of felt sense that the mother is really not in the room and defending against her is not necessary. it really is over.
my hope is that it will help us in the relationship with our regular T. I know we were treating her like the mother, trying to keep her away from us.
we work hard to open up. I am not really sure how well we are doing. we allow her in more when it comes to the things we work on alone at home. so she at least knows about that. without email she missed the majority of that in the past. I felt a little less guarded last session. the realization is so weird, but without boundaries there is no trust. we couldn't act differently as long as we didn't feel safe because we didn't feel that there is a space between us. it used to feel like our life would depend on her and her ability to do things right.
the topic we talked about was so difficult I forgot most of it again and now I am glad we are recording things. even listening to it again did not make it all stick. But I think we left the shame thing behind for now.
we are just a few hours away from the 100.000 word mark for the book project... it feels a bit crazy but we are really doing this now...

I'm trying to understand exactly what you're talking about with showing boundaries, because it sounds like something that could help us. What does it mean to express a boundary? And how did you get from that to knowing that the mother wasn't there and you didn't need to defend against her?

Do you mean that to protect against the mother, you couldn't show or express any boundaries? But how is that protective? Don't you need boundaries to protect you against someone?

We do feel a lot that we need the T to do things right, and it's very upsetting when he doesn't.

Sorry for all the questions. We're just going through something with our T right now (again...), and I'm sure part of it has to do with old beliefs that are interfering in this relationship in the present.

Anyway, sounds like you're making a lot of progress--in therapy and on the book!

we have Somatic Experiencing. That works with impulses a lot. This is the relevant article that describes the basic approach https://www.dis-sos.com/releasing-traum ... body-work/
we think of the situation that stresses us today and look for the impulse connected to that. In this case it was words and a hand movement. The hand movement is a non-verbal expression of a boundary. the movement is slowed down and repeated very slowly while we mindfully notice what we are doing. it makes the body realize that it is in fact setting a boundary right there.
We noticed that our impulse for words was not addressing the current situation, it was addressing the mother. So we switched to following the impulse thinking of that situation. that is when eventually we realized that we are talking to the air, she is not here. it has the quality of a realization that counters derealization, or a situation stuck in the past. In a way we ended up in the present with the new understanding that the defensive motion isn't needed anymore because the situation is over.

Mixed in we had the situation of parts like Age going into freeze when we attempted to defend ourselves. we grew up in an environment where trying to protect ourselves led to more harm, ridicule and torment. we couldn't possibly succeed. So we have parts who stop every attempt to prevent more harm and then hold still. allowing things to happening without making them even worse for us. that is really good protection in this specific situation. in our family, boundaries were not allowed. that is why parts try to keep us from having them.
but it meant that everything was utterly enmeshed. everything depended utterly on pleasing the mother one way or another. there was no room for being ourselves, having our own opinion, expressing our own thoughts. that is the topic we are working on in therapy right now. Although we can express strong opinions in writing we wouldn't dare to speak a word in a team situation. at work or even just group therapy we are silent and invisible. the goal is to learn to be more of a tangible person outside of our writing.
that is why we need to un-mesh from our mother. our T just gets caught it in through transference. By un-meshing the mother situation we get a better sense of being un-meshed from the T as well. In that relationship we can actually be an independent person whose world does not depend on the T. it is hard to explain but it feels like the boundary is what makes it possible to feel like ourselves. out of the danger zone. maybe that is very specific to our situation... but when there is a boundary we don't have to react to everything she (mother or T) does. We are not in the past where someone elses moods and actions dominated our whole life. she (mother or T) can do her thing and there is a space between us and we do our thing and when there is an interaction we process things and see what we make of it. somehow the boundary exercise helped us feel more in the present and less like the reactive child that constantly watches for signs of trouble and how to please.

I am not sure if this could be replicated because it is born of the impulses in a specific situation and that is always the key element because it means we work with what is at the surface and ready to be processed. not sure if I explained it well enough.

This is very helpful--thanks. I'll need to go through it slowly and see what the steps look like for us, since it will be different. But we have a similar enmeshment background and lack of boundaries, and freeze response, so there's a lot here that could be very useful. Thanks again.