My Baby's Therapist and Mirroring Going on through the relationship
Wondering what was missing in my marriage, it finally hit me like a cannonball. I always knew the concept of it in the back of my mind, but never did I experience it full force consciously, in 1D or 2D like Abby Miller talks about.
Yesterday, my husband and I went together to take our baby to mental health therapy to figure out what was wrong with her and in her psyche of emotions. We sat down with the therapist, and she candidly began to ask open questions to digest the situation. She asked what brought us there, in each of our own words. I answered with a lengthy description of my daughter's avoidance of bonding with me, and my intuition that it was happening despite all outer sources telling me it was nothing, and I am "just Projecting" my own childhood trauma of being adopted and not being able to bond, and it comes NATURALLY with biological mother and child, and it's there so no matter what I do I can't break it. Yeah yeah. I agree with that, but what if there are walls around ME that prevent our bond?
Kind of like in the movie I watched, sorry forgot it's name, about a father that was adopted as a kid and it prevented his son from ever feeling like he KNEW who his father was, and this affected his own self-knowing, so he took his Papa on a surprise trip back to the Romanian orphanage he grew up in to try to discover his familial roots, and this opened his father to emotions never felt before. His father, a former science teacher who studied plants, suddenly became emotionally ecstatic, experiencing childlike wonder that made him seem delusional in middle of the night on their time there after he found his birth brother. I cried buckets, the feelings felt so familiar to me and I just wanted to jump for joy for the broken yet found old man. If anyone is interested in the title, I can ask the people who recommended it to me and get back to you.
Anyway, my instincts were telling me that something must be amiss about our connection, based on my daughters responses to my tight hugging and searching her eyes for connection that seems lost.
We figured out that because of my own challenges of connecting with my adoptive parents, I may be having a hard time helping my daughter through her own struggles. I was pretty hurt when she said that just because a person has trauma it does not mean they don't have a chance of being happy in life, so I said, "that's true, living on the outside of everyone else, but managing to be happy by myself has been my life ever since I can remember." I get triggered whenever I feel that people living on the outside of adoption say insensitive things that shows unawareness of the loneliness I experienced growing up adopted. I know it is all me, and how my hologram interprets other people's views of me as pathetic and totally fake, but it still hurts deeply when I come across that nagging belief. Sometimes, though, I do have congruence of reality of thinking the person is not seeing me, and those are hard hurdles to deal with. I took my chances with this lady, though, because she seemed nice and I know that this is the only way to get help- to open up and see what will become. She was fair enough about opening the option of us switching therapists if we felt this wasn't working for us.
So open up I did. She asked me the last time I saw a therapist, and I admitted it's been a year and a half, and as I was saying it, I became aware of how sad I sounded and a part of me wanted to cry right then and there. I felt myself slipping into a victim/infantile mode of just screaming for help, and it was extremely vulnerable. In the past, I would hate myself for it and drowned right in my shame, but now, I stood with it and honored my child self. I had a strong presence inside that said, "Stay right here, you are okay."
I admitted to my inner shame and how I never believed I had the right to stick up for myself, even when others took advantage of my naivety, and the lows I felt during those years. She seemed a bit uncomfortable as I poured out my tale with all the vulnerability and honesty, but she had no choice but to nod and understand. She was very hesitant, and I recognized that she was validating my story. She agreed with me that it was right of me to leave my past therapist, who, when I told her I was not feeling validated and wanted to leave, tried to manipulate me into staying and working out the issue because it would show that I can't have any relationships with anyone else in my life because a therapist mirrors how you see others. Well, if she had been a healthy one that would be the case but I believe she had her own issues that prevented her from seeing my needs and validating me, and it was healthy of me to leave. My child's therapist full heartily agreed.
When I mentioned how I felt trapped in my past "addictions," which is what I call the relationships with narcissists that I had that destroyed any last sense of dignity that I had for myself, I felt myself break a little inside as the memories of unworthiness came flooding in. She noticed, and told me we can address those issues later on when I feel comfortable talking about it. I said, "Why? I am done with those relationships..." She answered that it may still affect me, but it was up to me. Looking back, I know she was right, but I am so used to denying my issues that I was sort of "testing" her to see if she really understood me. Just like I test myself to see if I really care about someone by ignoring them or my feelings, until I feel inner pain that can identify that it means something to me.
Whew, I really do sound messed up. Talking to a therapist about all this really mirrored me for myself well. I do have a good feeling about it though, as uncomfortable as it was.
As I sat in that office, I felt an inner calmness that comes from being true to my inside. We both admitted (My husband and I) that we had no outside support, that our families disagreed with our knowledge and understanding of baby Awareness (well, of course, they'd never want to admit what makes them feel that their whole life of neglecting their children's feelings was a farce), and that we had pushed them away for our own self protection as we waded through these new yet fragile way of living. She nodded in understanding, and said, "So you are isolated." Another flash of truth went off in my head, we really were, and I saw how strong we were being.
She agreed with Baby Awareness, and said that in the past ten years a lot of new studies are going on to show that baby's feelings do, in fact, have a bearing on shaping their future lives, and it also has a lot to do with later incidents that they go through, and how traumatic events are dealt with. She said that is what this children's clinic is for, to help children get through trauma and painful feelings through the working with their parents to understand how they affect the child, and play therapy to see how the child interacts with toys because it is so connected to their inner worlds.
She asked us about our agreement on therapy for our child, and we easily said that it was not an issue for us. I could see on my husband's face that although he was not fully involved in our daughter's emotional health in the beginning, he had come a long way and was now at the point of it being a top priority for him as well. His worry lines on his forehead and look of sad concern flashed through me, and I felt a surge of love and pride in him.
All of a sudden, it became clear to me, as my husband went on explaining his earlier experiences with babies and how he felt they were mistreated in his family, and his concern about his nephew's misbehavior stemming from being misunderstood and shamed, that he really was just as lost as me. It was a powerful realization because until then I was seeing him a a strong one who was ruining my life by purposefully not making me feel like the GREAT, Strong, resilient person that I was. I realized that I was asking too much of him, that his psyche was just as damaged and confused as mine. He needed someone to SEE his pain and history just as much as me.
We were both really just children, living out our grown-up lives but waiting for someone to take care of the babies still not protected in us. Pete Gerlach, a genius Veteran and Inner Systems family therapist, says in a video about what we need in healthy relationships that one of these needs are for appreciation and feeling valued by our partner. This has been a gaping hole for me, but again, I attracted it with my own hologram of not SEEING and VALUING my self, and trying to force others who could not see me either to do it. I always liked to blame him for my inner pain to make my ego feel better.
So our relationship, of course, is not satisfying. I need to be seen, and he needs to be seen.
The therapist said something profound to me that resonated. I truly came to that clinic thinking that all of the problems lay in my daughter's inability to express her emotion, and that it was hopeless because I couldn't see her. I was hoping for a therapist to gauge what was going on with my daughter, because my adoptee-ness (I just made that term up) was fogging the view. She said, "Nothing happened to her that could really cause as much denial or fragmenting as you went through in your childhood... But your own relationships with others will be what she will learn from, and her bases of how she will see the world and learn to interact." Well, not in those words exactly. But THIS was the truth. And, as I told her, I can NOT attach to anyone else in my life, besides my husband, and we did throw away all our past relationships that were not serving us, so this is really the time for me to learn how to. This is going to be a Journey of learning to trust people whilst still being able to hold my inner truth. (Lol not to sound like Abraham Lincoln). I am excited.
Love,
An Adoptee Heart
Yesterday, my husband and I went together to take our baby to mental health therapy to figure out what was wrong with her and in her psyche of emotions. We sat down with the therapist, and she candidly began to ask open questions to digest the situation. She asked what brought us there, in each of our own words. I answered with a lengthy description of my daughter's avoidance of bonding with me, and my intuition that it was happening despite all outer sources telling me it was nothing, and I am "just Projecting" my own childhood trauma of being adopted and not being able to bond, and it comes NATURALLY with biological mother and child, and it's there so no matter what I do I can't break it. Yeah yeah. I agree with that, but what if there are walls around ME that prevent our bond?
Kind of like in the movie I watched, sorry forgot it's name, about a father that was adopted as a kid and it prevented his son from ever feeling like he KNEW who his father was, and this affected his own self-knowing, so he took his Papa on a surprise trip back to the Romanian orphanage he grew up in to try to discover his familial roots, and this opened his father to emotions never felt before. His father, a former science teacher who studied plants, suddenly became emotionally ecstatic, experiencing childlike wonder that made him seem delusional in middle of the night on their time there after he found his birth brother. I cried buckets, the feelings felt so familiar to me and I just wanted to jump for joy for the broken yet found old man. If anyone is interested in the title, I can ask the people who recommended it to me and get back to you.
Anyway, my instincts were telling me that something must be amiss about our connection, based on my daughters responses to my tight hugging and searching her eyes for connection that seems lost.
We figured out that because of my own challenges of connecting with my adoptive parents, I may be having a hard time helping my daughter through her own struggles. I was pretty hurt when she said that just because a person has trauma it does not mean they don't have a chance of being happy in life, so I said, "that's true, living on the outside of everyone else, but managing to be happy by myself has been my life ever since I can remember." I get triggered whenever I feel that people living on the outside of adoption say insensitive things that shows unawareness of the loneliness I experienced growing up adopted. I know it is all me, and how my hologram interprets other people's views of me as pathetic and totally fake, but it still hurts deeply when I come across that nagging belief. Sometimes, though, I do have congruence of reality of thinking the person is not seeing me, and those are hard hurdles to deal with. I took my chances with this lady, though, because she seemed nice and I know that this is the only way to get help- to open up and see what will become. She was fair enough about opening the option of us switching therapists if we felt this wasn't working for us.
So open up I did. She asked me the last time I saw a therapist, and I admitted it's been a year and a half, and as I was saying it, I became aware of how sad I sounded and a part of me wanted to cry right then and there. I felt myself slipping into a victim/infantile mode of just screaming for help, and it was extremely vulnerable. In the past, I would hate myself for it and drowned right in my shame, but now, I stood with it and honored my child self. I had a strong presence inside that said, "Stay right here, you are okay."
I admitted to my inner shame and how I never believed I had the right to stick up for myself, even when others took advantage of my naivety, and the lows I felt during those years. She seemed a bit uncomfortable as I poured out my tale with all the vulnerability and honesty, but she had no choice but to nod and understand. She was very hesitant, and I recognized that she was validating my story. She agreed with me that it was right of me to leave my past therapist, who, when I told her I was not feeling validated and wanted to leave, tried to manipulate me into staying and working out the issue because it would show that I can't have any relationships with anyone else in my life because a therapist mirrors how you see others. Well, if she had been a healthy one that would be the case but I believe she had her own issues that prevented her from seeing my needs and validating me, and it was healthy of me to leave. My child's therapist full heartily agreed.
When I mentioned how I felt trapped in my past "addictions," which is what I call the relationships with narcissists that I had that destroyed any last sense of dignity that I had for myself, I felt myself break a little inside as the memories of unworthiness came flooding in. She noticed, and told me we can address those issues later on when I feel comfortable talking about it. I said, "Why? I am done with those relationships..." She answered that it may still affect me, but it was up to me. Looking back, I know she was right, but I am so used to denying my issues that I was sort of "testing" her to see if she really understood me. Just like I test myself to see if I really care about someone by ignoring them or my feelings, until I feel inner pain that can identify that it means something to me.
Whew, I really do sound messed up. Talking to a therapist about all this really mirrored me for myself well. I do have a good feeling about it though, as uncomfortable as it was.
As I sat in that office, I felt an inner calmness that comes from being true to my inside. We both admitted (My husband and I) that we had no outside support, that our families disagreed with our knowledge and understanding of baby Awareness (well, of course, they'd never want to admit what makes them feel that their whole life of neglecting their children's feelings was a farce), and that we had pushed them away for our own self protection as we waded through these new yet fragile way of living. She nodded in understanding, and said, "So you are isolated." Another flash of truth went off in my head, we really were, and I saw how strong we were being.
She agreed with Baby Awareness, and said that in the past ten years a lot of new studies are going on to show that baby's feelings do, in fact, have a bearing on shaping their future lives, and it also has a lot to do with later incidents that they go through, and how traumatic events are dealt with. She said that is what this children's clinic is for, to help children get through trauma and painful feelings through the working with their parents to understand how they affect the child, and play therapy to see how the child interacts with toys because it is so connected to their inner worlds.
She asked us about our agreement on therapy for our child, and we easily said that it was not an issue for us. I could see on my husband's face that although he was not fully involved in our daughter's emotional health in the beginning, he had come a long way and was now at the point of it being a top priority for him as well. His worry lines on his forehead and look of sad concern flashed through me, and I felt a surge of love and pride in him.
All of a sudden, it became clear to me, as my husband went on explaining his earlier experiences with babies and how he felt they were mistreated in his family, and his concern about his nephew's misbehavior stemming from being misunderstood and shamed, that he really was just as lost as me. It was a powerful realization because until then I was seeing him a a strong one who was ruining my life by purposefully not making me feel like the GREAT, Strong, resilient person that I was. I realized that I was asking too much of him, that his psyche was just as damaged and confused as mine. He needed someone to SEE his pain and history just as much as me.
We were both really just children, living out our grown-up lives but waiting for someone to take care of the babies still not protected in us. Pete Gerlach, a genius Veteran and Inner Systems family therapist, says in a video about what we need in healthy relationships that one of these needs are for appreciation and feeling valued by our partner. This has been a gaping hole for me, but again, I attracted it with my own hologram of not SEEING and VALUING my self, and trying to force others who could not see me either to do it. I always liked to blame him for my inner pain to make my ego feel better.
So our relationship, of course, is not satisfying. I need to be seen, and he needs to be seen.
The therapist said something profound to me that resonated. I truly came to that clinic thinking that all of the problems lay in my daughter's inability to express her emotion, and that it was hopeless because I couldn't see her. I was hoping for a therapist to gauge what was going on with my daughter, because my adoptee-ness (I just made that term up) was fogging the view. She said, "Nothing happened to her that could really cause as much denial or fragmenting as you went through in your childhood... But your own relationships with others will be what she will learn from, and her bases of how she will see the world and learn to interact." Well, not in those words exactly. But THIS was the truth. And, as I told her, I can NOT attach to anyone else in my life, besides my husband, and we did throw away all our past relationships that were not serving us, so this is really the time for me to learn how to. This is going to be a Journey of learning to trust people whilst still being able to hold my inner truth. (Lol not to sound like Abraham Lincoln). I am excited.
Love,
An Adoptee Heart
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