The child and adult me... parts??

[Twinkletoes]

Hi all, this is only my second post on here so again, please forgive me if I am in the wrong place. I am sure I will get the hang of things soon enough.

Okay, so I am having a hard time at the moment and struggling that when I go to therapy, I don't "take my feelings" and so am very emotionally disconnected and cut off etc.  Anyway, I came home tonight and was crying and so I wrote in my journal to figure some things out when I wrote a sentence about how I sometimes get this vision of myself sitting on the floor in my therapist's room, holding my legs/knees up to my chin. Now in real life, I have never sat on the floor, I sit on the sofa. It made me question whether that is the child part of me.. the feelings.. could it be a part of me that I dissociate from? does that even make sense?

Sorry, I am unsure if this is a revelation that I have a dissociated "part" or whether I am just being weird?? Any help would be so appreciated right now..  thank you in advance if you take the time for me. x

[Three Roses]

I think, if that really clicks with you it's probably accurate. Then maybe next time your therapist asks you to connect with feelings, you could try sitting in that position on her floor? If you wanted to, and felt it was safe, of  course.

[woodsgnome]

Dissociation may or may not be at play. Even if it is, it's not the final destination, and via therapy (or other internal/external means) might even change. Labels are only pointers to help with understanding, and can be flexible, IMHO. 

As to normal or weird or whatever, all that matters is what seems right and good for you. Your object in therapy is not to entertain the therapist, but with her or him find a way to work with whatever comes up for you. And if it includes sitting on the floor as you describe, and it feels right and/or spontaneous, it shouldn't be considered weird at all.

Just today I did something with my therapist that at one time I would have considered silly and/or weird. It's from Pete Walker's cptsd book, if you're familiar with it. It's an exercise in feeling (p. 240 if you have the book). He starts by indicating that yes, it may indeed seem silly, but can be effective as at least beginning to access feeling. And 'feelings/emotions' after years of heady stuff is one of my goals with my present therapy. I've loads of the ins-and-outs skinny on psychology and personality stuff from top to bottom and back, but have always been scared and blocked when it comes to wrestling with the deep scarred feelings left from my early years.

It does help to have good rapport and especially trust with one's therapist (although the exercise can be done alone, it never worked for me that way). I'm fortunate to have an extremely skilled therapist and so we gave it a go. Sure, the inner critic screamed 'bloody silly nonsense' when we started, but shortly it lost it effect. The exercise ended up with cleansing tears that were years in coming and a heart that felt refreshed to have emerged from its box of pain. And yes it was silly. And scary. But I also found that don't matter so much; they may even have helped, in their own way, like finding gold where you least expect it.

The key for me was to suspend expectations and just let the session flow, which I could do based on a long-building trust with this therapist. I'm not at all worried anymore what she might think. The only 'normal' in effect with this is letting go, indeed playing. What could be more appropriate then a little play to find that inner child?  .

In effect you've already sat on that floor, even if only in your vision. Imagination can be powerful sometimes just in suggesting that one can 'get out of the box'. How it happens is immaterial. Normalcy and weirdness? Where they come in doesn't matter, if that's what it takes to meet one's inner child. Even if the vision just stays in your mind, it may have helped point out a new direction. And if it does that, that makes it pretty normal by any standard.   

 

[hypervigilante]

I'm attaching one of my favorite photos because I think it relates to this revelation you've had.


I am a very illustrative communicator as well- with others, sure, but I really mean with myself mostly. It sounds like you're like me in that sense.

Sometimes pictures or images say more about how you're feeling than words can formulate accurately. It sounds like you imagining yourself in your therapists office balled up refers to your feeling of needing to protect yourself, even if it's with defenses we learned when we were young that aren't always very helpful to us as adults like they were when we were children.

I definitely think that could be your inner child at work, or even you nursing your inner child while s/he faces all the scary stuff you're facing as an adult.

I like this picture because I think it shows us how we can be sometimes. As adults we may turn away from one another when deep down we seek connection. Innocent and without criticism.

I definitely don't think you're weird or that this is weird!

[Eyessoblue]

That totally makes sense to me, when I've been to therapy I can very rarely connect and I talk about myself as if I'm talking about someone else, I come across as emotionless and very matter of fact, my therapist says that is a coping mechanism that I have learnt throughout my life and dissociate myself away from the pain that I'm really feeling. Quite often though when I get home from therapy I'm a complete mess mentally and have a hundred questions that I want answering there and then but by the time I go back to therapy I'm back to being my very matter of fact emotionless self, I find it really frustrating within me that I'm like that but I guess it's my way of coping and dealing with it all. More then anything I would love to be able to go to therapy and sit and cry and tell her how bad it really was, but at the moment I just can't do it and carry on my story as if it were a film that I have just watched. We started to try and do inner child work but I had to ask her to stop as I really felt like I couldn't deal with it and my brain felt like it was overloaded and I couldn't process anything she was saying. Hopefully I'll get there one day.

[hypervigilante]

Please excuse how far this reply is so out-of-date.  I was compelled to mention that trust building (with your T and in life!) is an important and time-consuming (deservedly!) process. I hope that you've had time to build some trust and get closer to meeting some of your needs since we last spoke. How are you?