I was debating on whether to add another past journal entry or to write about my brain. My brain sounded like the better way to go. Or is it that my brain told me...is it taking over? It already has control. Okay, rambling now.
Since I talked about my eating disorder with my therapist on Friday, I have all these negative thoughts running through my head. It is just rhetoric, thoughts I've always had. Thoughts that come after I share something where I feel vulnerable or something I am ambivalent about. We all have them. Some more than others.
Part of mine is a normal response and the other part has to do with internalizing all of what was told to me growing up and what I had to tell myself to emotionally survive. Either way, it interferes with talking more. However, pulling back after being vulnerable is normal. I told my therapist that I just felt naked before him. I'm also in Salvador Dali land still.
I think, that it is also defensive, so that I don't have to deal with what I shared because I really have mixed feelings. I don't want help and I do want help and it feels better. Yet, I still do not want to give up my control which is an illusion...it is controlling me.
Yet, the thoughts continue. Like I said before we all have them and it generally interferes with those of us who have been abused. Perhaps, you hear them too. They are automatic. Mine go something like this, "I isn't that bad. I shouldn't have said anything. It isn't a problem. I can handle it on my own. I don't need help. I'm fine. I don't know why I brought it up in the first place. I'm just being dramatic. I don't really have a problem. I'm just trying to make one up for attention." The thoughts go on...
I also think that it is my way of beginning to process what I told my therapist on Friday. Talking directly about something that has been like an elephant in the living room since I began seeing him was a big step. So, now I want to retreat back and pretend it didn't happen at all. Our minds learn to do funny things.
"Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion" ~ 1954
6 comments:
I understand.
It's a defense mechanism.
If it's a problem = not in control.
One of the biggest breakthroughs I had with my eating disorder was that all this time I had thought that *I* was using *it* to control things.
Turns out, really, my *Eating Disorder* was controlling me.
Which meant that it was a terrible control mechanism-- especially considering that I really wasn't in control whatsoever.
Eating Disorders are very much like having the habit of smoking cigarettes.
@ash. Eating disorders are an addiction with all the same characteristics and trappings...except you can't stop eating (you know what I mean). It is one of the few addictions where abstinence is not possible and you are faced with it constantly, everyday and throughout the day.
Hey CC, I think I've commented on this stuff before.
Just on the weekend I realised I've led myself into a potentially vulnerable situation I wasn't expecting. I've become good friends with a number of people in my bloggy world. And a couple of them I've started email correspondance with. We've been getting to know each other.
And then I realised in an IM chat... oh, this person actually knows all the things about me that I've been desperately trying to conceal. And yet I like talking to them... but it does feel... weird.
And it makes me feel needy, to the point that I'm very confused.
I think you've been so brave telling new things to your therapist after so many years!! :)
Hey, Svasti. It is good to hear from you. I know a lot of my stuff is repetitive.
Congratulations on being vulnerable. That is what is so helpful about the blogging to me is that it is an opportunity to be vulnerable, but with some control and anonymity. I just dawned on me while writing this that if we have all that and yet have difficulty with expressing something, then most of the time it must have to do with us and our uncomfortableness with the subject.
Needy is scary, but that is not all you are. And, it is normal.
Thanks...I can't believe after all these years that I still have big hidden parts from my therapist.
CC, sounds like you're doing a really good job of recognizing the mind rhetoric, and that is a huge help in starting to get past it. Way to go!
@immi. Thank you especially for the encouragement.
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