Gunhild Archer, counselor

I feel tension, connected to anger and desperation. As I focus my attention inwards, I hear:

“I don’t want to”

and

“It won’t help”.

Something is pushing against my attention. In my attention is a subtle expectation that I should sit with my feelings. I need to move, heal, release the different parts of me that are resisting intimacy. I need to shift to be a match to being held and supported.

A feeling surfaces. Despair. I want to cry. I feel like I’m stuck in limbo, and I can’t get out. I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.

The belief that I won’t meet someone unless I’m open to meeting them is lingering in the back of my head. “I need to change how I feel, that’s the only way I will attract someone…”

A voice responds: “You can’t make me change how I feel, you can’t force me to believe it’s going to be ok if I open up. You can’t make me NOT feel guarded. It’s not possible”.

Yet another voice: “Well, it’s your fault then”.

The myriad of parts makes me feel overwhelmed and hopeless. I feel like I’m at the mercy of these parts, and my past – I can’t see a way out. Locked between the feeling that I have to feel different to get what I want and the pushback from the parts that can’t and won’t change how they feel.

A reasonable voice is telling myself: “You need others to heal, relational trauma is healed in relationships”. It’s countered with an argument. When the reasonable voice says: “We can look for someone who wants to be there through it all”, another counter argument. There is someone who shuts down every suggestion. The voice is a collection of different people I have encountered throughout my life: “You shouldn’t use your friends as therapists”, “You’re toxic”, and “You’re being codependent”.

At this point I’m genuinely in tears. I don’t know what to do, it’s too much to hold all by myself. I need someone to hold me, but I have no one. Not someone I trust with this level of vulnerability. I know I have to give people a chance, after all, trust is built. But I’m not open to let anyone in, and so the loop continues.

Yet another voice is coming in loud. “Stop crying! Get your shit together. Focus on the things you CAN control!”

Although all these parts are talking, are they hearing each other?

No. There’s no connection. Not even from myself towards the parts. In fact, my attitude is sneaky. I seem to validate and listen, but I don’t really. My attitude is similar to my parents. I want the parts to feel because that would mean they would move through the feelings, which in turn would make it possible for me to attract what I want. That’s the attitude I have towards the parts: I want you to feel so as to… I’m not truly hearing their experience.

Why don’t I want to acknowledge them? I look at them… What comes up when I observe them? What’s my resistance about?

The first thing I feel is disgust. Judgements. “You’re tainted” (it’s shame given to me by my dad), followed by “You’re so needy” (self-hate projected onto me by my mom). There’s also something that feels pure in the midst of it all, I can finally see one of the main components of the dynamic.

I’m caught in chaos because I never had my childhood experience reflected back to me. How am I supposed to believe what I’m currently going through, the memories, emotions, and my reactions? The pureness I feel is connected to can best be described as a “I’m looking around to see if someone else sees the same as me”. It’s a child’s need. This is the hallmark of unspoken trauma. Certain trauma doesn’t exist. It can’t. No one wants to acknowledge it, because doing so would ruin the life of both the perpetrator, and the family of the perpetrator. I did what I had to do to survive, I rejected anything connected to what happened. As an adult, I’m left with the remanence. I have no physical proof, except my symptoms, and the symptoms can be discarded.