Day 23

It has been a week of... knowledge, sobriety and emotions. First, I have shared this blog with my sister. After talking with her, sharing memories and discussing this blog, she suggested that maybe I should include actual names so that there is accountability. That made sense to me as I am not keeping secrets anymore. So I am going to go back and edit past blogs and insert actual names.

This conversation must have triggered something in me to know where this man - wait! his name is Albert - was because I started searching online (with all my knowledge from working at companies with less than ethical standards). It seems that Albert still lives in Carlsbad New Mexico, in the house once owned by his grandmother. He has been visited by the police twice this year so far, as noted by the police blogger in the local newspaper. It sounds like he hasn’t changed at all. This knowledge has created some issues for me because for the past several days I have had reoccurring “conversations” in my mind about confronting Albert, learning the truth and moving on with my life. But not in one “conversation” does he apologize. It is actually the opposite with him verbally attacking me, turning the facts around and being sick with descriptions. How can I have thoughts like this and why did I even look for his name? Sometimes, knowledge hurts.

I decided to request the copies of the police report from 15 years ago. I want to read the facts for myself. I know that as time goes by we tend to change the story to fit out needs. For example, I used to be embarrassed that I grew up poor so I never mentioned the multiple times we had no gas, electricity or food. I used to be ashamed that my mother was beaten severely over and over and that I was sexually abused so I never talked about my childhood. So I wonder if my version of the ending of the abuse is somehow different than I remember it. Did I really run away in order to not have sex “like a girlfriend” with Albert as he wanted? Did I really tell the authorities who promptly pulled my sisters and me out of our home and put us in a foster home with people who were unsympathetic to our plight? Did I really get sent away to a mental health facility because I was acting like a teenager or was it more than that? Was there really not enough evidence to prosecute as I remember or did my mother tell them not to press charges? Really! What is the real story? What happened 15 years ago because my memory as I remember it is fuzzy now?

After I wrote last, I had an alcohol breakdown. So, with the help of my therapist and my husband, Jack, all the alcohol is out of the house…with the exception of the bottle of chardonnay in the fridge that is for cooking – looks good enough to drink most of the time – or the red wine in the cupboard that is also for cooking – hmmm…maybe that needs to go also. Anyway it has been over a week since I drank and I am craving a drink. I can’t even drink diet coke because I am used to having vanilla vodka in it. I have been drinking green tea like crazy... not the same really. It is really tough to not drink. Sometimes a drink just helped ease life. My purpose of drinking was never really to be drunk, unless it had been that bad of a day (like the day after I read a letter from my mother). Drinking served two purposes for me. One, it helped ease the anxiety and frustrations in my day to day activities and helped me sleep occasionally. Two, it helped loosen me up and allowed for me to communicate with others and even sparked some creativity. Well, the creativity is gone and I want nothing to do with anyone else really except my husband, kids, therapist and my sister, Amber. A lot of my anxiety has left while I have been off work for the last 3 weeks but many other things are surfacing. I read 15 books in the last 12 days and can’t sleep much at all.

Emotions have been trying to get through. I just don’t know what they are called. I know things are bad when I am eager for my therapy appointments and I try not to cry on my way there. It’s like I know that it is safe to release everything that I have to keep locked up at home. Stupid reasoning, I know. Not sure why, I just think that as a mom I am not supposed to cry or be upset in front of the kids. This week I have researched emotions or feelings more. I am still trying to figure it all out. Like did you know that the feeling of disappointed is a combination of sadness and surprise? I wasn’t even aware that surprise was a feeling. So after some research and referred websites, I was reading one website that had a list of feelings when needs are met and a list of feeling when needs are not met. Much more interesting to me was the list of needs that we need. I saw this list and the first thing I thought was, WOW, I have none of this. After discussing this in therapy, I do have many of these needs met NOW, but not as a child. This led to a conversation about ego state therapy. More research…

Ego state therapy is interesting. Of all the research that I did, the following is what interested me most.

“Parent ego state contents are taken in, i.e., introjected, from parenting figures in early childhood – and, to a lesser degree, throughout life – and, if not reexamined in the process of later development, remain unassimilated or not integrated into the neo-functioning ego of an adult. Since the child’s perceptions of the caretaker’s reactions, emotions, and thought processes will differ at various stages of development, so also will the actual content and intrapsychic function of the Parent ego state vary in relation to the developmental age when the introjection occurred.

Introjection is an unconscious defense mechanism (involving disavowal, denial, and repression) frequently used when there is a lack of full psychological contact between the child and the caretakers responsible for his or her psychological needs. The significant other is made part of the self (ego), and the conflict resulting from the lack of need fulfillment is internalized so the conflict can seemingly be managed more easily (Perls, 1978).

In addition to the various physical needs of childhood (Maslow, 1970), a child’s relational-needs require the attuned involvement of parents or significant others (Erskine, 1998; Erskine, Moursund & Trautmann, 1999). These relational needs include:
1) security within a relationship – a physical closeness and the freedom from humiliation and physical violence;
2) validation of the child’s feelings, thoughts, fantasies and various needs;
3) being in the presence of someone on whom the child can rely for protection, support and guidance;
4) having a shared experience such as playing and learning together;
5) self definition within the relationship;
6) making an impact – influencing the other, at least some of the time to respond in accordance with the child’s wishes;
7) or desires and respond accordingly; and
8) the expression of gratitude and love to the caretaker – the manifestation of bonding and loyalty.

When these relational-needs are not acknowledged, validated and normalized by significant others there is a rupture in interpersonal contact – the bond between child and caretaker is disrupted and a conflict ensues between the caretaker’s mis-attunement, invalidation, emotional neglect, or physical abuse and the child’s desperate attempts to have his or her relational-needs satisfied.

As a biological imperative children require both a physical and psychological attachment to maintain psychological health (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980). When needs are not met the resulting anxiety stimulates an unconscious defensive identification with the other. The external conflict is solved by internalizing the other and disavowing one’s own needs, thereby the child can stay attached, bonded and loyal. This is often accompanied by a sense of resignation and the formation of a compensating script belief such as “If I can’t get my needs met then I don’t need” the external conflict of relational-needs not met becomes internal where it is handled within the individual rather than continue the external relational conflict. Metaphorically, the conflict of needs-not-met is as though there was a psychological vacuum in the relationship. That psychological vacuum – the absence of interpersonal contact – is filled by unconsciously identifying with the significant other.

Brown says, “Introjection allows a person to avoid her painful feelings associated with the loss of a person, place, or event by creating within herself an image of the lost object. Her unconscious fantasies maintain her association with the lost object and prevent her from working through the painful emotions connected to the loss” (1977, p.5).

Introjected elements may remain as a kind of foreign body within the personality, often unaffected by later learning or development but continuing to influence behavior and perceptions. They constitute an alien chunk of personality, embedded within the ego and experienced phenomenologically as if they were one’s own, but, in reality, they form a borrowed personality (Erskine, 1988, 1997).” (www.integrativetherapy.com)

After all that research, I was concerned that maybe my therapist had me looking at all this because I was “crazy”. He confirmed I am not. Thanks. I just feel that way. From the research on ego state therapy, it is made to sound so easy and normal to communicate with the different states, find out who is dominant and create harmony among them all. I just wish that is how things really were. Wouldn’t it be great to talk to me as the child I was? Tell me that I love me and that things aren’t that bad once we are all grown up? That not every man is bad, that not every mom chooses dependency over her children, that not every touch and emotion will hurt? I am still looking for the “cure” to the abuse. It is not there, not as far as I can tell.