Posted by Daisym on June 20, 2009, at 21:52:35
In reply to Psychoanalysis question, posted by antigua3 on June 17, 2009, at 15:03:34
A - you wrote:
"So, naturally, most of our time was spent with me recounting the flashbacks as much as I didn't want to. I did want to tell him about the most recent one, but I did want to explore his role in all of this and really, our relationship in terms of the transference that had occurred because of this. But he wouldn't bite; he kept the focus on the flashbacks. His reaction was confusing to me; he was using the blank slate thing on me and that felt invalidating. All things to talk about. I do know, however, was that his primary goal was to keep me safe, so maybe he thought the blank slate would be safest, given the circumstances. I don't know, maybe I'm excusing his behavior or just defending him."
I'm late to this thread -( see what happens when you go away for awhile.) But this paragraph struck me as important. In trauma therapy, it is important for the survivor to tell their experiences and feel their experiences with a safe person. Even if you were "just" telling the flashback, not actually going back into the memory, it was still important that he didn't let you off the hook - and derail the conversation. Because one of the ways of hiding from the ugly stuff, is to focus on something else. It is common to get mad at someone so that you get a breather from talking about the painful stuff. I'm not saying the relationship isn't important, but I think my therapist would do essentially the same thing - although he would probably say, "let's stay with your flashbacks for now." As you said, you've worked hard to get to this place of memory retrieval, so it is really, really important.
My guess is that if he'd let you go the intellectual place of trying to understand the flash back trigger, instead of relating the flashback and emotional overwhelm, eventually you would have wondered if he didn't want to hear about it - if it was too awful for him. And his blank slate may really have been what you guessed - a way to keep you held and safe with lots of space while you told.
I hope you told him about feeling suicidal. It is important that he knows about this. And remember what I said before - these feelings are part and parcel with the flashback. I imagine that some part of you must have wanted to die when this was all happening. So it makes sense that these feelings emerge with everything else. And intellectually, it is impossible to wrap your brain around how brutal all these things were - and to understand why they would have happened at all. So while we want to know what lurks in corners, it is also super hard to know. It takes an amazing amount of strength to know. So be kind to yourself. I know Father's day can be a trigger.
Hugs, Daisy
poster:Daisym
thread:901559
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090614/msgs/902340.html