Update on joint therapy with uBPDm

[RavenLady]

Hi deFOGers. Here's an update on the situation I first posted about here: https://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=77654.msg676174#msg676174 To summarize where things were when I wrote that post, uBPDM finally lined up a therapist to meet with the two of us after I told her I would not talk to her without a therapist on the line (I had previously refused to meet with her in person). This was shortly after I realized how seriously her verbal abuse was affecting my health. I was very nervous and cautious about the direction the joint therapy would take and had misgivings about the T Mom chose.

Some significant things have happened since then. First, and separately, when it became clear that I have C-PTSD, I asked my own individual T to focus our work together on that. He said he felt he lacked the training for scientifically validated C-PTSD treatment and when I insisted that's in fact what I want and need right now, he had the decency to refer me to a local expert in the field. So I've been in *real* trauma therapy now for a few months. (My new T uses the treatment model described in Janina Fisher's Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation. It bears little resemblance to my previous therapeutic experiences and for that and much else I'm grateful. It is still hard, hard, hard. But an absolute lifeline.)

Second, and following some self-advocacy on my part, the T uBPDm selected had the good sense to meet with me separately first. (She lives far away from both M and me, so we meet remotely.) In advance of that first talk, I prepared notes that helped me to lay out in the clearest terms I could my theory that both of my parents demonstrate PD behaviors, and subsequently emotional abuse and neglect were and have been central to my experience of life and our family. I explained that my struggle with chronic illness was shaped by this, and that I would not and could not return to the past communication patterns in our family, for the sake of my health. In a stroke of good luck, the T has personal knowledge of my particular illness and we could connect over that. I articulated to her a goal of determining whether or not it might eventually be possible to have a relationship with uBPDm that would not be actively damaging to me. Obviously my separate work toward my own healing will largely shape the answer to this. I told her I was really just beginning trauma therapy and that I needed to buy time to get my legs under me in this journey before ramping things up with Mom.

I also told her that regardless of the answer I find to my own question, I believed Mom deeply needed an advocate and therapist who she could trust and who could help guide her toward her own healing, and I would be grateful for any progress the two of them could make to this end. I told her that I can no longer provide the emotional support to Mom that she has seemed to need in the past, and that I worry she has nobody else and experiences a great deal of unresolved emotional pain. I encouraged the T to treat Mom in her own right, regardless of what happens with our joint counselling.

To my considerable relief, Mom's T seemed to understand my position immediately. She also evinced solid understanding of emotional abuse in families, what can motivate adult children like me to estrange from their parents, and the nature of trauma in these situations. She quickly defined Mom as her primary client and ever since they have been meeting almost entirely without me. (I'm still amazed how artfully the T finagled this with M. M had been actively avoiding therapy for years and years and it was joint therapy she had, after all, signed up for.)

For several months, our contact was limited to brief small-talky conversations at intervals of every few weeks, always with Mom's T on the line. Before and after each convo the T checked in with me and we set up ground rules to steer the conversation away from triggering or fraught subjects. She spent the rest of the time working exclusively with Mom.

Mom signed a release so the T also shared information about their sessions with me. Though I haven't necessarily wanted to know much, what the T has offered has been very validating. Her statements initially were around the lines of, Your Mom seems unable to answer basic questions about her internal state or the people who she is close to in her life. Then, We haven't ruled out autism. Then it became, I got to experience her defensiveness and we've started working through that.

In every interaction I had with the T, she consistently and emphatically encouraged me to preserve very firm boundaries. She reminded me I have no responsibility to carry any of M's emotional load. She affirmed I had no duty to forgive M now or ever. She repeated that M's job is to do her work on herself, and my job is to do my work on me.

This approach meant that, at each step, I could rebut a little bit more of the shame and blame that saturates my inner world as a reliable consequence of  maternal abuse/neglect. 

Still, because I was getting all this second-hand, I remained skeptical that they were making progress. Something shifted, though, after our most recent conversation, which was the first of a substantive nature with M since my going ELC. In preparation, I wrote out notes and stared at them throughout the conversation, which consisted primarily of Mom reading to me a statement she wrote. Here were some of the notes I stared at while I was listening:

"I feel my toes, see the trees out the window, breathe deeply, and notice how my body is feeling."
"I am big enough to hold me."
"She can't eat me."
"My path is different."
"I can protect myself."
"I don't have to be perfect to be lovable and likeable."
"Clarity Calm Curiosity Compassion Connection Confidence Courage Creativity"
"I am blessed."
"I belong here."
"It's okay to be afraid and unsure."
"I deserve love."
"I have survived."
"I can and will move on."

I took notes while Mom spoke. In essence, her statement was an acknowledgement that, due to her own experience of childhood family trauma, she has never been emotionally present for me. She has always been walled off and caught up in herself. She apologized, stated she had regrets, and expressed a commitment to learning new behaviors. She cried throughout.

After she'd finished, I focused on taking care of myself and not carrying her emotional load. I told her that while I do have a human instinct to reach out to her, my own process meant I would limit myself to thanking her for telling me these things, acknowledge the courage it took to do that, and express optimism that if she kept doing her work, and me mine, we would get to where we needed to go.

In the language of Fisher's book, I then got to see one of of Mom's "attach parts" cry out needily for rescue from me, and experience the huge, huge relief of Mom's T swooping in and redirecting that childlike impulse squarely onto herself. Can I just say how much of a game-changer it was to not have to mother my Mom in that moment, while still seeing her emotional needs get a response from someone else? And how proud I am of myself for staying compassionately detached?

We still have a very, very long way to go. But as of that conversation, I now feel my theory about "what's wrong" between us has been unequivocally confirmed, out of my own mother's mouth, in the presence of a witness. The gaslighting and invalidation that was my daily bread-and-butter in my FOO has been dramatically upended. I am now certain my life has been shaped by chronic parental emotional neglect. (My uNPDf is similarly emotionally MIA.) This is a hardship too great for any human to bear without grave damage to their well-being, and this is why I have suffered. I am still suffering. But I am determined to suffer less. And I am on the right path to that end.

I refused an invitation during the call to discuss "next steps," because I knew I would need time to sit with what Mom had shared. I'm glad I did. I'm still sitting with it all, but a couple more issues have come into focus. First, in order to have a complete reconciliation, I'll need to also hear her address the abuse. The neglect was bad enough. But the abuse is why I won't talk to her without a third party.

Second, we won't be able to have a real relationship until Mom gets to the point that she can sit through my recounting of some of the damage she has done to me AND can respond appropriately. I don't want to dump on her out of vengeance, but because I should NEVER have had to bear all this pain because of her, and if it belongs anywhere, it belongs back on HER, not me.

Third, while I will be surprised, based on past experiences, if Mom continues to sing the same tune for very long, let alone manage to ever substantially change her behavior, I have hope that she has found a T who is a good match for her. With a good healer in her life, who knows what might be possible. But at the very least, she is getting some desperately needed emotional support, which makes it SO much easier for me to not feel compelled to try to meet her needs at the expense of my own.

Sorry this is so long! But members of this community were instrumental in getting me on this path and I thought some might benefit from this snapshot of this stage of one particular traumatized adult child of uPDs getting a little bit of healing. I haven't been around Out of the FOG too much lately but y'all still hold a special place in my heart.

Happy healing to all!

RavenLady

[P&K]

I have nothing to say beyond how powerful your post was for me. I am so happy to hear you received some much needed validation and are headed in the right direction. You are strong and amazing.  Peace and love to you!

[Andeza]

I'll admit, it's a strange sensation to be absolutely bursting with pride for somebody on the internet, but there it is nonetheless. What an incredible journey you have ventured to take. Well done. 

[RavenLady]

Thanks P&K and Andeza. I'm trying to feel the strength and pride you are sharing with me! It's felt a lot more like survival than success, but for some of us, survival IS success. I recently came across this quote attributed to Haruki Murakami:

And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

Pretty much how I feel inside these days.