What is your princess?

The reason why you show up for therapy and do the hard work by exposing your pain? As he explained the reason Mario in Mario brothers game goes through all that is because he is trying to save the princess. So what is my princess and the end of therapy?

That was the question that was posed to me in session this week. In other words why are you here?

I most certainly did not say, "Why because I love you and would die if I did not see you like a child feels in a store when they turn around and mommy/daddy are gone." I feel like the earth would fall out from under me if you kicked me out or said we are preparing for termination. No no no.

What I did was go through all the things therapy has helped me with up to this point and what still needed to be resolved like me going from calm to a basket case in a flash. So overwhelming emotions that over come me hense the webinar.

So what is your princess?

What an interesting question.

For more than a few years I was preoccupied with getting my therapist to love me. Somehow my brain believed that if she did, and I could feel it, I would finally be ‘enough’.

Towards the end of therapy, I had a few breakthroughs and harsh realizations particularly around what I was doing to try to earn that love and the negative impacts it was having on the rest of my life. My goal switched to gaining independence, inner strength, self-respect and the ability to self-care. Unfortunately my therapist remained a triggering distraction so I finished (and I’m still finishing) the rest of my work outside of therapy.

I have so many princesses! I want to able to live without the disruption of pathological dissociation. To get to a point where I am able to have meaningful relationships with others. To no longer experience flashbacks in response to the triggers of trauma all round me in daily life. To be able to experience an authentic relationship with another human being. To get to a point where I can be true and accepting and protective of all parts of myself. Where I can be authentic and full and stand rooted in my own truth.
I hate therapy. I hate the process of it. I hate the vulnerability of it.
I hate that I have to do it in order to achieve the things I want to achieve.

I wanted the pain to stop. I don't see that as a princess nor as something outside of myself.

Amyjay I think we could be twins. I echo everything you said.

Trust me I said all that as well. Triggers sending me into flashbacks but most of all not having that child part that needs to be taken care of desperately activated all the time. I said to be able to be in best adult self almost all the time. Right now I am clinging to home like a life boat and do not even understand why? Not like he lives my life with me on daily basis. My internal world changes if he goes away but my psychical world does not.

Mine was to get to a place where my history wasn't running my present.

Yes he has said that in therapy. Not having my past rule every decision in the present. So I do things or not do thing based on fears from the past that do not actually live now in the present and I do not even realize I do it.

When my history became history, I was finally able to move forward. It was hard getting there though.

T always talked about getting to a place where I could put my history in a box and place it at the back of a high shelf in a closet. I would know it was there and could make choices about when and if to pull it down and look at it, but the items in the box were no longer strewn about the house where I was tripping over them, constantly seeing them, mad at them for being in the way. I thought he was a bit nuts at the time, but I realize now that is exactly (metaphorically) what I have been able to do.

The thing about old boxes on shelves in the back of closets is that you forget they are there for long periods of time. You can actually forget about them because they are just full of old stuff you don't need to live your present life. You are able to function quite well without the constant reminders tripping you up. The items aren't gone. They aren't quite forgotten. They're just designated to an appropriate location.

I think I've written about this before. My mother passed away two years ago and this last year, we went through the process of going through my parent's house and emptying out their things. We had the job of taking their boxes off the high shelves in the back of their closets . . . literally. I realized Mom had literally done what my T had helped me do figuratively. Looking through their boxes was at times nostalgic, sometimes funny, sometimes painful. It had to be done slowly and with the support of my sister. We shed a lot of tears. We laughed a lot. We got Dad to tell us lots of stories.

The process reminded me that I need to be respectful and careful of my own boxes and careful in choosing when I pull them off the shelf. They're okay up there. They're not bothering me or anyone up there on that shelf. Looking through them needs to be purposeful and respectful because I don't want to strew the items all over the floors again and start tripping over them.

Could your princess be the little girl who loves her therapist mommy/daddy? Even though they disappeared and didn't show up and hurt and disappointed you far too often? Still, she loves. . .That seems like a princess, to me. (Don't know how you feel these days about your real mom and dad, but the ability to love is still there.
Again, that seems like a princess, to me.)

I am not understanding this. Sorry. I need it spelled out.

You said that you loved your therapist. That love is something in you.

Maybe I can say that because I "worked" long and hard to piece through the feelings about my parents and in the end, love was still there. That love was mine, not theirs, it was in me even though I felt it about them.

The ability to love is a "good" thing, I think. It's a "good" thing in me, I think, even though it can also lead to a lot of pain sometimes. I guess I've decided to value that in me, because. . .well, maybe I just have.

Without love, the world pretty much just sucks, IMO. It pretty much sucks period. I'm not able to love often but it seems like something good in me when I can.

I see that same love in what you wrote about your T. And yes, it's awful when the mom and dad you love disappear and aren't there. And end up being torturers. And, yes, maybe that loving little girl dare not come out into the world as a result.

Or -- maybe that doesn't ring true with your experience at all. Just a thought. Seems to me I see a loving princess -- deeply, safely, protectively ensconced away -- in your writing sometimes, but maybe that's just me.

To be at a point where I can manage anxiety without spiraling all the time, and to learn to like myself more. I am already sadly, forgetting T, so that issue is nearly over I guess

Initially when I entered therapy it was so that I could be a better, happier mother to my 3 children. Then it became to be able to stop the constant pain of feeling like I had to keep everybody out of my personal life. It was the fear that if anybody knew the real me, they would think I was horrible and disgusting. Now it is to be able to deal with my past so that I can live a happier more fufilling life.

Where does one learn how to love? Is this innate or you learn from getting loved from loving caring parents. What if you never had loving caring parents. Then you do not know what is love. I do not know if what I feel for my therapist is actually love or not. I know the thought of not having him in my life is excruciatingly painful and I can feel the the weak desire to leave just start fading away. Even though I say I love my therapist I am not even sure if that is what it is.

I get that, I think. It's different from me, you're different from me. But - and I could be wrong, other people may disagree with me or see me differently or, or, or. . .

What I see in your statement in the OP about your T IS love. A child's love for a parent figure, maybe, but a starting point. An innate starting point maybe, who knows, but It's in you, a part of, a capacity in you now. What I worked so hard to disentangle in myself and which maybe? Is more independent or well-known or something, I recognize in what you wrote about your T. So I recognize it, I value it, that is maybe something people need in our early life and if we don't get that recognition by somebody, yeah, how can we know? It's tough.

But it is there in you, I believe that. Is there any smidgen of you that feels or thinks it may be possible? A tiny smidge of a starting point, that's something.

And maybe you'd like to define your princess differently, but . . .It's a princess that I see in you and would definitely be worth Mario going through so much.

Love doesn't need to be shown to us in order to exist within us. It isn't something that is "learned". Love is an emotion. It is a physiological aid to life and attachment. It just is.
Attachment patterns are different to the emotion of love. Attachment patterns are learned ways of a young child getting the best care possible in the circumstances. In my circumstances with two very abusive parents who were not at all loving, I learned to get the least worst care by isolating and being alone. But I also needed to be fed and housed. So there were parts of me that needed to attach to the abusive parental units as well. So my attachment style is largely avoidant, especially for physical and emotional safety, but I attach for the purposes of ensuring the essential needs of life - food, shelter, etc.
But that is separate to love. Love for my alters - especially the hurt little ones - comes from my compassionate adult self that can step back and "knows" the child selves deserved more than that. These are the adult selves that the article you linked talks about. They didn't learn love or compassion from an external model. It just exists in us as it does in all human beings.
Somewhere in you you also have a wise compassionate self. It might be easiest to access it in relation to external others first. Like... to other hurting children. You don't need to have been shown compassion towards yourself in order to know how to feel compassionate towards a hurt kitten, a crying child, a dying animal etc . Unless you are a natural psychopath and have no capacity for empathy with others this compassionate self exists within you also. This is the part of self that needs to be nurtured and developed in order to be able to give it to yourself. And contrary to what you may think, it doesn't need care and compassion shown towards IT before it can feel it alone. It is already there, a natural part of your own humanity.
This is the part of self that can be grown and developed with the support of a therapist. It doesn't need the therapist to give it love and care. It just needs to learn how to use that internal compassion in service of the younger, hurting parts.
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I don't disagree with you Amyjay. I would say that when I first went into therapy, I hadn't felt love of another or being loved in so long, I was out of touch with it - clouded in my depression. It took a while before I felt it and could recognize it for what it was. Even now it is an emotion that is hard for me to access in a way that I define as love. Caring and compassion is easy for me to access, somehow they don't connect to or feel the same as love; though I intellectually know that love is part of compassion and caring.

Amyjay...once again we are on the same page. I have told my T many times that I was always trying to save any injured widlife as a kid and I always use the metaphor to describe my trapped and helpless feelings as those of an injured animal in a cage. He said it is great that despite the way I was treated I was still able to show love and concern to the animals instead of being cruel to them as that is all I had been taught.

My T therefore knows I have it in me and while it comes natural when dealing with animals, it is foreign for me to show love and care for myself, my parts, or other people.

He is always reminding me and telling me how to show love and understanding to my Littles. He is always happy when I say I did it on my own although that is rare. I do not look for love and caring from others, my brain was trained at birth to not look for or expect that. But I guess my T is hoping that I can eventually start loving myself and to accept love and caring from others once I learn to extend it to my Littles as I do to animals.

Sorry I got off topic. I guess my princess would be to be able to feel and act like a normal person so I can quit therapy as soon as possible.

I would like to find that special someone in my life before I die. So far I have never been able to sustain a lasting relationship because they always take on characteristcs of my abusers and I run.

But I would settle with just being a normal person and being able to handle life on a daily basis.