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I also am familiar with the feeling of not knowing if it is "clean enough." It is helping me to think of cleaning as self-care and I stop when I get tired.

It will never be clean enough for Drill Sergeant Mom.

I'm pretty good at most of the house, but the kitchen is where evil lives. We got a dishwasher, and we never eat anything but frozen meals. I feel a lot better when I don't spend much time in the kitchen, but it's just avoidance. It's one of the things I've just given up on. I used to cook more out of necessity but now I live here, where frozen meals are plentiful, tasty and cheap, so I was all too happy to give that up!

I guess I don't eat well, but I feel so much better when I don't worry about it and just eat whatever I want. I keep presliced cheese in the fridge and I eat it by itself, which is the kind of thing my mother sees as a crime. WHERE'S THE BREAD. YOU CAN'T EAT THAT WITHOUT BREAD. Brrr, kitchens and food!

Oh man photos. I was looking through my boyfriend's family photos over the holidays and even THAT was triggering. I hadn't even been born yet, in another country, when most of those photos were taken. Seeing how sweet and loving his dad was with his babies/toddlers/children just made me feel very sad. (Moms still freak me out, so the photos with his mom didn't have the same effect. :-x)

I don't know if I will ever see my childhood photos again, and I'm not sure if I will ever want to.

Because I intellectualize and analyze everything! It would have been at the least harder for her to overcome my defenses if I'd been prepared, but I didn't have a clue. I had heard of attachment theory of course, but it wasn't something I'd given much thought outside of the basic description in my psych 101 textbook. I definitely hadn't thought about what happens to those children as adults.

A relational approach means building a relationship of sorts between the therapist and client. I believe that if I'd gone in knowing too much, it would have interfered with this relationship because I would have thought about it too much. It had to be about feelings and not thoughts. There was also no question of me knowing more than her, which made it easier to just go with it and to trust her (and my feelings!)

The value of the bond is hard to put into words. It's why, for example, Pete Walker doesn't treat patients over the phone or internet. (At least, I don't think he does?) Things like validation and empathy simply don't come through as well when you are not face to face.

Brandy, I wonder if I have the conversations with my mother (once they've been started by her) partly as punishment, partly because I think/hope that I can straighten out some things and stop some of the same-old accusations. I don't know if I'm ready to just instantly cut her off.... Maybe I'll take some time to think of and write out some goals and strategies, so that I don't have to decide what I'm going to do when she does call, just remember what I've already decided.

I thought about it for a good four years before cutting my mother off. Sometimes I wish I'd done it sooner, but I know I wasn't ready for it. That's a good idea to think of some goals or strategies. In those four years I tried many things to make contact bearable. She was nasty and miserable regardless of anything I did or didn't do.

I had rules about contact long before making the final cut, too. She was not able to call me out of the blue whenever she wanted. She had to make an appointment. If it wasn't appointment time, I was unavailable. No exceptions. If she didn't give me enough notice, I would get back to her after the time she had wanted had passed, even if I could have technically made the time. I was busy busy busy. Even with all this control, she still found ways to pick at me so eventually I just gave up.

[I used to have problems sleeping, when I was a child. Then I discovered daydreaming (aka dissociating) so now when it's time to sleep I just go to my happy place and I'm out in minutes. It also needs to be dark enough, and quiet enough (I ALWAYS sleep with earplugs), and I can't have too much caffeine during the day. I sleep when the whole world disappears. It's like in Hitchhiker's Guide when Arthur discovered that the secret to flying is not thinking about it at all.

I've never heard anyone else talk about falling asleep like this. I don't know what that means, but I suspect that I am just very very crazy, to be able to turn off reality like flipping a switch.

It was surprising to find that 7-year-old self had this sense of pointlessness and hopelssness wrapped up with physical appearance. As if, due to this uncontrollable circumstance, all doors were closed forever. As if there were no life beyond the way one looks to others.

My inner child felt the same, but for different reasons. The hopelessness due to things that couldn't be changed, though she (I) never connected it to anything in particular. We were just bad, and there was no explaining it or changing it. It just was. Do you think looks might be a sort of scapegoat for this general sense of inadequacy or unworthiness? Is it really about looks? If I could have blamed my looks for the way I was treated, I would have! I had nothing to blame but my self.

EFT has helped a lot of people, and I have tried it quite a few times over the years, with little success. The problem is, the sessions always begin with something like "even though (fill in the blank), I completely love and accept myself."

What. Really? Is this meant to be like a "fake it till you make it" thing? I think I could do this now and probably mean it, but definitely in the past if I'd managed to choke that out I wouldn't have been able to keep the sarcastic smirk out of my delivery. My first impulse would still be an incredulous look. You want me to say what?

What I used to call love was actually fear. Knowing this helps with the word itself, though what it really means is still a bit of a mystery.

I used to have social anxiety. I worked it out... sort of. I don't feel anxious automatically around people any more, but I still have the sense of being different, so social interactions still generally feel awkward. At least on my end, I think most of the time the other person doesn't notice, which actually makes it worse in a way. What's the point of talking to people if they don't see you anyway.

This is a pretty old post so I hope you went through with it and it all worked out.

My therapist once asked me why I always looked scared when she came to collect me from the waiting room. What kind of question is that?? Nothing personal, but therapy is SCARY.

This is similar to what the therapist I saw did with me. Interpersonal therapy with a focus on attachment issues. It was very helpful, but I'm not sure it would have worked so well if I'd known what she was doing.

My therapist helped a lot with basic feelings. I remember one moment in particular when I said I had a bad feeling, she asked where I was feeling it, I put my hand on my chest and she told me it was "fear". ... That explained a LOT.

I call it feeling haunted, because that seemed an obvious choice. Most people have heard of a haunting melody, or of being haunted by memories, and the feeling seemed to be in the same vein, but when I tried to describe feeling haunted, even my therapists drew a blank. This is the most evocative way to explain it -

Does anyone remember soap operas, back in the day? My mom and sister used to watch them a lot back in the 70's and 80's. Well, on American soap operas (I don't know about other countries) when a character was remembering a sorrowful and/or dramatic moment, the scene would go misty, the remembered voices would echo and there would usually be some sad, yet slightly ominous music in the background. The type of feeling evoked by such scenes is what I call feeling "haunted".

Well, back in my teens through mid 20's, I would feel this way quite often - sometimes for days. If I had been lost in memories of a tragic love or something, this would have made more sense, but it would come out of nowhere, seemingly be attached to nothing, and stick around making me uneasy. Had my life been a soap opera, that sad and ominous music would have been following me around everywhere - walking to work, doing laundry...

I think I do know what you mean, maybe. Though I refer to this feeling as "longing" and though I don't know exactly what I am longing for, it can last for days. Weeks. It is almost certainly grief-related, but like many feelings it is hard to nail down and define.

It's often triggered by music. I'm really glad you posted this because I've been thinking about this and googling it lately. I know I know I know it's about something that is missing, but WHAT. How do I find out what is missing? What is the source?

It certainly doesn't help that people seem to have no blessed idea, so trying to talk about it is just like having the depression conversation with someone who feels sad sometimes but then they just watch a sunrise and everything is great again. No no, that's not what I mean at all.

You are lucky you "outgrew" it. I'm still missing whatever it is. It bugs me! I want to know what I'm missing.

Have you ever thought about just hanging up or not answering the phone at all? Why even bother going through the same thing again and again?

I cut all contact with my parents (who are 100% responsible for any mental issues I have) when I realized that the cost of doing so was lower than the cost of continuing to allow them to abuse me. And any contact with them is abusive, forcing their warped idea of reality down my throat, resistance is worse than futile.

I'm angry a lot. I'd prefer to be not so easily driven into an internal rage over minor annoyances. It just happens, usually when I'm exhausted from tolerating an endless stream of constant irritation.

Babies die without love, even if they have everything else.

If that were really true, I wouldn't be here. Would any of us?

I don't like movies, probably because I find it difficult to only be with the characters for two hours. I love series about crazy people, like The Sopranos, Dexter, Boardwalk Empire. Most good series have at least one nutter to examine and analyze.

I really like seeing "bad people" punished, even if the punishment is way excessive. When I was a child I didn't understand why the Casey Jones character was a villain. It wasn't until years later when I watched a fan made film where a character told him "You can't kill people for ripping off a pack of bubblegum." Ooh! When you put it that way... yeah, I guess that's true. I was reminded of this recently with the real life story in the US, in Ferguson. My Facebook feed was exploding with outraged Americans and I was mystified. I spent a fair amount of time thinking about whether maybe I really am just a huge racist, but I think it's the punishment thing. Of course I know rationally that shoot to kill is not a reasonable response to (allegedly) robbing a shop and then wandering along down the middle of the road, but I need to have that pointed out to me cause I just do not register it correctly on an emotional level.

Yes, I have this at times, and it can last for months. Still have it right now, but it's improved a lot since I've been taking wellbutrin. It's frustrating, and I'm endlessly surprised by how minor the effect is on actually doing things. I do the things, and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, but then I get positive feedback. So all right. I guess I did the things correctly. Somehow.