(Written in 2003)
I’m reading from the beginning of ‘97. Mostly writing down affirmations that I don’t believe. I’m clearly in pretty bad shape. I can also see how badly my husband let me down, how he was distancing himself. How the help he offered was always intellectual /cognitive and sometimes invalidating: he got angry at me for “whining”, worried that he was “enabling” me by helping me — every time he did one of those I ended up feeling so bad I just wanted to die. The times when I actually felt strengthened were when Lynelle validated that the feelings were responses to abuse in early childhood. It’s so clear now — but it certainly wasn’t then. And I didn’t have the understanding that if it “worked”, if it made me feel stronger and more grounded, then it was true, and if it plunged me back into the misery, then it was false. I think I’ve only really got that very recently. I see that my childhood experience left me with the belief that if I found something comforting, then it was a lie I told myself, but if I found it painful it was a truth I didn’t want to see. What an inversion! It was Mom & Dad who told themselves lies to keep comfortable, and who got angry or hurt if someone told them a truth they didn’t want to hear.