1995: Sullen Angry 8-yr-old

From my journal for November 28, 1995

Well, let’s see if she is here, that sullen angry hurt child.  I have a hit of her age as being 8 or 9, and of Mother as a hurt angry sullen child herself.  I can feel her presence, but she’s not ready or not willing to talk.  She doesn’t want to have anything to do with grown-ups, or with grown-up advice, or with grown-up value systems.  This sounds like someone who’s had unreasonable expectations laid on her, to be mature beyond her state of development, to be mature without having grown organically through the earlier stages, and then was given no support for this enormous stretch, or praise when she accomplished it.  No wonder she’s hurt and angry.  Well, I’m here to listen.  Here’s the pen if you want to say something.

You’re a fine one to give me the pen.  You don’t want to hear about what it’s been like to be me.  I feel silenced, patronized, condescended to.  I can’t express my anger in fine words, or coherent statements, and you devalue it as childish, as being about trivial things.

What am I angry about?  I don’t know, I don’t know —   I’m angry at feeling trapped in some goody-goody bourgeois room that’s narrow and full of little knick knacks and when I try to swing my arms to make room to breathe I knock something over and get told I’m being rude and I have a vague sense, or maybe it’s just a hope, because this place is so painful and tight and stuffy and boring, I hope that there’s another world out there, a bigger world, with room to move and breathe and beautiful things that would satisfy my heart and beings that I could talk to — but you tell me that’s just a fantasy, unrealistic.  And so I make myself wrong for my hope, and try to fit in among the dusty artifacts, and try to nourish myself on fantasies that are limited because there’s nothing outside me to feed them.  And now I find that there is a world out there, a would of mountains and trees, a world of artists and musicians and dancers, and you never told me about it, or helped me develop the skills I need to be able to function in that world.  That’s why I’m angry.

And I have liked working on the costume for the “Lady from the Black Lagoon,” and I thank you for that.

O, my dear, I’m so glad you were able to tell me about what it’s been like for you, and I don’t blame you for being angry at me and distrusting me, and I’m trying to find more ways to find nourishment from the “outside” and to support you in creative expression.

November 29

Woke at six, feeling rested and grateful to be feeling better.

I have to say I’m blown away by this conversation. This is work with “parts” long before I started doing it with my therapist. I wish I remembered the “Lady from the Black Lagoon.” Although she doesn’t say it directly, I think she doesn’t want to have anything to do with adults because Mom & Dad were so unhelpful. I love her description of a “goody-goody bourgeois room that’s narrow.” It doesn’t describe the house I grew up in so much as the emotional tone of my parents’ lives.

I think this 8-yr-old is the same as, or similar to the obstreperous child I wrote about in the last post. Looks like I need to let her be both angry and grieve. Or maybe I’m the one who needs to grieve because I never let her out in my life. No, that’s not true.  After I had been doing Somatic Experiencing for a while, I got one of those emails about calling your congressperson to complain about something.  I wanted to do it, and instead of being immobilized by my anger, I was able to go to the phone and make the call. I was so pleased.

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