Written after a session with Erica in April 2015, and posted at that time.
So what happened with Erica? I told her about the pain of spring — the earth waking up and I’m still frozen. Also told her I was really wanting a dog. And the grief that I wasn’t able to take in how much Bella loved me until the end. Here come the tears again. I guess that’s big. And Tiny was in grief too, when I went to write about it her grief was also that she didn’t know she was loved. I guess I have a lot of grieving to do.
Bella is the dog who died in September 2013. “Tiny” is the part of me that I discovered and describe in Deep Work.
It took me awhile after the session to really get how sad I am that I wasn’t able to take in the love that was there for me. I think this is only possible now that I’m starting to be able to see myself as lovable. It makes me so so sad. How different my life would have been. But the first thing I learned from mother was that I wasn’t lovable. I tried and tried to do the right thing to make her happy, but she was never happy with me. Finally, the youngest part of myself, who needed to be aware of being loved in order to be aware of herself at all, had to split off and close herself up so nothing could get in. Mother’s poisonous energy was too toxic for her to take in, so she had to block out everything.
I think Tiny must be that youngest part of myself, the first one who had to split off to protect herself. I realize I have too little understanding of the possible Attachment Disorders, though the one I am dealing with is where the attachment figure is a source of fear rather than comfort. Easy to imagine how much damage that does.