I now know a lot of my inner insecurity and fear and descent into addiction from the age of 17 comes from the removal or absence of significant attachments growing up. The early loss of my sister to a new life far away from us was a wound that went deep but one I could not share with anyone or even fully understand at age 3.
When I look at photos of my sister’s wedding with myself in them I look sad and bewildered, like I don’t know what is going on. I am the only child in those photographs and my sister and her new husband left on a boat for a different country the following day. I imagine now the hole that was left by my sister’s absence then and now with the death of my Mum I feel the shadow imprints of that hole, but not as deeply for luckily over these past few years I have managed to reach out more to those I would love to share a friendship or connection with, those who I can say how I really feel and what I am really experiencing inside.
What I noticed over the lead up to my Mum’s funeral following her death was the insecurity and unreliability of many of my familial attachments. My brother was the only fully physically present figure but he was not operating on an emotional level, so when he wanted to extend his support I found myself brushing it off. With other family members I noticed they were just not there or were only there in a very inconsistent way. When they were there I did a sideways dance due to fear and lack of trust
Due to my abandonment history I am not used to either consistency or reliability in attachments or support. I am used to insecure unreliable attachments and those who try to fob me of or gain distance from me. This was made clear to me this morning when I read the chapter Just Like A Timepiece in the book Beyond Borderline : True Stories of Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder.
In this story the sufferer speaks of making her first most significant attachment shortly after her first hospitalisation for the disorder. The doctor she bonded and attached to then left the programme at the hospital and the sufferer then spiralled into addiction. I could see as I read the clear connection between that emotional abandonment and the sufferer’s need to medicate her pain. Luckily seven years later the teller of this story moves to a new town where the doctor who treated her is in practice as a therapist. Through trust and courage she makes the attempt to connect to her and her therapist makes herself available 24/7 which is what one therapist told me years ago is the only thing that works for those of us with deeply disordered and insecure attachment experiences.
Looking back I see how many therapies broke for me when my therapist took a break. I am also wondering at the wisdom of what my therapist told me this week, that by leaving me alone to cope she was helping me to build that resource inside or look to others. Maybe there is a lot of truth in this but a deeper truth is at a time I really needed her 24/7 she refused to be there for me. She told me this week when I went back to see her she was surprised I had come back, coolly and calmly she explained she thought she would not see me again. It would have been no problem for her, but it would have been for me. I would have had to find yet a new therapist, explain my story all over again and I have been with this therapist for 2 years now and that’s a lot of sessions building a knowing and a history.
I felt so sad when I read this story this morning. Of course I was glad for the writer she was able to find such a consistent reliable attachment with her therapist, Dr. Chase. She writes :
Dr Chase and I still continue to meet twice a week at the time of this writing. She is by far the most important person in my life. She has done more for me than anyone else I have ever known. There are still moments when I struggle, and she is available to me at any moment, both night and day. The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder is not an excuse for me. Its is simply an explanation. I have begun to tentatively form friendships , although many times I still retreat within the safety of myself The other day I found myself saying “I like myself.”
And I cry now.
I felt upset this morning that my own therapist does not provide that kind of support. I felt I had no other alternative but to accept her boundaries last week, but that doesn’t mean I think they are right. I think what she did to me over the time of Mum’s death was hard and unfair but I also know she had the best of intentions and understand her reasoning. I am used to giving over in this way. Another person’s will and desire was stronger than my own. She held all the power and control and I accepted it. I could have left to start again with someone new I guess but what I get most of the time from Kat works.
I am going to find other sources of support next year. Like the person who told the story I quoted from above I am now building in my own life growing connections with several people in my own life. I know the fears I have of abandonment relate back to very real experiences of being alone and abandoned when I most needed support. With my Mum’s death around the anniversary of my Dad’s that empty black hole does open up within me some mornings. But the difference is that now, armed with inner psychological awareness I know the need I have to reach out, I can also reach inside for the love and understanding, it is where life has always forced me, so why argue with reality?
Yesterday I was brave enough to visit the husband of a good friend who was part of my trauma past in the aftermath of Dad’s death back in 1986 who had undergone brain surgery to remove a tumor on Thursday in the hospital where I spent 3 months following my accident at the end of 1979. I needed a cup of coffee before I got there and he was doing well. His wife was there and we talked for well over an hour. I thought then as i drove home of how life and recovery is always trying to bring us full circle. Recovery is like a spiral dance in which we pass over and re-experience old ground, pain, trauma and issues but with a new elevation or perspective on them. At times we have to go into the fire and face or front up to those triggers or re-enactments, but armed with the knowledge we gain from our journey we grow in awareness on each revolution around the center of our self and past.
Many of my attachments broke all through out my life. Some broke in later years due to unconscious fears, but many of them also held firm. Those who have loved me have watched me battle with my need to connect amidst enormous fear. They have stayed close but not too close and then there are those who over this most painful time have made real efforts to draw close and be near. Their consistency in being there for me has made me aware that it is safe to trust in world I so long ago learned to doubt or fear.
Maybe it took my Mum’s death for this to all come full circle. I don’t know. I only know I am so grateful all these years later to be living just a little further outside of all of that insecurity and fear that plagued me unconsciously for so many years. I will perhaps always carry deep insecure attachment and abandonment fears but hopefully with mindfulness they will no longer need to dominate my life so unconsciously and I can learn who is secure/safe for me to trust and place my faith in.
