Finally Growing Up

After a year of EMDR and loads of therapy, I kind of had a breakthrough a few weeks ago.

I’ll describe the breakthrough in a bit, but first the point of this post: my whole adult life I’ve felt like I was maybe still 14 emotionally in a lot of ways, but now I may finally be doing that last individuation and maturing (definitely at the early stage!).

Has anyone else had this experience? I’d love to read your stories about it.

i suspect that mom keeping me so enmeshed as a teenager, so focused on soothing her, and so focused on living, doing, being, thinking, feeling exactly how she wanted me to, left me unable to identify my needs, what I like and want, unable to voice my needs and feelings unless I’m with someone very gentle and caring and thoughtful. Someone who doesn’t override what I’m communicating, who works hard to liste, understand, play back and ask questions.

The breakthrough: I was able to identify that my husband has been asking me to be a certain way for our whole marriage. Until now, I thought it was my fault, that I couldn’t figure out how, that I just am not wired that way. I even had several EMDR sessions to try to address what I thought was blocking me. A few weeks ago that situation where he feels I’m not showing up the way I should happened again and I realized it’s actually what my husband is doing/not doing that is why I can‘t bring myself to engage.

Now that I’ve identified it, I need to figure out how to communicate it.