WAW: Watching & Waiting (part deux)

[Bridgestone]

Hello all,
I have been away from home for a few days. I had been hoping that I could relax & move this sitch to the back burner for a few days.

H. called the evening of the day I left & told me that he had scheduled his IC for the same date & time as mine. My IC & his IC & he stood there & had a 3way discussion about doing this & agreed that it was do-able if we wanted to be able to do a joint MC with all 4 of us 1/2 the time & IC the other 1/2.

While this is my long term goal, I was very surprised by this, as I have only seen this new IC 2 times and for those 2x we have only talked about the R for about 20% of the time. We have spent much time talking about my issues & how to view my actions with through a more healthy lens.

H has seen his IC 7 times and much time has been spent talking through his side of things with his IC. While H was clear that he understood if I didn't want to do this in 2 weeks, I was also clear with him that this made me very anxious.

For me, walking into a room with an IC who doesn't really have my side of things about our R., and two adult men, one of whom has been verbally, emotionally, & physically abusive to me and the other who has his back & I have never met, is really, really scary!!

The 'want' to be in the positive side of this situation (with two well-trained professionals & my H) to hopefully affect positive change is strong, the fear of being in the negative side of this situation (with an IC who doesn't really know me, my former abuser, & the man who has his back &I don't know) where my feelings & side of things are not 'taken care of' is stronger.


While he was very clear that if I didn't feel safe yet with my IC, it was OK that if I didn't want to do this, we could each just do our own IC and leave, no need to meet for MC at all. In that sense he was giving me the out to say 'no, I"m not comfortable, I'm not doing this. Period" no explanation needed at all.

However, I REALLY wanted him to understand WHY this was SOOOOOOOOOOO scary for me at this point. I wanted him to get my explanation.

I spent almost the past 36 hours while away the past 2 days, trying to explain this to H, via emails, texts, phone calls, IM'ing.

After telling him I needed to vent this to someone else, as we were both getting frustrated in no 'hearing or being heard'. He was in his 'fix it' mode I was in 'understand me' mode.

I talked to a good friend & she let me vent, validated, & allowed me to understand it was OK to let the professionals know my concerns, ask for more information & what I needed to help feel safer.

I sent an email to H's IC doing just that and cc'd H on it.

When we talked at suppertime last night, he was happy that I had found someone to talk this through with, but very sad & dissapointed in himself that he could not do what I needed.

We started back down this path of me being heard... this time when he started to validate my feelings... "I hear you are really scared and are hesitant to put yourself in that situation" I stopped him... because I had my friend do what I had really needed,

I asked him... do you want me to give you a script for what I want to hear & how I want to hear it? He said.. yes that would be very very helpful

so I told him the following

in a quiet, sensative voice..
"Bridgestone, I can tell you are really scared to put yourself in this situation... I can hear the shake in your voice, the tightness in your tone, that tells me you are really, really scared.. "

I said.. can you honestly do that? He said of course.. I just didn't know what you needed me to say & how.

So he did the above (more or less in his own words..and then added the following...

I bet you are picking at your fingers, maybe even shaking, your breaths are shallow & you are sitting stock still just looking at the ground.

I started to cry... "he notices, he understands what I look like when I'm really scared!!!"

It was like an emotional orgasm.

Strange I know. I gave him some more 'script' about seeing my actions which he did the same basic thing with.. taking what I gave him & tweaking it with his own style.. again.. more tears for me, more emotional orgasms.

I have more & more hope.
but damn.. it's hard when I'm not numb.