A Little Epiphany - (and a newbie delurking)

[Dia]

Hi, all!

I'm here to wish the very best that 2010 has to offer to you and yours. 2009 was sure was a stinker, wasn't it? Thank God and Greyhound it's gone!

I have a whole bunch of stuff to post, but I'm going to have to do it in bites.

Short version - things are great! I did a DB session on my own, then the day after Christmas, H and I slipped in to see my most excellent IC in the desert for a 2 hr session focused on *drumroll* ... validating feelings.

So I've got stuff to share from both of those sessions, plus some of my own personal musings.

Here's the first of the latter as it applies to reconciliation...

The end of detachment, re-attachment if you will, is hard. And since it happens both quickly (for me) and under the radar, it's a perfect set-up for having it come out of nowhere and bite you in the arse!

Stuff that didn't used to matter all of a sudden does. Stuff you used to blow off gets under your skin again. And most of all, your self image very quickly becomes vulnerable to your partner's moods, feelings and perceptions of you. YIKES!!

It's an insidious slippery slope. Some of it is necessary for re-bonding, and some of it is a gold-plated opportunity to change old boundary patterns before they can become entrenched again.

In my case, when I was struggling so hard with H being invalidating, it really threw me. It felt as if he wasn't just invalidating my feelings or my perception of events and reality in general. It felt like he was invalidating ME. The message seemed to be, "Your feelings are worthless drivel, so *you're* worthless drivel, too."

And after two years of not letting him put that on me, all of a sudden I let him. And I didn't even realize I was doing it. All the crap that I was feeling, all of the labels I'd been expected to wear came out in spades. Unreasonable. Demanding. Hormonal. Over-emotional. Malicious. etc.

There are two - ok, three - parts to fixing all of that.

1) Realize it's happening.

2) Stop accepting the negative self-talk. Your partner might think or say that stuff, but as with vampire, it can't come in unless you invite it.

3) Work with the partner on the negative messaging.

We are currently doing all of the above. Or rather, I'm doing 1 and 2. *We* are doing 3.