My group therapy sessions were now going along especially well. I was in with a group of women I call my sisters-in-spirit. An overwhelming majority of us were raised by abusive, controlling parents with Hyde & Jekyll personalities. We all related and no one was judging.
Our therapist Marcia, told us many people were simply unable to comprehend a group like ours. In other words, most of society! Here, I was finally among people with whom I felt completely comfortable. We all sat around a long U-shaped table. The therapist's chair was in the open space.
Marcia placed a large box of Kleenex on the table to be passed around when needed. We were there to support each other emotionally. Marcia criticized me because I never cried.
"I want to see you cry, Dianne!" were words she often repeated.
By this point in my life, I felt all cried out! Anger had taken over, I oozed venom; all directed toward my parents & step-mother. Plus I felt a great deal of self-loathing for not finding a way to escape them. They just all died off.
Marcia drew a crude sketch of me on the blackboard, shackles around my ankles tied to gravestones. She said I needed to grow wings. -- They would have been useless! I really needed a pair of bionic legs!
Once, as homework, I was given a writing assignment to imagine my ideal birthday with my mother. -- My birthday was NEVER acknowledged when I was a small child. (I wrote of this in a previous blog.) I could not even begin to imagine my mom in this role. Instead, I imagined one of the ladies in therapy as my mother. I wrote from this perspective.
The class delighted in my story! Marcia began giving me other writing assignments to vent. To my surprise, the group greatly enjoyed them all. But then, I was a graduate of several creative writing courses. I admitted that I was a failed writer. However, the reaction of the group gave me new hope to return doing what I loved.
I seldom received positive reinforcement for anything before. My mom and step-mother considered it babying. Marcia said it wasn't babying, it's a basic need. -- One of the ladies pointed out how both women had shamelessly babied my dad!
Here, I was finally forced to face my father's psychological abuse as well. Something of which I had long been in denial. Previous therapists tried to touch on this, but I fought it! I made it clear I wasn't going to criticize my dad. In my mind, he had been the good parent.
But he grew more and more ugly to me in words and actions as time passed, escalating in his senior years. I figured it was just part of the aging process. Marcia explained that most people manage to grow old without becoming mean and abusive.
My eyes were opened as to how I was undermined in subtle and not so subtle ways. If you truly care about someone, you do not methodically destroy all their sense of confidence and self-worth in order to control them. Everything I learned in therapy was highly illuminating.
I decided to return to my writing. Something my father always called, "a fantasy!" I now had the green light from the universe. And I would use my dad's money to make my fantasy a reality! It didn't matter if I never became a best-selling author. It was what I enjoyed, as well as therapy.
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