Fixing my brain: starting with attachment

Oh, therapy. What else can I say about it. In typical 1 hour session fashion (as opposed to 2), anxiety very quickly took over and I successfully managed to talk about nothing that really mattered for the majority of it. It’s frustrating, but I also didn’t want to open up certain cans of worms with just 1 hour…

At some point we talked about how to make the most of the 1 hour sessions so they’re more productive since they stress me out so much. I think I said something along the lines of that I wanted to use them to fix my brain…whatever that means.

Towards the end, we got into attachment and how I’m basically a disaster when it comes to that. I’m sure those were her exact words too. (I’m kidding.) Apparently it isn’t healthy or “normal” to want to have babies and get too many animals because you want them to love you. Whatever. It’s totally normal. Right? No? Okay.

I’ve always known that I have attachment issues. I’m insecure and usually afraid in all of my relationships with people around me, but I guess I assumed that that was just like, a normal problem to have. Apparently, not so much.

So then I sort of halfway jokingly (but also not jokingly) asked her if “we should fix that”. She kind of, more seriously than I expected, asked me if I was ready for that. I guess it wasn’t something I was expecting to need to be ready for?

But I guess diving deep into attachment and my childhood and my past is going to…be intense. Aaaaaaaand in case you don’t know, we attempted to do EMDR a few months ago, and, well… It did not go well. My brain fought it the entire time and put up walls and it was just..not great. And the topic we did it on wasn’t even that hard. So I guess this will be significantly harder, and I sucked last time, so her “am I ready for that” question is pretty valid.

I honestly don’t even know what “working on attachment” entails. It isn’t EMDR, but we can use EMDR for parts of it? And I know it will be hard, but I don’t know why. Just because we’re digging into my past and my wonderful childhood? I can do that. I can totally get through that with sarcasm and dissociating.

Oh, maybe that’s the hard part. Not doing that.

Apparently she’s been trying to get me to figure this out for a while and she was happy that I finally figured it out. Hah. I mean…she could’ve just told me. We probably could’ve been here a few years earlier if she was just like, “Listen. You’re a hot mess, and this is what we’re going to do about it”. But “thats not how this works” or something. Whatever.

I guess this is a major source of a lot of my issues. Or something. Shit. Can you tell how hard I’m fighting the sarcasm right now even just writing this? Yeah, I’m gonna need some help getting through this. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fun. I’m not at all worried about it.

This is something that I want to be better, so I know that even though this will be hard and really suck…it will probably be worth it. I think that I’ve just gotten masterfully good at 100% not thinking about or feeling anything lately. So when I think about my childhood and my life and all that…well, I guess I just don’t. I shut it down before I even have a chance to think about it.

But I do want to fix my brain. So guess this is where we have to start…at the beginning. Ugh. Yeah, this will probably suck.

Or…I could just keep finding and creating things to love me to fill the enormous holes in me? Is that valid? Do people really not get dogs and other pets because they want something to love them?

Shit. I mean…all of that really is news to me.

(I promise I’m normal.)