TTT-Loving (or hating) oneself...a new ponder

Firstly, I'm obviously still going to post cross stitch stuff (whenever I stitch, which seems to be getting less and less...I'm TRYING to work on that too with the therapist), but I've kind of decided to take my blog in a bit of a different direction, at least for a while. I've decided to share some of my trauma therapy tidbits with you guys. Obviously, I get it if you don't want to read or comment, you don't have to. Some of this might be too personal for the faint of heart, or you just might not care (and god forbid if the people mentioned below read this, I'll never hear the end of it!). I'm not going to share everything we deal with (that would be Harry Potter-esque), but when important area of interest comes up, I think this could be cathardic. Besides, you guys know me, there isn't much of my life I haven't blurted out over the years here, so I don't have many secrets left anyway. I will start each post with a TTT (Trauma Therapy Tidbits), to help you ignore it if you want.

So, let's dig in! A million times in my life I've heard the phrase, "you can't love someone else if you don't love yourself first". But I've never pondered too deep into the question myself until trauma therapy last Thursday. First, she asked if I hated myself, to which I answered (obviously too quickly...thanks Hotel California!), "no, I don't think I do". Then she asked if I loved myself. That question was harder and threw me more off guard. I suddenly realized I don't think of myself in love/hate or any other form of endearment, I don't analyze myself externally because I don't actually think of myself at all and don't even consider myself a person, which was a weird brain explosion. And then we were off down another rabbit hole (I sure seem to be digging down a lot of those lately). She wanted me to explain why I thought that and, even after everything she and I discussed, I've been digging even deeper since.

Obviously, going into every single highlight we went through would be ridiculous. We hit on about 15 of my major traumas since birth, but since I have hundreds more, it was kind of a moot point. She did validate one thing that NO ONE has ever "officially" validated for me before...I'm a very traumatized little girl, and not just because of Hotel California. I thought that maybe it was all just in my head, or maybe I had all been blowing it out of porportion all these years, but nope, she was pretty adamant about it. It was kind of nice to hear from a professional, although I'm not sure it changes anything.

With everything discussed, it was determined that I was raised to not be important, to always be secondary to someone else, to never be able to have a support system, or to be able to rely on others, to only be used as a tool or an abuse doll, or being ignored altogether, hence my conclusion that I couldn't see myself as a lovable person, but an object, devoid of self love. I never had the chance to form an opinion of myself because of my childhood and most of my adulthood. And, why would I even bother now? It wouldn't matter anyway. If I had done, it probably wouldn't have been a good one, so it's probably best I didn't. Going back to that annoying phrase I mentioned at the beginning, why would I want someone to love me in the first place? I couldn't trust them, couldn't count on them, couldn't even believe they actually loved me, so why even mess with loving myself and setting myself up in the first place?

Once I came to that mind-blower, my therapist seemed a bit too gleeful, like she broke a wall or something. I was just kind of, "huh, well, didn't realize that, but OK, makes sense". She rambled on and on about how much progress that was, but again, I didn't get it. I knew almost all of this, I just may have not put a couple of the puzzle pieces in, but those one or two pieces still don't matter. They don't change things for me. Yes, I was a VERY traumatized little girl, so what? No matter what trauma I can dig up that caused a specific behavioral issue, it's all something I've accepted because I can't change it or fix the damage done, nor am I the type than can forgive and forget. I can just live with it and use it to protect myself in the future, end of story. They were lessons, very painful ones, but they had a specific cause and effect that serves a very strengthening purpose today.

So, when she starts in with "now we can work on fixing it", I instantly started with "whoa horsey, let's just wait a minute there!". Every single thing that has happened to me has helped to make me able to be a functioning Autistic (see, I used "the" word!) because I do have that hardened outer shell. Sure, the OCD and other initialed diagnoses help, but it's this scar tissue that makes me who I am. Besides at 50, it's not something I'm willing to change about myself, so we may have already hit an impasse with treatment if she wants to start cutting away scar tissue. I like those scars, thank you very much!

When she started in with "do you want to be loved and do you want to love yourself?". That was easier to answer. No, I don't think I want to be loved. I have literally been betrayed (often in very damaging ways) by every single person I've ever known. Literally, when your own parents ruin you, you're pretty much screwed for life, let alone everyone else. I couldn't trust someone enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. I would just be waiting for the let down. Her question to that was, "but what if they weren't going to let you down?", to which my answer was, "but I would always be expecting it and would probably inadvertently cause it just from that". And she said, "yes, you are right because you have to love yourself first, so do you think you can love yourself, because you didn't answer that one?". I still didn't answer her because I changed the subject. I have the feeling, at least next session, she will bring it up again.

I also discovered that my penchant for dropping people like old trash when I've had enough or they've pushed me too far and never giving them a second glance is a trauma response. I didn't know that. That's a personality quirk I'm probably most proud of today. Instead of getting hurt, I can walk away clean slate, no muss, no fuss. If they get hurt, well, they shouldn't have pushed me too far. That's their fault, not mine. But that was also a new factoid, and I think I was more fascinated by that, than the fact that I didn't love (or hate) myself. My personal opinion of me doesn't matter in the overall scheme of "me". It's probably why I could care less what others think of me either.

Is that odd? That I don't think I need (or even want) to love myself or even think about myself in terms of love and hate? Have you guys ever really thought DEEP about that concept? What do you think about it? Obviously, I don't want you guys to dwell on my supposed "pitiful childhood filled with horrible and unthinkable traumas" (she actually used that phrase...I was kind of like, "bitch, please! I'm lucky I survived the season finales of Once and Agents of Shield, those two things had more heart strings pulled than any of the above"). I don't want or need pity, I think I'm past it at this point anyway. That hurt little girl is LONG gone now and beyond saving. I don't want to save her, but maybe it would be worth letting her go and creating a new little girl? What about that idea? But do I want to risk a new life of more hurt and betrayal? I'm obviously hard-wired for it. Give it to me guys!