Dear Stef,

I need your help. I've been a long time listener and sought out therapy as soon as I turned 18. Between then and now I have made very limited progress chipping away at my armor and processing my childhood. I'm panicking at how long its taking when I want to cross the desert, meet a virtuous woman and maketh the babies.

I think biggest hurdle is that I'm quite split between my emotional and intellectual. I'm really strong on the intellectual side, identifying patterns, reasoning through healthy behavior, and making theoretical connections with my past. I've learned this alone doesn't work. With me, it doesn't touch my beliefs or really change how I feel or even open a door for me to explore or interact with that realm. I feel hopelessly broken.

To be more fair, I have occasionally made connections between these two worlds but only briefly a handful of times in therapy. That's not enough. I still have many dysfunctional behaviors from my near death experience called childhood. I had no bond, was not parenting and was constantly in danger of violence from my middle brother and abandonment from my sadistic mother.

I'm baffled that I can logically understand how bad I had it but still lag behind so much with my emotions and lack of empathy for myself. Typically in your call-in, once people understand, they connect. I am so fucking frustrated. No matter what I've tried with two therapists and journaling, I'm not touching it.

I am not without emotions, I can feel them strongly. I do try to suppress them until their intensity overpowers the suppression.

Talking about suppressing, I've been experiencing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome(self diagnosed) for the past 10 years. I've been to alternative, normal and specialist doctors and ruled out all kinds of illnesses, infections and deficiencies. I'm left with a "shrug, we don't know what's wrong with you". I have a working hypothesis that it's mental with physiological effects. I both overuse my fight-or-flight and ignore/suppress the feedback of my body. I just keep pushing through and at some point, my body has burnt out and has trouble repairing muscle damage. You are supposed to repair when you are safe!

On another note, fair warning, my mom fights with fog. Prior to writing this, I have tried to overthink this conversation you and I'll have. I kept looping in those conversations because my inner mom would lose to inner Stef. She tried fighting tooth and nail to get by with "I don't know" and 'I don't remember". When she couldn't outwit or play dumb/passive or manipulate, I felt unspeakable danger will occur, like I'd die. Contrary, I think this is when SHE dies and I can be free to be vulnerable.

In my experience, most of my past is a grand canyon chasm of fog so thick you can cut a slice of it and serve it as meringue. Only a few plateaus (memories) peek out with little sense of depth. On the same note, in a therapy setting, when I try to bring awareness to what I'm feeling, I get nothing, like going to a play with a white curtain in front of the performance the whole time. The cast is doing something behind there and no matter what, the curtains never part.

There's quite a trail of blood leading to my mother in the my present day disfunctions: Whipping myself verbally, rounding down my accomplishments, believing I'm worthless and feeling unsafe in social situations to the point where its easier to avoid most interactions, and fear of dating due to risk of abandonment.

My ACE score is 6 or 7 of 10. Not sure on the whether the one about parent being assaulted counts. There was no drug use, prison, or sexual abuse (not counting early exposure to pornography through unfettered internet access). My mother is a malignant narcissist, father a workaholic, middle brother is really fucked up, oldest brother seems kinda okay but sides with my mother.

I've been torturing myself for the past 3 weeks straight trying to ask for your help. I've been strongly avoiding and fearing it and yet strongly intent to make it happen. Something tells me that I did a good job providing enough info in this email alone to for you to help me get unstuck.

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