Does your family of origin reinforce your cognitive distortions, or your negative feelings about yourself? Maybe, in therapy, feeling so much better.. and yet, just an afternoon or two, setting you back..

Yes it does, which is where I have gotten the sense that no matter how much work I do on myself I can never truly escape. It’s why as hard as it was I had to let them go. The entire family system reinforced things about me that I can’t support or be part of.

I remember talking to M about the abuse I’d endured and the difficulties that continued to that point in time. I’d have therapy on Tuesday and then maybe hang out with my folks on a Saturday. I told M it didn’t feel right to be talking to him all about the abuse and then spending time with them like everything was just fine. I did the latter less and less until I finally stopped doing it altogether.

M never pushed me in either directon, but he did help me understand that this dynamic of being sucked right back in to the former unhealthy mental state that served the abusers was reason enough to remove myself completely from the situation. I did not have to consign myself to an existence of merely enduring, not even just occasionally. I really could and did have the right to be free.