You Can’t Sit With Us

I am unsure of where to begin with this entry.

Sitting in my therapists office learning about schemas, in the cafe journaling when I recalled this memory, or the memory itself.

I’ll begin in therapy.

After I got divorced, I was seeing my therapist to help navigate through the difficulty of what it was to become a divorced father, the emotions around that and I guess the shame that comes with it. About two or three sessions in my therapist was asking questions unrelated to my divorce. She was asking about my childhood, about the death of my mother and about other experiences.

When I questioned what this had to do with why I was there she began to explain what schema therapy was and suggested that if we look to understand my schemas it might explain where some of the breakdown in my marriage and previous relationships had occurred. She also went on to explain that without understanding myself and my own contributions then I would likely face the same challenges in future.

What we uncovered in schema therapy was that I had a deep fear of abandonment and what came with that was unhelpful thought and behaviour patterns.

With this new knowledge, a few puzzle pieces began to fall into place.

But where does this fear of abandonment come from? What happened during my childhood that created this deep-seated fear that those I care about will leave me?

I don’t really resonate with aligning this fear of abandonment with my mums death as I was 21 when that occurred and it wasn’t my mums choice. It probably reinforced an unconscious belief but it wasn’t the cause.

Around this time that I was in therapy in 2019 I began to see the benefits of writing and was doing it fairly consistently.

One morning as I was writing, it just came out. I recalled a time in primary school when I could physically feel the emotions I had felt back then. I could feel them as if they were happening right then in that moment.

Writing has a funny way of doing that. At times you will just be writing aimlessly and something will present itself. Almost like the scene in the matrix where neo is offered the red pill or the blue pill.

One option means he will continue on the same path, the other will open a new door to pursue a new reality.

This moment for me was just that.

I was aimlessly writing and a door opened, ready for me to walk through to access an unconscious memory that had been impacting my adult life.

I was in third grade, only 7 or 8 years old. I was standing out the front of the library and had a physical fight with a boy from my friendship group. One of the cool guys. We were the cool group.

I don’t know what we fought about, but from that day I was no longer allowed to sit or play with them. I felt isolated, alienated and I had no idea why. I felt abandoned.

It was the first time in my life that I felt the cruelty of an external events impact on my internal wellbeing and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Writing about this memory was like a lightning bolt had struck.

More pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

This is an important memory for me. A core memory. One that is connected to feelings and emotions that I still experience today and it’s something that I want to change.

But how?

How do you change something that has been present without even knowing for 25+ years?

Dive deeper. Keep writing. Keep being kind.

Sit with yourself.