Therapy Session 15: Pt.1 – Childhood and Adulthood, It’s ALL Connected

Your childhood is the foundational building blocks of your adulthood. There is simply no other way to view it. At one time, I thought some aspects of your childhood impacted your adulthood. However, the more I unravel it in these sessions, I recognize that it’s much bigger than that.

In the past sessions, we discussed relationships and how the people in my childhood impacted my adult relationships. We covered the male figures in my life, like my dad, uncles, and THE TOXIC SIBLING. My take away from those sessions after having in-depth discussions revealed that the relationships I grew up seeing were not the types of interpersonal relationships I wanted to have. Additionally, there were some trash behaviors that I always leaned away from when forming partnerships myself. Although I leaned away from them, there were barriers and walls built in the process, unknowingly. The sessions moving forward will help me look at that, create a solution to address, and unravel it.

Once I gained some clarity around male family member issues, the learned behaviors from childhood experiences that impacted my adult interactions were recognized. Now that I am aware of them, I can work toward changing the behaviors formed by those childhood experiences. After I identify something, it is then my responsibility to discontinue perpetuating those behaviors that are not beneficial to my end goal.

In this session, we went back even farther and deeper into childhood. I admit I wasn’t ready. Whew. I WAS NOT. Did I say I wasn’t ready?

We spent most of today’s session discussing the fall out of an incident that triggered some anger about my mom or the one that birthed me. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I was raised primarily by my father and paternal grandmother.

After having my son, I thought I’d resolved my issues with the abandonment of the one that birthed me when I was two months old. However, ALL of this kind of came out of nowhere, so I realize even though I’d forgiven her, I still have some residual issues. For me to be successful in moving forward with the CHANGE that is happening in my life, I must unravel these residual feelings so I can then put them aside and move on with that in my rearview mirror.

I love that the therapist was able to read me or look at my non-poker face and realize that this was probably an issue that I might not be up for tackling 100% in a session. While this was recognized, it was still acknowledged that I needed to deal with it residual or not, for me to move forward. So, part 2 of this post will try to tackle that.

The issue with the one that birthed me, is the foundational level of heartbreak beneath the layers of other childhood issues because I FEEL as if a lot of the childhood issues/trauma was indirectly and directly a result of her abandoning our family. Harsh, but true.

I’ll say, as I said in a few previous posts, none of this is to place blame, but it is more to acknowledge, heal, and move on. I know parents do the best they can with the tools they have. That doesn’t minimize that as adults, even if you didn’t cause the trauma, it’s your responsibility to heal from it.

A part of therapy is getting to the foundation of issues, bringing them to light so they can be healed, and I can move forward. So, this is about my healing process. It is about how I feel and NOT the feelings of those that caused the injury that needed healing. WHEW, LAWD, BLACK JESUS, this session.

Keep an eye out for Part 2 of this session.

I would love to know your thoughts on this session, therapy in general, and more about your journey in getting better in touch with who you are through therapy. Reach out, let’s chat on FB, IG, and Twitter. Until then, Happy Healing.

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