What connects my ice cream obsession with disliking adoption?

[flowboy]

I'm writing this as I am still integrating my session from yesterday.

 

Since I was very small, I had this recurring vision of my parents buying me an ice cream, and throwing it on the floor. In pure ungratitude.

 

Boom. I don't want this anymore.

 

It's a scenario I would play through in my mind, for no apparent reason, and then get predictably get emotionally shocked by the lack of gratitude and the sadness of throwing it away.

 

"How could I even think such a horrible thing?!"

Upon which I quickly tried to think about something else.

 

This would happen regularly when I was 8, and to this day it still happened. I labeled it a "mind worm" and never gave it much conscious thought.

 

Cue random-ass symptom number two: my girlfriend's sister has just adopted a 2 year old boy. Sweet kid. His parents couldn't take care of him anymore because of illness.

 

And I don't like him.

 

I like all the kids from that family, they're the sweetest, but this boy: it was almost as if I had decided to not like him before I even saw him.

 

I only found out yesterday how this ties together.

 

Set the stage: my girlfriend and I are talking and introspecting in bed on a lazy sunday.

 

We touch on the topic of Inner Alchemists, making a website for it, and how much work it is.

 

She comments that I seem to be spending 75% of my energy on what could go wrong.

 

"Why do you do these complicated things for in case nobody likes your website? Why don't you assume people will like it?" (a response to me trying to explain google analytics)

 

I feel myself slip into a spontaneous therapy session.

 

"Because... if I don't have concrete things to fix, I have no hope."

 

"If I have no hope, there's no point in living because it's never going to be good."

 

"I would have to feel that my work is not good, because I'm not good."

 

Why do you feel like your work can't be good because you're not good?

 

"Because... somewhere.. along the way, I was rejected."

 

(I have no idea why I'm saying this, it just comes to me spontaneously)

 

I have a strong sense that my innocence was lost. Something good's been taken away from me.

I was in paradise, then I got kicked out.

 

What do you see?

 

"I see.. my mom. She's not looking at me"

 

Why is she not looking at you?

 

"Because she's talking to someone. A family friend. An aunt. Or maybe A DOCTOR"

 

A doctor?

 

I have no idea why I said that, but it seems to lead somewhere.

 

Where was your dad?

 

"I was afraid of my dad. I really had forgotten that I didn't just love him and wanted to be with him, I also feared him when I was little. Because he got mad and threw things"

 

What else do you see?

 

"I see a machine..." My subconscious just gives me a single image of a patient monitoring device, floating above me.

You said somewhere along the line you were rejected?

"Yeah..."

 

"Maybe I felt like I was being punished?"

 

"Maybe I didn't know why I was in the hospital, and I thought I was there because I was bad?"

 

"Maybe I felt I WAS BEING THROWN AWAY, THEY DIDN'T WANT ME ANYMORE" 😭😭😭😭😭

 

A huge emotional release follows as I start to sob and cry in a strange high pitched voice.

 

FLOOD OF INSIGHT

 

Immediately, my subconscious reminds me of the ice-cream-on-the-floor obsession, and it connects:

 

I AM THE ICE CREAM.

 

I must have carried that feeling of being rejected by my parents with me ever since the hospital stay at 8 months old (which I don't remember), and whenever it bubbled up, my subconscious twisted it into a vision of throwing away ice cream.

 

If I had done the Gestalt exercise on that (how does the ice cream feel in this scene?) I could have decoded that years ago.

 

Suddenly it becomes crystal clear to me why I have such a hangup around throwing things away. I have the worst time decluttering. I basically can't stomach it emotionally and need psychological support of another person to do it.

 

As a kid, I used to think of teaspoons that fell behind the kitchen counter, no one would use them anymore, and I'd be on the verge of crying.

 

I'm always trying to make the most of what already exists, even when starting fresh would be much more efficient. Which explains hanging on to my old badly written blog posts and coaching exercises and videos.

 

My girlfriend tends to make this joke when she sees a cute dog: "Maybe we can ask them if we can have it, in case they don't want it anymore?"

 

I CAN NOT stomach this joke, it's horrible and it triggers me.

 

Now I know why.

 

I am the ice cream.

I am the thrown away clutter.

I am the dog.

 

These repressed feelings were projected onto all these.

 

And....

I am the adopted boy.

 

Now I see.

 

Suddenly I understand why I dislike this adopted baby that Maria's sister has. I just disliked this 2 year old because he was adopted.

My empathy was shut off. He must have felt rejected and "thrown away" by his parents, just like I did in the hospital scene. So I had to dislike him in order to not feel that.

 

For the ones of you reading this thinking that I'm nuts, or pulling far-fetched theories together, or speculating: I understand, but you're wrong, and I can prove it to you.

 

Do a guided childhood regression session.

 

Give it your all.

 

Do it three days in a row.

 

There will be no doubt in your mind.

 

This experience of crystal clear knowing WHY you have these weird hang-ups, it's something that can only come out of a deep feeling session. No amount of thinking or hypothesizing will get you to that certainty.

 

But the certainty and insight is only a bonus.

 

The real reward is in dissolving these emotional hangups.

 

Which happens FAST once you do the emotional work.

 

I already feel like I can love this kid, at least don't dislike him anymore. Even though thinking about his history makes me cry now. He must always carry that shadow of rejection by his parents. Even though he'll be able to repress it and have a pretty good childhood now, but it will haunt his shadow until he addresses it in therapy.

 

I already feel more courageous about putting the website out there without having everything prepared.

 

Other notable things from the experience:

• I also had a deep experience of what it's like as a baby to need love in order to live, how hopeless it is to know you can't do anything if you're abandoned. Touch = life, love = touch.
• To question what you've done wrong, thinking you're "bad", not being able to think a more complex thought than "this must be happening because they don't love me"
• Just because you're in a different place and your parents aren't there. It feels like a punishment and there's no ability to understand the reason, however justified
• Then I felt what it's like to need to suck on a nipple, and the direct line of nurture that goes from mouth to belly, and how total and all-encompassing that need is. And it's the same need that makes me want nicotine. I just recognize the feeling. So I'm pretty sure that nicotine addiction can be cured this way.

 

Thank you for reading.