My Therapist Says I’m Doing Better.

So why don’t I feel any different?

I’ve been in and out of therapy for my entire adult life. It took me several years, a lot of writing, and a misdiagnosis to be able to actually use it as a form of help.

I typically just toyed with them. My hour-long sessions were nothing more than a game to me — a game that the therapists not only couldn’t win — they weren’t even playing. They were pawns in my game.

I went because my father wanted me to and my mother didn’t. It amused me to see her squirm in the face of confidentiality, wondering what was said about her inside of that office. She loved to tell me that therapy was for the weak. Manipulation to try to prevent me from spilling the sordid tales of growing up under her thumb.

Through several years and even more therapists, they’d come to learn specific things about me.

• I had a Master’s in Psychology and could call their shots from the sidelines.
• I had grown up in the world of ballet and I did not like it.
• I had been assaulted when I was 16 and almost died but I didn’t.
• I did not have a good relationship with my mother.
• I had severe body dysmorphia and had managed to stop myself from the throes of eating disorders twice.
• I had gone through an addiction to opiates but quit on my own without rehab and never went to any meeting ending in Anonymous that involved 12 steps.

The people on this platform know a lot more about me than that.

The game that I played with them, I would call it ‘trauma roulette’ but it was more like ‘trauma hopscotch’. If they tried to get me to talk about one of my traumas beyond the fact that they happened, I would simply switch over to a mundane and unimportant facet of another. I answered most questions with, “I don’t care”.

I was diagnosed as having Borderline Personality Disorder. They said I displayed a “stunning” lack of remorse, an absence of empathy, abandonment issues, impulse control problems, severe outbursts of rage, and a tendency to distance myself from people at the slightest infraction.

Cool. There was a name for what I was molded into.

Except that was the problem. I was molded into that person. I didn’t have a personality disorder. I had a lot of trauma that had a lot of consequences but I refused to show my hand.

My father bought about 17 books on how to handle a child with Borderline Personality Disorder. I went back to my life in Manhattan without a care in the world.

When I was being mentored for recruitment into the FBI, I was assessed by their psychologists. Several of them. I passed all of their tests. I had no problem answering their questions. I talked about some things, and left some things out, and no personality disorder was detected. I was a prime candidate for being someone with no remorse or empathy…

It’s those two things that the diagnostician got critically wrong.

I have a lot of empathy. It usually shows itself more for animals because they’re pure innocence without a voice and I have frequently put myself in harm’s way to help them… even if it got me bitten in the process. I have empathy for humans but sometimes it’s tricky. I empathize with things I feel deserve it. Sometimes I think people just overreact and for that, I can be seen as cold.

Someone who is a stay-at-home mother of one child complaining that she has too much to handle because her babysitter goes on vacation — I have no empathy for that whatsoever. I find it ridiculous.

In my job, I deal with a lot of elderly people and the children of elderly people. They are going through the unbelievably difficult journey that is the end of human life in America. It’s expensive. There can be abusers. It’s heartbreaking and frustrating. It can make you feel guilty if you can’t handle it all on your own. There are a lot of feelings involved. I have endless empathy for them and I love my clients. I will stay on the phone talking to them. You can always tell when they’re lonely and just want someone to tell a story to. I will listen.

On the other hand, I don’t want to be near them at all. I like that the phone separates us. Elderly people frighten me. They are a terrifying glimpse of a future I can not avoid. But I’ll talk to them all day.

My empathy is not the same as most people. But it’s there.

As for remorse? I am far more likely to feel guilty and remorseful over things that I can’t control than things that I can. I felt endlessly bad while I was sick and bedbound, unable to work or help with the bills for a year. I apologized to my husband constantly and the apologies were sincere.

Now, I have a job, I make decent money, and I have a severe shopping addiction. I tell him that I will stop. I fully plan to do so. Then I get paid and the temptation of Amazon and other stores I like calls to me. I feel bad afterward. The problem is, the way I comfort myself when I feel bad… is by shopping.

It’s a very vicious cycle.

For the most part, however, it’s rare that I will apologize for things that I actually do or say. Because I’m an extremely deliberate person. I am calculated and purposeful and even when something I do or say is unkind — it was intended to be. I find apologies to be an empty waste of time. You can not undo or unsay things. I will admit when I’m mean. I won’t apologize but I will admit it. And I genuinely feel that’s far more meaningful and sincere than an apology.

Abandonment issues, impulse control problems, severe outbursts of rage, and the tendency to distance myself from people at even the slightest infraction — those things describe me to a T. But think about what you know about me versus what those therapists knew about me and see if you can explain them by something other than a personality disorder.

• I was sent to live alone in a dorm in Manhattan, over an hour away from my family when I was only seven years old.
• I didn’t just grow up in the world of ballet and not like it — I was tortured. I was deprived. I was hurt. I was forbidden to cry. I was encouraged to smoke. Eating disorders were called dedication, not problems. I was raised by wolves.
• I didn’t just have a bad relationship with my mother, she ignored me for most of my life but when she couldn’t ignore me, she abused me.
• I was assaulted when I was 16 but it was more than just the fact that I almost didn’t survive. I died twice. I had six broken bones — three of them in multiple places. I was in the hospital for two months, I had more of my brother’s blood than my own in my body, my life was threatened by his friends, I was put through the trial from hell, I was told (by my own mother) to lie about it and say I was in a car accident, and I went through many sessions of extremely painful laser removal of many scars that I still see.

Of course, I have abandonment issues. I was abandoned repeatedly as a child. My mother didn’t even hold me after I was born and told an EMT to let me die rather than leave a tracheotomy scar.

Of course, I have impulse control issues. I spent 20 years of my life deprived of even getting enough food to fully develop normally. I’ve been making my own money since before I could spell b-a-n-k but I never had time to do anything with it, nor would I be allowed to do anything fun if I did!

Of course, I have severe outbursts of rage. I’m angry! If this was your life, wouldn’t you be?

And of course, I distance myself from people at the sign of even the smallest infraction. The man who assaulted me was my ex-boyfriend. I’d trusted him once. I’d liked him once. And then he tried to kill me.

My mother hated me for existing.

My ballet instructors tortured me for an art form.

No adult ever did anything for a child that was clearly going through some pretty horrible shit. I do not trust people. So the second they show that they can not be trusted — even through something small — yes, I distance myself. Because if they can do something small… what bigger things can they do?

I can count the number of people that I know I can count on on one hand. My father, my brother, my husband, and my two best friends. And both of my best friends have recently gone through some very serious health issues. One had cancer (twice) and the other has a severe clotting disorder and his medications worked too well which caused his liver to start bleeding.

There are other people in my life that I care about and trust with a grain of salt. They’re important to me, they’ve been in my life for a long time, but there have been small things that got them off the little list of people that I count on completely.

But if they were to suddenly disappear from my life, I don’t think I’d notice for a while because I rarely even speak to them.

That’s just how I am.

None of this is shocking to any of my long-time readers. Because you know my story… the parts I’ve shared with you, anyway. Sharing those parts, and writing those stories, is what led me to finally being ready to do therapy the right way. Not to toy with her. To actually speak to her.

Every week, like clockwork, I show up, I am on time, and I talk. She knows about my past, at this point — she knows only bits and pieces above what my long-time readers know. I’m starting to tell the parts of the story that I never had before. Cutting myself to the quick. We also talk about work, my pets, my marriage, and other good things in my life. And she says I’m doing a little better every week.

But I don’t feel any differently than I did before.

I’m still angry. All the time.

I’m still anxious. All the time.

I’m still scared. All the time.

I still want my mother to love me and my childhood to be… a childhood… all the time.

What does better mean? Does it mean I am talking about more of it than I did? Does it mean I’m not toying with her or blowing her off? Does it mean that I’ve reached some sort of new level in the cPTSD Triangle of Doom Home Game? What does it mean?

If I’m doing better, shouldn’t I feel better?

Maybe I learned Psychology wrong and should give my degree back.

Feels like the same old shit to me.

Fewer games, but still damaged, broken, traumatized… me.