Sunday, July 2, 2017

Warm Gently Before Serving

by Charity and Allegra

[In response to a post on PsychForums about needing empathy, understanding, and healthy nurturing from others before being able to demonstrate them.]

Except for the part about you identifying as having DDNOS, we identify with what you wrote here.

We've always craved nurturing. Never got it from our mother, who was in turn abused by her own mother. Our need/desire to be nurtured has led us to some very unhealthy relationships--not romantic, but "friendships" and other relationships where the imbalance of power ended up hurting us. We did not consciously seek out this imbalance of power, although we did see ourselves as powerless.

Currently our T is the only one in our life providing the kind of empathy and understanding that we need, and we do understand the realization of having to pay to receive them. She's suggested several times that we would benefit from learning to nurture ourselves. But as you said, we need to receive healthy nurturing from the outside before we can offer it to ourselves or to outside people.

It's a dilemma for us too. A dilemma that feels very isolating.

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