Defining images

Consider what experiences and feelings define you, because there are more ways than you realise.

A newborn baby crying alone in an incubator, their arms and legs flailing in distress. That's been an image I've been regressing to in most of my therapy sessions the last 12 months. Then working up to approach and comfort the child - a version of myself.

This representation of my fear of abandonment.

I've been identifying with this image strongly. This earliest "memory" of being unsafe and alone. It's a pervasive feeling for me. There's only been a few brief (< 1 year) periods in my life where it wasn't part of my experience. And I’ve been spending a lot of attention on “healing” from this.

In my last session, for the first time in therapy, we delved into the idea of safety and peace. Rather of logically it preceded the image in the incubator, the image was a baby cosy in the womb - a floating cherubic ball. I was amazed by how it felt; a strong clear image, unstrained, but "right". It was such a light and effortless image to experience...

It has something to do with my previous writing the tonus in the body and a perspective being attached to it; holding together a form of identity in the body; continuously calling a past experience or perspective back into the body; an identity of being someone fearful and trying to mitigate it.

I focus so much on managing and healing my fear that it didn't occur to me that there can be an experience without it.

Consider what experiences and feelings define you, because there are more ways than you realise.