Will we recover?

Will we survive? As in I/we/my system? I don’t mean survive as in live, I mean will we recover from this? Is healing still possible (if it ever was)? K and I are right in the thick of the attachment work and trauma processing. Pretty much all the parts are attached now. That has taken so long. Weirdly even with the recent rupture, parts are mostly aware that overall she is safe. Perhaps the most hurt are hiding, but it does feel as though the rupture has paled into insignificance – I hurt her (rightly or wrongly, this is how she felt) and she hurt me, and we will be okay – because most parts can see the bigger picture. And the bigger picture hurts like hell, like it is actual hell, because our attachment figure, our mother figure is leaving us all alone before we are ready.

So will it even be possible for parts to ‘transfer’ their trust to someone else? It could take years again, I know, but is it even possible? Or will some of the parts be so traumatised that they are never reachable again? I know that all the time with K won’t have been wasted, but so many times we’ve spoken of therapy being a process and that this is why the thought of her going away midway through is terrifying because there has been so much unpacked and we would need to start again with someone else and go through the same process but with that new hurt to recover from. I get that we’ll go from where we are now, with my knowledge of myself and my system and stuff, but in terms of the attachment work and internalising a sense of safety – we will be starting again. And I have felt myself internalising her and building up, through our attachment to her, a sense of safety in the world and in myself. So what happens when that has developed a little (a lot) with one person and it is disrupted? In February last year I wrote this ‘Things make me feel safe because they remind me of K. And eventually, after enough experiences of feeling safe, those things will make me feel safe and I won’t know why anymore. And in this way I will have a sense of safety inside me, to carry into the world’.

So what happens when the things that made me feel safe instead make me feel heartbroken and lost? What happens when they remind me of loss and devastation and annihilation instead of care and holding and safety? What happens to that blossoming sense of safety I carried inside me? Is it lost?

I’m not sure I want answers to this, because reassurances won’t stop the terror and overwhelm. I don’t want to start again with someone new. I just want K. We all do.