Still Not Getting Better

[walker]

I wrote this some time ago, on here

Where is the path towards my soul

When I am far from being whole?

Darkness has risen, letting in light,

But my soul is out of sight.

Humanity is all around

Piercing days with too much sound.

Opening doors to glimpse a life,

Closing days of endless strife.

Laughter rising from the deep

Choking any chance of sleep;

Forced outside to take the air

Fearful of the slightest stare.

Time to leave it, let it go,

Loss, that only I shall know.

Grasp the day that's filled with hope,

Tense my body, try to cope.

Strategies they make me learn

Whilest deep within, a pain shall burn;

Smiling face, don't make a fuss

No one really cares for us!

Endless pressure from outside

When all I wish for, is to hide-

Within the path towards my soul

For I AM FAR FROM BEING WHOLE!!

Things are stuck and I am beginning to realise why.

The only HEALTHY, view I have, is that I have learned through the eyes of others

To recover may well be to look after myself, to eat well, to smile, to make the best of what I have, to return to teaching

BUT THESE ARE ALL THINGS THAT BELONG TO OTHER VOICES IN MY HEAD

For ME - behaving like that, is returning to where I was, what everyone else wanted from me

I am still lost

Still hidden from view

and I dont know what to do

I ricochet between the past and death - back and forth - in a dark tunnel -

I cant see another way out

[D.Ash]

Walker...

I am so sorry it's still so bad.

Can I just say that I think your writing is beautiful, even in it's pain. You have a gift there.

And you are a teacher? Wow! There's a gift that you have to share with the world... we need more gifted people like you to allow themselves to shine in this world.

You also are incredibly bright and insightful - you have recognised that you have lived thru and taken on the view of others. I used to do the same...

Now I work at building my own personality, from scratch... I take the qualities I love in the world and make them my own... to build my own personality for me. It feels so fake at first, but it feels a billion times better than the hole I was in before. It sounds like you're in a position to do similar.

You say you can't see another way out, yet you already describe one in your post - may I suggest that over the past 24 hours you simply haven't FELT you can see another way out. I know how I get when my BPD consumes me, like the deepest darkest pit.

But, please remember that is goes this way sometimes, but it has to go the other way too.

Am thinking of you, Walker.

Please, you have shown a glimmer of hope in between the lines of your post... Let's hold on to that, please? Cos if you can have hope, you can recover.

Keep hope alive, Hugz -Dxxx

[Fairy]

Hey Walker,

I think it is really good that you have worked out what you feel the problem is, that is a big step. I had a mental breakdown eight years ago, for the first year I was very ill, didn't really know what was going on. When the psychosis left me, I was left with a deep depression, no idea what to do or how to move on. I learnt I had no sense of self. No idea about what I liked or disliked, I just couldn't be bothered with anything. I had to re-learn what I enjoyed. It was so hard the first few years, it felt so pointless. I started counselling, I started voluntary work at a pre-school. I liked both of them. I started swimming, I liked that. I began to feel defined as a person. I don't like socialising very often, I like reading, but not when someone is breathing down my neck about a book they want me to read. I like gardening. I like routine, not dictated by others. With these things, I feel I am person. I tried lots of things, the ones I have mentioned are what I like, are how I wish to be defined. I feel comfortable with those things.

I would say, try something new, something small. Any recovery is about small steps, being kind and patient with yourself. Keep talking here, exploring possibilities, it is very good to share these feelings.

Fairy xxx

[walker]

That is just it - I dont know my likes or dislikes

Everything I think I like - I usually find is referenced to someone else - theythink a colour suits me - they think it is good for me etc.

Music was my thing

It was - I now believe - perhaps the bridge between them and me - a gateway into my own heart

It was what I lived for

and it was crushed

Yes I studied it at uni

yes they would say they encouraged me

BUT IT WAS CRUSHED by who they were and what I had become.

It is a constant source of grief

Please dont try and give me examples of how i may use it - I know

But the crushing is intense and consumes me

I AM NOTHING

I AM THE PARTS OF DIFFERENT WHOLES, but NOT WHOLE

I feel so, so lost and under such intense pressure to conform and return

No disrespect - but there are many times I wish I could have broken down completely - and allowed others to see the mess inside me

But I am so tightly controlled and ashamed of what I have become, that i mostly sit at home and hide

or show others the face they recognise.

LOST so LOST

[mrD]

My dear Walker

i hear you, and wanna send out a search party for you, help u become found, you are clearly a very talented person but wound up like a coiled spring, so tightly you just cant seem to let go, for fear of what you might find, i know that fear....you matter, your unique, and its nr impossible to see a way out, but you will find it, you see, nothing lasts forever.....

there's nothing to fear but fear itself and fear is whats holding u stuck and lost, face it and it will cease to be!

bless you Darlin...xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxD

[Fairy]

Hey Walker,

That was what I was trying to explain, I didn't know what I liked or disliked either. Everything I liked was dictated by people saying, "You are good at that". Not me feeling I liked it, just that was what I had, or didn't. The way that changed was by me trying different things. When I found something I liked, I wanted to do it. Didn't feel I should, or it would please others, I just wanted to. It is hard, it takes energy when we have none, faith when it is scarce. My advice would be to try something new to you, something small, feeding some birds, buying a plant, creating a starting point.

Fairy xxx

[walker]

Talented ?

No

just raw

All I want to do is cry

I cry at adverts, at pitures, at songs, at birds in the garden, at the dog, at kids playing

I cry for my parents, for their innocence in the hurt they have handed me

I cry for humanity

hide, and cry

[walker]

And now I cry because my husband is spending hours trying to negotiate school fees on my reduced salary

and all I do is run away.

I need to go back to work

it will stop the money problems

this is MY fault

being so damn selfish

how dare I think of myself

people depend on me and I am failng them

I am letting them all down

perhaps it is better

SHUT HER AWAY

and pretend she was never there

be the person they all want

who cares how much she hurts - they cant see it - she wont let them -

nobody knows, nobody cares

she is worth nothing - she is bad - evil lazy cow - the truth

Find who she really is?? it is evil - she has no good in her - the good belongs to others - it is their strength , not hers

[Angel123]

Hey walker

I can feel your pain. And i wish there was someway i could help ease it.

By you posting on here you have taken the first step so dont be too hard on yourself.

So what if all you do is cry. At least you are releasing some of the pain that way.

Finding out who you are will take time. And when it starts to happen it can be exciting aswell.

I am learning things about myself that i never imagined would happen.

Please keep trying, you will get there in the end.

Take care xx

[walker]

This is an image of my life

please excuse the poor artwork

As I have got older,and bigger, the person I am has gradually faded away

She has been hidden by the demands and influences of those around her

[mrD]

Hi

thats not a bad picture actually....

hows that dog of yours? whats he called by the way too?

Dx

[walker]

Ben, and he is sulking cos we are eating tea + he got no walk today

you dont like the picture, then?

[amy123]

Hey walker,

the picture looks great,

i'm sorry your still hurting,

Amy xx

[mrD]

Aw poor lil sod, give him a big cuddle for me, and yeah i do like your pic, it shows how creative and expresive you are...

what u got for tea, i'm bloody starvin

Dx

[walker]

sausies

sorry

all gone

Ben having leftover veg

stop trying to cheer me up

I want to hurt

[mrD]

i love sausies and ships...

take it easy T

Dx

[mrD]

i love sausies and ships...

take it easy T

Dx

[walker]

Bless you

Sorry cant send the apple and blackberry crumble

playing little housewife tonight

[Fairy]

Hey Walker,

I love your picture, it is so expressive, I have spent about twenty minutes looking at it. It is certainly not poor art work. If I had made that I would put it in a frame.

Fairy xxx

[walker]

it is harder on a laptop

Yesterday in therapy I was trying to explain why 'moving forward' makes me feel stuck

I drew a line with my name on the left and mum +others on the other end.

as I moved along the line, my name got smaller and smaller until it vanished

as I wrote, I realised the image I had inside my head.

I have no concept of what 'recovery' could be like, as it is part of a different picture, with my name visible at both ends.

Sometimes , lately , I have found I can only whisper to my T

Writing was helpful yesteday

perhaps that is the child lost within me

I dearly wish I could let go of the controls and set her free

But I feel like she is bad and everyone will hate her

[Fairy]

Hey Walker,

Have you drawn a picture of recovery? That would be very interesting to compare, and also to express that journey.

Fairy xxx

[walker]

no

I cant

it is too frightening

too threatening

an unknown entity

That is why I prefer to be ill

it is what I know

[hummm_mabbe]

Things are stuck and I am beginning to realise why.

The only HEALTHY, view I have, is that I have learned through the eyes of others

Hiya

Nothing happens at all quickly. I spent the first 4 months of therapy just talking about how I felt, getting out the immediate anger etc. When we started the imagery and other things, that was some months in.

We have been kind of going in some circles lately, probaly for about a month. I am far more in otuch with my bad schemas and how they feel, I can feel the full weight of all of them, it has been really crippling. After this stage, I gained a lot of insights because all of the feelings were so pure and immediate. I saw that I did not trust my therapist, thought she saw me as a nuisance, that she was only 'faking' and would soon get fed up with me. Then I realised that in every way I was expecting her to behave (and in fact was twisting her actions to match) like my mum, sister and dad. Sometimes I 'saw' them in her. This is called Transference and, after the pahse of really feeling all the pain and loss, I saw how much I am living that transference with her and the world. Doing this pulled away a curtain and helped me to see that no matter what Emma did, I would always see it in a bad way. automatically.

She said this is to be expected, that it takes time, and that its ok that I dont feel able to trust. She accepted it all, didnt try to tell me I should be different. She just said that we would chip away until those schemas were more quiet. I felt more relaxed today.

I realised that imagery is the best way for her to get through to me. Having my eyes closed means there are no eye contact problems, and because I get to 'be' little ross, i can say everything I really feel without feeling worried that I am being argumentative. And Emma just listens, soothes me, makes me feel heard and then stands up for me in the image. Its really good - like a validation superhighway.

This is the first session since I began back in April that I have felt this way (apart from once before, but didnt realise why). Thats 6 months, and for the last 1-2 months I was feeling more and more stuck, and was even thinking about terminating. Then I realised that it was the transference - the way I was seeing Emma based on how my mum and sister had been. I realised that I had disqialified a number of times when Emma had been the very opposite of mum.

Therapy is SLOW, and its incremantal. It can be PAINFULLY slow. It happens in fits and starts. It was not Emma who realised that there was a transference problem - it was me who figured it out and then told her. That is slightly worrying in a way, but she did say it was something she suspected. Things like this do eventually come up, but they can take time. I just short-circuited it because I happened to read a book that made me realise. Reading a lot will help you to get better because it will educate you and make you see things inside yourself - after all psychologists arent psychic and the more info we can give them, the better.

I am not going to say "dont despair" because I know that you are. I know why you feel that way and I too have been feeling that same sense of hopelessness lately. In a way you are blocking yourself because the moment things feel a little off, you dive straight back into "I am hopeless, I am ill, I dont deserve it" - thats is understandable because that is what you have always known - 'better the devil you know than the devil you dont' - even though that devil is gutting you with a penknife.

Therapy is incremental. It begins with validation and insight. At the moment you are not getting insight because you keep being pulled back into that devil you know, attacking yourself and dropping into desperation. You may sense that others reflect your desperation and feel that theres nothing they can do to help. Just like anyone suffering from a bad mental illness, you have created the very situation that you fear around you. This is part of transference - you make what you fear the most actually happen.

Knwoing that wont instantly change it, but it represents a little 'chip' out of the wall. A little message to say "hey maybe I am repeating a pattern here". But it sounds like you keep diving back under that same stone the moment things dont feel right. The imagery should help you to get round this, but it sounds like even in imagery you feel like James is invalidating you. This would make sense - you have been so utterly invaildated by your family for so long, it feels so normal, natural and part of you that you expect nothing else. But then that other part of you feels ignored, desperate, and wants to run and punish herself. Its one of your cycles.

I do it too. I feel that because emma is a woman, and my sister and mum were very invalidating, humiliating women, that all women will be the same. Everything Emma says to me I block out, even when its actually very validating. I reason she must be 'putting it on'. Then i walk away and think "she didnt validate me, she must think I am a pain in the ass". My mind churns and find lots if little clues that 'back up my theory'. Then my paranoia kicks in and I feel angry at her, and withdraw. As I get more distant and challenging, so Emma will find it harder to be warm to me and will feel that I am pulling away, and think I need space - when in fact I need the opposite. I make my fear happen. Transference. Projection. Even though I know this, I still do it automatically because that is the programming I have. When I look at Emma, I still SEE all these things because that is how my brain is set up to see women. It will take a very long time to see that Emma is not going to humiliate, belittle and abandon me in the way mum did. A very long time.

It is a GOOD thing that your only healthy view comes from others - that is where it starts. In months and years, if you can let the process happen, those views will become your own, you will FEEL them instead of just know them. But first there is a lifetime of learning that you have done about the world to challenge, and that learning, right now, is invisible to you. It is your reactions and instant feelings. You take them for granted, they 'are' reality and they seem just as concrete as the screen in front of you now. But they are based only in images and models that are in your mind - just like how you have a model on how to operate a tap or hoover, or what will happen when you stick 50p into a vending machine and press buttons - you have the same expectational models of people. The thing is, a vending machine always does the same thing, as does a hoover. people are always different - but as humans we do not like it when our internal models are challenged, and so we fit what happens to what we think we know, instead of the other way round. If we expect something bad to happen, and instead something good happens, we find a way to 'make it' bad. Its like going up to the vending machine and expecting it to overcharge you by 50p. When it gives you a can of coke at 50p instead of a pound, you then say "ah must have been a malfunction - normally it overcharges". Its a silly example, but that is what transference makes us do - but it is so automatic, so much part of the 'matrix' that we are living in, that we take our feelings for granted.

To begin to make progress, we need to realise that we are plugged into the matrix and to begin to learn the rules that run our minds - and how they differ from reality (whilst at the same time MAKING reality change around us - thats the freaky part). I know its cheesy to bring Keanu Reeves into this, but its a useful way of seeing personality disorders and transference - to see the whole thing as like being Neo before he was 'unplugged'. Everything looks, feels and IS real, but really theres a another truth behind it. Its just that the mind makes it real. Starting to recover is starting to see the program - YOUR program.

One of your first lines of code is "I deserve to suffer / I will never change". The spike in the back of your head that keeps the program alive is something that you needed as a kid and didnt get, an experience that was never resolved, or a continuous erosion of something that was essential to forming who you were. To begin to pull the spike out requires receiving whatever it was you didnt get or fighting back against what it was that erdided that part of you. For me it is being given a voice and feeling validated. That is the keystone - the data spike in my head. I needed that from emma before anything else can happen. You have your own spike, your own program, your own needs, your own data. The idea of therapy is to become a hacker, if that makes sense.

Its time to see if you can start to pull that spike out the back of your head and pull apart the lines of code. Its a big program - it will take a long time.

I really hope youve seen the matrix or this will make no bloody sense

I REALLY hope you will read this and try to make sense of it, rather than jumping straight back under that stone .... maybe do a google search on transference as a start. I know you did some psychodynamic therapy a few years back but you dont need to go into the depth that it does on transference - only to begin to question the automatic loops you have and what part of the past they come from. Despite what the wiki says, transference was not 'invented' by Freud - its been recognised as far back as philosophers like Descartes and Epictietus. Freud just worked it into his therapy, so dont be put off by that. All you need to do right now is see the loops you are playing out with James.

[walker]

confused

but re reading

i pour my heart out to James - just as I did to mum

i want to matter to him - just as i do to mum

i constantly think I can trust him, then think he is fed up with me and wants me to stop going on - MUM??????????

i run back, frightened he will go - MUM????????????

i feel he thinks i am making a fuss and not really ill - MUM??????????????

I see what you are saying -

I have begged him to come back there with me

NOW?

I am tired and no longer think I am ill

I feel it is fine and I will go back to where I was

I am angry with the world

and

I JUST DONT KNOW

[hummm_mabbe]

confused

but re reading

i pour my heart out to James - just as I did to mum

i want to matter to him - just as i do to mum

i constantly think I can trust him, then think he is fed up with me and wants me to stop going on - MUM??????????

i run back, frightened he will go - MUM????????????

i feel he thinks i am making a fuss and not really ill - MUM??????????????

I see what you are saying -

I have begged him to come back there with me

NOW?

I am tired and no longer think I am ill

I feel it is fine and I will go back to where I was

I am angry with the world

and

I JUST DONT KNOW

The anger is good - that is the next manhole cover that is sitting over the true nature of the problem. Why are you angry? What drives that sense of rage? Have you been denied something? HAve you been wrongly judged? Have you been put in a place yu didnt deserve to be? HAs some element of you humaity been shut away? You know why its there - it bubbles just beneath the surface every day. You have permission now to let it out, to say what you feel, to say how others have hurt you and made you feel this way.

Everything comes in layers. There may be fear on top of shame (fear of showing any emotions, which may get you punished because they are shameful for example), and then under that may be MORE anger - the true source of the anger - the original event that made you feel hurt. And under that anger, is hurt, pain, grief. Or they may be confusion, a sense of falling, of 'why'? Its layer upon layer and the only way to look at them is to press 'STOP' on the machine for a moment, starting with those times in therapy, and let someone help you look at the layers. LISTEN and answer questions of him and of yourself.

Also it might be helpful to look up "Dependent Personality" and "Histrionic Personality" disorders. Most PD's have overlap with other PD's, like with me I have traits from paranoid, narcissitic, schizoid etc. This doesnt mean that I am especially mad, it just means that the DSM criteria are wack and dont account for all the overlap.

I am no expert, but when I read abaout dependent pd, it mentioned how those people learned early that they needed to seem like they were coming apart at the seams before they felt people would give them attention - something which you identified before after the hospital incident. The problem with dependent PD is that the person wont actually listen to advice - they simply want more and more evidence of being cared for. Essentially as long as someone is talking to them about their problems, they feel momentarily better, but then almost as soon as that person stops or goes away, the person needs to fall to pieces again in order to get that care back again. The advice that is given is kind of secondary and doesnt go in - again I remember before you said that you take 50 peoples advice and then ignore them all. It may be that you have dependent or histrionic traits and that these are what are keeping you stuck in this loop? It does seem that no matter what happens you go back to this extreme crisis state, but dont seem to really explore the problem - you just seem to pootle around n the same circle. If you were only needing people to respond to you that could be a reason?

Im not trying to be mean - if you are living that cycle then you may bot even realise that you are doing it. Somehow you need to find a way to throw a spanner in that machine for the moment and give yourself the chance to take a look at the mechanism, and I fear that the more people simply supply sympathy, the more you stay stuck. That again would be transference. It may have been that you fell to pieces only once or twice with your parents, and that those times they paid attention to you. That is a POWERFUL reason to keep repeating the same behaviour - you were a little girl doing the only thing she could - doing the only thing avaliable to her to try to EARN THE RIGHT to her parents love. That is sad, that is absolutely heart rending - why should a little girl have to negotiate for the love she was entitled to recieve from the moment she was born? But in the world, it may be easier to get some level of sympathy from people. If you fall to pieces, most people will be sympathetic. For amoment there is an ADDICTIVE quality to it - at last, people are loving me, wanting me! Who wouldnt feel addicted to that? The problem comes because people are not your parents. People are conditional - they do not owe you what your parents owed you. People want to feel that when they help, that you will be able to use that, absorb the care they have given and move on. But your cycle keeps you stuck - as they pull away, you feel like you are being plunged back into that cold place you lived in as a girl, and so you return to the same cycle, the same loop. People seem exasperated and you begin to blame yourself for them pulling away. The only way you can explain the fac that this keeps happening is that you must be totally broken. If you're broken, then you dont have to look any deeper. You dont have to ask the quest6ions that are so scary and horrible. If you are broken then you cannot get better, and so your disaster states are all the more justified, and if people become angry then that is more evidence that you are terrible, awful, dont deserve to be better. When you state these feelings, it pulls people in more. They tell you that you do deserve to feel better, that you arent awful or horrible. The cycle starts AGAIN. But people only go so far until eventually they feel like nothing they say or do will make any difference - and thats when you feel them pull away. Thats when you become desperate and feel you must apologise and tell everyone how bad you are. Online, there will always be that supply, but it keeps you stuck. It does not help you out of the hole you are stuck in.

It doesnt matter so much if you arent 100% convinced what your cycles are - just be aware of them. When you are with James, try to develop an inner ear and watch out for any possible loops you are having with him. Try to think about your sessions after. The times the transference is kicking in will be the times where you withdraw, block him out, feel he isnt listening, feel upset by him, feel suddenly REALLY angry at him.

Like I said, learning as much as you can will seriously help you. I know someone suggesting that you may have Dependent or Histrionic traits isnt very nice - at least with BPD its somehow less insulting. But it wasnt until I realised that I have narcissistic traits - something that I felt HORRIBLE about, that I could begin to see how my actions affected other people, and how I actually cause some of the problems that I have in my life. Therapy is not only about figuring out who was wrong to you and building self-esteem - with the PD's we also need to look those dark, hidden places that are full of shame squarely in the face. We all develop ways of dealing with shitty home envirionments, and then we carry them into the world. People arent all the same as our families, and so when we act to them like we acted in our family, they resent it. They get angry and reject us, and we dont know why. Or maybe that rejection reminds us of our past too, and then we say "see? the world hates me" without ever seeing that we have just caused that.

The best way to be able to stand back from yourself is to learn mindfulness skills. I dont know if James is doing this with you yet. You can teach yourself these skills from books such as Emotional Alchemy by Tara Bennet Goleman. Im not sure if you already bought that? This is all advice that will move you along the therapy path - these are the tools you need to begin breaking the cycles. Therapy is not a passive experience - we dont wait to be healed or 'treated' - we have to engage with the process, give as much as we are getting. If we just act in a passive way and wait for the therapist to press magic buttons, then not much will happen. Therapy is about a partnership. Its a safe relationship where you must be yourself, act as you always act, so that a caring, enlightened witness (the therapist) can point out things that you do that may hurt you in the outside world.

You keep saying you feel James doesnt "come with you". I think it would help you to understand what you mean by that. What is is that you need from him, that you feel he is not giving? Does it feel like he wants to 'fix you', but somehow this feels wrong? Would the example above of just wanting to feel cared for, perhaps fit the bill of what is happening for you? Can you see that, if this is the case, why you will be doomed to disappointment, why that is a cycle that can only harm you?

Or do you mean he will not explore the past? I would say its essential he does. If he wont explore the past with you or allow you to vent about your parents, then ask him WHY. SOme therapists are not comfortable with this for a number of reasons - he may have his own past that he doesnt want to be reminded of (many CBT therapists are like this which is why they like the technicality and 'here and now' quality of the approach), he may be religious (Christianity's fourth commandment says thou shalt honour thy parents) or he may simply be over-committed to the cogntive model. It may be that he has picked and chosen bits of schema to add to your therapy.

Do you WANT to explore the past? Are you able to bring up those buried feelings of anger, shame and hurt that you have about mum and dad? Listening to James talk about them WILL make you uncomfortable. Even if you have just launched a tirade against them yourself, hearing someone elase say it will ALWAYS feel odd. That is why the imagery is there - so that the therapist can talk to the parent directly during a remembered episiode, whilst you are feeling all the hurt sensations that you felt at the time.

When you pour your heart out, are you communicating the needs that need to be met, such as feeling safe, validated and understiid, or are you telling him how hopeless you are, how you dont deserve to be better, how the world hates you? There is a subtle depth to each of these. The second bunch are a cover for what you really need - those core needs of feeling valued and protected by a parental figure. The feelings of being undeserving, vile, horrible etc are the messages you have internalised from your parents - the ones you feel you must remain consistent to. They may not have SAID these words, they may have simply implied it, either through subtle phrases or through body language, a look, a pervasive, chronic pattern of relating to you.

This is something called a copy process . Because you crave the love of your parents still, but may never have truly recoeved it as you need it as a child, the only way you have of feeling close to them is to uphold the values that they instilled in you. So when you tell yourself how terrible and useless you are, you act us if they are still in the room with you. You act towards yourself as they once did. Some deep part of you clings to that because it feels like the only way you can ever have that ond, and that if you break it then bad things will happen, either the threat of how you were punished back then, or the threat of being abandoned by them.

The past is gone, you cant have what you needed when you were little. The time and opportunity for your parents to give you what was owed to you is past - and you cannot change them. They are not going to become what you always needed and wanted. But its the little girl part of you that is clinging to the hope that one day you will get what you needed that keeps you stuck in the same cycle - repeating the same behaviours that you learned as a girl to deal with your envirnoment, the ways that you learned to elicit some vaguely recognisable expression of love from your parents, perhaps fussing over you that one time that you were ill. But those behaviours dont work in reality, or at least they may do for a while, and then things seem to fall apart and you become more desperate.

Its frightening but you need to let go of that loop, let go of that drive to repeat the past. It will feel like you are letting go of a lifeline in a stormy sea, and you will fight it with all your strength. That is when you must latch on to the lifering being offered by James - if you can learn to trust him, be honest in what you feel about him, and explore what your relationship means to you.