Learning how to express my needs without feeling guilty or ashamed

To some extent I can get those needs met vicariously, by watching movies or reading books. I don’t feel jealousy in *these* cases because – why? Or, maybe I did – but now I’ve done enough work to recognize *why* I’m jealous, and to acknowledge my own needs inside myself, even though I’m *still* waiting for my mother to meet my needs the way I – needed them? to be met?

Well, it feels like I’m *beginning* to get those needs met from outside myself – a trickle, growing larger.

It’s like I described way back at the very beginning of this blog, now buried under a million, billion, bajillion peeled and re-peeled layers (sometimes I fling them away and they stick right back, kind of like static cling – blarg!)

When a person goes long enough without what they need, it’s like a plant that never gets quite enough water: Its roots actually *shrink* a little bit, and become a little less permeable, to *conserve* what little water it’s able to *get*.

But the ‘negative’, *flip* side of this ‘protection’ is that it also prevents one from getting what one needs.

(Comes to mind here that a friend once said, “every form of refuge is a prison – a song quote from – where?)

So, the thing that started out as a ‘defense’ against a dangerous, ‘toxic’ (sorry, overused, trite, self-help word) emotional environment *also* prevents me from ‘soaking up’ the good stuff when it comes along.

I’m getting better at it, but it’s *work*. And I’m not always sure how to *do* the work. Fits and starts, forward and back, sometimes spinning in place in small circles. And sometimes collapsed in a completely boneless, protoplasmic, quivering heap on the floor, waiting for someone to come along and help me re-assemble myself.