Another Abuse After-Effect

Guess what? I have found yet another *&^#* remnant of my father & mother's abuse. The litte girl in me doesn't want to grow up. More to the point, she doesn't understand that it is safe to grow up.

Here is what I mean. I've been working in therapy on why I keep running into a career brick wall with myself. While trying to determine what some of the internal messages are that I have a hard time hearing, I've meditated on the question. A few weeks ago I realized that perhaps one of the factors is that the little wounded girl inside of me who stopped developing around 2 (when the incest started) doesn't know that it is okay to grow up. She thinks that she has to be either mom or dad, neither of whom are attractive adults to grow up into being. So she has internalized this message about not growing up. My therapist and I have been working on ways to communicate to her that it is safe to grow up and that she only needs to be herself - not mom, not dad. While it is okay to take some of the (few) positive traits of m & d into her life, she is not, by definiation, them. Our cultural messages are that we are to grow up to be better versions of our parents or little versions of them. This is a cultural message she absorbed and now despeartly needs to discard.

Do you have ideas of how to help my young self understand this? Ideas, brainstorming welcome.

Thanks,
Your sister survivor,
Leah