Before therapy, a thought came to me: "Why am I so obsessed with my appearance?" I brought it up as a topic I was prepared for. A few years ago, when I started dancing striptease, I was completely natural. While dancing, when men choose dancers for private dances, I began to notice that women with big breasts, facial adjustments were more desirable. This was a big trigger for my childhood trauma - rejected, unwanted, not being the best, i.e. not deserving of love. I don't even know how and I found myself in an endless cycle of obsession.
Fighting aging and hunting for perfection became a part of my everyday life. Everything started to revolve around this topic. I started to examine the people around me in great detail. What my evaluation settings considered absolutely repulsive and unacceptable, I started to examine in myself. The slightest wrinkle began to be a problem that had to be solved urgently. After a few years and several operations, I realized that I was still not satisfied. That I was still looking for new and new plastic surgeons or dermatological doctors. That I was still finding flaws in myself...it became an endless fight with windmills. A ridiculous Don Quijote.
I rejected myself. I didn't love myself. No self worth.
How did the therapy help me? When I tuned in to the horror and revulsion of aging, I went through layers of fear, rejection, and unacceptance by those around me. A story opened up for me when I was 3 years old and was taken to my dead great-grandfather's house. The room smelled bad. My great-grandfather was an old, shrunken man. I saw a lot of dead animals as a child. On my grandparents' farm, in the forest, in ditches by the road. From what I remembered in therapy, all those dead animals were eaten by insects, worms, and other animals. This is what will happen to my great-grandfather. I was overcome with revulsion and panic. Exactly the feelings I experience in my everyday life from my aging. I imagined all these creatures eating my body. The therapist asked me to call a guide who would help me through this. The Death appeared. Interestingly, I am not afraid of death. Neither in therapy nor in everyday life. I feel safe and at peace with her...in fact, I perceived her as a friend, with whom I finally don't have to pretend anything. We walked together and she showed me what comes after death. The soul detaches from the body and goes home freely. It is happy that it can move on. Free itself. The body completes its cycle. Freed, it becomes part of Mother Earth. It returns to where it came from. I perceived the peace and joy of giving itself to the mother, nourishing her and she accepting it with love...It was a beautiful process full of emotion and gratitude.
In connection with this story, the film The Tree of Life by T. Malick came to my mind.