Posts from — November 2008

I am still feeling dramatically different inside. I still am seeing myself more clearly and with more compassion. I recognize that what I went through was significant. I still feel some new bits of freedom that just peaking at blows my mind away.

And I feel like regressing. Riding the tricycle. What that means in practice is that all I feel really up to doing right now is sitting on the sofa and watching internet TV. Sewing feels a little too mind intense. Reading the books I would love to read would mean using brain cells I really don’t have available.

I am sad about this. Kind of. I used to resent it more when I would end up in this situation. I still do resent it, but it feels easier right now to surrender into the situation. Amazing stuff around how I feel about myself and how I can interact in the world is coming my direction. It’s just not here yet. I can’t even do much to help it get here sooner. Yeah, I hate the way things are, but where I am is enough.

So I kind of settled in for this. I put on some really comfy clothes this afternoon. Got all the cozy blankets out. Cued up some of my favorite TV shows. And curled up on the sofa. I need time to zone out.

There’s not much more I need to say except that I do want to acknowledge the role of the holidays. I am impacted by them. I would have liked my parents to have left a message or e-mailed, wishing us a Happy Thanksgiving and saying they respect my desire for space but did want to be sure I knew they care. I do wish that I had parents I could be close with at this time of year and who felt really good to be close to. I caught myself today feeling sad and I knew that this was why (in addition to the other stuff going on). Something Andrea has said really hit me today. It’s not that the goal is that I stop feeling sad. The goal is to stop pretending that I don’t feel something that I do. So while I feel like I am regressing and I feel sucky, I can at least feel the relief of being truthful with myself.

This morning I woke up with an unshakeable feeling that something is going to get even better in my marriage. I just realized that this is probably why I am so motivated to set my anger aside for a while using my new powers of choiceful dissociation and why I didn’t mind that I won’t speak to Andrea again this week due to the holiday. Something’s really changing within me around how I see my husband.

I’ve been noticing all week how different I feel with him than I did two years ago. Two years ago, eight years ago, I adored him. Loved him and liked him both. I was closer to him than anyone else, ever. He has brought me alive and the decision to marry him is partially why I fell apart and started on this journey of becoming attachable because the process of really consciously choosing him shook me up in a good way. More on that hopefully some time down the road.

What’s different in the last two years is that I have really let him in. There’s an emotional place within me where my love for him and his love for me can rest. I remember two years ago being really aware of how I expected him to hurt me and was always surprised when he didn’t. That would be a fascinating e-mail to Andrea (because I know I shared this with her) to dig up. I almost can’t remember the feeling anymore. I think I had the feeling of kind of checking out emotionally at times. I do remember thinking he would get angry at a whole host of things and then being so surprised when he didn’t care. I think I would check out just before feeling close to him or feeling safe with him.

It’s fascinating to talk about this now because as painful as I can see that this was for me at the time my relationship with my husband was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I felt so good. I guess I felt so good that I started to notice how checking out no longer felt good. It made it more obvious that there was something going on inside of me that was hurting and it had nothing to do with my husband.

My hunch is that what’s happening in me right now, this change that I sense, that it has to do with checking in with him emotionally. Let me see if I can say this with words that convey something. I used to take for granted that I would have to check out in my relationship. I think I’m wanting to take for granted that I am always checked in.

I’ve paused a moment to see if that feels right. It doesn’t quite express what I am thinking, but it is close. Maybe this will help. I used to be so concerned about being perky. I would get scared if I wasn’t feeling perky and I worried if our relationship could withstand my unperky mood. Thankfully, that’s become less and less of an issue. Now we are cranky with one another and I am not phased. I am sensing that my innards are wanting to really claim their right to be loved all the time. In relationship.

Ha, maybe this is it. My insides are really getting it that I am with them in good times and in bad, and they want to let themselves feel this way in my marriage. I will love them even if they are a jerk sometimes with my dear husband.

Well, that’s better but still not quite it. Oh well. These attempts do feel good though because my parts like my attention to what is trying to happen within them.

Well, enough for now. There’s a lot to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving.

I did succeed today in choosing dissociation, and it feels great. I still know I’m angry. I don’t have to hide from that, but I could let go of my anger because I trust myself that I will be able to come back around to it. Phew!

I can tell I need some to live into the goodness that’s really becoming real in my life. My e-mail had gotten backed up with 150+ e-mails read but not responded to. I took some time tonight and got back in touch with people. In the past I would have felt so self-conscious about this, worrying about being so tardy with a response and apologizing all over the place. Instead I just picked up where I left off and I addressed the time issue when it made sense. I had fun. I found myself writing things to people with such openness and joy. I got e-mails back from folks. One person I had been out of touch with for a very long time and it was wonderful to catch up. Another person I had promised a book to when it came out. Well, more than a year later I popped it into the mail tonight.

Several months ago I noticed that I was feeling sturdier. Tonight I feel super sturdy. I have a me that I come from, that I know is beautiful.

There was a point tonight where I sent something to someone and I was eagerly anticipating a reply. It’d sent probably my most transparent e-mail, explaining what was up. It was with the person I had been out of touch with for a long while. I have to say that I thought what I’d written about where I’m at was incredibly beautiful. I found the words with such ease and I loved sharing my story. I noticed that I really wanted to hear back from him right away. I really wanted to be seen for the way I told my story.

While totally understandable that I would want this, I started to feel kind of crummy. I was doing the old thing of thinking that I had to have feedback from outside of myself to feel real. I remembered something I’ve been noticing. What really satisfies me is when I see for myself how wonderful I am. That feels incredible.

I think that’s what’s also been so satisfying about this evening is initiating contact with people from this place of knowing myself, my good points and even I guess my bad points. Well, yeah, my bad points. That’s what made getting back to people after such a long time feel so okay. I knew timeliness isn’t one of my strengths these days. And it was okay because I see myself in that complex way with both my good points and bad points all mixed together. I can be with all of myself. Before it was painful to be with myself when I was so behind on e-mails.

So this is where I am at tonight. May peace be with you.

Gosh, I am really, really angry. It’s surprising me because I’m not in physical pain like I have been before either with dissociative fuzz in my head or other symptoms from the past that I can’t put my finger on right now (that I didn’t use to recognize as anger). I’m just aware that I am angry and unresolved. It’s not going away, and I’m pleased I’m not doing anything to try to make it go away.

I could do something I would have done in the past which is write about the anger, but I’m doing an experiment. I suspect that I’ll have more insight in the morning after a good night’s sleep. So I’m going to wait to write or attempt to write about what’s making me so angry. Perhaps I’ll get insight that goes beyond what’s bugging me about past things that happened with Andrea. This stepping back and letting myself rest might not be what I need. I’m saying that now because I want to give myself the flexibility to keep offering myself strategies that might be helpful to me tomorrow or even tonight if I don’t end up dropping off.

The other day I thought I sensed something big coming within me that would break loose a bunch of junk. It did turn out to be true that a lot of understanding came to me over the weekend. I hope that what I am wrestling with now will end up with the same results.

I feel this bizarre mix of righteous, unadulterated anger and eager anticipation.

I feel like I’m on my way to some kick ass mastery of anger.

I’m angry, and I can tell. I’m kind of just seething. Not really able to do anything about it – express it or articulate it. In some ways I’m kind of just enjoying that I can be angry or that I’m getting so familiar with what it feels like.

I’ve had an amazing day or so because I’ve gotten another window into what my life is growing into. It’s good, really good. And now I’m back to some intense work.

It has to do with Andrea, yes, but I think I’m feeling something underneath my anger at her. When I went to McDonalds I kind of got my anger out at her or could at least articulate it to her. Now is something different. I bet I’ll be coming back to being angry at Andrea.

I think what I am feeling is something about harming myself. Not killing myself, to be absolutely clear, not that kind of harming myself. I mean the kind of harming myself in little ways. Isolating myself. Eating things that don’t help me or have me feel good. Turning my anger in on myself and not participating in life. That kind of thing.

The isolation bit, being alone, feels important.

I’m having a hard time being in my own skin. If I could roar, I would roar.

I do feel really turned inside out right now. I’m feeling glad that we didn’t go away for the holidays. I sense that what I’m running up against is really big. I might get a fuzzy head. I’m pleased by how relaxed I am. I’m not afraid of feeling bad. I don’t like how I feel right now but I know that in the long run the bad feelings are not going to overtake me. I will come out victorious. It might just take a while.

Stay tuned.

Last week Andrea and I talked about my bicycle metaphor. She suggested that it sounded like my adolescent was really frustrated when she doesn’t know how to move forward and that she might like the choice to metaphorically ride her tricycle.

So today I talked directly with Andrea about what was making me mad at her. I’ll likely have more to say about this later. Interestingly, after our call ended and I had a few minutes to reflect on things, I was kind of stuck about what to do next. I was stirred up. I knew that I couldn’t yet dissociate in a positive kind of way and go about my life again. But things I used to do in the past like get in the car and drive somewhere, get some fast food, nap, and even just get under the covers in bed didn’t feel right either.

However, I started to realize that this wasn’t a moment when anything new was going to happen. While it would feel kind of yucky to do the things I used to do, it was kind of comforting to think about riding the tricycle so to speak. So I got into bed and just sat there for a while. Then I decided I was hungry and I would like a Big Mac Meal. While the food itself didn’t seem that appealing, there was something about it that at least felt familiar.

So off I went. To my surprise I started thinking more and in ways that felt good and insightful. As I drove there, I started being able to articulate more of myself to myself. I found words for things that had been hard. It felt good.

As I turned onto our street to come home, I felt even more some very familiar old ways of being with times like these that don’t easily. But it was okay. I wasn’t afraid it was permanent. I imagined telling my dear husband that indeed I was back where I had been many times before but it was different and it wouldn’t last long.

Hmm. I do notice as I am writing this that I feel sad that everything is not wrapped up with Andrea, that I do feel back in this old place. We did talk about working through my anger slowly. There’s a lot of insight in it here for me. It was weird while we were talking because we were talking specifically about what was making me angry for about 30 minutes, but time went by like it had only been five minutes. So while we may talk about this for several weeks the time might go quickly while we talk about it!

This all does make me nervous and uncomfortable, but not like it would have been to talk about a while back. I do feel brave as Andrea complimented me, but it also feels relatively easy.

Last year I needed to buy some shoes, but I am picky and just decided to keep wearing my old shoes which are falling apart at the back of the shoe. They are my winter shoes. They are six years old, almost seven. But last year there was no urgency. I wasn’t out and about so much. So I didn’t worry about it. I guess not buying a pair of shoes was my act of surrender to the fact that I still needed to lay low. So I wore out my slippers instead, no kidding.

But these days it’s beginning, BEGINNING, to feel like I might actually get some use out of a new pair of shoes.

I’ve said quite a lot that I’ve been feeling a lot better. Today I feel better partly because I have some perspective on what more needs to heal and grow stronger within me. I’ve been through a bunch of – it’s getting so much better experiences. They are a time of euphoria when they happen because I feel freedom within myself that I never knew was possible and could belong to me. I’ve been so disappointed when those times of euphoria have also led me back to my cave where as a result I am also better able to feel something that I had dissociated. That in turn gave me more euphoria.

I’m not so sure what I am trying to say this morning besides that momentum is building and that I need new tread on my shoes to keep up with the gradually increasing pace.

Well, I guess I want to say that I also feel fried. I was hoping that by writing this morning that I will be able to get to something about where I am today. I want to tell you all about what is happening, what has happened. But I can’t. So instead I am going to make some spaghetti, watch some hulu, and trust that one day the words will come. No shoe shopping for me today.

These days I’ve been in my own headspace so much that it’s been hard to be engaged with my husband. It’s not just that I’ve been in my own headspace. It’s that I’m not even sure who I am, who the me is to offer in relationship. This doesn’t quite capture it either. Maybe this does. I’m trying to get a hold on myself, a firm enough of a grip so that when I give myself away I know I won’t lose myself.

Yeah, that’s a lot closer to what I mean.

Poor guy, it’s driving him nuts, but over the years and especially over the last few months we know it’s worth it. Our relationship feels really good when we both come at it firmly grounded in ourselves.

Within six months of dating my dear husband I told him that he needed to go out and buy a copy of the book Passionate Marriage and read it. He did. I was taken aback! I hadn’t had a romantic partner ever take my words so seriously before. Of course David Schnarch’s chapter titles like, Fucking, Doing and Being Done didn’t hurt any!

I loved some of the things the author David Schnarch when he talked about this issue of feeling grounded in yourself. I’m going to go consult my copy of the book. Give me a minute and I will report back on what I find…

He sums up the challenge I am facing with this paragraph:

Differentiation involves balancing two basic life forces: the drive for individuality and the drive for togetherness. Individuality propels us to follow our own directives, to be on our own, to create a unique identity. Togetherness pushes us to follow the directives of others, to be part of the group. When these two life forces for individuality and togetherness are expressed in balanced, healthy ways, the result is a meaningful relationship that doesn’t deteriorate into emotional fusion. Giving up your individuality to be together is as defeating in the long run as giving up your relationship to maintain your individuality. Either way you end up being less of a person with less of a relationship.

Right now I am in bed writing this on my laptop. My dear husband is a few inches from my typing hands. His knee is wrapped around my foot.

I share this because it’s a big deal that I am up writing this post this morning. I generally wake up earlier on Saturday mornings. My mind is often chugging away with ideas after a good night’s sleep, but I have felt inhibited. Okay, this is a little embarrassing, but it’s relevant. I’m kind of lying there feeling guilty because my mind is running but I kind of want to do something about it, but I feel beholden to my husband. Like I am supposed to be there being all cuddly while he is sleeping away. I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent lying here thinking but feeling trapped because of what I think is my obligation to be hanging out available.

Of course, sometimes I get up, listen to NPR, and putter around the house until he wakes up. That’s great. I usually totally enjoy myself. But it feels alone. Afterall, the reason I’ve been lying around in bed is because I also want to be close to him. I want to feel his warmth and cuddly-ness. It hasn’t been worth it to get up to leave. I’ve spent my whole life alone, why would I deny closeness now?

I hope I’m being clear in my writing here. I notice myself feeling so much compassion for myself, for the part of me that’s been lying in bed getting the closeness she’s so desperate for but also hindered by a thought that she has to, I think, be glued to her husband in order to get that closeness. This is such a typical healing attachment issue – not being sure that closeness can be maintained without physical proximity and while being my own individual self.

I also feel compassion for the part of me that would go off by herself in the morning but do so feeling alone. She had to get away to remember who she was, to not get too merged into the relationship. To do so she had to cut herself out of her relationship and be a touch defiant, saying – well, I like to get up in the morning or some such differentiating thing. That’s not a bad thing to do.

In fact in my example here it’s not that either position is bad – sacrificing my desires to be cuddly or declaring myself an early riser and puttering about the house – it’s the feeling underneath it all, the feeling that I have to be one or another, that is constraining.

This is why I care so much about attachability, about being in touch with the knowledge that I am loved and cared for for who I am and have some sort of secure base established within my heart and psyche. When I have this I can be both an individual and together. I don’t have to turn off my individuality to be close or turn off my togetherness to be an individual.

While right now I am blogging at my computer in bed with hubby entwined in my feet, that’s just the literal version of individual and togetherness. I want to be able to carry this with me wherever I am.

One last thing, for now. I’ve had this great experience writing all this out. I feel more connected to my individual and my together parts. This could lead me to believe that somehow I’ve mastered this feeling. But that’s not true. I’ve actually felt this wonderful way before. The tricky thing about this differentiation stuff is that I am finding that it has to be done over and over again. I become more of my true self so I have to recalibrate the togetherness stuff. I feel closer to my husband, to friends even, and I have to recalibrate my idea of myself as an individual. It’s one ENDLESS cycle. (I typed that with some drama in my fingertips, in case you didn’t notice!)…until it gets easy.

Had a therapy session today. I was totally testing Andrea. My adolescent is experimenting with being a jerk! But it was kind of fun to have a safe environment where I could test that out. Basically, I am mad at her about some long ago stuff but I’m not ready to talk about it even though she’s kind of been bringing it up. I knew I was holding back today and it would have been easier if I had just said what was on my mind, but I wanted to be sure I could trust her. I can, but there’s something that feels so good about having been a bit of a pain. On purpose.

What also happened is she helped me be not alone in being not just angry but furious. Furious that I’m even in the situation where learning about rejecting friends and managing relationships is a big deal. I brought it up by talking about how it’s beginning to register that I had NO capacity for rejecting my first husband when we were dating. I feel fairly vulnerable saying that. It also feels good to be accepting of myself and who I was then enough to be able to say it. I was a babe in the woods.

I didn’t want to be so innocent because that would have meant that my parents failed me so horribly. I didn’t want them to feel shame. I didn’t want to let them down.

But the truth was that this led to my being raped the first week of college, being utterly unequipped to date, choosing a partner who was not right for me, and being in a horribly abusive marriage. Then it’s taken a long time to undo this mess. In the process I’ve not been able to make good on all the promise I felt about myself academically and intellectually, not having the emotional intelligence to make it through my life with any semblance of ease much less to accomplish or contribute in the ways I have dreamed.

I keep feeling better each time I articulate this. At the same time I am a little self-conscious writing this because I know that my old self would have been very critical of what I just wrote. I used to think that this was whining and that I should be grateful for what I had. I thought it was more “evolved” to not see myself as a victim. Now I see it’s not so “evolved” to not be able to deal with the truth. (But even being evolved just doesn’t matter as much anymore.)

So I am furious. And I am somehow able to be in contact with friends.

I also wonder what’s next. It’s a big deal to be furious. Is there more? Will there be something else to be that angry about? Have I simplified what I am angry about, consolidated all of what I’ve learned in therapy, and is this essentially all I need to do? I have no idea.

I do know that my fury isn’t over. I haven’t sat with it long enough. It is too soon to move on. But I am surviving this anger. I was telling Andrea today that I realized that my anger was so scary to me to feel that that was what motivated me to really withdraw from the world last year and what had me paralyzed in bed for so many weeks on end. It was that bad and hard to confront my parents in my head.

Remarkably, I’ve been thinking about articulating my fury to my parents. I’m not sure if that would make a difference to me, but I am not scared at the idea of being able to talk about it if only privately in my head. I can survive my own anger toward them.

I can survive because I’ve learned how to be attachable. I’ve learned I’m not braving the world utterly alone.

I am sure that there will be more to this story. More stuff to painstakingly work through, more stuff that will eventually come more easily, but for now it feels good to be okay. For now I have some peace.

I have been thinking a lot about rejecting people. It’s a little confusing. But here’s what I know about myself.

I have been loathe to reject ANYONE! I never want anyone to feel rejected, ever! Of course I have had this point of view because I have never ever wanted to feel rejected myself.

The thing is (and I guess I wrote about this within the last week but often things need to be repeated and repeated for them to sink in for me) that my relationship with rejection is changing. I’m not as hurt by it. It truly was devastating to be rejected as a child. I played alone at recess. I felt inadequate and incapable of playing along with others. It was a true hell.

As I got older and had a little more support in my life from being in a safe high school environment, I had just enough extra support to move around socially. Or at least do so and hide how awful I felt. I was still so afraid of being rejected. Not just rejected but REJECTED. I had no place to go emotionally if I was rejected. Well, except to a place of dissociation and the false comfort of my family which was rejecting at its core but at least was something for me.

As I see that I have feared being rejected and begin to see that rejection isn’t an awful thing for me, that I can survive it, even easily at times, I am less worried about rejecting other people. I see more clearly that people will survive my rejection because I am seeing for myself how to survive rejection. Sometimes being rejected doesn’t hurt at all, and at other times it still does hurt. The hurt, though, seems more normal, human, not like something I have to dissociate from. I know that Andrea cares about my being hurt, and I am starting to be able to tend to myself, too, when I hurt.

I’ve grown a lot in this because I had this awful experience having to reject my parents. When they visited the area, I decided not to meet with them because I knew it would be too hard on me and interfere with a fledgling “me” that is developing. It was so hard. I wanted to go to them and make it so they didn’t have to feel pain. In the end I didn’t, and I took care of myself first.

So that’s the other thing about rejecting others and their needs that has so challenging for me to wrap my head around. I get to put myself first. As much as I deeply care about the concept of empathy, I am learning that I kind of need to set that aside sometimes. Or at least not let my feelings of empathy make me think that I can do something to fix the situation and in doing so forget about myself.

Andrea always talks about how I seemed to have learned at a very early age to see the needs of others and to mold myself into what would help other people feel good. It is a totally unconscious thing that happens. I’ve begun noticing it a bit more.

My point about writing rejection is that I did something kind of bold for myself. There’s a party this weekend that a bunch of people I know are going to attend. It’s near my house. I’d like to get to know one of the hostesses better and a person I hold dear will be in attendance, but it’s a theme party and I just can’t get excited about it. Plus I’m not sure this group is really my crowd.

Instead a new friend is going to come over and we’re going to watch a movie or two and get to know one another. The getting to know one another part feels awkward. I’ve been thinking that it’s entirely possible that I won’t like her after all! Not because of anything I’ve experienced so far. It’s just possible. That’s a totally new idea for me. I might have to go about the business of rejecting her. Ugh.

I know, I know, it’s kind of a goofy thing to think of at this stage, but it’s also exciting to think that I get to choose her as a friend and she gets to choose me. Of course this is ultimately true with all of my friends, but this is different. I guess what I’m so aware of on my side is that I am no longer so fearful of not being loved that I have the freedom to approach relationships more openly. It’s true that my friends today are friends that I click with. I don’t want to give the impression that that’s not true. But the unconscious stuff about how I see myself and what I bring to the table is different. We JUST get to click or not click.

A huge advantage of all of this is that I know that she will either click with me or not. I have unconsciously tried to meet people’s needs so much that in the past when I haven’t clicked with someone I felt bad about myself. I didn’t understand that 1) I didn’t have to meet people’s needs and 2) it all wasn’t personal, certainly not life and death personal like it felt as a child growing up if I didn’t take care of my parents and their needs.

So anyway, that’s one of the things on my mind today. One of the things that I hope I can keep getting more comfortable with to the point that I take it for granted someday.

About four hours ago I woke up angry. I’ve been angry for several days now. This morning I understood a little more about how I am angry.

When I am angry, I don’t want to be close to anyone. This makes perfect sense. Last summer Andrea and I had a momentous conversation where I was angry with her, and she helped me to see how it was totally normal to step away from people, from your close attachments when you’re angry.

That’s all come back to me this morning. I’ve pulled away from Thrane. A friend even sent me an e-card and I just didn’t want to open it. Being close and warm and friendly doesn’t feel good to me right now. Maybe one day I’ll feel more comfortable sharing this angry time with people. It would be nice to be less alone. Until then I have this blog, and I did e-mail my friend to say thanks and explain why I hadn’t opened it. That felt like a way to be connected but still true to myself in my anger.

One day I also hope that anger moves through me more quickly. Anger is still so very new. I still have a hard time identifying that I am angry. The emotions are so small and quiet. My best indicator is that I want to be by myself.

A year ago I was beginning a year of not talking to many people. I remember I slept a lot. I couldn’t do much. I would be done in by dissociation. I see now that I was also done in by anger. My anger was too much for me to handle. I could only shut down.

Now I’m a little more functional, well a lot more functional. At one point last year I would say that I wanted to just sleep for several days and let everything pass and integrate. I see now that I was partly talking about my anger. Today I don’t want to go to sleep. I’d rather be out in the yard or something. But it is weird to feel like something needs to pass.

My anger is so big that it’s hard to imagine it passing. Andrea and I were talking about my anger a week and a half ago and I told her that I felt so distressed that I worried I would hurt her. She really helped me by saying that my anger wouldn’t make her leave. She would still stay with me and be with me during my anger. That helped a lot. That day and since she’s helped me to identify my feelings of anger.

I guess I’m so angry I don’t want to talk about what I’m angry about. But it has felt good to just acknowledge this anger here in this blog. Every time I do I feel better and freer.

Before I sign off I want to note something else. I’ve been learning how to dissociate again but in a good way. The difference is that now I can recognize that I feel something but decide that I can’t handle it at the moment so I let myself go about my life. I’ve come to trust that I’ll be able to handle it some time later. That feels good. It feels good related to this, too. I know there’s a huge amount of anger trapped within me. It’s nice to know that I can set it aside a bit until the time when I am better able to handle it.

I just love the photos in the header of this blog. Sometimes I just go to this site and hit the refresh button over and over so that I can see each one.

In therapy sometimes Andrea asks me how it would be helpful to imagine her with me. Would I like her to sit near me? Put her hand on my back? Lean against her?

These photos help me to imagine a way to mentally/physically experience attachment with her and with myself.

When I was a teenager, I went to the home of one of my classmates every finals period to have a massive study session. My friend and I were in nearly every high school class together. It just worked out that way, and I am really glad it did. We were in carpool together, too, but we weren’t close. We always had a good time studying together. She and her family really helped me to be more of my eccentric self. They loved it and seemed to cherish me for it. (Ah, a few tears can’t help but form.) Still we were never close.

Andrea and I have deconstructed this together, and something she said has rung true for me. When kids are adolescents, part of their job is learning how to discern things. What may have happened is that this friend of mine discerned that there was something amiss within me. (Oh, this sounds so harsh that I find it hard to share. I just know it’s true, and I want to anyway.) On the surface my social awkwardness was what was amiss, but of course that was just a symptom of having to face my life alone, without the guidance of parents. That could be sensed if not articulated. So in a lot of ways I couldn’t be real friends with this friend because of how I was and what I didn’t have within me emotionally to cope with the world.

I’m sitting here recalling this and thinking of the incredible truth telling Andrea did when saying this. I can see now that what she said was a bitter pill to swallow. But at the time all I remember was feeling relieved when she said it. I thought a little bit after the therapy session, but I didn’t feel self-conscious. I guess I am far enough away from that conversation with her to allow myself to feel self-conscious now. Well, self-conscious and more able to accept this truth about myself. I am really able to be conscious of how this was true for me, but I still feel shy about this truth. I am still embarrassed and ashamed that I was uncared for by my parents. There’s some basic humiliation there.

My teen is crying now as she’s letting this sink in this time around…Ah, it feels good to be able to cry.

And I can tell she wants me to keep telling this story about this family because there was a point to this post.

In the last week we’ve been working on our living room, installing some book shelves, getting a sofa back in place after it’s tenure in another room. The living room feels really good. It feels like a home. It feels like the home of the friend I would visit during finals time. There are books everywhere. The sofas are comfy. My husband and I both have great spaces to be in the room together. There are nice bits of us scattered around the room. My cats have nice places to sleep.

When I was at their home during those times, I never wanted to leave. We always had music. We ate nice snacks. (They introduced me to Trader Joe’s.) It just felt good and safe.

I never consciously felt unsafe in my home. There just weren’t clear cut experiences that either happened or that I remember that would have created a cognitive dissonance in my head. But something really wonderful has happened for me since I remembered these times with this family. These memories have helped me to juxtapose what it felt like in my family and what it felt like in this other setting. That’s helped me, and amazingly, just a few months later, I am feeling a difference in how my home feels now. I guess that’s because this juxtaposition is also waking me up to how the old ways I’ve felt inside don’t have to live inside of me.

There’s another huge issue with Facebook. Setting boundaries, when to and when not to.

Right now I have two people who have friended me that I haven’t said yes to being friends with. They are people currently in my life, recent acquaintances. I see them when we get together with friends in a large group. One I would kind of like to have in my group of friends. Another who frustrates me in real life.

What dismays me about this second person is that I will be out to dinner with her in these large group settings. I will make small talk, ask her a question and she will either answer it briefly or her husband will answer it. I end up having a great conversation with her husband. That’s fine, but I hate the fact that she never is inquisitive about me and that in general she’s a horrible conversationalist.

This person has been an interesting person in my life in general. I have written some to Andrea about her, and I’ve been learning a lot that I never got to learn as a kid about social interactions from the experience of having this woman in my life. As usual it is incredibly reassuring to me that I have Andrea with me. I do not have to face this alone. That is healing.

But this is a new wrinkle, having her friend me in Facebook. Rejecting people is not my forte. I have desperately want to NOT be rejected, and so it feels horrid to think of rejecting her. At the same time I am getting more okay with being rejected. It’s not the awful experience it once was. I am beginning to see it more as a natural, acceptable thing that happens in life. It’s not so personal, either on the giving or receiving side.

Andrea and I talked about this once in a way that really helped me. She said that friendships are funny and kind of crazy that they even happen in the first place. First you have to like the person. Then they have to like you. Then you both have to be able to have the bandwidth or time/resources to be able to be friends. It’s all kind of happenstanceish.

I’m getting all shy writing this. I’m wondering if you, my mostly anonymous, unquantified readers really do want to read all I have to say about this. But I’ll keep going anyway.

The other thing Andrea and I have been talking about is how maybe I might decide that for the next couple of years I might decide to be a bull in a china shop. Go about my life not worried about offending people, just focused on having fun. I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of my life being overly concerned about the feelings of others. It may be time to just not care. After all, people who are enjoying themselves and create fun around them are often forgiven for their gaffes!

So my shyness around writing about this also involves some of this – why bother investing so much energy into this person attitude that I am trying on. Why bother thinking another thought about this person who wants to be my friend? Why not just ignore her request and go on with my life? Who cares about what she might say when we’re in person? Who cares about my nervousness of wanting to tell her the truth and being afraid of what would happen if I did (and worrying about how to tell her the truth in a kind, sensitive kind of way)?

Oh, I am shaking in my bones a bit just from writing this. But I think what I am going to do is just ignore her request. And I am going to put some faith in the universe that I won’t have to face the follow up that is inevitable (in the form of, “I friended you but you didn’t respond.”) until I’m ready.

In the meantime I get to keep Facebook mine. Because if I did friend her, it would change Facebook for me. I would be less open about my life. I would have less fun because I would have let her intrude on my space. (More about the transparency of Facebook and the issues for me as I am healing and recovering in another post.)

And it can be a good do-over or a bad do-over.

Someone who was one of the “popular kids” from elementary school friended me when I first got on Facebook. My child felt so good to be included. I can’t tell you how much this meant to her. It was a balm to an old wound.

However, this person is still popular, and I haven’t made it on her radar screen. She has hundreds of friends. She has never responded to anything I have written to her. So it’s turned out to be a kind of false balm. Well, kind of.

The kind of is because my child has had me with her to face this experience. When I was a kid, she was totally and completely alone. She didn’t let herself feel the rejection. That would have been too overwhelming. Nevertheless, she was hurt anyway. Hurt not by this person per se but distressed beyond words by situations I’m still wanting to be able to articulate. Distressed by the climate of her childhood that left her alone and totally out of it, left to herself and her own devices to try to cope with situations way beyond her emotional capacity.

I want to say more about my child having me to face this situation. I think it is as simple as she’s not alone. Like I have been coming to grips with over and over in this blog, there’s a part of me that is now far more stable. It’s the part of me that has internalized Andrea’s love for me, for me, and not for what I do for her.

What this has translated into is that my child could feel sad that this person didn’t e-mail her back, didn’t reach out and make contact. The adult, current me, along with the nurturing mother part within me could reassure her and tell her that it’s okay to feel sad, okay to feel disappointed. I suppose this older part of me even redirected the child within me to the things that do feel good in my life, the friends that I do have who love me and whom I love.

Perhaps the teen in me also had the support in seeing that this person and I are different. I did indulge in a little comparative – ooh, she likes XYZ, how not me! But I think it was in a healthy way. Or at least it’s true that as a teen I never let myself indulge in those comparative kinds of things. It was too scary. I so didn’t want people to judge me that I didn’t let myself judge other people, at least consciously. It felt kind of good to be able to make that comparison with that person. It was like I felt safe enough to make the assessment. I knew I could assess without tearing this person down. I could assess more for the sake of knowing myself.

It also felt like an older wiser part was guiding me saying – well, you can see she has lots of friends. She may be interested in collecting friends to support her business. She may just be a great collector, convener of friends. She’s wanted to have a reunion in the past and so by being a part of her friend base you’ll get to stay in the loop. It can be a real gift to know these people.

My older, wiser part also advised that she might simply not see that we have that much in common. We didn’t before. I don’t have to have this huge do-over experience as a validation of my worth. That is not the point. But I can use the experience to be me and not give my power over to someone else to tell me that I’m okay. We’re not on the school yard anymore.

That’s kind of where I am left with Facebook – although I want to keep writing about it. It’s becoming this do-over experience where I am seeing myself as just me. I do what I do because I like it. If it attracts connection, connection happens but it’s not this validation of me. At the same time I get to play in some of the old situations I used to be in but being the current me, guiding and loving the young parts that lived in those times.

One of the things about PTSD treatment that I’ve read is about the value of being able to revisit the times when trauma occurred and then finding that you are indeed now living in safer times. It’s valuable to feel emotion that has been dissociated, that was too unsafe to feel at the time. So it kind of blows me away that Facebook is a tool that’s shown up at this time in my life to help me safely revisit those emotions with people who otherwise would just be a figment of my imagination.

There’s much I want to post on this morning. It’s hard to know where to start. But sometimes, like with a lot of things in therapy, I want to start with my relationship with Andrea.

I want to start there because even posting here on my blog raises stuff about my relationship with her. That’s because I write a lot every week about what’s happening and I e-mail that to her. Last we talked about it, my writing stood a pile a foot high on her desk!

It is intimate to write to her. It is like a child…

I have to interrupt myself already because I just had a really important experience with my cat. I have been paying more attention lately to caring for both of my cats’ needs. As soon as I sat down a few minutes ago, he climbed into my lap. I had been typing around him. And then I stopped.

Over the last week or so I have been really attentive to both of their needs, and we’ve talked about this in therapy. One day I wanted to go outside and do yard work and Bolder was meowing incessantly. I thought that this might be one of those days where I would just have to ignore him. Instead it dawned on me that I could just talk with him. So I gave in and came inside and sat with him. I pet him. I told him what I wanted to do. I suggested that he sit on his favorite blanket or go find his brother and keep his company. As I was thinking/saying this to him, he found his way over to the blanket. I sat with him a little more, and I explained my plans. I would be in in half an hour, and I would check on him. In an hour and a half I would be back for a longer period to have lunch.

In therapy that week I told Andrea about this and she immediately asked me what impact this had on my infant, my child, and my other parts. It was really soothing then to talk about how my caring for Bolder was like caring for my own young parts. My tenderness toward my cats was tenderness toward myself. It is also important to note that one of my parents’ favorite stories to tell about my being a baby, almost the only story they told, was about how they would let me cry endlessly even at just a few weeks old, and they would escape to the garage to avoid having to hear me. So this had a lot of symbolic meaning to my young parts to see me be able to care for my cat so generously.

Since this experience I’ve been more available to both cats, and with Bolder I’ve noticed, not unlike with a child, that if I pet him and love him up that at some point he will have his fill and move to a spot nearby where he will often clean himself.

So today when making the decision about whether I attend to Bolder or not, I remembered that there would be a point where he would have what he needed. I would be able to write. I would not be engulfed by his neediness for the rest of the day. I am certain that my neediness freaked my own parents out, and that’s likely where my own feelings toward Bolder came from. So I went about petting Bolder. At one point I wondered if I might be overcompensating a bit. Did I want to give him the message that I was there so much so that I pet him with too much vigor? I wondered about that and then re-attuned myself to his needs. At one point he did predictably move to the ottoman next to me. He is now finished cleaning himself and keeping an eye on me although his eyes look like they may be shutting soon.

I find this kind of attunement to my own needs a very intense and slow process. Right now, for instance, I sense that in a lot of areas of my life I am wanting to feel things that I haven’t been able to feel before. However, there is no way yet that I can access those feelings. I will have fleeting thoughts about various topics, but it is like the thoughts can’t connect with feelings I have on those subjects. I know that I will feel a lot of relief when I can feel my feelings, but I’m just not there yet. So I have to be satisfied with just tending to my young parts in these gentle, slow kinds of ways. Ways that reassure, ways that help my young parts know that I am there with them so that when the time is right they can feel those feelings that are right now beyond their reach.

I hate that this is so slow. Sometimes. It’s painful to feel pent up feelings and not be able to do anything with them, and yet my younger parts do feel tremendous comfort in knowing that I am with them, that there is no pressure to feel that which cannot yet be felt, and that I care for and respect them even though this is an impossible task right now.

This is definitely because this is what Andrea has modeled with me. I don’t have to jump in and tell her stuff. I don’t have to force things to happen. A lot of my early writing was an attempt to get this stuff out, but now it’s not an urgent task because I am not alone and because I have a greater ability to see myself as more than my negative emotions.

So this kind of brings me back to the topic I started with – writing about my experiences. I have done a lot of writing directly to Andrea even while I have had this blog here. It has felt funny to write here some times because I don’t want to lose the closeness that I have with Andrea. I remember reading something about how it can be important to focus your emotional energy into your work with your therapist, to not diffuse your feelings by talking with lots of friends because that can take away the potency of having help from therapy and the therapeutic relationship. I spent a lot of time in more recent years talking to other friends and wish that I had brought more to therapy but that was a journey in and of itself.

So my feelings about wanting today (we’ll see if I sustain this) to write more here does represent the beginning of a possible shift away from that closeness I feel with Andrea and toward more carrying of that closeness within me and sharing more of myself with the outside world.

I realized yesterday after my session that I feel anxious about this. I guess about how much I can hold her within me. I don’t need her as much but I guess I don’t want to grow up too soon so to speak. That was definitely an issue for me in my childhood. I want to know I have her even if I don’t need her quite like I used to. In my head it still feels like I either need her or I don’t need her. I want to have and need her in more nuanced ways. It does feel like if I don’t need her desperately that I have lost her. Of course that’s not true.

The other thing I suspect is that I am having feelings about her and our relationship, frustrations that I’ve had with her, that are within me that I can’t quite articulate. So I also feel distanced from her right now as I am trying to get in touch with those feelings. But I also need her now.

It’s all interesting noticing.