Posts from — December 2008

I have found a new psychotherapy blog that I really appreciate titled Jung At Heart.  I love what she says here in her post titled In the Darkness:

I recently ran across this powerful quote from Jung on therapy:

“The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering. “ -C.G. Jung

How very different this view of therapy is from the current preoccupation with happiness and positive psychology! Jung understood that suffering is a part of life, that it has meaning and that to live fully is to know that suffering will be a factor in one’s life throughout life. If I look back on my own life, I know that I have learned most from those times which were difficult and often painful, not because I wanted to but because of the choices and consequences i faced at those times. The good times, the times of great happiness are wonderful and I have celebrated and cherished them and look forward to more. But it has been in those dark times when I have had to face myself and look deeply into my life and my actions that I have grown most.

Reflecting on consolations and desolations, joys and sorrows is a part of many spiritual practices. Matthew Fox wrote in modern terms in Original Blessings about the Via Negativa, the path that takes us into darkness. So much of post-Enlightenment culture has been about the flight from darkness that many of us have lost sight of the meaning and value of darkness. New life begins in the dark. Seeds germinate in the dark.

Therapy which acknowledges and even embraces the dark times, suffering as well as joy, opens the door to that new life and creativity that can come from them.

So I just posted that I feel rotten but not so much physically in pain.  By the way I don’t think I would have noticed before that I was in pain.  

I’m also aware that where I am right now does follow predictably a time when I am able to see something that is true that I couldn’t see before.  I am really hazy right now.  Emotionally hazy.  Not so able to move hazy.  Worn out hazy.  

My dear cat had to go to the vet this morning.  I really did not want to deal with this but of course I did because it’s important.  

But I am really aware that I need to be home, curled up, taking care of myself and letting my mind-body heal.  Letting myself adjust to life after having revealed to myself some pretty hefty truth.

A bunch of stuff has been happening that I haven’t written about here.  It’s good stuff.  And it’s having me feel rotten again.  Really rotten.  

But it’s been weird because it’s a different kind of rotten.  I wondered how.  I’ve been wondering for over a day I guess.  Then I figured it out.  My body doesn’t physically hurt as much with this round of feeling bad.  My body is still tired, but there’s less pain.  

Nice.

So today I’ve had my shower.  I’m up and about.  My body is not shut down.  I’ve been able to think about the future, feel close to my dear husband.  I’m just tired.  We’re going to a friend’s house for dinner tonight, and instead of suggesting something that would require me to go to the supermarket and make something, I am bringing something I can pull together from what I have at home.  I have that much energy.  And, I’m kind of pleased with myself that I recognize my limits.  Even a year ago I would have expected that I could do anything and beat myself up for not pushing myself to bring the dishes that would have involved more effort that I thought of.  It’s feels really good to know my limitations for today.  To accept them.  I can do this partially because I know that my limitations are not set in stone.  They will change or lift or not.  I feel capable of working with them and I know that the self I am able to bring is enough.

I had a great experience yesterday.  A friend came over to make wreaths.  Originally, she was going to come at 2pm.  But it worked out better for her to come earlier and that worked for me.  I found out that morning.  So I didn’t have a chance to plan ahead in my brain and be ready for her at 10.  I was on track to be ready for her at 2.  It’s great it worked out this way because I’d only been dressed for a bit before she arrived.  I hadn’t eaten.  Given where I’ve been emotionally, I didn’t have enough time to get myself “together”.  This was a chance for me to be with her just as I was.  I also turned out to be weepy all day yesterday.  While it’s not unusual to be weepy with friends, there was something a little different.  In general I was just kind of hazy.  It felt so good to have her with me, in my life, in my house when I was so fuzzy.  I felt safe enough.  And I had a great time.

Yes, because it was both that I was hazy and I needed the companionship while I was hazy.  That’s been a really hard thing for me to have.  I’ve had a lot of friends who I am close with but who live a distance from me.  So it hasn’t even been geographically possible for a long while to have friends be with me in my space when I am hazy.  But geographics aside, it’s still new for me.  

In sum what I am saying is that yesterday I let my guard down and it felt good.  Again, this is because my attachment relationship with Andrea and my husband are strong.  I KNOW for myself that I am enough.  I’ve gotten that through my relationship with them.  And so I am attachable with other people, too.

I’m sure there’s a particular adolescent component to all of this.  I’m not sure what it is exactly.  Well, I have some ideas but I’m going to let them simmer for a bit.

This morning I woke up and felt different, as I often do after a good night’s sleep.  Before going to bed I wrote about not feeling alone and specifically my adolescent not feeling alone.

I’ve actually gone through this experience of realizing that I am not alone so many times, but it’s becoming clear that each time it’s with a different part of myself, my infant, my child, etc.  Of course, each part also needs time for this all to settle in so they rediscover that they are not alone many times themselves.

For my adolescent this process of soaking in that she’s not alone is coming at an interesting time given that she did not hear from her parents at Thanksgiving.  There’s a quote that’s on the sidebar of this blog that really applies and captures how she’s been feeling:

“It is one of the turning points in therapy when the patient comes to the emotional insight that all the love she has captured with so much effort and self-denial was not meant for her as she really was, that the admiration for her beauty and achievements was aimed at this beauty and these achievements and not at the child herself. In therapy, the small and lonely child that is hidden behind her achievements wakes up and asks: ‘What would have happened if I had appeared before you sad, needy, angry, furious? Where would your love have been then? And I was all these things as well. Does this mean that it was not really me you loved, but only what I pretended to be? The well-behaved, reliable, empathic, understanding, and convenient child, who in fact was never a child at all? What became of my childhood? Have I not been cheated out of it? I can never return to it. I can never make up for it. From the beginning I have been a little adult. My abilities — were they simply misused?’ These questions are accompanied by much grief and pain, but the result is always a new authority that is establishing itself in the patient — a new empathy with her own fate, born out of mourning.”

Alice Miller – Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self

I just had the weirdest feeling.  Well, I’ve actually been having it for two weeks or so.  It’s this awareness that I am not alone.  My husband is with me.  This feeling really felt strong because my husband joined Facebook.  This made it really clear to me that we have one another and we have our friends.  I’ve just kind of had my friends but I never counted on having a feeling at home that I wasn’t alone.  I just have always assumed that I am.  That’s been what I’ve felt in my heart and in my head.  That’s really changing.

Of course, this is really amazing for my adolescent.

I am wiped out this afternoon.  

A dear friend came over this morning and we made wreaths together.  It was great.  

This happened right after my post this morning which was a weighty post.  A lot moved and shifted within me.  I’m kind of reminding myself that all this change happens slowly and it wears me out.  There’s so much more happening than meets the eye.  I need time to recover.  

This evening my husband and I have plans.  It feels so good to think of being able to sleep the afternoon away, let my unconscious work its magic, and then do something enjoyable this evening.  I am appreciating in this moment that it has taken me a lot of work to be able to get to the point where I can understand my cycle and understand how I heal and what I need.  And not to fight it.

This morning my adolescent feels really safe.  She is comforted by what Andrea said yesterday – that it seems like there is lots of healing that I’ve done that is finished but that the work with my adolescent is not.  Being seen by Andrea in this way feels really good to my adolescent.  This being seen makes the world feel sturdier to my teen.  It also has her feel like her needs have been singled out.  It affirms that she does have unaddressed needs.  This feels good.  She feels important and valued.

After getting a shower this morning, I was thinking about my parents and not hearing from them around Thanksgiving.  I used to be aware of re-experiencing trauma.  It’s time again to say explicitly that it was re-traumatizing to not hear from them.  I can do that now.  I have the emotional capacity for it.  I feel better about things with Andrea.  My adolescent feels seen for her challenges.  Seen by me.  

Not hearing from my parents, her parents, was traumatizing for my adolescent because it touched the deepest nerve for her around being a teenager.  I said this last night that it was a blow.  Her anger had more power than it should have had.  That still feels kind of risky to say.  I feel my own second guessing defenses in play.  But it’s true, my anger did have more influence than it should have.  It confirmed for my adolescent that she is only lovable when she shows up as nice because they can’t handle her as a real, complicated person with needs.  The trauma, though, comes into play because it reminds her of how things were when she was a teen when she needed her parents to be alert to her, aware of her as a separate entity, as a developing child with needs.  The situation reminds her of being attuned to her parents’ needs but having no clue of her own.  

This is hard.  It takes a physical toll on her.  

And it’s weird because I keep feeling how distinct she is from the adult, more solid me.  I know that this takes a toll on her, not on me per se.  I can’t move because she can’t move, but I know that it’s her that’s in trouble.   I think that this helps her, too.  She couldn’t have done this work before I could hear her voice so clearly or feel her so clearly.  The work of adolescence is individuation and so it makes sense that she would feel so distinct within me.  Of course, I’ve done a lot of work to get to the point where she could be this differentiated from the other ages and parts within me.  But the final work could only take place in a context where her voice is so distinct.  

Well, now both she and I are crying.  She is crying because she likes being known for how far she’s come and how much effort has gone into this project.  I am crying because it feels good to be close to her while being separate from her.  That distinctness makes it possible to be close to her because I actually can know who she is.  That was the impossible thing that happened in my family.  She couldn’t be known for who she was as a separate entity.  That’s why my hearing her voice so distinctly is so special.  Wow.

After speaking with Andrea today, I remembered how a couple of years ago I thought somewhat regularly about the burden my twenty year old self had.  She couldn’t be herself.  It seemed like she was still having to take care of the child and adolescent within me.  These days I think that my adolescent may be struggling with her role caring for my child.  She really had to look after my young parts, too.  My child.  My infant.  She had to hold everything together.  She had to get good at it in order to survive.  

Now that my young parts are relatively well cared for she kind of gets to cut loose.  She knows her young parts are safe with Andrea.  She’s just not sure that she is.  She’s not sure she’s safe differentiating even from her younger parts.  It’s scary to be an adolescent in general, much less an undeveloped adolescent in a 35+ year old body.  Well, of course it’s possible for her to be an adolescent in this body now, and it wasn’t at all possible in her adolescent body.  But my point is that she is having to let go of her old responsibilities and trust Andrea and me now.  Things were at least familiar for her when she had to take care of her young parts.  Now she’s the one to be cared for.  

I guess that the adult part of me also wants her to know that I know that this past Thanksgiving wasn’t easy for her.  Yes, she and my younger parts, and the adult me felt safe in the knowledge that we are getting better.  We are feeling better.  Things are making a lot of sense as to why I have been struggling for so long.  I feel like my pain is now real.  I/we recognize the struggles I’ve faced.  I am able to see myself more clearly and see my family situation a lot more clearly.  But it was devastating to her to not have her parents be in contact in a minimal way during this holiday.  It is a blow to her.  It’s the blow that she didn’t want to ever experience, the blow that had her work so hard at being the person her family wanted her to be.  She didn’t want her anger to push her away from her family.

And it did feel like this to her – that she would be pushed away from her family, not that she would push her family away from her.

[I did write more but lost it due to a server issue.  Oh well.]

So today talking to Andrea I was nervous and uncomfortable.  And guess who plopped himself on my belly from the get go?  Yep, my cat.  

He stayed with me for quite a while, wandered away, and then came back.  

I was telling my husband about how things were today and in the middle of it, as always, he says something about the cat.  This always annoys me.  Even now.  But it’s just one of those things that happens.  We’ve gotten to be quite light hearted about it.  Today my husband, before I mentioned anything about what happened during my call with Andrea between my cat and I, said that an image of this cat often appears in his head while I am talking to him.  It happens regularly.  

Interestingly, at one point Andrea was checking in with me about how connected I might feel to her.  We’re working on my adolescent being able to be mad and angry at her without having to feel alone.  My adult self kind of spoke on her behalf, genuinely representing her, saying that she wanted to be connected to her and that she didn’t want to be alone.  But, my adolescent directly and defiantly said to Andrea that she wanted her to know that my cat was with her.  I told her then about how he’d been with me from the beginning of the call.  

We talked about this and I don’t remember exactly what was said, something about the protection that my cat offers.  I think Andrea said something about how I do have people and cats supporting me and yet she also hoped to be able to be able to really be with me when I face moments of anger.  She hoped she could play the special role that she as therapist can play.  My adolescent kind of wants to say – yeah, yeah, yeah – as I recount this.  But she also feels to my adult self really relieved that Andrea made sure to inject herself here.  

Regardless, I am glad that my cat sees how much I need him at this point.  I’m glad that he’s in tune with the part of me that is so hard to reach right now.  The part of me that in some ways just doesn’t want to be reached but oh so desperately wants to be reached.

Well.  I’m kind of excited writing this post because therapy is fascinating.  It’s what I need.

So I was nervous, pissy, upset in anticipation of my session with Andrea today.  I felt just awful.  To move around and do much was very hard.  My body was shutting down on me.  This always makes me mad.  

I don’t know if I was out of touch with my feelings or what but I did manage to talk to Andrea and not totally freak out by not showing up.  I did have the feeling that not dealing with my anger with her would be far worse than avoiding my time with her.  It did feel like it was likely that it would be a good thing to talk, but I wasn’t letting myself hope that I would feel all better afterward.  

I do feel a lot better but not all better.

I got to say that it’s weird to feel this awful because I kind of like it.  It clearly is my adolescent who is struggling right now, and she does like that I am not pushing my bad feelings away.  Well, away, away.  She likes that I’m trying to help her manage her bad feelings and giving her permission to choose some dissociation.  She trusts me that I’m not going to run away from her feeling bad.  That feels really good to her, and I think sometimes feeling bad and being allowed to feel bad by me is reassuring.  (That made me cry.)

I also want to get out what Andrea and I said at the very end of our call today.  I clarified that I have been angry with her because I’m not sure in the early days that she was forceful enough at getting to me.  She really heard that and that helped.  Then I said something about how I needed to be truthful with her now about that time because I am being truthful about other parts of my past and I need her with me to be truthful.  But I don’t want her with me being truthful about these other parts of my life if I am not truthful with her about our relationship.

That felt really, really, really good to say.  There are lots of things I could feel relief about from our call today, but this just seems to be the most important.  She was with me on that.  I was with me on that.  It feels like something tied up within me is now untied.  I don’t really understand why that would be so significant but maybe it will be clear in a few months.

It did really feel like she is championing my adolescent.  My adolescent was snarky and upset during the call.  She still is.  Even at the end of our conversation when Andrea asked if my adolescent felt heard and cared for, I said back to Andrea that an older part of me feels like this was really helpful to my adolescent but my adolescent doesn’t want to say that.  

It always kind of shocks me when Andrea takes my adolescent seriously.  (more tears)  I want Andrea to hear the part about it feeling good to my adolescent through an older part of me, yet she pays attention to the fact that my adolescent doesn’t want to speak.  It’s like there’s this spotlight on her.  My adolescent doesn’t like it and she likes it, too.  She likes being taken seriously, but it has her feel a little uncomfortable.  

All today it was weird for Andrea to be taking my adolescent’s anger seriously.  I got a chance to say something that meant something when Andrea agreed.  We were talking about whether I was mad that I had to deal with all this anger.  I said that on the one hand I was but I also was not.  I can see from how hard it is for me to deal with being angry that I really need to be engaged with this stuff even though it’s hard.  It’s a relief to be in the middle of it all.  Even though it’s so hard that my body starts to shut down.  

There’s a lot more I could write about, but I’m going to wait.  

I’ll close by saying there is a great Boston Legal episode available on abc.com where Jerry gets the girl, finally.  He gets her once he really accepts himself.  

I know my teenager liked that moment.  She loves the show in general.

I might have just said this in my last post.  I’m puttering around the house right now considering what I’ve just written.  And I have more to say even if it is a repeat!

The revelation is not the seething anger itself (and those are just the best words I have for the moment to describe what I feel.  I’m not sure that’s it exactly).  The revelation is that I have had feelings that I had to deny in order to survive and those feelings are running my life.  I guess that’s not a huge new revelation.  But maybe the revelation is that I’ve intellectually known that to be true and now I am really in touch with how it feels to be run by the denied feelings.  I know how it feels to be run by the feelings because as I am more conscious of them I am reminded of how I felt when I was unconscious of them.  

Plus I am having to learn how to live with them.  I was putting away some clothes when I was thinking of how I couldn’t even have begun my day or doing something around the house when I would feel so bad I stayed in bed most of the day.  I didn’t know that I had anything else of me besides those feelings and so they would overwhelm me.  This morning I know there’s a fairly sturdy me that is bigger than those feelings so it is possible for me to live a life independent of them.  

Of course back when I was in a coma-like state I was also pretty grateful for those feelings because they were real.  I didn’t totally want to get out from underneath them because it was oddly pleasurable to be with yucky, awful feelings that I had run away from all my life.  It was a relief to surrender.  

I guess now I have more sophisticated ways to surrender to those feelings.  I’m experimenting with those ways today.

Last night I updated a blog of mine about my garden.  I posted a link to it on Facebook.  When I got up this morning I was thinking about it.  I wanted people to comment on it in my status update, letting me know that they had seen it.

I felt funny about this and judgmental toward myself.  I was sure it was some kind of vanity.  

But in the pause between writing my last post where I was very compassionate toward my younger parts, I realized that what I want is to let people into my life.  My feelings are around hoping people accepted the invitation or will be able to at some point.  I feel shy about this, but I want it.  I want people in my life.  I want people to know and see what I care about.  I certainly want to know and care about their lives.  I want people to come closer to me.  I want to let them come closer.

Wow.  With that last post I felt a lot of acceptance for my anger from myself and this had led to feeling more anger.  

The funniest part of it all is that I don’t want to feel angry.  It’s not like I feel angry in a conscious kind of way.  Or like I feel like I need and want to get the anger out.  Yet it seems clear to me that another part of me does need to feel and get the anger out.  It’s not a rageful anger or an anger that is volatile and blustery.  I don’t think I’m able to feel anger in that way around this.  

It feels more like my young parts are getting a chance to let out feelings that they could never express as children.  I am angry as my present day self that I never had a chance to form an identity of my own.  I suspect that my young parts are feeling feelings related to that, related to the having to subsume themselves.  They felt anger at something that they could not name when they were actual children.  Again, not anger exactly, but frustration and something else that they turned in on themselves.  

Andrea said to me recently that I may need to help my young parts to identify what they are feeling and I seem to be doing that now.  They need my reassurance that it’s okay to be having these vague seething feelings.  They need to know that I see that they are embarrassed that they are only now learning how to feel anger and that it’s okay with me that they are such novices.

They like that I’ve walked around the house this morning and seen things I’d/they’d like to do.  Little things like putting away laundry and even cleaning the house.  It is reassuring to them that they are not lost to their anger, to things beyond their control.  I want them to know that they have me, that we are not living in those helpless days anymore, and they are safe to feel whatever they need to feel at whatever pace they need.  They can choose to dissociate a bit and do things around the house if that would help them.  Or they can spend all day feeling and writing.  They get to choose.  They can be assured that I won’t let a little temporary, chosen dissociation interfere with their long term goal of healing.  They can be assured that I will be with them if they choose to keep writing and feeling.

Yesterday I worked on one of my blogs for about 12 hours.  I didn’t feel so great.  But it was something I could do, that I wanted to do, and so that’s what I did.  This is very different from the past when I would feel bad and be immobilized.  It’s not that I am thrilled I was productive.  No, that’s a huge trap for me.  It’s that I could acknowledge to myself that I felt bad and then it was nice that I could still be me somehow and not just totally stuck feeling rotten.

I still felt rotten when I woke up this morning.  Well, maybe not as bad as rotten, but I was aware that I had been seething with anger. Yesterday my husband and I took a walk around the neighborhood.  He was teasing me about something, and I felt cranky.  I warned him that I was angry and that he might want to be careful.  He had a bring it on attitude which was really nice.  He also said that it did not seem like I was angry on the outside.  It was hard for him to tell.

That’s the thing about my seething anger these days.  It is hard to recognize.  It keeps being a relief for me to recognize that the times earlier in the year when I was holed up in bed for days on end that I felt really angry.  The anger did me in.  I didn’t know how to be with it.  So yesterday means a lot because I got to experiment with a new way to be with it.

I also recognized this morning that when I am angry I stop doing little things that are good for me like flossing my teeth, washing my hair, picking up my clothes, and other caring-for-myself things.  This makes me think that in the past I turned my anger on myself.  Only now I am learning that I feel an anger toward others.  This takes some adjustment to not turn the anger inward.  Needless to say I flossed my teeth this morning.

So now I’m just hanging out with the seething.