Category — In the Present

Well, this morning I went back for my third round of work on painting our patio set.  Most of the surfaces were covered with the final coat of paint, but there was lots of detail work to be done around the arms and legs of the chairs.  I started tackling those areas and it was like I would think I had gotten everything and then another unpainted area would appear.  This was happening over and over again.  It was really frustrating.

I had to stop for a minute and come to terms with the fact that this was not a project that I would be able to hurry through to the finish line.  I wouldn’t be able to suffer through the agony of all this fine detail work, comforting myself with the idea that I would be done soon.  I wouldn’t be able to rely on that old manic thrill.  So I also stopped and recognized that I really hated this project.  I kind of got a kick out of saying that.  But I knew completing this was important to me.  I wanted to do it.  I just didn’t want to ever do it again!

It was nice to spend this time with myself, to settle myself down.  I found myself thinking about how I enjoy puttering around the house and decided I would approach this detail work that way, relaxed and like the point was not to finish something per se.  Before I knew it I was actually done with what I set out to do, and I actually had a great time.  But I still won’t do this kind of project again any time soon!

As I was painting, I was thinking about how painful this would have been not so long go.  Having to do something I hated like this, would have had me feel trapped and that feeling would have kicked off another layer of much more vague feelings.  I would have had a PTSD response which would have then kicked me into a manic state of mind.  My heart would have been racing, I would have tried to just stay focused on completing the project, I would have felt tense, and my mind would have wandered to rehashing various people interactions and what went wrong and what I feared I had done wrong.  Oh what a hell.

My young parts felt really happy today.  So, so, so different from that time because I understand what those vague feelings would have been, I have outwitted the mania, and I know I am not living back in the past anymore.  I can actually make a distinction now between past and present.  What a relief.

This week the focus of my attention has been on my adolescent.  

I’m beginning to recognize the signs that she needs me.  I was up one night thinking about various situations along with my frustration with my father.  Often my adolescent wants to act.  She gets an idea and she feels like she must do something about it.  She does this all while feeling like she is on her own.  It was the middle of the night and it dawned on me that she did feel all alone.  I stopped and remembered that Andrea would be there for me during my next appointment.  She would help me discover what it could feel like to not be up at night thinking about things all alone feeling compelled to take action.

Not surprisingly, once I figured out all the things my adolescent was thinking about and reminded her that Andrea would help her, I fell soundly asleep.  

The next day when we spoke during our appointment, my adolescent was so excited to be on the phone with her.  Our connection was immediate.  I could feel Andrea really with me.  I knew she really wanted to be with me.  My adolescent self talked and talked and talked.  

Something had happened that morning that had disappointed me.  Another person in my life seemed to really misunderstand me.  My adolescent felt so incredibly good knowing that Andrea understood her.  She could let this person’s misunderstanding of her slide off her back and stay engaged with this person whom she still likes.  But it was just so much fun to be able to move on with her life and not be stymied as she would have been in the past by this person’s judgement.  Plus my adolescent was happy because in moving on my adolescent was still able to be herself with this person.  She did not hide herself from view as she would have in the past.

When I shared that with Andrea, she asked me if I could see that she was smiling at me.  Smiling not necessarily at my success (or because in my old terms I had “performed” well), but smiling because she was happy she could be there for me, good or bad.  This is something we’ve talked about with my younger parts.  She’s really wanted me to experience the mutuality of our relationship, especially in moments when I need her.  The idea that she would want to be with me because she enjoys caring for me is still a new thought, but with my adolescent it felt even more foreign.

I told her that after she said that it made me aware that my adolescent felt her with me or felt that it was a mutual experience only 20%.  I realized I couldn’t begin to fathom that she would be smiling.  

This makes me want to cry right now.  I am sad because I see now that it would be so hard for me to even look at her much less take in the fact that she was smiling.  Yesterday, I just knew that there was so much more closeness that I could feel.  Today I feel more into the depth of that loss.

My entire demeanor has changed writing this just now.  I was feeling the delight of something new and now I feel the deadness of the emotional life I have come from.  I am so sad that I used to spend my energy being careful not to offend because I feared being more alone and abandoned than I already was.  I am ecstatic that I am getting the emotional help I need to be even more of myself, thus offering more of myself to the world around me, and thereby being more connected to people.  It is so much better than being careful.

After I recognized that it was hard to imagine Andrea enjoying and smiling at my teenage self we did some more of our imagining ways we could be together.  We imagined going window shopping.  We saw something made of recycled materials, something that was something else in an old life and made into something entirely different in a new life, and decided to go home and see what we could make.  Andrea did say as we were window shopping that we would be shopping together but that she would be pointing at stuff less at things, and more following my lead, seeing the things I liked and helping me to see other things like what I liked.  Those little, subtle things she says like this about these times with my younger selves really help me to understand the spirit and the nurturing essence of her care for those parts of me.

So we imagined that we went home, made something and then we put something up for sale on an etsy.com site.  My adolescent felt a new sense of what Andrea’s support could feel like as she imagined Andrea being with me regardless of anything I made on the site sold.  But my teenage self wanted Andrea to be clear she didn’t just mean that she could feel Andrea’s support as a way that would redress wrongs in my actual life.  It wasn’t about a reactive thing.  It was that she was beginning to sense how it would feel to have Andrea with her.  

Let me see if I can remember more details.  So my adolescent didn’t just want to feel supported if something didn’t sell on the site or no one liked her art.  She wanted to…  Well, I’ve lost it.  Clearly this is a really new notion for me.  

We also were talking about how I wanted to not feel constrained in my creativeness.  Like I didn’t want Andrea to have expectations that because I made one great thing that I would sell just that item.  I wanted Andrea to encourage me whether I decided to take that approach or not.  I think it was at this time that Andrea reminded me that her being my caregiver to my adolescent did not mean that I had to show up with everything figured out.  She would be there for me even feeling really confused.  How I was just didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that she was there for me as I needed her.  

By the end of our conversation I was still grappling with this notion of my adolescent really feeling her support and what that could mean and how I could use it and appreciate it.  I said to her something like it felt like we were sitting around looking at this big huge box wrapped in beautiful paper and topped with a huge bow.  I could barely take in the beauty of the bow.  

Somehow we got to the idea that there was a beautiful coat inside just for me.  A coat that represented her love and support and that would give my adolescent just what I needed.  She urged me to not even begin to take in and appreciate or understand the coat.  Instead she suggested I just wear the coat and discover what it’s like to wear the coat.  If I putting the coat on was too much, I could at least know that the coat was waiting for me.

Later that evening I responded to an e-mail about an event an organization I used to care deeply about is putting on.  When I started my sabbatical, I knew I just had to stop all that I was doing because I kept being frustrated that I couldn’t seem to be myself or accomplish what I wanted.  I kept trying but was getting the same results.  So my writing back to the sender of this e-mail was a big deal.  It came naturally and I did it because I felt like there were things I was seeing about how they were approaching this next event that they needed to know.  I needed to share what I saw because I wanted to share what I had inside of me.  

So I wrote an e-mail that surprised me because I was able to articulate the thoughts and ideas I’d had way back before my sabbatical.  I found a way to articulate myself that was impossible before.  Two things were different.  I believed in myself and I knew Andrea had my back.  

As soon as I sent that e-mail, another situation from the past came to mind.  I haven’t decided how involved I’m going to get with that situation but I found the words to articulate myself.  That felt really good.  

Then I got a reply to my e-mail to the first organization.  He was delighted and said that I asked the questions that no one ever even thinks to ask but that make such a difference.  He had missed my input.  He asked if he could forward my e-mail onto the board.  I was really pleased.  I can hardly wait to talk to Andrea about this and maybe even imagine her smiling.

I said a while back that whenever I feel anger everything changes for the better.  A while back I was considering anti-depressants.  I don’t remember the exact details of the situation, but I ended up getting really angry about facing this decisions about anti-depressants.  I got angry with Andrea and discovered that I wanted our relationship to grow and change.  We made adjustments, I allowed myself to be angry in some other areas of my life, and before I knew it I was out of the desperate funk I was in.  This was a big moment for me when I learned that one of the keys to my healing was anger.  

It’s often really hard to remember how useful anger is to me.  Andrea has to remind me of this.  She’ll check in with me about my feelings toward her, and it continues to be helpful for me to learn that my anger isn’t going to decimate her and that we can use the information my anger gives us to help me get more of what I need from her.

While I am not in a deep funk today, I do feel myself growing and changing a lot.  This leads me to feeling stuck and like things are hazy and unclear.  It seems like a little anger would help give me clarity.  It’s an instinctive sense.

I wonder if I am pretending that something is okay that really isn’t.

I say this because earlier in the week I wanted to go to an event but the logistics weren’t working out.  It was a bad time of day for my husband.  He wasn’t helpful.  It wasn’t clear when we were going.  My first reaction was to seriously consider just not attending.  To pretend to myself and others that I didn’t really want to go even though we’d been planning on it for weeks.  All of a sudden something changed and I let myself be angry and disappointed and whiney.  I stopped pretending to myself.  Amazingly, within five minutes the situation worked itself out.  

I am pretending about something, something that I don’t think I can even be angry about, that I so take for granted that it would be hard imagining being angry.  I suspect it’s one big thing with lots of little things that go with it.

Remembering how good I felt earlier in the week when I let myself be angry makes me think of free-flowing arteries.  When I am pretending, it’s like the arteries are clogged and my ability to move around freely is hindered.  As I become more aware of what it feels like when I am not pretending, I become more aware of how it feels when I am blocked.  It is more uncomfortable.  That’s what probably had me stop earlier in the week and be angry.  I was beginning to know there was a better way.  

I guess what’s happening this morning is that I am learning how to interpret these new physical sensations that something is bugging me.  It’s irritating that I can’t just name it.  But I do know that if I chill out for a bit it will all be clear.  I might be uncomfortable, but it is just a matter of time.

This weekend was interesting.  We had a bunch of social engagements, and I looked at these experiences through the eyes of mutuality, where I found it and where I did not.  

I’m sitting here Monday morning feeling deeply content and very surprised about this because I found a bunch of non-mutuality and yet I feel okay.  I feel okay because I feel sufficiently not alone.  I know Andrea is with me.  I am also so delighted to keep coming back to the miracle of finding a husband with whom there is so much mutuality.  

But as wonderful a husband as I do have it would not be enough in that deep in my soul kind of way.  I would always be pushing him to be more or do more or show me more how he loves me.  I would want him to be my parent or my therapist.  I feel content because my adult self and my young wounded child self knows that Andrea knows how to help me and her.  Andrea knows how much attention is like food to my young seven year old self and how much that self within me now needs attention.  Andrea just knows what I need.  I may have to wait until our next appointment but I can relax now knowing that I will get what I need when it’s time. 

We were talking about friendships recently and Andrea said that it might take some time before I find the mutuality that I am looking for.  I would add that it may take some time before I am fully capable of the mutuality I am looking for!!  I certainly have it in places, but I want my life to be filled with mutuality.  I lived my life so much feeling like I was on the outside looking in, believing that I could not have mutuality with kids my age.  I believe Andrea when she says that it may take me a while.  

I keep thinking about something she’s told me about friendship, that it’s so random.  You have to like the other person, they have to like you, and then a bunch of time and place stuff has to be right so you can be friends and actually spend time together.  I can understand this because I certainly feel a good bit of mutuality with folks but it certainly hasn’t been the right time or place in my life to be friends.  Andrea’s quick to point out that that’s also a sign that it’s not mutual for me right now.  

She did that in our last session.  I know she says this to help me remember my own sense of myself and my needs and wants.  It also helps me to feel two other things.  One, totally accepted by her for whatever it is I need and want.  She’s not telling me I’m wrong or the solution to my desire to have more close friendships is to change my wants and needs.  She’s just pointing out that I want something else more right now and that’s okay.  Two, knowing that my wants and needs helps me not take so personally the non-mutuality of some of my friendships right now. 

Well, this is a little more complicated.  I am coming to understand that I can not take personally A LOT OF THINGS.  My world view is beginning to look really, really different because of this notion of mutuality.  As I let myself be motivated by my wants and needs, I am beginning to see that my wants and needs are often fickle.  They don’t necessarily MEAN deep and important things about myself or others.  So I can see that other people are fickle too and so how they react and respond to me also doesn’t MEAN something about me and my self-worth.  

Because I lived in a world where external response and approval was so critical, I thought how people responded to me did MEAN something.  I think that’s one of the greatest gifts Andrea keeps giving me is a way to find that what’s within me is so much more important than what others think.  

Out in the world you hear about this idea.  I would even try to get myself to think that what I thought was more important than what others thought, but it took therapy for me to really get the concept.  

And so here I am on a Monday morning, reflecting back on the weekend.  I am sad that I look around and see a lot of acquaintances that don’t feel all that mutual, but I also feel safe and not alone with that realization.  I am relieved that I have internalized Andrea’s comfort and support enough within me that I don’t feel desperately overwhelmed and all by myself with that idea.  I am relieved I am not trying to change myself to be different in order to better fit.  Or that I am hating myself for not being more like other people.  Or that I am re-traumatized because this alone feeling feels like my growing up alone feeling.  

Instead I had this desire yesterday to share even more of myself with others via Facebook just to see where there might be more mutuality.  Instead I feel more able to be myself.  Instead I am sitting here knowing that I am enough just as I am.

That’s a lot that not feeling alone does for me.

Also in today’s session I explored how I felt about my schedule.  We were trying to figure out if it was fun or not because that was a real hallmark of my imagined interactions with Andrea whether I was an infant, three or seven.  Shared fun.

I loved it when I said that it’s a little hard to translate that kind of child-oriented fun interaction to my current life.  Fun is a little different.  Andrea laughed because she recognizes that one of the things I enjoy so much is hauling mulch.  I added that I anticipate it – in the afternoon after I’ve come in from outside for the day, before I go to sleep, and again in the morning before going outside.

Gosh, there’s much I want to say here.  Not sure how to continue.

I guess I didn’t want to miss talking more about how we distinguished contentment, manic-ness, and fun. 

She asked me if I had much time in my schedule for friends.  I said that I do have some things in my schedule but they are more events and get togethers and not friendships.  I said I wasn’t sure that I wanted friendships right now.  

She took this as a chance to remind me that that’s okay.  Friendships are mutual things.  I have to want it as well as the other person has to want it.  So it’s okay for me to remember me in the picture.  It’s okay if I don’t want friendship.  (Note to my dear friends reading – this is only temporary!)

That was a great jumping off point where we talked about how what I am experiencing right now with her is a caregiver type relationship.  It is steady.  Reliable.  It has a different feel from a friendship which has a more excitement-oriented feel.  By it’s nature friendship is more manic.  The fun comes when you get together which may only be once in a while compared to the steady fun of a regular caregiver type relationship.  

It was really nice to be able to talk about how what I want now is to internalize that caregiver type relationship within me, the contentment of it.  I felt a little funny before talking about this about how I wasn’t so interested in having fun.  I had been wondering if I am having enough fun, but I could say that I didn’t even really want to worry about that.  That felt like the wounded me worrying and trying to overcome not feeling like I was a part of the rest of the world.  I wanted to feel contentment.

She reminded me of how I faced this choice in choosing what I wanted in a life partner – excitement or contentment.  I chose contentment and I discovered so much more than I ever hoped for with my husband.  So she said that it was probably a good bet for me to keep choosing contentment.  And this could apply to how I work out my schedule.  Another thing we know about me is that I get a lot out of every experience so I don’t need excitement per se.  I will find interesting and invigorating things regardless.

In my last post I talked about imagining myself leaning up against Andrea at one point when I felt relief from our conversation.  What I see now is that that was the point where I felt safe with my feelings.  I had started to feel all manic because I was afraid of my feelings about missing her and had felt instinctively like I had to pull myself together during her absence.  (Well, actually I think I felt conflicted about that, wanting to not do that but not being sure of any other way.)  When I wanted to lean up against her, I had found another way by sharing with her my feelings and letting her help me with them so that I didn’t have to face them all alone.

Right now I feel so good.  Well part of me does.  Some of me feels in transition, like there are still old bits of me that are having to get used to all of this new good stuff.  

At the beginning of our session today I felt right with Andrea and I felt like she was right with me.  We’ve worked really hard on our relationship, being relentless in our efforts to find how it is that I can feel really, really helped by her.   It took me so long to get used to the idea that she could help me.  Even when I did like her help I still had to keep discovering that I could have it more and even better.  That I could have her help, that I deserved her help.  Not to mention learning how to stop defending against having her help!  

It’s so gratifying to be where I am tonight.  I get that something really special has been happening.  And it is still sinking in.  I have help and guidance.  I am not alone.

I had an amazing session with Andrea today.  She’s going out of town again on business.  This means we had to meet one day early (today) and will need to meet one day later than our usual time next week.  Not so bad.  Except that I was feeling cranky before our session today.

We talked about that.  My child felt cranky.  She was feeling like she liked the idea of the my schedule but she was resisting it.  This was a new feeling because I have been feeling very, very happy, looking forward to each new day as I go to bed.  So even though the feeling was small it clearly seemed to mean something.

She could articulate to Andrea that she felt frustrated because it felt like the two sides of my brain need to come together more, work together more.  My child is really perceptive.  She said that she could imagine that there’s more for her (more peace and satisfaction and enjoyment), and this makes her frustrated.

Andrea briefly mentioned that it was interesting that I felt this feeling of the two sides not being connected because that’s part of what research shows about trauma – that the right and the left brain don’t communicate so well.  Thankfully, though, she knew better than to look at the trauma piece and steered us back to our relationship.

She talked about how what made my schedule special and meaningful is that it is relational.  I could just have a schedule and it would feel empty and worst of all for me it would be devastatingly lonely without the relationship aspect.  This tied into what I was feeling with her being gone.  My schedule was beginning to feel hollow because my dependable schedule with her was changing.  

This then had me realize that my child was feeling a bit manic at the prospect of Andrea leaving.  She felt an urgency that she hadn’t felt before to feel more like all of her brain was working together or feeling tight as she put it.  She really quickly went back to her old habit of wanting to be all put together.  Before facing Andrea’s absence, she had been feeling no rush at all in healing.  She was really content to just relax and feel the comfort of my routine which really means feeling the comfort of my relationship with Andrea.

At one point once we had figured this out together, I started imagining how good it would feel to sit next to Andrea with my back up next to her side and just feeling her love and caring.  I could feel her supporting me in this challenge of missing her.   

In some of our other “meditations” where we imagine her as my caregiver one of the things that’s come out of it has been my surprise at how as my caregiver she could enjoy herself so much being with the infant, three year old, or child me.  I never really thought of being with me/caring for me being that enjoyable.  That someone would want to lavish me with attention because of me, because they enjoy it themselves.  Essentially because of that mutuality.

Today she said that she doesn’t like leaving me when she has to go out of town.  She said that it’s practically the first thing that comes to her mind – that she’s going to have to leave me and she doesn’t want to.  She talked again about enjoying me even in this context.  This felt really good to me.  I could take it in.  I told her that I knew immediately that she wasn’t talking about feeling guilty about leaving me and that I was not bad for making her feel this sadness at leaving me.  I just know she cares and she doesn’t like it when things interfere.  

I think about how long it has taken for me to be able to feel as cared for as I do now.  I guess there are two things that I feel – cared for by Andrea as my caregiver and enjoyed by her, too.  

While she is away, I can call on my “babysitter”, her colleague, since she will be so far away and unreachable.  I imagined how different I would be to my babysitter.  I am not the same person I was at the beginning of January.  Andrea said that I might seem less ambitious.  I hesitated and said I wasn’t sure about that.  She clarified and said that she meant that I might care more about being contented.  That sounded right to me.  More on that in a separate post.

I am writing today because I don’t want to forget some really important things that are happening right now, but I hesitate because my brain feels a bit cloudy and I’m not sure that I can really articulate what I want.  I will do my best and just the words out.

Andrea and I have been working with my young parts – my infant, my three year old self, and my seven year old self.  When I say that we’ve been working with them, what I mostly mean is that we’ve been kind of doing a meditation where I sit and relax and she takes me step by step through what a day would be like and feel like if she were the caregiver of these young parts.  

With the infant she talked about how the day would start by getting dressed and how we might play together through that process, how she’d figure out what toys I liked best and how I liked to be played with.  We went onto imagining eating and she talked about the foods that she would prepare and how she would give me time for me to eat as I liked.  Then we would go outside and play.  I would need to put a hat on and she explained what might happen if I didn’t like the hat.  That we would not be able to go outside unless I had the hat.  She would try different things and different hats to help me not mind so much having the hat on, but she would be insistent for my safety that I would wear a hat.  We then talked about how we might go to the park to meet some other babies and their parents and play and how that would be even more fun than playing at home because there would other little ones there as well.  She told me how she’d help me.  She’d show me how to engage the other children there, she’d help me go run after a child in a game until I was able to do it on my own, and things like that.  

This was all incredibly meaningful to me.  I felt incredibly at ease and peace after our session.  I could see and feel what it would be like to be parented.  To feel attached.  To not have to know it all myself.  To follow and how to be guided.  

And the part that has also really stayed with me is the value of routine.  

So much so that I have found over the last couple of weeks since we did this that I have formed a routine.  For a long time I had no or few routines.  I needed to be able to be flexible so that I could figure out moment by moment what I wanted to do and break my habits of always doing what it seemed other people would approve of or what I imagined others would approve of.  I also really needed a lot of room to feel my emotions.  I was worried that routine doing of things would become a way that I used to prevent myself from actually feeling my emotions, that I would revert to using work as a distraction.

I am past that point now.  In fact the other night after I woke up from a late afternoon nap I didn’t know what was going to come next and I felt very unanchored.  I decided right then and there that I would have an evening walk with my husband, as long as he was willing.  It was such a relief to have something to move into.

I don’t necessarily feel excited or elated about this routine.  I suppose this is a good thing given my manic tendencies.  But I do feel very comforted.  I’ve tried for years to follow exercise routines and the like, but this is very different from my old attempts.  I’m not doing aspects of my new routine because it would be a good idea or yield these great results.  My motivation isn’t come from my head.  I guess my motivation is coming from a feeling within my heart that whatever the routine is would feel good to me, good to me like how I felt imagining having Andrea be my infant’s caregiver.  I feel like I am submitting myself to routine, like there is something older and wiser in me guiding me and ensuring that I care for myself.

This notion of submission came up a few days ago.  What I’ve decided would feel good to me for the mornings is to get up, have breakfast, do whatever I feel like for an hour, go outside and work in my garden, take a shower, do yoga, make lunch, and listen to the radio.  I was on my way back to the house after being in the garden and I noticed myself trying to get out of the shower and yoga.  I was trying to bargain with myself.  It was incredible when an older part of myself just said no.  No bargaining.  I had internalized that part of Andrea that said that wearing the hat was essential for my going outside and being safe.  My younger parts felt the strength of the older part of me and willingly went along with the plan.  There would be yoga.  That’s just what is done.  I feel lots of peace even now typing this.

In my most recent session I was saying to Andrea that I loved this routine thing so much.  While I knew it was good for me, I couldn’t quite differentiate between it and my old workaholic ways (because I get such a kick out of it and completing the various parts of my day) so I asked her to help me with that.  She said that part of what was different was that it was what I wanted.  I know myself now enough to know what I want and what I like.  Then we also talked about mutuality.  When we had imagined her as my caregiver, there was a lot of mutuality, being together and figuring out what I liked.  If she knew I liked playing with the ball but not the stuffed animal, she was going to play with the ball with me.  That’s what I was doing with myself and this allowed the experience of routine to be comforting to me.  

This is a summary of what we talked about in my last session but is largely from a few weeks back.  There’s more recent stuff that would be fun to articulate.  The old me would have a big huge writing session right now and rush to get more stuff down on paper.  While that’s sometimes fun and I don’t want to deny myself that pleasure just because that’s “the old me”, I’m not going to do that today.  Instead I’m going to be trusting that I will remember the important things to share and wait until tomorrow or my next chance to write.  (I don’t yet have a writing time built into my day and I’m not sure if I want it formalized yet.)

So much has been happening that I haven’t even begun to capture here.  I hope one day I will tell the stories.

For now I will say that for the last week Andrea and I have been really talking with my parts and spending time with my infant, three year old, and today seven year old.  She has talked about how she would be with them.  How if she were their care givers how it would be.  

Today my seven year old self really wanted her assurance.  So Andrea talked about how delightful it is to know her, to give her attention.  If she were her caregiver it would be fun to watch her drawing a picture, for instance.  My young self got shy when she heard that.  She felt like wiggling with discomfort.  Indeed she wants Andrea’s attention.  She wants to be seen and admired and appreciated for what makes her her.  At the same time it feels a little different.  It’s different to be really aware that she has Andrea’s attention.  She knows she’s had it, but it’s a different thing entirely to be really conscious of having her attention AND saying that she wants it and wants more of it.  

My child is coming to understand that deserves attention.  She’s beginning to feel what it would feel like inside to know that, to have been raised knowing that.  Just imagining it myself, it is such a reassuring feeling.

I’m vaguely aware that in my relationship with my husband that I’ve started to feel more deserving of attention.  It sounds weird to me now that I would just now be opening my eyes to that, but I really had no previously ingrained sense that caring attention was mine to have.  I remember feeling like I had to perform to get attention.  It’s embarrassing to say but I used to think that if I did something well (made a nice meal or was perky or something) that I would have my husband’s attention.  I remember feeling this well into our relationship even though I was vaguely aware that this just wasn’t needed with him and that he loved me so much for me.  It was hard to get my head around that.

So it’s bizarre, kind of in the same way, to internalize even more after today’s session that Andrea really wants to give my young seven year old self lots of attention.  She’s wiggling a bit with discomfort but I suspect that over the next several days she’ll relax more into it.  I was going to say that I can imagine her tugging on Andrea to tell her – it’s okay, I can have attention now.  However, that’s not how it would work at all.  With Andrea as her caregiver, she would be receiving attention as part of her daily routine.  Andrea would be paying close attention to her needs and delighting in her.  It wouldn’t be up to my seven year old to be in charge of when she would have Andrea’s attention.  She would just have it.  Her infant and three year old self would have internalized that a long while ago.  

That will need to sink in for a few days.

I haven’t written here in a while but a bunch of stuff has been slowly happening as I lay low, do little, and spend a lot of time cozy in bed.

I’m back here writing because I want to capture a call I just had with Andrea.  I was feeling anxious, almost like I wanted to throw up.  In general I feel good and I was nervous because I was unsure if I really would be safe feeling this good.  

Andrea asked how old the part of me is that feels anxious.  She said she didn’t think it was my adult that felt anxious and I heartily agreed.  I decided it was about 3 or 4 year old me who felt anxious and still feels a bit anxious now.  

My 3 year old self shyly said something about my haircut.  I got my haircut and this made her feel nervous and different from my mom.  When I first said this to Andrea and even now as I retell the story, I feel really relieved to be talking about this, to get my feelings out in the open.  Andrea and I talked about how my mom had a fairly decent baseline care for herself but how she doesn’t really feel good about herself, can’t appreciate herself.  It felt really taboo to my 3 and 4 year old to be admiring her hair, pleased with her hair, and feeling great about who and how she is.  

After those last words I typed, I felt something relax within me some more.  She does feel really good.  

So Andrea and I talked about how it’s natural that this part of me needs some reassurance.  My three year old said that she would like to follow Andrea around, to stay close to her because she needs her right now as she gets used to this new feeling of feeling really good.  Of course, Andrea said that she would love to have my three year old present and to reassure her and be present for her.  I added that it felt like my three year old needs to be reminded of who she is, how she looks and feels as she is feeling good, to have this mirrored back to her so that she doesn’t forget, so she doesn’t have to hold all this newness by herself.

At one point Andrea also talked about how we might remind my young self of the basics, that she is separate from my parents, that she is no longer enmeshed with them.  Later Andrea added that my young self also doesn’t have to feel nervous about reaching out to her because it is out in the open that my mom failed me in a lot of key ways.  My mother has said that so my child doesn’t have to feel murderous when she chooses someone else (in the form of Andrea and my adult self) to depend upon and help her right now when she really needs it.

I was very glad Andrea said this as well.  I didn’t know how important this would be to my young self until she said it.  It does feel very awkward to shift this loyalty.  

Part of shifting that loyalty is that she is also choosing someone in Andrea who doesn’t exploit her when she feels bad.  My feeling bad as a child was a way that my mother seemed to feel better while in her own pain, like she had company.  Andrea assured me that she did not need me to feel bad.  While I could feel bad with her, she did not need me to feel bad for her.  She wanted to help me to feel better and loved and cared for and cherished.  I could be shy, scared, excited, feeling really good or feeling bad.  Regardless, she wanted to be with me and for me to know that I could be there with her, too, and have her help to feel good.

In the middle of her saying this, I felt a switch get flipped inside some part of me, maybe the adult me.  I could imagine and feel how if I had a child of my own right now that I would have wanted that child to meet in a place of feeling bad.  I could see how I would do to my child what I experienced from my mother, and in that second it felt like something changed within my adult self.  It’s dawning on me that this does not just have great implications for a child we might have in the future but that my three year old self can have a different relationship right now with my adult self.  

I am really proud of myself because I called Andrea and I did not wait until my appointment to get her help.  I knew that I needed her immediately.  That has been such a huge challenge.  I knew she wanted to help me.  I knew she didn’t want me to suffer.  I knew she would be delighted I had called.

We ended our call with me saying that if she went about her evening tonight and happened to hear the little patter of feet behind her that she would know that it was me.   She giggled and my child felt loved and delighted in.

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.]

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.