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I haven’t written for a while, but I’m jumping right back in with at least this post.  I’ve been more internally focused and writing directly to Andrea.  She’s away on vacation as she usually is this time of year.  It’s always tough on me and we try to prepare each year, some years better than others.  Sometimes I talk to her once while she’s gone for 3-4 weeks.  Last year I spoke to a colleague of hers in the interim.  It all depends.  This year we arranged it that I could call her on her cell phone with the understanding that it might be a couple of days before she gets the message.  So I called her this morning.  Delightfully, she was there to answer!

I always question whether I need to call outside of a regularly scheduled appointment.  Do I really need to talk to her?  (I’ve decided that if I am asking that question, I do!)  I used to try to figure out what I would say in advance.  I guess I want to be efficient, and it’s a way of managing the anxiety of calling when she’s in the middle of something else.  Today I tried to figure out what I was going to say but I remembered something we talked about a long time ago.  She talked about how when buying her house she wanted to talk to the agent.  Not because she really knew what she wanted to talk about but just because it was such a big deal that it felt good to reach out.  So I kind of remember that.

I called because there will be another week before we talk and I knew I could make it until next Tuesday but I didn’t want to just get by, conserving my energy.  I wanted to be able to keep going and I knew I needed her.  It would make a difference to talk and to not just be totally self-propelled.

So I called.  At first it was awkward because it’s outside of our scheduled time.  I could remember talking about that and so it made it easier to just be there with her.  I knew before calling and again while on the phone that that was all I wanted – to just be with her and have her be with me.  It has taken so long to be able to get to this point.

And so I talked about stuff, just kind of rambling.  And then I relaxed and I got excited.  And I could tell she was enjoying me.  I could tell she was glad to be there for me.  I could tell her I have been sick and how hard it was to motivate my husband to do something but how I could still love him so much.  I could tell her how much I understand myself and my family dynamics even more.  I could tell her that I made it through Christmas.  I could tell her how much I’ve missed her.

Then out of the blue, from deep within me, I said, “I was a big girl.”  My heart opens up typing that now.  After saying this, I immediately said, “Yeah, I called to tell you that.”

Her absence is really tough on me.  In the past I have handled it in the same way I handled stuff in my family by acting really, really competent and grown up before my time.  Way before my time.  Past years I couldn’t have said to myself or to her, “I miss you.”  I would tell her how I handled stuff and kept it together, but I couldn’t say that I missed her.  There was probably anger and so many other feelings that were underneath her absence that it was just too hard to do anything but have a forced gracefulness and self-sufficiency.

Somehow this year I’ve gotten far enough along that it could be different.  The soft, vulnerable parts of me could speak up and say out loud, “I’ve been a big girl.”  The soft, vulnerable parts could get through the awkward stage of the first few minutes of an out of session phone call and remember that she would be so glad to be with me and welcome the chance for me to be with me.

The tears keep streaming down my face.  I have come so far.

And I love that I knew I could make it on my own for the next week but that that was just silly.  I knew it was a lot to do on my own and that it would be better to acknowledge to myself that I was needy and that she could make things so much easier for me just by talking.

I wonder what the rest of my week will hold.  I had thought that I would be all energized after this.  I will be but just not right away.  I’m a little stunned by how soft and gentle I feel inside myself right now.  I need some time to get used to this.

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  One huge side effect of this feeling better is that it has had me return to the truth of how my life was before I felt SO MUCH BETTER.  In the process I have felt awful.

A lot has been written this week in the field of psychology about how plastic the brain is.  I would completely agree.  Mine is feeling very plastic, perhaps even gooey, but it’s still not easy to make changes.  There are emotions that go with this.  There’s loss, grief, relief, disbelief at how one coped, disbelief at what you’ve discovered is true, and more.

Not sure I can be so coherent today as I write.  Guess I haven’t felt that way in a while!

I had a session with Andrea today and one way she helped me cope with all of these changes was to have me imagine myself as a toddler being introduced to a new life on a new continent.  As always, she pointed out that I would not have to face this new life on my own, and there would be a lot to face.  Everything would look different.  My high chair would be different, the food I eat would be different, my family’s schedules would be different, the language around me would likely be different.  This helped my current me self feel really well taken care of, because I was known and understood for how things would feel to my young inside parts.

I feel like I am leaving some things out in the middle, like an explanation of radically things are changing for me.  But it’s hard to put words to.  But it’s all about how I feel about myself on the inside.  All of my assumptions about who I was have changed because I can see my family more clearly.  I wish I could say more but not yet.

Anyway, about being a toddler.  Andrea reminded me that I might need lots of naps as I adjusted to this new reality.  I always like hearing this.  I liked how she encouraged me to reach out to her whenever I needed her.  We know I am an eager child, one who wants to socialize and be a part of things, and it’s reassuring to me to think of her being there at every turn.  This isn’t new.  I’m a little embarrassed I am talking about this yet again but it is part of what changes everything.

I have had moments where I have felt completely numb this week.  Things were too much.  It was shocking when I realized in a new way how alone and compromised I was.  It is still kind of wild to feel pity for myself and then the relief that comes with it.  It is such a relief for my habitualized coping mechanisms to serve no possible purpose anymore.  And then I feel sad all over again as I get it more clearly what I had been hiding from myself for so long.

The only antidote has been the joy my wise cracking husband brings me and remembering Andrea will help me.  It is so wonderful to be able to be changed and made better by their presence.  I keep being surprised by how solid family can feel with my husband.

I did have some moments of being ready for and wanting to feel better today.  They had to do with my multi-acre garden which I have been trying to conceptualize for quite some time.  When I was feeling GREAT a few weeks ago, I read a design book and was able to really register and apply what I was learning.  Over the summer this had been really tricky the few times I had attempted what was then a feat.  Since then I’ve been dreaming of how I want parts of the garden to feel like, asking do I want this area to recede into the background or pop out at you.  I also have been able to conceptualize colors and how our existing trees and plants will flower throughout the seasons.  I also have spent some time eliminating possible plants given our environment and the impact of four legged creatures on them.

And, there’s one spot in the yard that I had a very clear idea of.  My favorite plant source is closing soon for the winter and I knew that if I wanted to bring my vision to life this year that I would have to get myself in the car and go.  So I did.  It was a great feeling to know that I wouldn’t sell myself out of that dream.

Andrea and I talked about that – about how my vision involves a plant I don’t even like a lot and colors that are not my favorites – and how this felt good.  She said something about how I seemed able to make decisions about what I liked and didn’t like all the while managing my ambivalence.  I saw that, too, but said that I used to work really well with constraints.  I made the most of the opportunities presented to me so what made this different, I wondered.  She said yes I did work very well within constraints but that what was different was that I had put in the “I” into the mix.  This is true.  Like I don’t like so much pink but I am not going to cut down these trees either.  It was much easier to accept what I didn’t like and move on and create something that I do like with what exists.  I didn’t feel this uncomfortable, unidentifiable, unallowable feeling of distaste.  I can cope with distaste.  I know I am safe feeling distaste (more on that later).  That makes it possible to work with this massive landscape of mine.  If it were a smaller space, I might have more leeway in removing or changing things.  However, that is completely cost prohibitive here because I am unwilling to spend huge sums of money removing trees that are essentially good trees.  It also is prohibitive on a time basis since I don’t want to wait for new trees to grow up.

Life is so much easier when there’s nothing in the way of my knowing myself.  It frees me up to be an adult.

Anyway, I’m going to take one of those naps/sleeps I was talking about above as I feel like I am rambling.

I’ve had some really interesting and exciting couple of days.  I have really enjoyed myself.

Yesterday I had a full day.  Then this morning there was a plant sale going on and I invited a gardening friend of mine to check out the sale with me.  We went.  On the way back I was exhausted.  I hadn’t eaten.  I thought that I would bounce back after eating.  Not so.  I took a nap.  I thought after two hours I would feel good again.  Not so.

So I did what I always do in a moment like that.  I e-mailed Andrea.  As I was writing I realized that I felt overstimulated.  Just having that word felt like such a relief to me.  I wrote that what I wanted to do was putter around the house, that that might be calming and soothing to me.

As I was loading the dishwasher, I also imagined her really understanding my overstimulation, wanting to be able to soothe me and help me feel better again, and knowing that she wouldn’t leave until this was done.  That felt really, really good to me.  I also knew that she would be able to understand this from a young child’s developmental perspective and that in turn added to the compassion that I felt for myself.

Today was a big day in another way.  I usually have an appointment with her today and I am transitioning to talking just once a week, from two times a week.  I am certain that this is factoring into things as well because it’s simply a huge change in our therapist/patient relationship.

Ironically, I had actually been looking forward to just one appointment a week because I thought it might be interesting to see what it was like to have a less stimulating week therapy-wise.  It is clear to me that I keep needing her in my head, if not during an appointment, to help keep my feet on the ground, to help me manage all the wonderful stimulation the world has to offer.  I have a feeling I will have more to say about this later on.

It was nice just now to be able to know that I felt overstimulated, to feel compassion for myself, to know that I was deserving of care, and to have the tools to settle down.  Or at least mostly settle down.  I could still be a little bit more relaxed.

Last year when my cat had to have surgery, there was a moment when I was in the surgeon’s office when I feared that the doctor would think I was crazy and that somehow they would be able to see this through my attachment to my cat.  It was comforting to me to recognize that I was indeed crazy, that I really was struggling with some significant emotional issues and that I had a troubling past and the effects of that past were coming to roost.  I was doing my best to cope with that.  So at least if people judged me for being crazy, well, that didn’t give them undue power over me.  I knew I was struggling.

Those feelings and doubt were aroused within me again today when I took the same cat to the vet.

And this time I see something that Andrea and I talked about a little a while back a bit more clearly.  There was a time a year and a half or two years ago when I started to have a really hard time with going to the doctor.  I had some issues of my own and I struggled with taking my cats to the doctor.  First, I felt anxious about what might be found when going to the doctor.  Second, and this has been the most enduring issue, I was so worried that I was making a mountain out of a mole hill.  It’s related to something I’ve been revisiting this week – my need to feel like I am doing the right, most conscientious thing.

The trouble with this last bit, of course, is that with health related issues you simply cannot know.  There is really no right thing to do.  If are concerned about something and you don’t have it checked out, then it could turn into something and you catch it too late.  If you are concerned about something, investigate it, and discover that it was nothing, you can feel like you were worried about nothing and too hyper-vigilent.  For me who likes to do the right thing, this is confounding.  There is the likelihood that I will judge myself as “bad” either way I go.

A while back, Andrea helped me by helping me to see this conundrum that I was in as I talked out all of my feelings.  I didn’t quite get how this problem typified the stuff that was truly making me crazy.  But I was soothed by the idea that some things like health issues just can’t be understood ahead of time.  There simply is no right path.  You do just have to awkwardly stumble forward.  It was comforting to me back then to know that I could stumble forward, that she would be there with me so I wouldn’t have to stumble alone, and that she wouldn’t judge me or think that I was bad for not knowing the answer ahead of time.

So today with my cat I was stumbling.  I didn’t know if I had waited too long to bring him to the vet or if I had brought him needlessly.

And I was again conscious of my anxiety and how afraid I was that they thought I was crazy.  I understand now that I was afraid they would think I was crazy because that compulsion to do the right thing was so strong within me.  I wanted to be sure I did the right thing because I am deeply afraid of being seen as “bad” by these people.  I really like and respect my vet, and so it might be even more important to me that I be seen well in their eyes.  Not wanting to be seen as bad has been this huge, unconscious obsession for me.  In the absence of a solid sense of attachment, I work hard at not being bad.  As a child I was terrified of being bad, of crossing a line where I would be in that category.  If I was “bad” (meaning overwhelming to my parents in some way), I would be abandoned.

So today I worried about people thinking I was crazy.  In fact I was overcome by the crazies.

And now I am better.  And now I remember all the times Andrea and I have deconstructed this stuff.  However, I’ve never been able to do this as easily on my own or as clearly.  Often I would feel this confusion in my head, meddling dissociation.

I expect that I will have many, many more episodes like this as I keep feeling better.  I expect I will come across situations that I have faced before, feel emotions, and have to work through them.  Some scenarios will feel as blissful as they did last night where I could pop out of a funk with no effort.  Others scenarios involve such entrenched feelings that I will have to work harder to tease things out.  I am just so grateful that my dissociation has eased and that I feel safe enough right now to be able to think things through without having to turn away from my pain.

Sometimes I can recognize how much I am challenging my status quo.  This helps me have compassion for myself.  My family really resisted me differentiating from them.  So it’s a huge deal to challenge my old assumptions in my head.

Last night I was feeling low or something.  It was so bizarre because I simply couldn’t get depressed.  My insides, body or mind or both, simply would not let me.  It was nothing that I did.  It just was.

The weirdest thing about what’s been happening lately is that I am discovering how depressed I was by how not depressed I am.  I just lived depressed until I couldn’t anymore.

I was thinking about how things started changing for me and I became aware that there was a problem.  Before I stopped everything and began this sabbatical, I would go on these trips back home.  I would go for a week and then I would return to my current home and be out of it for a week or two.  Then I would make a trip back home and I would be out of it a week or two before the trip and then a week or two after returning.  It was horrendous.  There was so much steeling myself and recovery involved.

What I am beginning to recognize now is that my whole life had these patterns of steeling myself for what was ahead and then having time to myself to recover from life.  Perhaps this is the weirdest part of what I am discovering about what is new for me.  I don’t have to recover all the time.  I don’t have to gear up for things.  I am just so much more available for living.  This is taking a whole bunch of getting used to.

So this takes the form of having a full day and still being able to putter around the house doing laundry, emptying the kitchen sink and the like.  Yesterday I went out to do some winter clothes shopping.  I noticed this tiny, small change.  Instead of kind of sighing and just being glad that I had dressed and was about to get out of the house leaving things in disarray, I had the energy to and I really wanted to pick up the clothes on the floor and put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher.  I realized in that moment that I had been feeling this huge burden around getting out of the house in the past.  It’s so hard to describe.  This will have to do.  Well, it was like I had to “try” so hard.  Oh gosh, it was painful.

Last night I faced another small situation.  I had put a pillow that had been soiled by a cat in the washer.  I hadn’t wanted it to contaminate other stuff so it was by itself.  This meant that the washer was unbalanced and it would require me to sit on the washer during the spin cycle.  A pain in the ass, pun intended!  (Oh, I guess I could have put old towels in there.  Anyway…)  I was thinking about how hard this would have been for me in the past.  The pillow would have ended up getting moldy.  I wouldn’t have had the attention span to complete this, even though my life is really uncomplicated.  As I am sitting on the washer, I remember how I used to play this “counting game” with myself.  To get myself to pick up the house I would negotiate with myself how many items I would have to pick up.  It was the minimum.  If I built up enough momentum and was enjoying myself, I could continue, but if it was too much, well at least I had made an effort.

It was such a funny thing to remember because I can’t imagine having to manipulate myself in that way anymore.  Even weirder is that I don’t think I’m going to back track.  I feel 70% or so better and I don’t have to worry about feeling 50% some time soon.  In the past when I would feel good, those kinds were kind of elusive so I would use that spurt to its fullest.  I now see why during this sabbatical there was a kind of funny call to action when I felt good.  It was weird to sit around and enjoy myself.  I was like I was primed to make the most of that time.  There was an urgency and a preciousness to those moments.

The other kind of nice thing is that I have no idea what was going on last night that had me feel low.  I just didn’t have to know.  I’d like to know and understand but I bet I’ll see a pattern in a few days or get to know “low”.  It may have just been that I was tired or that I was discovering a new part of being human.  Sometimes we just feel low.

It wasn’t long before I felt better.  I watched some TV and then I wanted to putter around with some of the stuff on my to do list.  Bizarre for me because I was doing this at 10pm, an impossibility at any previous time in my life.  I would have needed this time to recover.  In the puttering around I got to enjoy my husband.  I could enjoy his sweetness and the sweetness of our marriage.  Of course, at some point I imagined Andrea with me, wanting to understand what I was feeling, able to soothe my low feeling self, letting it be okay if I didn’t know what was going on, welcoming me into her arms and giving me a hug because she knew that often makes me feel good, and being someone who would not be overwhelmed by my needing her and my not feeling so great.  It was nice and this makes me cry right now.  It feels so good now.

Last night at some point I was sitting on the sofa and I realized that my body and head could not be depressed.  I guess I was sitting in a place that was familiar and that I had felt myself feel rotten and sink into depression while sitting there before.  I just couldn’t sink that low.  I did nothing to prevent it from happening.  It just didn’t happen.  Wow.

So here I am today just taking life very slowly.  It is enough to just take all of this in.

I also want to thank two of my readers for your recent comments.  I am so self absorbed lately that it’s a bit tough to take in things from outside of me.  At the same time it’s neat to know that you are celebrating with me.  Thank you.

Wow, what a session I just had.  I need to get this down “on paper”.  As always it will be stream of consciousness.  As always I worry now about being able to fully capture it!

I am left with these incredible feelings of peace and hope and a deep, deep knowing that I keep being on the right track.

Before my session I felt tired and sleepy, like I knew there would be some heavy duty lifting and I was shutting down a bit.  I thought a lot about something Andrea said last week that I finally really, really got in my bones.  In the early days I showed up to therapy, did my work on my own and let Andrea watch as I did it.  But I was not in the experience of therapy together with her.  That same session we talked about how neat it is with us human beings that we can be together and not know what’s going to happen when we’re together and that there is fun and enjoyment in being together as the adventure unfolds.

So I was thinking about this.

Heck, I can’t really retell this chronologically so I’ll start at the end.

We had talked about something that had really stirred me up inside.  We were talking about my pre-teen and feelings that she had that she had to deal with and cope with in the past that were really about the infant inside of her being terrified.  Oh yes, I remember and I am starting to feel bad again!  I could feel the anxiety in the tops of my legs.  We were talking about how I have had this feeling as it relates to friendships where I think I am supposed to do the right thing, that there is a right thing to do.  It’s an awkward feeling to have these days because that feeling doesn’t fit with the rest of the new life that is emerging for me.  But I do feel it.  The infant in me would have been terrified when she was little because there was a right way for me to behave for my parents, things that would generate their affection and things that would overwhelm them and have them abandon me.  So it is a very real feeling for me today to come across this feeling.  I have typically focused exclusively on doing the right thing rather than even considering what I think or feel because there is this huge existential need to ensure my safety and not be alone.

I had this feeling come up earlier in the week when I left from my pilates class and was saying goodbye to a very, very casual friend of mine.  We’re not that great of friends.  I would like to be friends some more, but that day I really didn’t want to be chit chatty.  I really wanted to do my own thing and remember that I really don’t have to care about other people.  I’ve been really relishing the job of the pre-teen to be self-absorbed in her own world, doing things only for her pleasure as a way of getting to know herself, etc.  So on the one hand I had this very genuine feeling of not being interested at that moment in cultivating this friendship and at the same time these feelings related to thinking that there was something “right” I was supposed to do in that moment that was accompanied by a sense of urgency and to my surprise terror.

So we were talking about this anxiety and we were near the end of the call when we did this amazingly interesting imagining of having Andrea with me in the midst of this awfulness.  She talked about this being the kind of moment where I needed her with me because being alone with these feelings is so toxic to me and that this could be a time when together I could discover that I could feel better again.  She asked my pre-teen self what she might like to do together – ride bikes, read aloud with one another, read separately together, make something in the kitchen, take a walk, etc.  I decided it would feel really good to make something together in the kitchen.

At this point I am thinking that it’s already late in the call.  She can’t really be serious about continuing, but she does.  I feel so much relief because I feel so anxious.  I won’t have to deal with this by myself.

We talk about what to make, what I’d want to do, what I’d want her to do.  I tell her I want to make a soup, a pureed soup, something with a nice, unexpected spice.  She asks if I want to choose the spice or have her choose it.  I want her to choose it.  But I want to puree the vegetables.  Aah, she says because you like that.  Indeed.  We work out that we’ll both wash and chop the vegetables.  I suggest that and it feels so good to do together.  Something not so nice that we do.  She offered to just let me puree the vegetables but I wanted something more.  I wanted to do more.  I see now that I could have just sat at the counter and watched her do this and allow myself to just step in for the fun.  But that wasn’t what I wanted at the time or what felt nice.

Then she asked me about getting the vegetables.  Should we pick them from the garden together?  At first I wasn’t so into this.  In real life I actually resist picking vegetables that I grow.  Anyway, in a flash it felt like it would be really nice to go outside together.  I could go outside and be out there with all that space around me and feel awful and uncomfortable and she could be with me in the middle of all of that.  I could calm down while we pick.  (And maybe I would let her do the work while I vented!)  As I was imagining all of this, it felt so good to have this time outside to relax some, to have things unfold in stages.  I could then picture coming inside and being able to experience another layer of relaxation as we worked together to wash and prep the vegetables.  And yet another as we waited for them to cook.  I could imagine myself feeling really good and relaxed by the time I got to puree the vegetables.

For some reason I still feel a little unnerved now as I retell this.  I paused and imagined Andrea with me and I feel better now.

She asked me at one point if I could feel her enjoying me and we talked at some length about how I did but I was caught up at this spot where I am so enamored with the feeling of being safe and relaxed that I can’t quite go to the next level of enjoyment.  I thought that was kind of interesting.

Holy moly!  I am feeling so much better and it feels like the stuff I’ve been learning is deep in my bones so that I don’t have to think about it.  I hope so.  It’s so fun feeling how much easier life feels.

I had a ful day working on projects and going about life.  No nervousness or anxiety.  I even felt the comfort in myself that I felt while making my trip to see my grandfather.  I could remember that person that I had discovered.  Wow.  I’d come to have faith I’d find her again, but it’s sure nice when I don’t just have to live on faith.

As I often am, I feel humbled to try to capture what just happened in therapy, but it would feel good to do so and one day I know it will mean a lot to me to look back at this session.

When I began therapy in 1997, I would have therapy by myself and then tell Andrea about it.  That’s how she phrased it today.  It’s totally true.  I remember it feeling like that.

So the way therapy started today was really different.  I’d paged her yesterday and got her help early on something that was bothering me.  I tried to write about it but I didn’t really get far.  I wanted her with me more.  When she couldn’t get right back to me and I heard her disappointment that she couldn’t, I was moved by that.  I felt okay but I could feel inside something.  I could be affected by her caring for me.  So all of this meant that I could let go and wait until our session today.  I could relax some because I knew she’d be there to help me.  This felt good.  And when I showed up on our call today, I didn’t know what would happen and I said that, but I was ready for whatever would.  This keeps being a HUGE deal for me whenever this happens.

What we spent most of our time talking about today was my pre-teen self and how she has been affected by reading Warren Buffet’s biography.  His early life story and the impact on him has been very, very disturbing to me and reminded this age of mine what it was like to be a pre-teen.  What I see in him that reminds me of me is that he had this single minded focus on whatever project he was tackling whether it be figuring out the odds at the racetrack, maximizing the method of his paper delivery, or as he got older making his first million dollars.  My pre-teen pain inside while reading about his drive and the way he used his brilliance to go after what it was that he wanted.  It reminded her of how she had to distract herself from the emotional climate of her own home in order to survive.  Buffet had his own share of home problems.

My pre-teen self also felt great pain as she read about Buffet as an adult off in his own world, separated and isolated from his family while he worked toward his goals.  It reminded me of the ways I have segregated myself from those I love while I am in pursuit of what I desire.  I chose to segregate myself because it was safer that way and because I needed peace and quiet to be un-intruded upon by my parents’ neediness.  When I read about Buffet, it reminded me of my own addiction to work, and it was almost too much to stand.

I was also reminded of my hard heart.

Anyway, I got to talk about that today with Andrea, and I feel so much better now.  Toward the end of talking I said that I wanted to have her hold me and so we sat in silence for a bit.  It felt so good.  We talked about how important it was that I knew that I could feel comforted, that I could feel bad and I would feel better.  When I was a pre-teen, I didn’t that would be true, and in fact it wasn’t true.  Years later things got much worse because of what I didn’t come to learn about myself as a pre-teen.  My own single-minded survival tactics did not protect me at all from what was to come.  And so it felt great to be comforted today, for the pre-teen that lives within me today, to feel better and reassured that she can feel bad and she will feel better.

At one point as I imagined Andrea holding me I told her that I was also imagining that she was rubbing my forehead and hair and that it felt good.  She told me that she also wanted me to know that it felt good to her, too.  I chuckled and said that I always forget that, that being with me can be enjoyable.

It was then that we talked about how at first therapy was about my doing it by myself, showing up, and then telling her about it.  This led me back to feeling something that my pre-teen longs to have lodge really strongly in her psyche – that she can let go and not have to know the outcome of things, that she can trust that she can show up with another person, someone she trusts, and have a good time, an adventure.  That a beautiful adventure will unfold that she could never anticipate.

This was the inverse of the longing or anxiety that she felt reading about Buffet.  This essentially is the anxiety of not being attachable.

I have come a long, long, long way with Andrea.

My pre-teen feels magically soothed.  I hope I have explained in a way that is understandable.  Oh my goodness I feel so relieved right now because this is what my pre-teen self has wanted as she came back into her life after such a great vacation.  The past is fading more and more.

A few minutes ago I paged Andrea because I was feeling anxious.  I had stopped what I was doing to be with the anxiety and started an e-mail to her.  I wrote that I would check in with my young parts when a bunch of things on my mind rushed to my fingers and I started typing that out.  I had gotten an e-mail from my mom, I was feeling funny because I haven’t felt able to be in touch with my family around my grandfather, and I’m wanting to make sense of how I go forward with my parents and was wondering if I needed to be writing and not working on my house projects.

While it was nice to have identified these things, it kind of felt like I was trying to figure this all out on my own.  So I paged Andrea.  Then I went outside and that felt good.  I was still anxious and out of no where it dawned on me that indeed I was just fine.  It was present time and not the past.  I am worried about these things but I am safe right now.  At moments like these in the past I have had to work harder at remembering this, but I didn’t struggle so much just now.

I do want Andrea right now.  I hope she can call me back soon.  I don’t want her so much because I am in pain.  I want her because I want to see how she can help me now.  I want her because it’s nice to be needy right now, to trust this attachment thing, and have her show me again that I can feel better.  Not tomorrow when I talk to her but right now.  It might be a little weird because I actually helped myself feel better, but I want more than just that old do-it-myself experience.  I want whatever it is she can give me.  I am greedy and I love it.

One day I will be on my own without her and I want to have as much of her now as I can get!  I love it that I think that.  That has taken so long for me to get to.

UPDATE I:  Andrea called back and said that she’s in the middle of back to back appointments but that we might speak in a couple of hours.  I was feeling really good and as usual I kind of brushed it off that I couldn’t talk to her right away.  I heard in her voice disappointment that she couldn’t help me just that moment and I let that get to me.  I let myself feel disappointment, too, that I needed to wait.

By doing so I got this even deeper sense that I don’t have to do this life thing alone and that I can relax into her even more.  It’s nice.

UPDATE II:  We got to speak and it was good for me.  I got to say that it is really hard for my pre-teen self to not feel guilty about not looking after my mom as she used to and for beginning to think that it is right and appropriate to grow up and be different from my parents.  Of all the ages within me, that is the one having the hardest time right now.  She’s not ready to move forward.  She is anxious about getting better.  Andrea suggested that I help her remember what it was like with her grandparents because she seemed to be able to be most herself and age appropriate with them.  It was okay to be different with them.

I am sad this evening.  Not so much fun.  I wish I could find this new sweet spot I’ve begun to get to know again.  In due time.  I know it’s coming.

Wow.  Some weeks I feel like it’s enough to just make it through the week.  This week was kind of like that but different.  It was like I held ground versus lost ground.  But the truth is that I lost ground from how I felt while I was off enjoying vacation with my husband and friends and family.  What made it feel like I did not really lose ground was that I figured out that in the past I would return from a great experience and then sink into depression.  I had no idea that this would happen before.  Worse it wasn’t just depression but I would relieve the trauma of not being able to change things in my family without understanding that that was what I had been hoping for.

In the present I do have words for those earlier wordless experiences.  I do have words for my present experiences.  That made all the difference this week.  I averted depression because of that.  This was enough to make it a really great week even if I wasn’t able to retain the goodness I’d experienced the week before.

On the drive home I identified that I felt like I had made it 75% toward my healing goal.  It felt like a conservative number, but I number that would hold.  I might feel like I had made it 85% of the way there but I would never feel like I was at less than 75%.  I am at that 75% now.   It is enough.  I have these stirrings inside of me where I feel differently about myself.  I have gotten to know myself as a different person who can have different assumptions about her life.  I can picture how living life will feel different one day.  But today is not that day.

It feels so, so, so good to be able to say that.  To not have to be different today.  To be more aware and in touch with the senseless burdens I have carried all of these years than ever before but to not have to be rid of them this moment.  I like accepting that things can’t change today.  I like being able to be okay with where I am.  In the last few years being right where I am today has been excruciatingly painful.  I am so grateful I don’t feel like that today.  I do hope that this acceptance will make it easier for my healing to continue.  I will say that.  I might even backtrack from here and get all freaked out if things are still slow going forward but I’ll deal with that if it comes up.

Holy moly!  What a therapy session I just had.  I am going to want to remember this one for a very long time.  So despite prolific posting already today, I will post more!

We talked mostly about how to have Andrea with me when I feel so good.  And today I have felt good!  Not manic good.  Good and mostly attachable but so good that I could go over the top in feeling good and just kind of be out there on my own feeling good by myself and be unreachable by others good.

This, Andrea jumped in to say, is the problem.  I am really good at feeling good by myself.  I am extra capable of feeling good on my own, of feeling joy.  I have even wondered if I have the so-called joy gene.  But I grew up having those experiences BY MYSELF.  When I have them by myself, it is really easy for me to get disconnected from the world.  I remember being a part of a really intensive leadership program and the feedback I got from the leaders and the group was to live in my feet so to speak because they sensed how ungrounded I could be by my joy.

I mentioned to Andrea that I had thought today about how in the spring we talked about how parents enjoy their children and how important it was for me to learn how enjoyable I am.  I did not get much of a sense of that as a child.

This post will be all over the place which will probably matter more to me than you the reader because it’s not going to fit chronologically with my session.  Oh well.

Andrea said that something that lingered with her after I told her about my visit with my grandparents and my cousins and their daughters was how much I enjoyed how chaotic things were with the girls, the wild abandon that they felt.  She pointed out that there I was really enjoying them and that as a child I never got to be enjoyed like that by my parents.  Oh, and as I think about it now that was what was so precious to me about my cousin singing along to their music.  He knew what made them happy and he enjoyed enjoying them.  It was even this “secret” pleasure.  Oh gosh, I totally want to download the song we were listening to now!

This was also a highlight of being with our friends’ kids this past weekend, one of whom was autistic.  It was fun to enjoy the baby.  It was fun when I could enjoy their autistic son in his unique way.

Andrea reminded me of how much she wants me to feel enjoyed by her.  I was reminded of how much it makes a difference.

Oh, I am running out of time to write.  So let me see if I can bullet point the other things we talked about:

• There was something said that was so meaningful that I have forgotten it.  It was too hard to hold onto.
• My old assumptions about my life had at their core this notion that people couldn’t enjoy me because I didn’t believe I could be enjoyed.  What’s different in the last two weeks and what I really got from our trip, was the experience of being enjoyed by my husband and the folks we visited.  I in turn enjoyed myself so very much.  I was attachable enough for this to all take place.
• Andrea said that she really, really wanted me to think of my telling her all the stuff that I enjoy.  When I look forward to telling her stuff, it is a way for her to hold me in the moment that the good stuff is happening.
• I could talk again about how hard it is to go through life enjoying the small things and having to process that all by myself.  I get so delighted by small things and now is a time in my life when there are so many small, simple changes in how I feel.  It could be overwhelming to deal with all of this positive change and require so much recovery time from feeling good.  As odd as this may sound, I really do need help at these good times.
• I was a little confused about why I hadn’t wanted to share with her the good times from our recent trip (except the part about my grandparents).  As I said this, it made sense to me.  I was enjoying the trip with my husband so much and so completely that I didn’t need her.  She responded saying the same thing.
• She said something about her enjoying me such that if I were missing for some reason that she would be looking for me and me alone.  Not some substitute or some stand in, but me.  That really moves me and tears suddenly came flowing out of my eyes right now.  I guess it reminds me that she enjoys me, not just the experience of someone like me.
• As always she said something about her being there even when I am messy and imperfect.  I know that more now.  I am much more sure that when she talks about enjoying me that I don’t have to perform for her.  It was nice to notice how I take for granted that I am accepted however I am.

I feel so relieved that we had this conversation.  It helps me to keep connecting the dots of my feelings to understand that things feel radically different inside when I let myself be enjoyed, when I have the experiences I didn’t have as a little one.  I am also relieved that more words have been said related to the trouble I have dealing with my joy.  This vocabulary will make getting from 75% to 100% healing much, much easier.  I will have tools to deal with the joy of getting better.

Self-analysis is a pain sometimes.  Sometimes I wonder if I am contemplating my navel far too much.  I get embarrassed about it and often don’t report as much of the self-reflection as I actually do here in this blog.  But my hope with this blog is that by sharing some of my process that it will help others, especially those who are deeply committed to healing through a therapy partnership.  I want to be real about the process to perhaps normalize (but who knows if my experience is normal!) things and counteract some of our cultural bias against things, including deep self-reflection.

I was feeling this embarrassment earlier in the week when I returned from an absolutely phenomenal trip with my husband to visit friends and just enjoy ourselves and celebrate a big milestone in our life together.  Here I was coming off a huge high, but seemingly like usual I was feeling depressed or at least very fearful I would feel depressed.  I was very introspective, yet again, and at a time when I really, really did not want to be introspective.  After all, a huge part of the joy of my trip was that I was able to be free of the detailed analysis and I was able to be myself more and discover more of who I am becoming.  It felt like a step backward, and it was a step backward.

On Tuesday I spoke with Andrea.  I had not felt like e-mailing her much before hand.  This is unusual.  So it meant that I had a lot of stuff to tell her about that I might say with a lot less context that I might offer by writing about it.  I spent most of my time telling her stuff with less time processing.  It was good and bad.  Good because it was real.  I hadn’t wanted to write.  Bad because I needed MORE from her.  At least at the end I could say this.

And, at least I could say out loud to her that I was really, really scared about re-entering my life.  I was scared of being disappointed and of losing the gains that I had made.  I’d felt this way before, even just the week before after my amazing junket to see my grandfather, but this time I was beginning to also recognize how this was a pattern for me.  As much as I hated it, the self-reflection was paying off.

I hated another part of this  - that once again I was being trapped, caught, influenced by trauma from the past – because I was recognizing that I would often return from great experiences out in the world but have no way to hold onto them, to let them change me, as I returned to my life.  I suspect this happened as a little girl and infant after spending time to when I was in my twenties and returned from a life changing conference.  This week I started to take seriously how completely frustrating this would have been to me.  How angry this would have made me and how impossible it was for me to integrate these new bits into my life because at the core of how I saw my life there were things embedded into my emotional structure that I simply could not change.  As a child I simply was not able to affect any change in my family.  As an adult I used to be so blind to these things that there was no way I could even be cognizant of these things until I could with the help of Andrea.

So here I was this week kind of angry, fearful of being stuck, fearful of being depressed.  Actually, it was a huge moment for me when I realized how afraid I was of being depressed.  It made sense to me that depression was likely.  I guess on some level I also was able to feel sorry for myself that depression was my only likely way to handle this (in the past and the only easy way to handle it in the present).

Eventually, I started to feel rotten which is not depression!  I had to call Andrea for some in between help.  I knew I could make it until my next appointment but that it would be far better if I could call her and let her in on what I was feeling.  It took a while for her to get back to me (close to an hour) but I felt better immediately.  She also didn’t have much time to talk to me.  I felt even better talking briefly with her.  At the same time I still felt yucky.  At my core I felt yucky.  But something Andrea noticed kept me intrigued by what was happening.

She said that at first I didn’t know that it was okay to feel bad, then I didn’t know if I believed myself feeling bad, then I had to learn that I could feel better.  I was in the middle of learning that I could feel better.

So I had a pretty good day yesterday.  I did lots of things by myself around the house while my husband was in bed sick.  That was fine but I also caught myself thinking that I had to live alone and in isolation.  I forgot that I could need and want my husband.  That was one of the things that felt so good on our trip.  I was reach-able inside.  Now home I didn’t want to be inaccessible to him or myself.  I stopped what I was doing and told him something along these lines.  It was nice to feel close again.

This morning rolled around and it was like I had never even struggled this week with these issues of depression, traumatic remembering, living in the present rather than the past.  I got up, played around with some of my house projects, and felt great.  My worst fears did not come true.  Yeah, it was bad for a bit, but I made it to the other side.

One of the thoughts I had after our trip was how sure I was that I was 75% through my healing process.  It seemed like a conservative number.  I think maybe 85% done is how far I am when things are going good.  But it was super helpful this week to really let myself be at only 75%.  It was also fun to recognize that I do have more to go, more that I can’t conceive of, more that I would never ever have dreamed was possible for me.

I’m excited about what that more will be, and I want to remember that unending, tedious self-reflection is a good bit what has gotten me here.  One day I will not have to analyze so much, but that day is not permanently here yet.  At least I know it’s possible to totally let go and what that feels like.

—

One more thing I don’t want to forget – yesterday night I also recognized that I was living my life under the assumptions I held about myself in my old life.  I was in pain because I couldn’t put my finger on my new assumptions about myself.  I was lucky that I knew that they existed (there have been many times when I have forgotten this) and that I had actually lived my life under these new assumptions.  But last night they were inaccessible to me.  I realized that this was true, and I think this also staved off depression.  I am fairly certain that I would have felt depressed if I couldn’t have been conscious of this because I would have felt powerless in the old traumatic way again.  Last night I was even blown away that I recognized that I would have felt depressed because in my old life I didn’t even know that I was depressed.  I wouldn’t have allowed myself the right to feel depressed and would have second guessed it.  Ugh.  That was awful.

I think I’ve written in the past how one of my cats, Shoulder, has taught me a lot about ambivalence and learning how to hold both my deep love and my hatred together.

Shoulder has been super shy and is very stubborn.  Earlier this year he refused to make a change in his food routine that would have helped his brother Bolder lose some weight.  It was utterly frustrating to me and Shoulder, an already light weight cat, lost even more weight.  I also wondered if he had kidney disease or renal failure and that this was what was causing the loss of weight.  I was just kind of fed up with him even while I was worried about his health.  At the same time he is super cute.  Truly one of the cutest cats on this earth. (I’m certain that this goes beyond owner bias!)  Both his appearance and some of his behaviors like sitting like a Dr. Seues character and the way he head butts you when he wants affection are incredibly precious.

I have always been someone who looks at the positive (to my detriment at times) and so it was really difficult to begin to acknowledge my feelings of hatred and anger toward some of Shoulder’s quirks.  For a while I told myself that I just always liked his brother Bolder more.  I guess that was soothing in some way even though that was a big deal for me to acknowledge.  Andrea helped me with this saying that indeed with some children even parents will be able to relate more to one child than another and that a particular child can bring up feelings in the parent that another one does not.

So I was surprised when Bolder began to raise frustrating feelings within me.  He has begun a habit of meowing in the middle of the night.  I felt so guilty because he is such a social cat that I knew our trip made him lonely, a feeling I have come to recognize for myself quite a bit.  Upon our return from a trip two years ago he was super needy when we returned, like he had an insecure attachment pattern.  This time he was less needy but he was meowing every couple of hours at night.  I felt horrible.

I did not want him to feel bad.  I’d listened to a great podcast about animal intelligence while on our trip and so I was even more sensitive to his emotional needs.  At first I feared that there was something physically wrong like a recurrence of the bladder issue that came up for him around this time last year.  I was kind of a mess about it.

The first night I got up early in the morning to sit with him.  He immediately calmed down.  I held him tightly like I imagine Andrea holding me when I am anxious.  It felt good because despite my own anxiety about his well being I was not anxious in that moment with him.  I could hold him and know somehow that I was enough as his caregiver.  I wasn’t freaked out that I couldn’t make things better.  It just felt clean.  I wish I had better words to describe this.  Well, I thought of the Dog Whisperer.  While cats are not dogs (!), I knew that I was calm and assertive and that that would make a difference somehow.  He quieted.  Sat in my lap, sat next to me, and then sat on his ottoman.  A pattern he has. I went back to bed and everyone slept soundly.

But then it happened the next night and the next night.  By the third night I started using the spray bottle.  I knew he was not struggling with a bladder infection.  I had decided that he wanted and even perhaps needed attention.  But I couldn’t give it.  I couldn’t wake up four times in the night (we sleep with our door closed by the way).  He would love to sleep on the bed, but my husband is allergic to cats so that it out of the question.

In the intervening days I had begun to recognize that this was tough for me because I was a little child whose cries were ignored and ignored and ignored along with other needs.  I was feeling incredibly guilty about my cat and I had never wanted to cause him the same pain that was caused to me.  I didn’t want to spray him.  I didn’t want to ignore his needs in such a way that so paralleled my own issues.

But I also couldn’t be held hostage.  I started to realize I could live my life anxious about his needs ALL THE TIME or I could come up with a solution that worked for everyone.  It started to be clear that I could be anxious about his needs (really my anxiety) and make things worse or acknowledge my feels (disgust and overwhelm from his needs) and work something out.  He would feel better in the long haul if I did that.  During the day I could be a good enough cat mommy.

So last night we re-started something I’d done months ago, I put them to bed in the basement.  We had a nice routine where I would pick Bolder up in my arms and cuddle him as I walked downstairs.  Shoulder would follow, and I would give them both treats.  Bolder was not as keen in the past on this routine but Shoulder absolutely loved it.  Last night Bolder seemed to enjoy it, too.

I felt bad because I might not be able to hear Bolder cry, but he is a cat afterall.  If he were an infant or child, especially an adopted child, my approach would be totally different and I would be looking for different signs and needs.  But Bolder is a cat.  I do care for him but the point is that it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.  I am not his parent.  So I can only hope that he comes to enjoy this routine.  If not, he will have to come to terms, as I have to with him and if cats can actually come to terms with things, with how he likes some parts of his life and doesn’t like other parts of his life.

Back to the Dog Whisperer, if I want to do something for him, what I can do for him is not overwhelm him with my anxiety about how to handle this.  He might even have been responding to this anxiety.  I hope so because it would be nice to have relieved him of this and eliminated the potential true source of the problem.

I talked a bit about this with Andrea earlier in the week and we talked about how when I held Bolder that first morning that there was not the confusing anxious feelings that I had with my parents.  I wasn’t undone by his discomfort.  That was really big for me.

I also think it helped me to learn earlier in the year about how to handle my ambivalence around Shoulder.  I never knew I could feel negative things about Bolder because he loved me in a way I really needed to be loved early in our life together and once even physically saved my life (with a hair raising meow that had me investigate a major car problem when we moved several years back).  How can you dislike a cat like that?  Well, now it’s easy for me.  I’ve let myself feel human things.

After making this big trip across the country to be with my grandparents, I have met up with my husband in another part of the country where he is on business travel.  Yesterday I had the day by myself in the hotel room where I slept and also took the chance to do some pilates and later get out for a long walk.  Today I also have the day to myself.

Andrea and I would talk a couple of years ago about how it was okay to feel like a puppy who was so tired after exploring the world.  I sure feel like that puppy now.  As usual, I have some of those old feelings of wishing I could be up and about in the world already, but the truth is I am too exhausted.

At the same time I think things would have been different if I had paged Andrea yesterday to check in after my big weekend.  I had a hard time going to sleep last night, and I have been a bit cranky with my husband.  As I was trying to drop off to sleep last night, I realized that I really needed Andrea.  I think acknowledging that allowed me to go to sleep just a few minutes later.  Thankfully, I will have a session with her today.

I’m not totally clear what I need her for.  Being my super independent self, I’m kind of impressed that I realized I needed her.  I talked to her before I left, and it was remarkable how much better I felt even though I’d already felt pretty decent inside of me (meaning I wasn’t feeling in crisis).  My husband noticed and said that I was much more relaxed.  I guess based on that experience I am able to say I need her.  Well, I guess it’s probably related to what I said last week.  I need her to help me bear all these new feelings within me.  I just can’t do that by myself.  It’s still too much.  I am still a little girl in that way.

And, I want to remind myself, that I never have to grow out of that need to have help bearing feelings.  I still get to go to friends and the nurturing mother surrogates I’ve adopted.  It’s just that now I want Andrea.  I’m not ready to grow out of her yet.  She’s the one I want.  My sense is that I need her in a really formative kind of way.

Gosh that feels good to say.  It’s a sign I’m attachable.

UPDATE:  I want explain more of what I meant about feeling cranky with my husband because I hope by writing about it I will remember in the future what might be going on.  I had been feeling really nit picky with him and second guessing how he was handling something work related.  Thankfully, I didn’t say anything out loud and he’s pretty secure in himself so that he wouldn’t have been affected directly by my mood.  But it’s still unfair of me and none of my business.

I had been thinking of bringing this up with Andrea when I talk to her today because I wanted help staying differentiated with him.  However, after writing this post, I think the issue has more to do with me needing her than how I relate to my husband.  Anyway, more on that after she and I talk.

My trip to visit my grandfather was incredible.  One of the best days of my life.

I arrived on noon Friday, my friends picked me up, and we bummed around for a bit.  They were kind enough to drive me to the house where I used to go and visit my grandparents when I was kid.  That place was so special to me.  I took lots of pictures.  It was nice to be reconnected to them and just hang out.  I really did need their support.

Then we took the two hour drive to my grandparents’ town where I met up with my cousin and his family.  I was kind of out of it, not really able to think about the logistics of seeing my grandparents and so it was actually my cousin who asked me what my plan was around contacting my grandmother to let her know I was there.  Would I call her that night or the next morning?  I hadn’t thought of all of this.  After worrying I would disturb my grandmother (she might be sleeping), I threw caution to the wind and called her.

She was amazed that I was there and sounded so relieved saying that they needed me there with my aunt out of town.  I was so heartened.  She would normally be so reluctant to say something like this and to be needy in any fashion so I was surprised and delighted I could be there and that my presence would make such a difference.  I was also able to say out loud and somehow in an appropriate way that I was there because I knew Grandpa wasn’t well and I sure as heck wasn’t going to let him go without saying goodbye.  It was really nice to get that bit out in the open.  Of course that was the reason I flew across the country on such short notice.  Being able to say this I think made it possible for my visit to be so much more rich and interesting than just a “deathbed visit”.  Since my cousin and aunt are so hopeful, it was slightly challenging for me to say this out loud, but I was also glad that I knew my situation is different from theirs in that they have been able to be with him everyday for the last two years.  I had not.  A couple of years ago it would have been hard to see my own situation as separate from theirs and would have felt overwhelmingly uncomfortable with that difference.

It was hard to break the news that I would be there for just one day.  I felt awful and guilty for flying off on vacation for the next few days.  I wondered if I could change my flight so that I could stay longer and convince my husband to meet me later in the trip.  But I also knew that in putting this schedule together that it had been overwhelming to think of more than one day.  It had felt good and like a lot emotionally for me to do.  So I remembered Andrea and imagined telling her this part of the story in the future and how she would be there with me to process my emotions later.  That seemed to relieve me of my discomfort in the moment and helped me accept my decision.  I probably also thought of her feeling sorry for me.  Like earlier in the week, this helped me relax and be myself, not all hard hearted.

The original plan was that I would stay at my aunt’s house but Grandma suggested I stay with her in her apartment.  I was all for it, and staying with her set the tone for the rest of the visit.  It was like a sleep over.  We didn’t stay up all night.  She is 88 years old.  But we did chit chat and share some memories.  It was sweet.

The next morning we woke up early (for me) and went to the first breakfast at her assisted living apartment.  I could tell she was delighted to have me visiting and showed me off with pride.

Then we headed to the convelescent hospital to see my grandfather.  We had lovely chit chat on the way.  I felt so able to just be there with her to learn about her daily life and share little stories about mine.  We got to the hospital and I walked in to see Grandpa and I burst into tears, shedding big huge drops on his chest.  I was so, so happy to see him.  I thought as I hugged him that he said something like – I knew you would get here.  But my grandmother said, after I didn’t say anything – she arrived last night.  Of course, I like the idea that he said to me that he knew I would get there!

Soon he was asleep and so my grandmother and I headed outside for a bit.  Again it felt delightful just to be together.  I was so pleased that I could be so relaxed and feel so connected to my grandmother.  Andrea had said something about this earlier in the week – that from the stories I told her about times with my grandparents that it seemed like I was more able to feel close to them than I was able to feel with my parents.  My grandmother was certainly much less anxious than my mother would have been.  I also think that on this visit I felt more free to be close to my grandparents because I wasn’t worrying about betraying my loyalties to my parents.  I had my parents out of my head, so to speak, and so I really good be close to my grandparents without fear that I would upset my parents.  After all, my parents are so upset that there just anything more I could do to upset them and I understand that that is more about them than me.

We head back in and chit chat more with my grandfather.  He is finishing up his drip-drip meal and we keep talking about stuff, random stuff.  We all went out of the room for a bit to the dining room, and I showed them some photos on my computer.  It was neat.  Then we went back to the room where my grandfather got comfortable in his bed again.  I had brought paint chips with me because my friends are good at paint schemes (we will be getting a new roof soon that we’ll want to coordinate with an eventual painting of the house) and so I pulled those out.  Who’d of thought that we’d talk exterior paint colors?  But it was something to do together, a way for me to share my life with them and it felt so warm and intimate.  It was so neat to have my grandmother’s input because she has such a good eye for these things.

At this point we’d worn him out so my grandmother and I headed out for lunch.  On the way we saw her favorite clothing store, which I also like.  So we made plans to go there after lunch.

In the mean time I keep being blown away by my grandmother.  She is just so with it.  Sure her body doesn’t quite work the way it used to but she’s just as open hearted and be to be with.  I wish I knew how to describe it.  It was just so easy to talk with her.  We’re having lunch and I realize that we haven’t yet spoken about my parents.  Sure enough in a few minutes she says – I’m not even sure if I should bring this up…

This was a moment that back at home I most feared.  What if something she said really upset me.  It had only been June when she said something that had me realize just how profoundly alone I had been in my larger family and how invisible my challenges had me.  This kicked off an emotionally exhausting, albeit productive couple of weeks of new reflection, and I had feared that something someone might say on this trip might similarly knock me off my feet.

To my surprise it came up and I was totally okay.  She urged me to talk to my parents to resolve this, get the communication flowing, not to let this keep us apart.  I have to pause in the story for a sec because I’m blown away by how unaffected I am even while writing this.  Months ago I would have been overwhelmed by this because I knew that there was this tremendous pressure to make nice and not produce conflict.  I felt so responsible.  But today I know myself so well and I trust what I can do and what I can’t do and why I do what I do so much that nothing my grandmother could say would sway me.  I know I’m not crazy for not talking to my parents.

So my grandmother gave me the chance to say that I was needing time to get some things straight within myself, that I had found that talking with my parents was so distracting that it would send me in a tailspin and keep me from doing the work within myself that I needed to do.  I could say that I don’t feel anger toward them in active kind of way day in and day out.  At some point she said something about how it’s true – people are going to be upset with you about stuff – and you just can’t control that and she was agreeing that my parents just needed to chill.  Well, she didn’t use the word – chill!

We were just about done talking about this when I remembered a conversation Andrea and I had about my grandmother sending me a poem about forgiveness and the pressure I felt from that to get on with it and forgive.  Andrea said something like – what I hear is that she is trying to say by all of this that she doesn’t want you to hurt.  She doesn’t want you to hold a grudge and have that fester and destroy you.  I thought she was right about that and so before we finished the conversation I said to Grandma that I thought I heard her really wanting me to not hurt myself by carrying a grudge and that I wanted her to know that I appreciated her concern for me.  That was super nice to be able to say that.

So we kept having a great lunch and then headed to this store we like.  Oh my gosh.  Again she is so vibrant and alive.  What do you think of the trend to wear a short sleeved sweater over a long sleeved blouse?, she asked.  Oh, I hadn’t noticed!!  My 88 year old grandmother who herself spent 7 weeks in a convelescent hospital earlier this year is more up to date on fashion trends than I am!

It was also fun to be out with her because she had her cane (which she kept forgetting – I told her it was because she was with me and she felt 50-60 years old again!) and was out shopping.  People loved seeing her and seeing us together because we were so clearly enjoying ourselves AND one another.  She might have had a cane but her spirit was louder than her cane.  It was like the two didn’t go together – her spirit and her cane.

She also told me something really interesting while we were about – that she had felt a kind of support like she had never felt before in her life.  She said that she had spent so much of her life alone and at home and had never realized how important it was to let people emotionally support you.  She had resisted assisted living but she had gotten so much help there that she was profoundly different because of it.  Wow.

So anyway we made it back to the convelescent hospital, found Grandpa and again spent the afternoon together.  When my grandmother asked me about my plans for returning to my friends, I found myself saying that I would leave when we were all exhausted, that I had no outside constraints (thanks to the generosity of my friends), and would be with them for as long as I could.  I was really proud of myself because I said this at a time when we had already spent the morning together.  I mean how much can you do sitting by the bedside of someone in the hospital?  But I wasn’t anxious to leave or terribly anxious about how we would spend the afternoon.  We would just be together and that would be enough.

As it turned out a friend of theirs visited an hour or so later, and she really made me feel good.  Oddly enough she knew a lot of the people my grandfather had worked with all over the country over the forty-fifty years of his career.  A couple of years ago they had really bonded over that and it really brought out so much in my grandfather.  This was really heartening for me to see that despite my grandparents move late in life to be close to my aunt that they still had managed to create a deep bonds in their new community.

When she left, the tears started.  It was embarrassing for me.  This woman didn’t really know me but I was so overcome by this connection and my relief in all of this that I was crying happy tears.  I was already crying and so I figured I would tell her this.

And this started my crying for the afternoon.  My grandmother had gone back with their friend to their apartment complex and so it was just grandpa and I.  I kept crying.  I was just so incredibly happy to be there.  I told him this, too, and then was sad a bit when I was sad but mostly I was just so incredibly happy.

Then my cousin and his daughters who are 4 and 7 arrived.  They love him so much and so eagerly kiss him and the eldest got in bed with him, cuddling next to him.  But then it was time for them to leave (we were going to meet up with my grandmother for dinner) and they gave me a few more minutes with Grandpa.

Our last time together was very sweet.  Close and intimate.  We kissed.  I stroked his hair.  I cried.  He assured me it would be alright.  I told him I was so glad he said that.  It was happening and I was thinking that those moments would stay with me forever.  That I was just so, so happy to be close and be there with him.  I wasn’t so worried about leaving him.  He said his frequent refrain – one of these days we’re going to come out to see you again!  He’s not joking – he really thinks this – and it is endearing.  This time I laughed and said that I wasn’t sure his body would make it out there but his spirit would live on.  He spirit would certainly be ith me.  And in that moment I was particularly aware of how much my life has been imbued with his spirit.

I also got to tell him about Grandma and how she amazed me today with her engagement in the world.  He asked me to look after her, and of course I will.  All throughout the day I was feeling how connected I was to her and them and how easy it would be to pick up the phone.  I was different.  I was essentially, more attachable as I like to say in this blog, I could reach out to her.  I could look after her.

Eventually it was time to leave.  And so I left.  I was a mess walking out of the nursing home.  Well, I thought I had been hiding it and then my cousin sees me and says – rough, eh?  Will you be able to drive and follow me back to Grandma’s?  Yep, I thought, those were understanding looks I got from folks as I was walking through the halls on my way out!

The kids were playing on the lawn and this gave me a chance to collect myself before getting in the car, and I was shocked that I was not more torn up and feeling so content.  I was ready for what was next.

What was next was picking up my grandmother and going out to dinner, all of us.  There was a moment when I was sitting around the table – three generations so happy to be with one another.  I don’t have these family moments much anymore, and I may never have experienced family moments so free of anxiety.  The kids were throwing food everywhere on the floor.  It was minor chaos and yet it was just so much fun.

My cousin takes me to meet my friends which was about an hour away.  He asks the girls if they want to sing for me and puts on their favorite music.  So we head down the highway with the radio blaring with kid rock music and all of us singing away (those songs are addictive).  My cousin admits to me that one of the songs is his guilty pleasure in that he clearly thinks he’s too old for it but loves it anyway.  I’m watching him and I can see how much he loves being a dad.  Just LOVES it.  He loves being wrapped around the fingers of these two little girls.  He loves being able to make them so happy by playing them their music.

I’m there singing along and feeling in a really complete way why I want a family.  I want this, too.  I want to raise little people to feel this way – this unadulterated joy at being alive.  Family can be like this.  Not just in a few, rare good moments, like I knew, but like this as a default kind of place.  I felt this whole world of possibility opening up for me around how having a family could feel different from what my own experience was like.

A few weeks ago I wrote about being tired and going to the party anyway and not having to be self-conscious about myself in the process.   I have felt that way all weekend.  I left Friday, waking at 4am and then going to sleep at 1am, waking up the next day at 7am and going until 11pm and then waking up this morning at 3:30 am.  I feel no internal dragging or complaining or whatever.  I just get to show up and have fun, tired or not tired.  In a few hours I will see my dear husband and hopefully his friends.  Then we’ll drive for another 4 hours.  I can do this when it’s enough to just be myself.  Thank God.

Oh my gosh.  I finalized my plans to see my grandfather!

Without having reflected in the post I wrote this morning about letting Andrea feel pity for me and wanting to make the trip with less of a hard heart, what just happened wouldn’t have been possible.

I was struggling with whether to go tomorrow to visit or wait until I might feel stronger next week.  I knew I would not have a good time during my upcoming trip with my husband if I didn’t go sooner than later and of course I wanted to see my grandpa.  But I couldn’t imagine how to get myself across the country without going nuts.

But I guess I had internalized Andrea’s feeling sorry for me enough that I could recognize that this was simply not something that I could not do alone.  In fact it would be RIDICULOUS to think that it was something I could face by myself and of course that it was totally legitimate that I was feeling awful about all of this.

So it dawned on me that I needed to call a friend of mine who lives near my grandfather.  She’s one of my stand-in mothers that I seemed to have befriended over the years.  I’ve been out of touch, but I knew she would help.  She has always been amazing because she has been willing to pick me up and drive me places when I am out that direction.  She has wanted to spend time with me and she has understood that I’m a kid (relatively speaking) – I have places to go and people to see so she wants to support me in that and spend time with me while she helps me get where I need to go.  It’s very sweet.  So different from what I experienced at home.

I called and asked if she could both help me work out the thought process behind whether or not it was realistic to travel tomorrow and to help me think through logistics.  I also said that I would need her help getting to and from if I were to go.

She was a dream, and I let her help me in a way I haven’t ever let her help me.  It brings tears to my eyes.  I let her reassure me and I let her suggest ideas of how to navigate family.  It let her be there to lean on.  I let myself lean on her.  Just like I am learning to do with Andrea.  At one point she even said, of course we can just give you a car to drive but we also want to be able to support you and make sure you feel really good and supported when you get there so we can drive you there, too.  Wow.  Words I needed to hear.

So I’m off to pack.  I did something insane yesterday in that I bought a bunch of plants from my favorite discount nursery.  I need to get those in the ground before I go!  While on that adventure, the friend I went with offered to look after our cats.  I am so glad that that was taken care of yesterday.  Makes everything easier today.

As I anticipate visiting my grandparents, I’ve come to realize that the scariest part for me is the possibility that I would make the trip feeling really hardened inside and being brave, basically if I did it as I used to live every day of my life.  The idea of that scares me a lot.  I guess I am worried that I might do this and never be able to find my way back to the real me.

The truth is that I am kind of living this way now so there’s probably not that much to be scared of because it’s my life now.

But something dawned on me after writing yesterday’s post.  Andrea’s feeling sorry for me is the ultimate thing that makes this different.  I guess it’s a lot like what I said yesterday.

• If I let her feel sorry for me, I don’t have to bear the painful feelings of returning home by myself.
• If I don’t have to bear them by myself, then I don’t have to be brave.
• If I don’t have to be brave, I don’t have to harden myself inside.
• If I don’t have to harden myself inside, I don’t have to have my usual PTSD response.
• If I don’t have a PTSD response, then I can be living fully in the present – experiencing what’s happening moment by moment and living as the current me rather than the old wounded me.

The trick is letting myself feel Andrea’s care for me, letting her pity me, letting her close to me.  Close enough to help me bear my pain.  I’ve let her do this before.  I suppose that these days she’s installed within my head and heart and so she’s always helping me bear my emotions to some degree.

But the emotions around going home are of course different, of the highest intensity.  On top of that it’s not just about going home for me right now.  I am sensing that in general I am connecting more dots about my past and so there are also more feelings in the mix.  What I think I’ve found lately is that these feelings aren’t so bad when I know I am safe in the present.  So I need her even more in the present right now.

Last night I was very uncomfortable and was having a hard time going to sleep.  So I imagined her with me, letting me feel her body supporting my body so that it could relax, even imagining her holding me so tightly that I couldn’t move away from her when I got scared and wanted to bolt.  That helped and I did eventually go to sleep.

However, I also had a bad dream about our relationship.  I dreamt that we had a long space in our conversation.  Like she had hung up in the middle of one of our sessions for an emergency and then not called me back.  Then when we reconnected we met in the morning rather than the evening and this upset my schedule and we never made up the lost time from our session.  This is a clear sign that my attachment to her is shaky right now and full of fear, anxiety, and disappointment.  I am confusing her with my mom.

Oh, and when I did talk to her, my father was in the same house as I was.  So I constantly had to move around with the phone to another room to feel safe talking with her.  Probably this means that I am feeling the old pull toward protecting my family from my feelings.

As I was trying to go to sleep last night, I thought of this wonderful quote from Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart by Mark Epstein, M.D.:

In an ancient Buddhist sutra called the Anguttara Nikaya the Buddha extolled the value of what he called the “tamed heart,” while warning against the dangers of not being touched in this way.  ”I know nothing which is as intractable as an untamed heart,…” he declared.  ”I know nothing which brings suffering as does an untamed, uncontrolled, unattended, and unrestrained heart…I know nothing which brings joy as does a tamed, controlled, attended, and restrained heart.*

*Jack Kornfield with Gil Fronsdal, Teachings of the Buddha (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1993), p. 85.

I can attest that this is true.

The sun just came out where I am and at that same moment I had this amazing realization.  When Andrea feels sorry for me, I don’t have to feel sorry for myself.

My normal response to things without her feeling sorry for me is to be strong and persist because the feelings around whatever I have to persist around are so strong that my only possible response is to dissociate the pain and get to work.  It’s too much to bear otherwise.

But when she bears the pain with me, it is not too much for me to bear.  When she feels sorry for me, I don’t have to feel the dissociated pain either because the pain is processed real time.  So when she feels sorry for me, I am freed up to live and go about life.  The infant within me is able to let go and move onto whatever’s next.

This is why parents are so important.

I got to talk to Andrea yesterday, and it felt so good to my younger parts.  I really needed her to be with me around all my feelings about my grandfather and the difficulties with my family that become all the more apparent when I am choosing very consciously not to visit when they are there.

My pre-teen told Andrea pretty immediately that she wanted to collapse on her.  Gosh, my body relaxes even now as I write about this.  (I suppose this is partly why I blog.  It helps me remember how good therapy feels.)  But back to the letting go and letting Andrea physically and emotionally support me.

It was a relief to let myself collapse on her because I could tell that I was gearing up to be strong to make a visit later this week to see my grandfather.  I used to always be strong and that feels yucky now when it is false.

We revisited a lot of important territory I’ve discovered along the way about how my mother would be with me when I needed her. What would happen with my mom was that when I needed her it kind of became a chance for us both to feel bad together.  It would be a chance for her to feel yucky as well.  We would merge at this point.  I would end up not comforted and feeling like I would struggle to get back up on my feet again or like I had to make this great effort to face the world again.

Last night as we were talking I brought this up to Andrea, that I was a bit reluctant to fully let go because it might bring up in me the false feeling of having to be strong, that I might start to think while collapsing on her how to be strong again, rather than just let myself be with her.

It was really powerful for me to name this.

I also told her before this bit of conversation that I had been aware that I hadn’t needed her recently, what a different feeling that was and that I discovered it made it easier for me to need her.  I struggled and struggled and struggled with letting her help me.  It was this huge risk for me because how much I needed her was so big that I wondered sometimes if it will ever end, that need.   It was just so awkward and was scary.  What if I always needed her so much?  I couldn’t imagine not always needing her.  I couldn’t feel inside what it would be like to not need her in the same way, to outgrow that.

When I shared this with her, she immediately said something about how I would not have had this experience with my mom.  It’s true.  The point of my relationship with my mom was to always come back to that place of neediness, to always collapse together when times got tough.  But with Andrea the point is to feel her with me supporting me for my sake, not to make Andrea feel better, but to make me feel better.

Something’s happening to me as I digest this and write it out.  Last night I told Andrea that as she was talking about this distinction between how she is with me and how it was with my mom that I kind of just say “uh-huh” because I get the difference but it doesn’t completely register and there is something inside of me that still feels cold and not able to be completely receptive.  So it’s nice something is happening to me as I digest this.

Another thing that happened as my pre-teen was stretched out on Andrea (in my mind I should clarify – we meet by telephone) is that she also asked me what it would be like for me for her to feel sorry for me.  I relaxed even more.  I had to kind of talk this one through because pity is still kind of a new experience for me and one that seems to change everything.  I really gave up thinking I had to be strong when I could let her feel sorry for me.  Oh, but I did have to clarify that it was not the sorry feeling like the one I would have with my mother.  That’s when we talked about what I just wrote above.

I like that she would feel sorry for me.  I like not having to be strong and determined.

Around this time I said I was a little suspicious of my ambitiousness around the visit.  I had read a book that talked about how to talk and interpret things the dying are communicating and I want to be my grandfather’s advocate.  Last night and especially now that just seems ridiculous.  Not ridiculous as an idea but ridiculous for me to add to my plate.  As Andrea said, all I have to do is go and see my grandfather and let him see me.  To me more feels like it interferes with that.

I don’t want to forget this part.  While we talked mostly about my pre-teen, Andrea asked me at the beginning if my infant was upset.  That got an immediate and resounding YES from me.  I had been feeling rotten, depressed, and all I wanted to do yesterday was sit on the sofa rather than go about living my life.  I made the connection that this happens most likely when my infant is in distress.  Now she’s going to be in distress when another part of me is in major distress so I think that’s why talking through what was going on with my pre-teen was so important.  My pre-teen’s issues were also my infant’s issues – having to be strong and feeling like she needed to deny her needs in the situation.  So that’s also why my infant was distressed.  I’m understanding this as I am writing.

I also said that has been amazing to feel what it’s like to not be depressed for the first time in my life as I contrast how I felt a couple of days ago and how I felt last night and to some degree today.  We were talking about this and we kind of remembered together how a day like yesterday and then now was a good day for me not so long ago because my head was not clouded over with dissociation.  It’s a little shocking to me to realize that my awful yesterday was once a good day.  I remember the pain I would feel when the cloud would come back over me on those old good days and how I once howled in pain over the phone with Andrea that this had happened and I was back feeling the old awful.  It makes it so much easier now to allow myself to be where I am in my learning.  Easier but not easy.

There’s a way of being I’ve discovered recently that I just can’t access right now.  I can tell I need to slide back into the old for a bit as I keep catching up with myself to integrate all I’ve learned.  My head is heavy with the intensity of new learning and I’m still not ready to get off the couch.  It feels like I almost can’t help but revert back to some of my old ways right now like napping and laying low.  Like with the Monday morning stuff, this has perennially frustrated me.  But it is what it is.  I seem to end up making lots of progress anyway.  I’m glad there are cliches like two steps forward and one step back at times like these.

The new part that I am having to give up right now is the sense that I am free to go about my life unfettered.  I don’t feel unfettered right now.  That’s been the gift of these last couple of days, the freedom.

I suspect that in this integration process I’m remembering the feeling of being trapped.  I’d actually forgotten the feeling over the weekend.  I knew I had felt that way, but it was so far away.  Now it’s close to me again.

As I write, I’m noticing I’m missing Andrea.  It’s amazing how saying that makes me feel better.  We’ll talk tomorrow.  I’ll be glad to talk to her.  I need her again after not needing her much lately.  I like recognizing that.