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Love is the Answer Addendum

March 20, 2012 5 comments

I woke up this morning after staying up late last night to finish the Love is the Answer post. Writing the post took me back through the feelings evoked and I woke up feeling drained and sad. Even as I finished the post, something felt a little “off.” In thinking through what was going on this morning, I realized that what I said in the post and the conclusions I came to are the truth as I see it. I meant everything I wrote, but sometimes when trying to distill the meaning from the confusion of experience, things get missed or overlooked in order for the arc of writing to follow a true path, so that the truth you are groping after can be expressed.

It is important to me that I am honest with you, dear readers. I have spent too much of my life not being honest and had to work too hard to learn how, to not exercise it now. And the last thing I would want to do is add to anyone’s burden by making them wonder why they are struggling so hard when someone else, dealing with the same issues, seems so “clear” about what is going on. Please don’t ever think that. My journey has been long and messy, it has wandered and circled, there have been blind spots, and cul de sacs, nuclear powered defense mechanisms, and lovingly nurtured periods of denial. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, feelings, safety

Love is the Answer

March 19, 2012 5 comments

So I went back to see BN on Wednesday morning. Actually I went back to see BN on Tuesday evening for a couples’ session. I  mentioned it before, but my husband and I have decided to tackle some issues that we share, not a conflict, and thought that BN could help us. I was very focused on not making the couples’ session about my stuff. So focused in fact, that it wasn’t until the session was over that I realized just how shut down I was. It started to occur to me towards the end of the session because my husband was actually sharing some pretty powerful feelings in answer to a question that BN asked both of us. I had floated through with a pretty superficial answer and there was my DH reaching deep. That’s when I realized that I was pretty shut down. I actually felt kind of guilty about that, like I had lied. But it hit me that I had stayed so shut down because it felt like it was my only way to get through the appointment.

So when we left the session, at the end of which BN had warmly shaken my hand and said “see you soon,” by the time we reached the car, I was starting to fall apart. I then realized that I hadn’t been shut down ONLY so I wouldn’t derail our couples’ session, I was shut down because their was a deep terror welling up at the thought of going to see BN the following morning. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, boundaries, disorganized attachment, earned attachment, Emotional regulation, encouragement, feelings, healing, hope, limbic resonance, love, needs, pain, safety, self-worth, transference

Hmm, knowing it was love didn’t have quite the effect I expected.

March 10, 2012 10 comments

For the beginning of this story, you might want to read The “L” word Part I and II, if you haven’t already done so.

Gentle readers, I am not in a good place. My reaction to not being in a good place is usually to go find a deep dark cave and hole up in there until I get the pain and hurt under control, but it’s an impulse I’ve been working on changing for a long time. So despite being in the midst of a Category-5 shame storm, I’d thought I’d talk about how I’m feeling instead. So if you’re reading this, thank you for listening. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, boundaries, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), dependence, disassociation, disorganized attachment, feelings, love, needs, safety, self-worth, transference, trauma

Nanny McPhee

February 26, 2012 8 comments

Who knew the Boundary Ninja is really Nanny McPhee? Like Nanny McPhee, the more time I spent with him and the more I learned, the better looking he got. 🙂 And her rules are strangely applicable to therapy.

There is something you should understand about the way I work. When you need me but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me but no longer need me, then I have to go. It’s rather sad, really, but there it is.

In some ways, it’s such a concise description of therapy. When I needed him, I had to stay, but when it became that I only wanted him, then it was time to go. Insights come from the oddest places.

Categories: acceptance, movies

The “L” word Part I

February 14, 2012 15 comments

So far all of the writing I have been doing here  has concerned my healing history so to speak. Stories of work I have already done and lessons learned. I’m going to deviate from that and actually talk about what’s going on with me right now. Partially because I think it would be helpful for others to hear about it, but also because I am working through this and struggling to understand what it means and how it fits in my understanding of who I am. When I talk about the past, a past about which I have had a chance to reflect, the stories can come out in such an orderly fashion, like little perfectly wrapped packages with a gift bow when the reality was actually an experience of raw confusion. I thought it might be helpful to see the raw confusion as it was happening.

I’m going to talk about the “L” word. Yes, that four letter word we avoid like the black plague in therapy: Love. Have you ever noticed that the shorter the word in English, the more confusing talking about it’s meaning is? I mean the long words like antidisestablishmentarianism  have very specific meanings. But say “God” or “love” or “happy” and suddenly you have a very long, complex conversation on your hands.  So one thing I do want to note is that throughout this post when I discuss BN loving me, I very much mean it as a parental kind of love, a love which seeks my good, not in any romantic or erotic sense. I don’t believe that there is an erotic or romantic component to his love for me. But if there was, I’d be the last person on the planet to ever know about it anyway. But I’ve never picked up on anything along those lines. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, attachment theory, boundaries, dependence, feelings, love, psychotherapy blogs, safety, transference

Therapy Lesson #6: Say how you feel anyway

February 2, 2012 9 comments

I had mentioned in the  What I Learned in Therapy, the complete list post, to leave a comment if there was any particular lesson anyone wanted to know more about. Normalwasnotmygoal (may I just say, awesome username!) left a comment asking about feelings being irrational, so I thought I would expand on that lesson in this post.

So therapy lesson #6: Feelings are more often than not, irrational. Just because they don’t make sense, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be expressed.

I had no idea how divorced from my feelings I was, when I started seeing the Boundary Ninja. Actually most people would have told you I was quite an emotional person (ignore my husband in the background, jumping up and down yelling “Hell yeah!”).  I was so scared to recognize or express my feelings that I would stuff them down and stuff them down and stuff them down, until the pressure built past the breaking point and then they would burst forth in all their ugly glory, taking everyone, including honestly, me, totally off guard because the intensity level would often seem way out of proportion to whatever was going on. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, boundaries, feelings, healing, hope, self-worth

Come Closer by Anis Mojani

January 31, 2012 2 comments

Another amazing poem by Anis Mojani. I love his metaphors; they just resonate so powerfully with me. This was the opening to TWOLHA‘s HEAVY and LIGHT  event this year in Orlando. I hope you find it as powerful as I did.

Anis Mojani performs “Come Closer” at HEAVY and LIGHT

I especially loved “what beautiful battlefields you are” since it has been such a fight to be able to live my life fully. I loved even more the idea that we need to dance our way back to God.

And he said something I want to say to all of you: “I am like you, I am like you, I too, at times, am filled with so much fear” followed by “walk through this with me, walk through this with me.”  We do not travel alone and therein lies our hope and strength.

Categories: acceptance, Anis Mojani, encouragement, feelings, healing, hope, videos, Youtube

i carry your heart

January 25, 2012 10 comments

Sorry it has been so long since my last post, life has thrown a few wrenches my way (if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!) and I’ve been a bit off balance (ok, try triggered as all get out) which tends to interfere with my writing abilities. I also had an ear infection and as my dear husband has to remind me EVERY time, antibiotics tend to depress me. I never, ever remember that when I’m in the middle of it. I just become convinced I’ve derailed, made up all my progress and throw in a few “I’m failing everyone and everyone thinks I’m a big selfish maw of need’ just for good measure. Cleaning out our old tape libraries can be a slow business at times. 🙂 But I am feeling better (gosh, do you think that has anything to do with finishing your course of antibiotics?) and slowly finding my balance. I also saw the Boundary Ninja and was able to deal with a chunk of what’s bothering me. We hit some stuff late in the session ( unusual for me but I needed to bring up something that scared me so badly, it took over half the session to finally go there) so I’m going back in two weeks to finish that particular topic. So thank you all for your patience.

We had a lovely interchange at one point during the session that I wanted to share, but before I tell you that story, I need to tell you this one (which also allows me to shamelessly steal from one of my posts on Psychcafe for blog content. Remember if your stealing your own stuff, it’s not cheating, it’s efficiency! :)) Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, attachment theory, commitment, dependence, disorganized attachment, earned attachment, encouragement, feelings, healing, hope, love, needs, safety

What I’ve Learned in Therapy: The Complete List

January 11, 2012 22 comments

Someone once posed the question on the forum, what are the most important things you’ve learned in therapy? I’ve actually written expanded posts on some of my answers, but thought it might be useful to post my whole list here. I’ve put links a the end for the previous expanded posts.

The most difficult thing to explain about healing in therapy is that it isn’t about “knowing” it’s about experiencing being with another person. So much of what I talk about below totally gonzo confused me when I first learned it. I used to tell BN that he was talking in Russian. But staying with my feelings and continuing to express them through the confusion is how I learned it. And I must give credit again to BN, who is really an incredibly gifted, compassionate man doing exactly what he should be. So much of my “wisdom” is actually my ability to accurately quote him. 🙂

So the full list is below. If there’s a particular item in the list you would want me to expand upon, please feel free to leave a note in the comments. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, boundaries, commitment, dependence, earned attachment, encouragement, feelings, healing, hope, love, needs, pain, perserverence, self-worth

Learning Developmental Skills: Emotional Regulation

January 7, 2012 3 comments

This post is a continuation of a series started in But therapy can take us a long way: Learning Developmental Skills Part 1. In this post, I want to talk about emotional regulation. We are not born knowing how to regulate our emotions. This is a skill that must be implicitly learned by being in the presence of another attuned human being who is capable of regulating their emotions. Which is why people with insecure attachment, or who suffered neglect or long-term abuse, often have difficultly “regulating” their emotions. They were never taught how to. The good news is that this is one of the things that can be fixed by therapy. Being with your therapist in a right-brain to right-brain way (with your feelings engaged, and experiencing attunement and limbic resonance) while accessing your intense emotions can teach you how to face and handle those emotions on your own. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, attachment theory, disassociation, Emotional regulation, feelings, healing, limbic resonance, perserverence, trauma, Uncategorized