Archive
The Paradox of Shame – Part I
Shame has been a constant theme throughout my healing, but I have found it to be really dominant as I have begun to risk more and live more fully. When I was recovering, I finally realized how ruled I was by fear. Fear was all about me, imprinted on a cellular level; present in the air I breathed. When I finally realized how permeated by fear I was, I was scared to stop being scared! I can still get scared, but fear is not the omnipresent backdrop of my life anymore. Being less afraid has led to being able to risk more. As I risk more, I find myself reacting with shame when I run into new difficulties. Happily, this has led to my discovery that BN is also a first class shame buster.
The true purpose of shame is to keep us safe from violating the taboos and rules of our “tribe.” For so many human generations, our very survival depended on our ability to be accepted by and attended to by a group of people. We are a social animal, who thrives by being with others. Our needs cannot be met without relationship. We cannot know ourselves outside of relationship. Failure to conform to the mores of a group could result in being driven forth so that an individual did not threaten the well-being of the group; but being driven forth was often the equivalent of a death sentence. So our need to “fit in” is extremely strong and other people’s disapproval can affect us deeply. Which is why a sense of shame is such a powerful motivator to control our behavior as it is literally experienced as a matter of life or death. Continue Reading
The Beginning Part II
For the beginning of this story, please see The Beginning Part I.
So when I left off, I was going to see BN alone, to tell him about my growing feelings for him. Did I mention the insanely scared part? I managed to explain to him that I was experiencing strong feelings of attraction that were really confusing me and told him about the articles which recommended taking these feelings to your therapist. I shared how his understanding and accepting me were so appealing, that I felt less alone than I had in a long time. BN was amazing (I was still capable of being surprised by that at this point in our relationship :)). He told me that he thought I was very brave to come and speak to him, that he was glad I was experiencing such a strong sense of being connected and that all of my feelings, no matter what they were, were acceptable and welcome in his office. Then he reassured me that he had the boundaries and nothing inappropriate would happen so it was safe to explore these feelings. Continue Reading
The Beginning Part I
NOTE: Since I’m going to be discussing couples counseling in this post, I just want to be clear in order to be fair to my husband, who has no voice here, that the problems in the marriage were complex, based on both our pasts and our reinforcing those patterns for each other. We were both, most definitely, part of the problem. I am also happy to say that we both took responsibility for our part and worked very hard to change. We just celebrated our 26th anniversary and are happier than we have ever been.
So I thought it would be good to go back to the beginning and explain how I ended up working with the Boundary Ninja. It was not a simple, straight-forward process, but interestingly enough contained the dynamic that I most needed to see. Which after a number of years and one break in therapy, I am finally working through. 🙂 Therapy does not usually take the most direct path (or in my case, even an intelligible one) for long periods of time. 🙂 Continue Reading
Feelings can be irrational: Example #637
Preface:This is going to be a bit of gloom and doom as I am in the middle of doing some fairly heavy processing of which this post is a part. When I am doing this kind of work the past rides close, which means that I will be struggling with bad feelings about myself. I know they’re not all, or even most of them, true. I also have a number of lovely friends and my husband who have been supporting me through this with care, kindness and love. So don’t take the gloom too seriously. Yes, this is not fun, but it’s also not insurmountable or unbearable and I am not alone in facing it.
This has been a really long crappy week. I’ve been dealing with a couple of different situations in which I’ve had to work very hard to keep my boundaries clear, work very hard to examine myself to sort out my own stuff and in most of the situations draw a hard boundary which has either not gone over well or has left me feeling like I’m kicking puppies or even worse, becoming my father. At one point this week I was actually wondering if someone had hung a sign somewhere on my person that said “please tell me what a crappy human being I am.” Since I am quite capable of doing that on my own more often than I would like, I honestly could have done without the assistance. 🙂 Continue Reading
Love is the Answer
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
Hmm, knowing it was love didn’t have quite the effect I expected.
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
The “L” word Part II
This is the second part of a two-part series, for part I see The “L” word Part I.
Before I tell you about what happened in the follow-up session (hey, no whining, I had to wait for two weeks! 🙂 ), I want to talk about what happened in between. Because therapy doesn’t just happen in your therapist’s office; your sessions are actually the tip of an iceberg. The part below the surface is all the processing and integration you do between sessions as you consider what was said and how it fits and consider what you want to talk about next time. For me, therapy can often feel like one long conversation, punctuated with long pauses, during which I’m doing a lot of thinking about what got said. Continue Reading
i carry your heart
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
What I learned in therapy Lesson 5 – The relationship of love and pain
This is lesson five of what I learned in therapy: Pain is not a part of love, love is the answer to pain.
This lesson actually came later in my healing and my work with the Boundary Ninja. I’m writing about it now as it’s been a subject that has been both coming up in a lot of conversations I’ve had lately and because I am learning to experience it as a lived truth. If forced to choose, I think I would pick this understanding as the most powerful that I learned in therapy. It is also extremely difficult to explain because at its heart is a mystery that lives at the heart of our existence. It’s not so much a truth that you understand, as much as you learn to accept. Continue Reading
Therapy isn’t enough
Therapy isn’t enough. Never has been, never will be. The Boundary Ninja would often say that to me when I would bring up my pain about his boundaries. I had all the classic complaints. How could I work through what I needed to in only 50 minutes a week? How do I open up when I need to and then pull it back together to walk out? Why couldn’t he hold me and comfort me when I was in pain? Why couldn’t I see him outside of therapy and know more about him? Why couldn’t I live under his desk? 🙂
Now the first time he ever told me therapy wasn’t enough, I must confess gentle reader, that what went through my head was “What the f***?!?! If you know that, then why in hell am I here?! I have no f***ing idea what you’re talking about?!?” Took me a long time to express that (I do believe I cleaned up my language when I asked. But maybe not, I could sometimes really rip loose in the BN’s office. Mainly because the first time I ever used the “F” word in front of him, when I calmed down I apologized for my language. He informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I was never to apologize for that, adults talk that way when they’re angry, we sanitize things too much and I should express myself however I needed to. I have often wondered if he ever regretted saying that. :)) He said many times to me (he had to repeat most things to me about 13563 times as I am slow to catch on) that therapy isn’t enough, and honestly, I thought it was extremely puzzling for a long time. I mean, I heard the words, but had no idea what he meant by them. But I eventually learned their truth. Continue Reading
Recent Posts
Top Posts & Pages
Blogroll
- Cycles of Becoming
- Everybody Needs Therapy
- F*ck Feelings
- Get Support
- Ironshrink
- Jung at Heart
- Living While Healing
- Moments of Change
- Monkeytraps
- My Purple Dreams
- Myshrink
- Not All About Cats
- Shrinktalk.net
- Tesseract
- Theme Showcase
- Therapy Tales
- Trauma and Attachment Therapy
- Waking Up
- what a shrink thinks
Tales of a Boundary Ninja 
Recent Comments