Archive

Archive for the ‘healing’ Category

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

The “L” word Part II

February 16, 2012 10 comments

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

Categories: ambivalance, attachment styles, boundaries, commitment, disorganized attachment, feelings, healing, limbic resonance, love, safety

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

Bass Ackwards

December 13, 2011 4 comments

I was talking to a friend about therapy today and connected to a very important principle about healing that I wanted to share. We often approach healing from the standpoint of “once I heal enough to not be <insert emotion here> than I’ll <insert new behavior here>.” We want to get our feelings to the right place, then act. But it doesn’t really work that way; we need to act in a new way so that our feelings follow. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, encouragement, feelings, healing, hope, perserverence, self-worth

What I learned in therapy Lesson 5 – The relationship of love and pain

December 8, 2011 22 comments

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

Categories: abandonment, acceptance, ambivalance, attachment styles, boundaries, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), commitment, dependence, disorganized attachment, earned attachment, encouragement, feelings, healing, hope, insecure attachment, limbic resonance, love, needs, pain, safety, self-worth, transference

Lake Loop Trail

December 1, 2011 5 comments

Hi all, sorry for the gap in posting but you’ll be happy to know I have a number of excuses reasons for why this has occurred. 🙂 Thanksgiving was a very busy weekend with lots of plans (not to mention the unseasonably high temperatures. Do you have any idea how rare it is to put up your outdoor Christmas decorations in shirtsleeves in Syracuse NY?!? We just had to take advantage of the opportunity.) Then, since it is November, I came down with a sinus infection. Actually I was two days away from making it through the month without one, which hasn’t happened in years, but didn’t quite make it. The good news was, I already had a doctor’s appointment for a routine visit set up, so I was able to get antibiotics and may have actually caught this before I go into my usual follow-up of bronchitis and kicking off my asthma. Light years to go, but my self-care is getting better! 🙂 Not to mention, one of my rare visits with the Boundary Ninja. (Ok, rare might not be EXACTLY accurate, but humor me, I’m trying to hang on to a sense of progress!) And to be perfectly honest, I am having a much more difficult time writing the next entry in my Developmental Skills series (Series? What series?! How do you call one post a series? ) then I expected. So I thought that if I wander off in another direction for a bit and write about something else, I could distract myself, so that whatever subterranean level of my brain which actually produces this stuff can proceed unhampered by my conscious mind.

I was talking about therapy with a friend the other day and how endless it can feel, when I was reminded of a story which is the perfect analogy for therapy. And that is the story of the Lake Loop Trail. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, healing, hope, perserverence