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Archive for the ‘hope’ Category

The Beginning Part I

June 28, 2012 7 comments

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

Categories: ambivalance, attachment styles, attachment theory, Boundary Ninja, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), dependence, disorganized attachment, feelings, healing, hope, perserverence, sexual attraction, transference Tags: , , ,

Forgot How Good This Was

June 20, 2012 9 comments

I had my Ipod on “shuffle all” which I do occasionally when I can’t decide what I’m in the mood for. I have wildly eclectic taste in music (some people have implied it gives them whiplash :D) so when I do this I have no idea what will turn up. One of the reasons I like to do it. The other reason is that once in a while, something you REALLY love, but haven’t heard in a long time, pops up. That happened this morning. And it’s so good I wanted to share it. I hope you enjoy it as much I do. 🙂

Baz Luhrman’s Everyone’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Favorite lines: “You’re not as fat as you imagine” and “you’ll miss them when they’re gone.” 🙂

Categories: encouragement, Funny, healing, hope, perserverence, self-worth Tags: ,

Shackles

June 14, 2012 16 comments

Greetings gentle readers. I have returned safely from a wonderful, refreshing vacation, but re-entry was a bit bumpy. 🙂 We brought back a stomach virus, to which I added some asthma and sinus problems, so I’m sloooooowwwwly getting back into a normal rhythm. It was really nice to be away, but it’s also really nice to be back. 🙂

I wanted to share with you an analogy about healing that I thought many people might find helpful (h/t to Blackbird as it was during a discussion with her on psychcafe that I first came up with this one :)). When I first started seeing BN, the prism through which I saw myself was one of pathology. That I had been injured and damaged by the abuse and I needed to be “fixed.” One of the greatest gifts that BN has given me (which is saying a lot as the list is quite long) was instead seeing my struggles as development gone awry. That there was nothing fundamentally “broken” or “wrong” about me. I just had not gotten what I needed or been taught what I needed to know. That anyone who had endured what I did would have similar struggles with similar issues; my reactions were reasonable, it was the circumstances that produced them that were unreasonable. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), encouragement, healing, hope, perserverence, self-worth, trauma Tags: , ,

Vacation and a very tired squirrel

May 30, 2012 12 comments

Greetings gentle readers,

I am presently away vacationing at Disney World with my family (both girls are home from college for the summer so we’re starting out with a traditional family trip to Disney World on which my older daughter will be celebrating her 21st birthday. We have several fun things planned, only a few of which will be embarrassing. :)) We’re having a really lovely time. My husband has been working really horrible hours, due to a refuel outage, of 14 hour days, six days a week and literally got home at 7:30 on Friday night and we left at 2 AM Saturday morning. So it’s good getting to see him for longer than 20 minutes at a time, not to mention just enjoying having everyone together. The truth is, it’s nice to be away and not be worrying about anything. And naps, naps are wonderful. 🙂 So I just wanted to let everyone know I am off recharging my batteries, so things may be a little slow around here for a bit, but I’ll be back all the better for the break.

I do want to share one funny story before I go, as in 26 years of coming to Walt Disney World, this was a first. We’re Disney Vacation club members and we’re staying at Bay Lake Towers which is part of the Contemporary resort, which is on the main monorail that goes to the Magic Kingdom. Continue Reading

Categories: Funny, healing, hope, perserverence, safety, self-worth

Diminished

May 15, 2012 6 comments

Yesterday was a very sad day. My husband called me in the morning because he had heard from a mutual friend, that our handyman, whom I’ll call Dan (not his real name), had a heart attack while training this weekend for an upcoming bike race for charity and had died. He was a very fit guy, and only 44 years old, so it was a total unexpected shock. I just kept saying “no” to my husband through most of the phone call.

We’ve known Dan over fifteen years. The friend who called to tell us of his death had recommended him years ago, just after Dan had gone out and started his own Construction company. We hired him to do some minor repairs. Dan’s specialties were carpentry and masonry and the man did dry wall like nobody’s business. He did such a great job the first time that we have just continued to hire him through the years whenever we needed work done. We sold our first home around seven years ago, because we were building a new house with an in-law apartment for my mother-in-law, and he was the one who got it into shape to sell. And he’s still who we call, when we need anything done. Or at least he was. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, feelings, healing, hope, love, pain Tags: ,

Erotic Transference

May 9, 2012 142 comments

Update: This post has drawn a lot of traffic in the time it has been up, leading me to believe it’s a topic that a lot of people may wish to discuss further. If you have questions about anything in this post, or questions about things not discussed in this post, please feel free to ask a question in the comments or send me the question privately at the email address in the right column. Thanks! – AG

I got a request from a reader to discuss erotic transference, so I thought I would share a few thoughts. I do want to be clear that although I have done a lot of reading about erotic transference, most of what I write here is based on my own experience and so may not be all that universal. I also think that erotic transference can be a very complex thing encompassing several different dynamics in the relationship. Our sexuality is a very powerful, integral part of us and  therefore a lot of things get played out in this area; issues around power, love, desire, longings, sensuality, self-worth, and attractiveness to list only a few. And all of these things are going to be even more highlighted in the therapeutic relationship since the therapist carries so much symbolic weight. Continue Reading

Categories: ambivalance, boundaries, Boundary Ninja, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), healing, hope, love, needs, pain, sexual attraction, transference Tags: , , ,

Why I Love the Boundary Ninja: Reason #456

May 7, 2012 5 comments

In the middle of a difficult session dealing with my stubborn fears and lack of ability to retain a sense of our connection lately, we had this exchange:

BN: It took a long time to get here. (referring to my willingness to be vulnerable and share my feelings)

AG: See, right there, that’s it. I feel like it’s taking me way too long to get through this.
Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, earned attachment, Emotional regulation, encouragement, Funny, healing, hope Tags: ,

Learning developmental skills: Identifying and Expressing needs

April 16, 2012 18 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 learning to identify and express your needs. For most trauma victims, this is most definitely a skipped part of development. Because the caretaker is putting their own needs ahead of the child’s when abusing them, by definition the child’s needs are being overlooked and pushed aside. How do you learn to identify and express something that is not even acknowledged to exist?

A long-term trauma victim often becomes hyper-vigilant. They learn to watch their abuser and observe their behavior in minute detail in the hope of getting some warning before an episode of abuse. So they’re paying a whole lot more attention to the abuser’s feelings and needs than their own. Add to this the fact that many victims of long-term abuse believe and/or are told the abuse is their fault, so they are also watching the abuser for cues about who they need to be and what they need to do to “finally” make the abuser happy with them and stop the abuse. (This serves the function of providing some sense of control in a situation in which you are powerless and have none.) Your own feelings and needs fade to insignificance in the face of needing to survive. Continue Reading

Categories: boundaries, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), dependence, feelings, forgiveness, healing, hope, limbic resonance, needs, pain, responsibility, safety, self-worth Tags: , , , , , ,

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

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