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Archive for the ‘pain’ Category

‘Tis the Season: Strategies for coping with a therapist’s absence – Part I

July 16, 2014 31 comments

This is the first part of a two part series. (It got a little long! 🙂 ) Life has settled down considerably but- of course- I am now working six day weeks because of a very demanding release going out the end of the summer. So I am re-engaging but would appreciate patience with my response times to comments and emails. But it’s really good to be back, I’ve missed everyone! Thank you all so much for you’re understanding and support while I have been away. Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, acceptance, ambivalance, anger, boundaries, dependence, disorganized attachment, Emotional regulation, feelings, needs, pain, responsibility, shame, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

Therapy isn’t enough Redux

March 25, 2014 88 comments

Greetings dear readers,
I am in the midst of a disruption, probably unknown to BN, of my own making and struggling with what to do. It is forcing me to re-examine my role in therapy and what I am trying to accomplish, and therefore, how I should proceed. I am writing this post to try and sort through my beliefs and feelings and see the best way forward. I would appreciate any feedback or perspectives that anyone wants to offer.

I had gotten very triggered by an event last week, that I took into my session last Friday. The event had triggered some very deep feelings – the early, primitive, inchoate, supremely disorganizing kind – which I wished to explore and understand in therapy. We did really good work. I was able to stay with the feeling without dissociating and put some words to what was going on (a deep-seated, primitive terror of abandonment as it turns out). BN was very connected and very encouraging and made clear, in a fair amount of detail, how well I had faced and handled the triggering event and had dealt with the feelings coming up. That he knew they were difficult to allow into consciousness and tolerate, but that I was doing really well with that and he saw improvements in a lot of areas. The session, while brutal, hugely increased my understanding of the dynamics involved and really helped reduce the pain and anxiety created by the trigger. I had a very deep sense of BN’s compassion and his approbation. Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, ambivalance, anger, avoidance, Boundary Ninja, dependence, grief, insecure attachment, needs, pain, responsibility, shame, termination, transference Tags: , , , , , ,

In Conflict

December 18, 2013 25 comments

In Conflict.

Martha Crawford, of What a Shrink Thinks, hits another one out of the park (and once again engenders deep envy in me for her writing abilities and insight)! If you have ever struggled with anger (and who among us hasn’t? 🙂 ), read this article. I am incredibly grateful that this is the attitude that I have seen BN take about anger. I am amazed at how he invites me to express it and how welcoming he is (and excited! Therapists are weird!) when I manage to. Anger has always been a difficult emotion for me, full of fear, since I saw it almost always modeled simultaneously with violence. It has taken years, a lot of difficult work, and two patient therapists for me to see the creative, positive side of anger that Martha describes so beautifully here.

Why are you still reading this? Go read the article! 😀

Categories: ambivalance, anger, avoidance, encouragement, pain, psychotherapy blogs Tags: , , , ,

Reliving the Shame

September 24, 2013 38 comments

I just had a deep insight into shame (which I suspect is going to sound D’oh when I say it) that I want to write down before I forget. I have been doing some rather intense work in therapy lately, which I will eventually talk about when I can find words. It has centered around my feelings about my body, my hatred of my body, the deep shame that I try to make about my body but which is actually about me, all of me (ironically enough since part of the work is accepting that my body IS part of me). Continue Reading

Categories: ambivalance, avoidance, boundaries, Boundary Ninja, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), disassociation, disorganized attachment, healing, love, needs, pain, self-worth, shame, transference, trauma, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

Coping with Grief and Abandonment Part II

September 12, 2013 26 comments

This is the second post in a two-part series on Grief and Abandonment, see Coping with Grief and Abandonment Part I.

I’m sure it will not surprise any regular reader of this blog to realize that BN was a huge part of how I coped, even between appointments. BN has a very generous contact policy, I am allowed to call him 24/7 including when he is on vacation. If I leave an emergency message with his service, he calls back within an hour. If he is on vacation and doesn’t answer the service in a certain amount f time, his backup (a wonderful, warm, empathic man) calls back, but always offers to have BN also call; it’s just a longer wait than usual. (I have higher standards for contacting him when he is on vacation but have done it. Earliest I have ever called is 8 AM and the latest is 10:30 PM although BN has made it clear that 2 in the morning is ok if I need). We very rarely do any processing during phone calls but when the grief threatened to overwhelm me, or the fears that BN would also abandon me, would rise up, then  a short phone call would help to ground and reconnect me. Most of mine are under three minutes and it’s not unusual to keep it under one minute. BN once referred to my “patented one minute phone calls” when I was worried about calling too much. 🙂 Often it wasn’t what he said but just the sound of his voice and experiencing that he was there that would do the trick. Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, acceptance, anger, Emotional regulation, feelings, grief, hate, healing, limbic resonance, love, needs, pain, perserverence, shame, trauma Tags: , , , , , , ,

Coping with Grief and Abandonment Part I

September 10, 2013 19 comments

GE asked the question below on the Ask AG page:

im wondering if you are wiling to share some of the strategies you used to cope with grief and abandonment feelings when things got rough during your recovery.

As I said in reply over there, this is an excellent question. Since I see grieving our losses as being at the heart of our healing, we should probably learn how to grieve, right? I have been grieving, one way or another, for a large part of my time in therapy, so this might turn out to be a bit of a laundry list, but I am hoping that everyone might find something that they can use in their own journey. Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, acceptance, anger, Emotional regulation, feelings, grief, hate, healing, limbic resonance, love, needs, pain, perserverence, shame, trauma Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Repair Part II

August 18, 2013 19 comments

This is the second part of a two-part series, for the first part see The Repair Part I.

I ended the last post having just done a bang up job of expressing my anger at BN. I told him that it had felt good to just let rip with that, but it also felt very wrong. He told me that it was really ok I was angry at him, that my anger was real and it was safe to express it, that it was important for me to learn that being angry didn’t mean that I couldn’t appreciate and value the relationship nor would I destroy it. When he said that I became conscious of a very deep fear. I sucked in some air and told BN that I needed to ask him something. Would he be able to hang onto that for me? He asked me what I wanted him to hang on to. I told him I needed him to remember that all of the gratitude and respect I had expressed for him weren’t gone even though I was so angry. In one of the most powerful moments in the session (which is saying a lot, trust me), he looked straight at me and said “AG, it never even crossed my mind to think that. “ Cue waterfalls. I seriously started sobbing in relief. I told him I had been so scared that I had lost him. He told me that I could not lose him, he was right there.

Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, acceptance, ambivalance, anger, avoidance, boundaries, Boundary Ninja, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), dependence, disorganized attachment, Emotional regulation, hate, healing, limbic resonance, love, needs, pain, power, self-worth, shame, transference, trauma Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Repair Part I

August 16, 2013 12 comments

I am back with the promised account of my last session. This post is the first of two (it got REALLY long). It was a very long, very intense session, so I’ll do my best to describe what happened. As in the last session that I described in Disruption and Rage, there are exchanges that stand out, but sometimes the order in which they occurred can get a bit fuzzy. And honestly, it feels like there is no way to convey just how powerful and intense this session was. As BN said later in the session, we were in right brain territory and it is in that place that words often fail. I do want to say up front that I experienced that my relationship with BN is very real, involves deep care on his part, I even dare say love, and some of my anger and all of my fears were based on my past. Even in the midst of being angry with BN, I am immeasurably grateful for him and his (sometimes appreciated, many times hated) boundaries.

I also want to confess that this feels scary to post. I am uncomfortable (such a weak, inadequate word) with my anger, so to allow others to see me at my most angry can feel like everyone is going to be deeply disappointed in me. But I thinks its an important part of owning this part of me to speak of this here. Sorry for all the bad language; to quote BN “you do like to cuss.” Especially when I am angry. 🙂 Continue Reading

Categories: ambivalance, anger, avoidance, boundaries, Boundary Ninja, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), commitment, disassociation, disorganized attachment, Emotional regulation, gratitude, hate, healing, limbic resonance, love, needs, pain, shame, transference, trauma Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Backfire

August 13, 2013 15 comments

We got back today after dropping my younger daughter off at college. I am finishing up a 12 day break from work that was a complete whirlwind. I had a nerve block, did a three-day trip to NYC, a block party, dinner with friends, then a two-day trip to Western Pennsylvania. I go back to work tomorrow, which is good as I think I could use the peace and quiet. 🙂

I also see BN for the first time in a month; I have a session at 11:30 AM tomorrow. Trying to get to sleep last night, I ended up worrying about walking into his office and seeing that my heart had been taken out of the box and that BN had let it happen. I then proceeded to imagine some highly dramatic exit scenarios. Needless to say, it took a while to get to sleep. Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, ambivalance, anger, boundaries, Boundary Ninja, insecure attachment, needs, pain, shame, transference Tags: , , ,

Disruption and Rage Part II

August 9, 2013 30 comments

TW*** CSA, rage and really bad language

For the first part, see Disruption and Rage Part I.

NOTE: I have really appreciated everyone reading and all the supportive comments. I am planning on replying but putting this out there has evoked an enormous amount of shame about my neediness so it may take me a bit. Truly sorry, I am at a loss as to where all the intensity is coming from.

I really dreaded going to the session. As I told a friend, the memory of giving him the heart box was a very special one; one that I returned to in times of stress. I was terrified it would be destroyed and I would lose something very precious to me; a dynamic that echoed the abuse by my father that we had discussed many times. At this point, that dread is feeling like it was a foreshadowing. It’s taken me so long to actually write about, that the session is a bit blurry. It wasn’t all that clear to begin with since I was pretty activated throughout. There were times when BN was speaking to me that what was rising up internally all but drowned him out. So I have these powerful vignettes that stand out but am not sure I have them in the right order, so forgive me if this seems a bit confusing. On the other hand, if it is confusing, it’s doing a good job of conveying my internal states. Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, acceptance, ambivalance, anger, avoidance, boundaries, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), dependence, disorganized attachment, Emotional regulation, feelings, hate, love, needs, pain, sexual attraction, shame, transference, trauma Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,