Archive

Archive for the ‘responsibility’ Category

Freedom, A Cool Wind That Burns Your Face – Part II

June 2, 2015 7 comments

Tiny Tom:I’m frightened!
Bobby: As well you should be. Freedom is scary. It’s a blast of cool wind that
burns your face to wake you up.
– Run, Freedom, Run from Urinetown the Musical

This is part II of a series. For the first part, see Freedom, A Cool Wind That Burns Your Face – Part I.

I walked in and sat and BN opened with “so you’re having a hard time?” (We tend to get straight to it. Any chitchat is done at the end of the session when setting up my next appointment). I told BN I was really activated and he asked why. So I basically did a dump of what I described in Part I. Near the end of my spew, I was saying how I just wanted BN to reassure me but he was in full-on therapist mode (I totally get the need for detachment but sometimes it just feels horrible Smiley). He was great, he just looked straight at me and as calmly as possible said “It’s all going to be ok.” I cracked up. Then he asked me an interesting question (he’s really good at asking very hard questions which seem SO obvious once he says them, but that I would never think to ask myself.) Continue Reading

Categories: ambivalance, anger, existential crisis, expressing needs, healing, responsibility, safety, shame, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

Feeling a Little Too Much

March 10, 2015 59 comments

Disclaimer: I need to talk about how I’m feeling, but am close to certain that at least some of what I am feeling has a lot more to do with the past than what is going on here and now. Not sure I’m up to sorting it out right now. There’s hurt, and some anger floating around, but I’m not completely sure about what. I’m probably reacting to things that aren’t really happening outside of my memories. Continue Reading

Categories: ambivalance, anger, avoidance, boundaries, expressing needs, feelings, grief, healing, needs, pain, responsibility, transference, Uncategorized Tags: , , ,

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

July 19, 2014 28 comments

This is the second part of a two part series; the first part is ‘Tis the Season – Part I.

We’re discussing strategies for helping us to get through our breaks in therapy (of any length!). We left off at journaling  and the strategies are continued below. Continue Reading

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

‘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: , , , , ,

One Among Many

May 2, 2014 40 comments

Veryhopeful posted a question on the Psych Cafe forums and the more I thought about answering her, the more I realized it was an excellent topic for a post. So with her kind permission, I am repeating the question here, then attempting to answer it.

Veryhopeful said:

Does anyone find it strange that the T is so important to us but yet he has so many clients. How is it possible for them to really care or separate each persons “stuff”. I’ve asked him this because it really bothers me that I have one of “him” in my life and he has dozens of “me” in his life. We all want to feel important to them but are we really? It’s so personal for us but not for them; like they are just an illusion or some emotionless guide…But what bothers me about him is that he takes no break in between clients and I find that really odd.

Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, boundaries, earned attachment, love, responsibility, self-worth 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: , , , , , ,

Some Handy Links

August 2, 2013 23 comments

Greetings all, just a quick post to provide some useful information. 🙂 I am working on a post to talk about how I am actually doing but its slow going. Promise I’ll get there eventually. But in the meantime, I have a couple of useful things to share. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, anger, avoidance, boundaries, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), disorganized attachment, healing, perserverence, responsibility, transference, trauma Tags: , , , ,

Enraged

September 13, 2012 28 comments

I just got off the phone with my sister, who just returned from my brother’s funeral. I expected to discuss the trip, the services, the family, my mother, my sister and my brother. What I didn’t expect was a major revelation that would leave me so angry I was shaking from head to toe and using language I didn’t know I knew. Evidently, my mother called my aunt, my father’s sister, who is the only member of his family she is still in touch with, to let her know my brother had died. My aunt had also lost her eldest to cancer a number of years ago and I suppose my mother felt a certain sympathy. While they were talking, my aunt conveyed a crucial piece of information 55 years too late to do any good. Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, pain, power, responsibility, trauma

Feelings can be irrational: Example #637

April 21, 2012 9 comments

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

Categories: acceptance, attachment styles, boundaries, Boundary Ninja, dependence, disassociation, disorganized attachment, Emotional regulation, love, needs, pain, responsibility, transference 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: , , , , , ,