safety | Tales of a Boundary Ninja

Emerging from the drug haze

December 8, 2012 Attachment Girl 21 comments

Trigger warning: Suicidal thoughts

Greetings, gentle readers, I have missed you. I am sorry for the long silence. My doctor, in what turned out to be a VERY frustrating experience, as part of the treatment for my back/hand numbness problem put me on a drug (which shall remain nameless as I know not everyone reacts the same to this class of drugs and I don’t want to prejudice anyone against it since they might not have the same experience) which had very bad side effects which took some time to figure out. And yes, as usual, the Boundary Ninja was a huge help. Turns out that a therapist who has a deep interest in neurobiology can be a lifesaver. 🙂 Continue Reading

Categories: feelings, healing, medications, pain, safety, shame, suicidal thoughts Tags: medication, pain

Memorable Quotes

October 3, 2012 Attachment Girl 16 comments

Had another very intense session with BN today who remains, thank heaven, completely unflappable. I’m starting to feel this insane impulse to just keep stepping up my behavior to find the breaking point; then I realize, I just don’t know where I would go. 🙂 Life just keeps throwing curve balls recently, and I guess I can take some comfort in the fact that I seem to react consistently, with shame. I joke, but I have been very triggered as of late, so that many feelings from when I am young have surfaced. I have recently experienced some difficulties that when viewed through an adult lens, I can clearly see are not my fault and even have nothing to do with me. I’m just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, Boundary Ninja, earned attachment, Emotional regulation, encouragement, hope, love, safety, termination Tags: encouragment, grief, pain, shame, therapeutic relationship

Sitting

September 30, 2012 Attachment Girl 13 comments

Greetings Gentle Readers,

I know I have been quiet as of late. News of both my brother’s death and my aunt’s revelations have knocked me off-balance and sent me back into my past in a way that has not happened for a long time. My work schedule has been quite busy, as well as my husband’s, so on top of the emotional stress, there has just not been a lot of free time, but I saw BN Thursday morning and wanted to post an update. I’ve been working on this post for so long that the last sentence originally said “I saw BN this morning.” I am somehow….gagged. As if attempting to voice what I feel inside is so impossible, that words fail and I simply turn away, again and again. So I am going to just finish this post and put it up no matter how it sounds to me, just so that I might speak. So if I sound strange or somehow not like myself, that is probably what you are hearing. Continue Reading

Working Through

September 22, 2012 Attachment Girl 6 comments

Greetings Gentle Readers,

First, may I say thank you so much for all the encouragement and support from everyone? Knowing I am not alone, knowing that there are safe people, that there are people I can trust now, has been a bulwark against the myriad of memories being dredged up. I have so appreciated all of you who have come alongside of me with your care, concern and kind words, it has helped so very much. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), feelings, healing, love, pain, perserverence, safety, trauma Tags: grief, pain, poetry, trauma victims, unexpected shock

Keeping Our Hearts Safe

July 14, 2012 Attachment Girl 13 comments

This is a favorite quote of mine from CS Lewis, one of my favorite authors. Most people know him as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia, but he was a leading Christian intellectual of the 20th century with a number of excellent books on and in defense of the Christian faith. I am a very big fan of The Four Loves and the Great Divorce, although anything he has written is worth your time. He also has a wonderful adult novel based on the myth of Psyche called ‘Til We Have Faces, that I return to again and again.

The reason I love this quote is that it is a reminder that life and living will sometimes involve pain, but the price of not experiencing that pain is too high to pay. Besides, I tried it for a number of years and it really didn’t work out. This quote provides me with the necessary courage to risk that hurt in order to live more fully. I hope it can help you as well.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to risk of tragedy, is damnation.

The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

Categories: acceptance, commitment, encouragement, feelings, hope, love, pain, perserverence, safety Tags: love, pain, risk

The Beginning Part II

June 30, 2012 Attachment Girl 15 comments

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

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, attachment theory, boundaries, dependence, disorganized attachment, healing, hope, needs, perserverence, safety, sexual attraction, transference Tags: boundaries, erotic transference, sexual desire, therapeutic relationship, unfulfilled needs

Vacation and a very tired squirrel

May 30, 2012 Attachment Girl 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

Bookends

April 24, 2012 Attachment Girl 10 comments

I saw BN today. The day did not start well. I was holding down a lot of terror because despite knowing better, there was a deep feeling of dread about what I would find when I walked into his office. I knew I was overreacting by being convinced that the relationship was beyond repair, but try telling that to my hamster amygdala. Which is also deaf, I believe. 🙂 And as if the terror was not enough on its own, I woke to a continuation of a difficult situation with which I have been dealing. I do not mean to be coy, dear readers, but this particular problem involves not just my privacy, which I have every right to set aside if I wish to, but also other parties for whom I cannot make that decision. So if I sound a little vague at points, you’re not imagining it.

So I drove to BN’s office in a very focused manner, as when I am feeling this scared about an upcoming session, I have this habit of overlooking a necessary highway change, the correction of which can be quite costly in terms of time. I was running a little late because I had stopped for a cup of coffee at what seemed to be the most popular drive through for a 50 mile radius judging by the line of cars. But I had been so nervous, I hadn’t really slept all that well the night before and we were out of caffeinated coffee at home. I was not going into the lion’s den unfortified, or even worse, unconscious. 🙂 So when I arrived, I headed upstairs as quickly as possible and settled in the waiting room. Continue Reading

Categories: abandonment, ambivalance, boundaries, healing, love, needs, pain, safety, self-worth, transference, trauma Tags: boundaries, detachment, needs, responsibility, secure attachment, unfulfilled needs

Learning developmental skills: Identifying and Expressing needs

April 16, 2012 Attachment Girl 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

Love is the Answer Addendum

March 20, 2012 Attachment Girl 5 comments

I woke up this morning after staying up late last night to finish the Love is the Answer post. Writing the post took me back through the feelings evoked and I woke up feeling drained and sad. Even as I finished the post, something felt a little “off.” In thinking through what was going on this morning, I realized that what I said in the post and the conclusions I came to are the truth as I see it. I meant everything I wrote, but sometimes when trying to distill the meaning from the confusion of experience, things get missed or overlooked in order for the arc of writing to follow a true path, so that the truth you are groping after can be expressed.

It is important to me that I am honest with you, dear readers. I have spent too much of my life not being honest and had to work too hard to learn how, to not exercise it now. And the last thing I would want to do is add to anyone’s burden by making them wonder why they are struggling so hard when someone else, dealing with the same issues, seems so “clear” about what is going on. Please don’t ever think that. My journey has been long and messy, it has wandered and circled, there have been blind spots, and cul de sacs, nuclear powered defense mechanisms, and lovingly nurtured periods of denial. Continue Reading

Categories: acceptance, ambivalance, feelings, safety

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