Archive
Existential Freefall – Part I
I was going to name this post “Existential Freefall or What I’ve Been Trying to Remember for 20 years (Well, 50 Really)” but that seemed a bit unwieldy, even for me, so I went with the shorter version. 🙂 I had a major breakthrough in my session last Friday, so much so I think I will be processing it for quite a while. I was finally able to remember something that I have been trying to bring into consciousness for over twenty years. Now that I’ve remembered it, I get why it took me so long. I’m going to try and explain both the memory and my process of getting there, but think I want to say up front that this memory is from such a young age, that it’s really about remembering the feelings at a time when I didn’t have the cognitive abilities to describe what I was feeling. Not to mention that trauma can send anyone of any age back to a per-verbal state. So anything I say is in essence a translation from my child self to my adult self. Words feel inadequate to describe the intensity of the feelings. And the feelings are continuing to unfold, I have been feeling sadness, and relief, and grief, and joy, and gratitude, (so much gratitude!) and weariness … you name it, it seems to be rolling through my system. But the key word here is “through.” I’m alive, all of these feelings mean I’m alive. I’ll take it. Continue Reading
Deprivation in Therapy
Dr. Jeffrey Smith has hit another one out of the park on his blog Moments of Change. He recently put up an excellent post that discusses what a therapist does and does not provide for a client in therapy and how you deal with the pain of the deprivations and why deprivation is sometimes necessary. This has been a big theme in my healing and I think he does an excellent job explaining what is a very complex issue. If you have ever struggled with what you cannot have from your therapist (Lord knows, I have!) go read this article: Healing a Damaged Self.
How do you protect yourself from the hurt?
***UPDATE AT END OF POST
Greetings all, sorry I know I have been completely absent as of late. I am still working 10-12 hours a day, six days a week. Should be done in about two weeks which will be nice as I am missing having a life. But I am also very much struggling with being hurt and thought writing might help, so I am going to sneak in a post despite my schedule.
What I missed
Since I’ve been on the topic of how we work through our grief for that which we did not have, I thought I would share some particulars losses I ran into and what was underneath them. As I’ve worked my way through therapy and uncovered the feelings I had buried so long, I also uncovered losses I had not been able to admit, let alone grieve. This is a very personal list. I expect that some of this will resonate with other people and some of it will be not true for them or seem like a significant loss. These are mine, what I needed to mourn, and I again offer the disclaimer that not everyone will need to do this the way I did. But I am hoping by being more specific about some of the issues I faced, that the process might be more understandable, even if my reasons to mourn do not resonate with you. Continue Reading
Tales of a Boundary Ninja 
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