Guest guest Posted June 5, 2009 Report Share Posted June 5, 2009 2, it sounds like a good therapy session! Good for you for taking care of yourself. I had never heard of EMRD or EFT before, but now I'd like to learn more (I did a google search, they both sound interesting). I wish you lots of luck & like you said, greener pastures :-) Justi > > > Today I saw my counselor and read to her 7 typed pages of nada's bizarro > behaviors towards me thru the years and 3 typed pages of fada's. It was the > first time I've ever shared all of the history with a professional and I > wanted her to fully comprehend the big ugly picture. > > She told me afterwards that I have 2 choices...to continue carrying around > the anger, in which case it will eat me alive; or to make peace with it and > move forward...which was my full intention in the first place. She said no > matter what has been said and done to me, I need to get to the place where I > can say " they are who they are " and I should not take any of their offenses > personally, as nada and fada had these behavior patterns locked into place > long before I entered the world. Here's an interesting tidbit...She said > anytime there is " Conditional Love " there is a personality disorder present. > > She recommended I go LC instead of NC, her thoughts are that if I were to go > NC, I'd just have to deal with other messiness after they've passed away. I > have no experience on this one way or the other, so I'm not passing any > judgments here, I'm just repeating what was told to me. Personally, I think > I'd prefer NC as it sounds much easier than having to deal with nada and > fada even infrequently...not to mention that every time I even think about > seeing them, my eye starts twitching involuntarily. > > I told counselor that ever since I set one simple little boundary, they've > pouted and given me the cold shoulder. Fada talked to me once over the > phone, to invite us to dinner but we already had plans. Nada has not called > me in 2 months nor have I called her either. (Its been nice!) > > I expressed how I am very fearful of nada and don't know how to deal with > her...that I become paralyzed with fear when she acts out. She said we'll > start to explore my fears and take them to the worst case scenario to see > them for that they are and figure out how to deal with them. > > I asked if she thought EMDR would help me, as my cousin has that done. She > said she has a man in their practice who does EFT? and hypnosis. EFT is > something he does with accupuncture. Anyone ever have any experience trying > to minimize your nada reactions using EFT or hypnosis? > > She also agreed when I said my bpd dil pushes all my nada buttons, which is > why I've had such overwhelming anxiety about being around dil too. > > I sure hope there are greener pastures on the other side of the fence...this > side is barren and rancid. > > 2 > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 5, 2009 Report Share Posted June 5, 2009 Jackie, I'm so sorry about your dog :-( My thoughts are with you. Justi > > > Hi 2 !! > > I'm just getting back to the lists again. My dog ( the one with bone > cancer) died last week and it's really been tough...as for your questions.. > >>Fear of ongoing endless criticism, disapproval, condescending attitudes and >>negativity at every >opportunity > > this is HER problem, not mine...if she's unhappy with what I'm doing, she > can stuff a sock in it, as long as I and hybby are happy, thats all that > matters..of course I don't LIKE to have these things hurled at me, but I'm > no longer afraid because 1) I KNOW she's going to do it and 2) who the > * & & ^% does she think she is to judge me any how ? it's just her opinion, > and she's wrong :-) > >>Fear of public humiliation > > this one I still have a little bit...the times she's done this, when I've > looked back at what was done/said, SHE'S the one who looked bad, not me...so > my fear is lessened because others will wonder whats wrong with HER > >>Fear of feeling trapped > > I used to have this...no longer..she can't " do " anything to me any more..she > cant hit me, because if she does, I'll smack her back, and since she's a > decrepid old almost 85 year old and I'm a weight lifting 50 year old..I'd > say *I* actually have the upper hand now !! > >>Fear of shutting down during verbal and emotional abuse like a deer in the >>headlights > > I have been working on this.. and with the phone, I would just hand up, but > if I'm in a room with them and it happens, I would hope my scenarios that > I've gone over in my head would be there to help me out.. > >>Fear that my mother will turn my children against me with info I've given >>her > > I only have step kids, so this isn't a problem > >>Fear of false accusations > > I used to fear this..and I wonder what she's told my aunts uncles, > cousins..but then I thought, 1) if they really wondered, they could ask me > and 2) if they're ready to take her word for it, and everyone knows theres > always at least two sides to everything..then they really aren't the people > I thought they were and I'm better without them > >>Fear of being told I'm ungrateful or have taken advantage of them because >>when they have given there >were strings attached and I never played >>according to their rules. > > I got this all the time..and I turned it around to make THEM the ungrateful > ones who took advantage of me ( two can play that game !!) I have droped > everything and gone up there, 400+ miles away when nada had surgery, when > fada had surgery, when nada had chemo, when they needed help with the house > ( hubby and I painted their house for them 2 times) we took them a load of > firewood...so, who's the ungrateful ones ?? > > Jackie > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 5, 2009 Report Share Posted June 5, 2009 I don't think it is odd at all. Heidi Subject: Re: Re: Today at Counseling To: WTOAdultChildren1 Date: Friday, June 5, 2009, 2:39 PM thanks, She was very special and I miss her terribly...how odd, huh ? when nada passes ( IF she ever does) I wont miss her one bit, and I wont cry, but I've cried so much over ( and other dogs before her) my Chee's death... Jackie I'm so sorry, Jackie. She sounds like a once in a lifetime dog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 5, 2009 Report Share Posted June 5, 2009 Jackie, As you said, our pets become closer to us than some people in our family. We live with them, have a give and take relationship with them, and of course we grieve their loss when they pass on. Pets fill a void in our lives, especially I think that's true of KOs because the parents were unavailable. I think that's why it was so horrendous for me as a child ever time they gave away whatever dog I was attached to. You have many good memories with Chee and were blessed to have such a loyal and faithful friend. > > thanks, She was very special and I miss her terribly...how odd, huh ? when > nada passes ( IF she ever does) I wont miss her one bit, and I wont cry, but > I've cried so much over ( and other dogs before her) my Chee's death... > > Jackie > > > > > I'm so sorry, Jackie. She sounds like a once in a lifetime dog. > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 5, 2009 Report Share Posted June 5, 2009 I'm so sorry about your dog. I've lost pets and it is so hard. They are so loving and good. > > Hi 2 !! > > I'm just getting back to the lists again. My dog ( the one with bone > cancer) died last week and it's really been tough...as for your questions.. > > >Fear of ongoing endless criticism, disapproval, condescending attitudes and > >negativity at every >opportunity > > this is HER problem, not mine...if she's unhappy with what I'm doing, she > can stuff a sock in it, as long as I and hybby are happy, thats all that > matters..of course I don't LIKE to have these things hurled at me, but I'm > no longer afraid because 1) I KNOW she's going to do it and 2) who the > * & & ^% does she think she is to judge me any how ? it's just her opinion, > and she's wrong :-) > > >Fear of public humiliation > > this one I still have a little bit...the times she's done this, when I've > looked back at what was done/said, SHE'S the one who looked bad, not me...so > my fear is lessened because others will wonder whats wrong with HER > > >Fear of feeling trapped > > I used to have this...no longer..she can't " do " anything to me any more..she > cant hit me, because if she does, I'll smack her back, and since she's a > decrepid old almost 85 year old and I'm a weight lifting 50 year old..I'd > say *I* actually have the upper hand now !! > > >Fear of shutting down during verbal and emotional abuse like a deer in the > >headlights > > I have been working on this.. and with the phone, I would just hand up, but > if I'm in a room with them and it happens, I would hope my scenarios that > I've gone over in my head would be there to help me out.. > > >Fear that my mother will turn my children against me with info I've given > >her > > I only have step kids, so this isn't a problem > > >Fear of false accusations > > I used to fear this..and I wonder what she's told my aunts uncles, > cousins..but then I thought, 1) if they really wondered, they could ask me > and 2) if they're ready to take her word for it, and everyone knows theres > always at least two sides to everything..then they really aren't the people > I thought they were and I'm better without them > > >Fear of being told I'm ungrateful or have taken advantage of them because > >when they have given there >were strings attached and I never played > >according to their rules. > > I got this all the time..and I turned it around to make THEM the ungrateful > ones who took advantage of me ( two can play that game !!) I have droped > everything and gone up there, 400+ miles away when nada had surgery, when > fada had surgery, when nada had chemo, when they needed help with the house > ( hubby and I painted their house for them 2 times) we took them a load of > firewood...so, who's the ungrateful ones ?? > > Jackie > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 5, 2009 Report Share Posted June 5, 2009 that is sooooo bizarre about the card. i feel uncomfortable just reading that! it must have been weird reading that. that's really sad. > > hm...my therapist did...after I showed her the bizarre valentinesday card to > my therapist, which had someone else's name on it " Dear Pat " which nada put > a line through then just put " Jackie " , no dear , then the end she put " love > Ray and Audrey " when she put a line through and put " mom and dad " again, no > love...and nadas note saying she was going to send the card to my cousin, > but then realized it said and son in law, and since I was the only one > married, I was the only one she could send it to....along with all the other > weird stuff nada has done to me....my therapist said she totally understands > why I feel the way I do, and that she agrees, nada is BPD, then she added > probably NP and a mean bully as well. My therapist is a dr too ( > psychologist)...my therapist specializes in personality disorders... > > Jackie > > > > With all the counselor did say, I was disappointed at what she did NOT say. > She did not validate any of my feelings nor did she say wow, nada is bizarro > and this is what's wrong with her. > > She asked me how long it took to write down all my things and I told her it > took a few days, I wrote things down as they came to mind. When I asked her > why, she said that my list was detailed and expressive. I think back on > this today and am beginning to wonder if she doubted that I was telling her > the truth. Part of me would like to ask her next visit if she actually > BELIEVES me...because if not, I don't really see any point in continuing to > see her. > > Has anyone else ever got this reaction from a therapist? > > Also, part of me thinks that I need to learn to validate MYSELF instead of > looking for others to do it for me. But isn't that what a therapist should > be doing? > > Confused. > 2 > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 thanks, , my nada gave away 2 dogs and tried a third when I was a kid, I think just to upset me. I can't count how many times she'd yell at me and accuse me of loving the dog more than her. Well DUH !! the dogs always were kind gentle, and comforted me when I needed it...where was she ?? the dogs never judged me, and no matter what I did or didn't do, they still loved me...not true of her, so of course I loved the dogs more !! They gave unconditional love, and she did not ! and yes, I really was blessed to have Chee...she was extremely loyal !! Jackie Jackie, As you said, our pets become closer to us than some people in our family. We live with them, have a give and take relationship with them, and of course we grieve their loss when they pass on. Pets fill a void in our lives, especially I think that's true of KOs because the parents were unavailable. I think that's why it was so horrendous for me as a child ever time they gave away whatever dog I was attached to. You have many good memories with Chee and were blessed to have such a loyal and faithful friend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 thanks, it IS hard loosing them Jackie I'm so sorry about your dog. I've lost pets and it is so hard. They are so loving and good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 2,  I was reflecting again on your original post, and I was thinking that you don't have only 2 choices. There is a third choice, which I think is the better choice, and that is to act.  There is some anger that is from the past that has simply entered a kind of petrified state because we were being harmed and felt helpless to do anything about and there was no way to express or to act on our anger to protect ourselves when the event was occuring and so the feeling simply got preserved inside of us. That, I think, can only be expressed now and released. Not much else can be done.  But I think there is also anger many of us feel about past events because it continues to happen and we continue to feel helpless in those situations. I have found that when you begin to be able to act to protect yourself and to prevent or to stop yourself from being harmed, then anger about past events begins to diminish.  Anger is partly a message to act and that we are in danger, and I think sometimes the anger hangs around because it continues to be the truth: we are in danger and we do need to act to protect ourselves.  Our innermost selves will sometimes keep sending that message repeatedly because it believes we need to hear it. Once we begin to be able to respond to that message in effective ways, we sometimes stop receiving it because it no longer needs to be heard.  Best, Ashana Own a website.Get an unlimited package.Pay next to nothing.*Go to http://in.business.yahoo.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 Ashana, Thanks for writing me back on this. This morning I also was doing some reflecting and I feel like I've never accepted my parents as they are because I've never grieved my childhood and never TRULY wanted to face the truth that my parents were not nurturing and loving to me. I know the stages of grief are: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. To reach acceptance, one must move forward but I seem to keep getting stuck at anger and once I start feeling it, I revert back into denial instead of facing the truth. When a person gets stuck at a stage, they never reach acceptance. So you are right, I have a trouble dealing with my anger, I don't speak up to nada because she terrifies me. Instead I shut down. When I was a child, I would try to defend myself verbally but of course never received any validation. My only payoff was that I succeeded in making nada angry and giving myself a small sense of power for having done so. As a teen, I got angry, mouthy and rebellious, but in the long run I only hurt myself by my actions. As an adult, I moved towards becoming empathetic of what nada and fada's lives might have looked like, causing me to justify their behavior and make excuses for it. Bottom line, I'm stuck and have never moved thru the anger stage because I don't know how to deal with my anger towards them. Or maybe I just became to afraid of facing the truth, so it was easier to revert back into denial. Only thru talking within this group and to my nada's sister, has anyone ever validated me and understood what I've been thru. My questions are these: What actions am I suppose to take and what does that look like? How does one ACT when confronted with repeated abuse? Someone once told me, perhaps you or Annie, that I possess no type of " shock response " that normal people do...where they would say " How dare you treat me this way! " Its true, I don't have that and I have no idea how to get it. I've had no healthy role model for this and I am truly clueless. Not only that, but I don't even have the internal radar to see the abuse coming, it broadsides me every time. Its like bpd's sense the minute I've let my guard down and then WHAM, they slap me upside the head out of the clear blue and I never see it coming. Fada told me a few years ago that I never could sense it coming when nada was about to attack. (Gee Dad, thanks for teaching me the warning signs!) This happens to me not only with nada, but my npd/bpd dil does this too. How does one even build in that internal radar or recognize when thye're about to blow? I am so clueless. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 Hi K2, That was me who had posted much earlier about the " How DARE you say/do that to me?! " reaction being missing in some of us. Its hard to think what to do and not panic or not dissociate when you suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself in a crisis situation. Maybe the solution is to get your therapist to help you learn how to protect yourself when your nada attacks you. Sort of like combat training, or emergency-preparedness training, or first-aid training or martial arts training; these disciplines are designed to help an individual survive an unexpected attack or disaster and react appropriately *despite* panic, confusion, chaos and zoning out/freezing up. Maybe get your therapist to do some role-playing with you in which you take turns being nada attacking you: you work through various scenarios until you can feel more in charge of/in control of the situation. Like in martial arts, when the sensei attacks the pupil from behind, and the pupil has practiced that scenario so much that they don't even have to think about what to to, their body instantly reacts, flips the attacker over their shoulder and throws the attacker to the ground. Maybe a combination of psychotherapy AND martial arts classes, to get both your mind and your body conditioned to react appropriately to attack would be helpful. -Annie > How does one ACT when confronted with repeated abuse? Someone once told me, perhaps you or Annie, that I possess no type of " shock response " that normal people do...where they would say " How dare you treat me this way! " Its true, I don't have that and I have no idea how to get it. I've had no healthy role model for this and I am truly clueless. > > Not only that, but I don't even have the internal radar to see the abuse coming, it broadsides me every time. Its like bpd's sense the minute I've let my guard down and then WHAM, they slap me upside the head out of the clear blue and I never see it coming. Fada told me a few years ago that I never could sense it coming when nada was about to attack. (Gee Dad, thanks for teaching me the warning signs!) > This happens to me not only with nada, but my npd/bpd dil does this too. > > How does one even build in that internal radar or recognize when thye're about to blow? I am so clueless. > > 2 > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 >That was me who had posted much earlier about the " How DARE you say/do that >to me?! " reaction >being missing in some of us. and it's missing because we were taught at a VERY young age that we are NOT allowed to challenge nada, and she has the right to do anything she wants to us... >Maybe a combination of psychotherapy AND martial arts classes, to get both >your mind and your body >conditioned to react appropriately to attack would >be helpful. LOL thats a good one :-) Jackie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 2,  I apologize that this will most likely be long. You've asked a lot of questions and given me a lot to think about that I think is very important.  First of all, often what you describe when you talk about your parents and how you react to them seems very much like a trauma response to me. It seems the way one would act if you've lived through a devastating hurricane and saw another one coming or if you lived in the middle of a war.  It's very understandable that you continue to freeze up around your parents. The " freeze " response is an adaptive one and is inborn--it keeps you alive when you are faced with something or someone more powerful than you from whom there is no ready way of escape. In that situation, flight would get you killed. Fight would get you killed. The only possible responsible that might keep you alive is to do nothing and hope that the threat simply goes away on its own. In an earthquake, the freeze response is the one most likely to improve your chance of survival. It is the most adaptive response to a bear. There are very real situations in which freezing is the best possible response.  When you were a child, your parents were bigger and stronger than you and there was no possible way to escape them. When nada attacked, the only thing that probably seemed to help in minimizing her assault on you was to do nothing and to try to make yourself very small and unthreatening. It would have seemed just as frightening to you whether the abuse was physical or only emotional. An assault on your identity is just as devastating as one on your life.  It is no surprise that freezing is what you continue to do when you are faced with their abuse. I grew up during a time when there was very frequent earthquake activity where I lived and to expect you to suddenly do something different around your parents is a little like expecting me to suddenly start running out of the building in an earthquake instead of looking around for a place where nothing is going to fall on me until the shaking stops. I do what I was trained to do. So do you. All of that is to say I encourage you to look at your automatic response with a degree of kindness and understanding--even admiration--even if you also know it is time to change that response.  I think there are three basic elements to trauma responses that need to be healed in order to move beyond the trauma: one is the feelings that were generated at the time, because they could not be felt or integrated during the trauma itself--the focus at that point needed to be on survival. The unprocessed feelings continue to intrude into your life until they are experienced and integrated. The second aspect is the sense of a tear in your way of understanding the world. The things that happened to you are very difficult to integrate into a view of the world that also makes life and predictable to you. At the time, you most likely simply sealed off your knowledge of what was occuring in order to maintain a world view that made it seem possible to predict what might happen to you and to have some degree of control in your life--because it is really impossible to function if you don't have that. But this doesn't work in the long term. You somehow have to construct a way of understanding the world that allows you to feel that basically you know how life functions and it is not essentially unpredictable or dangerous and yet you also know that it is possible for terrible things to happen to people. It isn't easy to do this, but I think it has to be done, and you also won't come up with the same way of understanding the world that someone else in the same situation might come up with. Your way of integrating the trauma into a sense of how life works will be your own--you can't borrow mine or anyone else's. The last part of trauma that I think has to be dealt with is the profound sense of helplessness that it creates. At the time it occurred you were profoundly helpless, and that experience takes an enormous bite out of your sense that you have control over events and over your life.  I think all of these need to be addressed, but that if you deal with any one part of it, things get better. You can start with whatever part you want to, and there will be progress.  You mentioned the feeling that you were always broadsided and that you continue to be. ly, I find it hard to believe that you don't have some kind of radar for this. There are patterns to most people's behavior--even bpds--and it is hard for me to believe you could grow up with regular abuse and not ever develop some sense of what the danger signs were. What I tend to think, instead, is that maybe you learned to supress and ignore your response to those signs as a way of avoiding the fear they generated for you. I think the thing to do to give you back a sense of control--so that you aren't broadsided--is to just generally check-in with yourself a lot. How do I feel? What are my emotions? How does my body feel? I don't just mean when you are dealing with nada, but all of the time, because I know for myself, I learned to ignore a lot of how I felt both physically and emotionally because it was just so hard to live with it. I couldn't go around feeling the terror I really was in all of the time, and I learned simply to supress it--and when I suppressed certain feelings I kind of had to suppress all of them. As you get better at knowing how you feel generally, you may start to notice things--like maybe when nada gets this certain tone (and I think all nadas always have a tone they get when they are just about to rip you to shreds), you start to get tight in the shoulders or maybe the hair on your neck prickles and you'll know that's how to see it coming.  You asked how to act with someone who abuses you. I guess I have to answer that you do whatever works. I'm a very visual person and I have to kind of run a movie in my head to know how a particular action will pan out. I literally have to picture myself doing it, and the other person responding, and then my response to that and I have to do that with all of the actions I'm weighing for me to really know what will help or what will work. I don't know how you will know what might work. You may just have to try things. The point, though, is to give up control over the abuse and simply focus on protecting yourself. In other words, I measure success against how I feel afterwards and not whether it changes the other person's actions--while, at the same time, knowing that standing up to an abusive person will terrify me to no end when I am doing it.  You mention you get stuck at anger and go back into denial. I wonder if something very bad happened to you either regularly or on a single significant occasion because you got angry and if it makes you afraid to be angry now. It's just a thought. It may be useful to go back in your mind and think about how you felt and what happened when you were angry as a kid. I've been more aware at a deeper level of exactly how much terror I lived in continually as a child and it's a lot more than I ever realized--the extent of it really kind of stuns me--but for some reason I've felt a lot better since I started to think about it and remember it.  Finally, I wasn't the one who said you have no " shock response. "  I don't really have one either. I don't think it's really necessary to have one. What you are talking about is really indignation and it implies a basic assumption that you deserve to be treated a certain way and that people will treat you the way you deserve and that way of thinking just does not make very much sense to me.  The way people treat me very often has very little to do with me at all and almost nothing to do with my worth. It often has something to do with me, but generally it has even more to do with them and what they feel or believe in that particular moment.  Not having a sense of indignation doesn't mean I allow myself to be abused, because I do have a sense that failing to treat others with dignity and respect is a kind of violence, and that violence is morally wrong and it is morally wrong to allow it. I often cannot stop or prevent violence against myself or against others, but I don't have to allow it.  So, I don't have any sense of, " How dare you treat me that way! " because I turn on the news and I see how human beings often treat one another. A man was shot a block away from our high school yesterday. When individuals kill others for almost no reason at all it makes no sense to me to be surprised that someone might belittle me or think badly of me from time to time. However, I do have a strong sense that I will not be treated a certain way.  I won't allow myself to be harmed anymore than I would allow the gunman who fled onto our campus afterward to come into my classroom and harm my students.  I think whatever way you have of understanding that you are worth protecting and acting on that feeling is fine.  Best, Ashana Own a website.Get an unlimited package.Pay next to nothing.*Go to http://in.business.yahoo.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 I like what you said here. I think it's spot on, and I think this has been key for me in healing. When I was in therapy years ago (with a therapist I clicked with, who actually recommended going NC with my mother), it was amazing the ripple effect this had in other areas of my life. It seemed *impossible* to say no to my mom up until a few years ago. Once I learned to say no to her, it started getting easier in other areas of my life. It was scary and made me shaky at first, but then I realized how simple it was. (And yet, not so simple at all, as we all know.) Now when I sense myself feeling like someone is taking advantage of me, I have an easier time just saying no, or saying, " Let me think about that, and I'll get back to you. " (I hope that helps someone out there... If it feels uncomfortable to say no to a pushy person on the spot, remember that you can always ask for some time to think about it. Then you can muster up your strength to decline the request, and you can also do it in a way that feels comfortable to you.) p.s. Congrats on the compliment you heard from your students this past week. That must've felt great! ~Saturday Ashana wrote: " ...But I think there is also anger many of us feel about past events because it continues to happen and we continue to feel helpless in those situations. I have found that when you begin to be able to act to protect yourself and to prevent or to stop yourself from being harmed, then anger about past events begins to diminish... " ~Saturday _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_St\ orage_062009 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 Ashana, You've helped me realize some things about myself and given me much food for thought between now and my next counseling appt. Thank you so much for taking time to write all this to me. 2 > > > 2, >  > I apologize that this will most likely be long. You've asked a lot of questions and given me a lot to think about that I think is very important. >  > First of all, often what you describe when you talk about your parents and how you react to them seems very much like a trauma response to me. It seems the way one would act if you've lived through a devastating hurricane and saw another one coming or if you lived in the middle of a war. >  > It's very understandable that you continue to freeze up around your parents. The " freeze " response is an adaptive one and is inborn--it keeps you alive when you are faced with something or someone more powerful than you from whom there is no ready way of escape. In that situation, flight would get you killed. Fight would get you killed. The only possible responsible that might keep you alive is to do nothing and hope that the threat simply goes away on its own. In an earthquake, the freeze response is the one most likely to improve your chance of survival. It is the most adaptive response to a bear. There are very real situations in which freezing is the best possible response. >  > When you were a child, your parents were bigger and stronger than you and there was no possible way to escape them. When nada attacked, the only thing that probably seemed to help in minimizing her assault on you was to do nothing and to try to make yourself very small and unthreatening. It would have seemed just as frightening to you whether the abuse was physical or only emotional. An assault on your identity is just as devastating as one on your life. >  > It is no surprise that freezing is what you continue to do when you are faced with their abuse. I grew up during a time when there was very frequent earthquake activity where I lived and to expect you to suddenly do something different around your parents is a little like expecting me to suddenly start running out of the building in an earthquake instead of looking around for a place where nothing is going to fall on me until the shaking stops. I do what I was trained to do. So do you. All of that is to say I encourage you to look at your automatic response with a degree of kindness and understanding--even admiration--even if you also know it is time to change that response. >  > I think there are three basic elements to trauma responses that need to be healed in order to move beyond the trauma: one is the feelings that were generated at the time, because they could not be felt or integrated during the trauma itself--the focus at that point needed to be on survival. The unprocessed feelings continue to intrude into your life until they are experienced and integrated. The second aspect is the sense of a tear in your way of understanding the world. The things that happened to you are very difficult to integrate into a view of the world that also makes life and predictable to you. At the time, you most likely simply sealed off your knowledge of what was occuring in order to maintain a world view that made it seem possible to predict what might happen to you and to have some degree of control in your life--because it is really impossible to function if you don't have that. But this doesn't work in the long term. You > somehow have to construct a way of understanding the world that allows you to feel that basically you know how life functions and it is not essentially unpredictable or dangerous and yet you also know that it is possible for terrible things to happen to people. It isn't easy to do this, but I think it has to be done, and you also won't come up with the same way of understanding the world that someone else in the same situation might come up with. Your way of integrating the trauma into a sense of how life works will be your own--you can't borrow mine or anyone else's. The last part of trauma that I think has to be dealt with is the profound sense of helplessness that it creates. At the time it occurred you were profoundly helpless, and that experience takes an enormous bite out of your sense that you have control over events and over your life. >  > I think all of these need to be addressed, but that if you deal with any one part of it, things get better. You can start with whatever part you want to, and there will be progress. >  > You mentioned the feeling that you were always broadsided and that you continue to be. ly, I find it hard to believe that you don't have some kind of radar for this. There are patterns to most people's behavior--even bpds--and it is hard for me to believe you could grow up with regular abuse and not ever develop some sense of what the danger signs were. What I tend to think, instead, is that maybe you learned to supress and ignore your response to those signs as a way of avoiding the fear they generated for you. I think the thing to do to give you back a sense of control--so that you aren't broadsided--is to just generally check-in with yourself a lot. How do I feel? What are my emotions? How does my body feel? I don't just mean when you are dealing with nada, but all of the time, because I know for myself, I learned to ignore a lot of how I felt both physically and emotionally because it was just so hard to live with it. I > couldn't go around feeling the terror I really was in all of the time, and I learned simply to supress it--and when I suppressed certain feelings I kind of had to suppress all of them. As you get better at knowing how you feel generally, you may start to notice things--like maybe when nada gets this certain tone (and I think all nadas always have a tone they get when they are just about to rip you to shreds), you start to get tight in the shoulders or maybe the hair on your neck prickles and you'll know that's how to see it coming. >  > You asked how to act with someone who abuses you. I guess I have to answer that you do whatever works. I'm a very visual person and I have to kind of run a movie in my head to know how a particular action will pan out. I literally have to picture myself doing it, and the other person responding, and then my response to that and I have to do that with all of the actions I'm weighing for me to really know what will help or what will work. I don't know how you will know what might work. You may just have to try things. The point, though, is to give up control over the abuse and simply focus on protecting yourself. In other words, I measure success against how I feel afterwards and not whether it changes the other person's actions--while, at the same time, knowing that standing up to an abusive person will terrify me to no end when I am doing it. >  > You mention you get stuck at anger and go back into denial. I wonder if something very bad happened to you either regularly or on a single significant occasion because you got angry and if it makes you afraid to be angry now. It's just a thought. It may be useful to go back in your mind and think about how you felt and what happened when you were angry as a kid. I've been more aware at a deeper level of exactly how much terror I lived in continually as a child and it's a lot more than I ever realized--the extent of it really kind of stuns me--but for some reason I've felt a lot better since I started to think about it and remember it. >  > Finally, I wasn't the one who said you have no " shock response. "  I don't really have one either. I don't think it's really necessary to have one. What you are talking about is really indignation and it implies a basic assumption that you deserve to be treated a certain way and that people will treat you the way you deserve and that way of thinking just does not make very much sense to me. >  > The way people treat me very often has very little to do with me at all and almost nothing to do with my worth. It often has something to do with me, but generally it has even more to do with them and what they feel or believe in that particular moment. >  > Not having a sense of indignation doesn't mean I allow myself to be abused, because I do have a sense that failing to treat others with dignity and respect is a kind of violence, and that violence is morally wrong and it is morally wrong to allow it. I often cannot stop or prevent violence against myself or against others, but I don't have to allow it. >  > So, I don't have any sense of, " How dare you treat me that way! " because I turn on the news and I see how human beings often treat one another. A man was shot a block away from our high school yesterday. When individuals kill others for almost no reason at all it makes no sense to me to be surprised that someone might belittle me or think badly of me from time to time. However, I do have a strong sense that I will not be treated a certain way.  I won't allow myself to be harmed anymore than I would allow the gunman who fled onto our campus afterward to come into my classroom and harm my students. >  > I think whatever way you have of understanding that you are worth protecting and acting on that feeling is fine. >  > Best, > Ashana > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Own a website.Get an unlimited package.Pay next to nothing.*Go to http://in.business.yahoo.com/ > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 Ashana, You've helped me realize some things about myself and given me much food for thought between now and my next counseling appt. Thank you so much for taking time to write all this to me. 2 > > > 2, >  > I apologize that this will most likely be long. You've asked a lot of questions and given me a lot to think about that I think is very important. >  > First of all, often what you describe when you talk about your parents and how you react to them seems very much like a trauma response to me. It seems the way one would act if you've lived through a devastating hurricane and saw another one coming or if you lived in the middle of a war. >  > It's very understandable that you continue to freeze up around your parents. The " freeze " response is an adaptive one and is inborn--it keeps you alive when you are faced with something or someone more powerful than you from whom there is no ready way of escape. In that situation, flight would get you killed. Fight would get you killed. The only possible responsible that might keep you alive is to do nothing and hope that the threat simply goes away on its own. In an earthquake, the freeze response is the one most likely to improve your chance of survival. It is the most adaptive response to a bear. There are very real situations in which freezing is the best possible response. >  > When you were a child, your parents were bigger and stronger than you and there was no possible way to escape them. When nada attacked, the only thing that probably seemed to help in minimizing her assault on you was to do nothing and to try to make yourself very small and unthreatening. It would have seemed just as frightening to you whether the abuse was physical or only emotional. An assault on your identity is just as devastating as one on your life. >  > It is no surprise that freezing is what you continue to do when you are faced with their abuse. I grew up during a time when there was very frequent earthquake activity where I lived and to expect you to suddenly do something different around your parents is a little like expecting me to suddenly start running out of the building in an earthquake instead of looking around for a place where nothing is going to fall on me until the shaking stops. I do what I was trained to do. So do you. All of that is to say I encourage you to look at your automatic response with a degree of kindness and understanding--even admiration--even if you also know it is time to change that response. >  > I think there are three basic elements to trauma responses that need to be healed in order to move beyond the trauma: one is the feelings that were generated at the time, because they could not be felt or integrated during the trauma itself--the focus at that point needed to be on survival. The unprocessed feelings continue to intrude into your life until they are experienced and integrated. The second aspect is the sense of a tear in your way of understanding the world. The things that happened to you are very difficult to integrate into a view of the world that also makes life and predictable to you. At the time, you most likely simply sealed off your knowledge of what was occuring in order to maintain a world view that made it seem possible to predict what might happen to you and to have some degree of control in your life--because it is really impossible to function if you don't have that. But this doesn't work in the long term. You > somehow have to construct a way of understanding the world that allows you to feel that basically you know how life functions and it is not essentially unpredictable or dangerous and yet you also know that it is possible for terrible things to happen to people. It isn't easy to do this, but I think it has to be done, and you also won't come up with the same way of understanding the world that someone else in the same situation might come up with. Your way of integrating the trauma into a sense of how life works will be your own--you can't borrow mine or anyone else's. The last part of trauma that I think has to be dealt with is the profound sense of helplessness that it creates. At the time it occurred you were profoundly helpless, and that experience takes an enormous bite out of your sense that you have control over events and over your life. >  > I think all of these need to be addressed, but that if you deal with any one part of it, things get better. You can start with whatever part you want to, and there will be progress. >  > You mentioned the feeling that you were always broadsided and that you continue to be. ly, I find it hard to believe that you don't have some kind of radar for this. There are patterns to most people's behavior--even bpds--and it is hard for me to believe you could grow up with regular abuse and not ever develop some sense of what the danger signs were. What I tend to think, instead, is that maybe you learned to supress and ignore your response to those signs as a way of avoiding the fear they generated for you. I think the thing to do to give you back a sense of control--so that you aren't broadsided--is to just generally check-in with yourself a lot. How do I feel? What are my emotions? How does my body feel? I don't just mean when you are dealing with nada, but all of the time, because I know for myself, I learned to ignore a lot of how I felt both physically and emotionally because it was just so hard to live with it. I > couldn't go around feeling the terror I really was in all of the time, and I learned simply to supress it--and when I suppressed certain feelings I kind of had to suppress all of them. As you get better at knowing how you feel generally, you may start to notice things--like maybe when nada gets this certain tone (and I think all nadas always have a tone they get when they are just about to rip you to shreds), you start to get tight in the shoulders or maybe the hair on your neck prickles and you'll know that's how to see it coming. >  > You asked how to act with someone who abuses you. I guess I have to answer that you do whatever works. I'm a very visual person and I have to kind of run a movie in my head to know how a particular action will pan out. I literally have to picture myself doing it, and the other person responding, and then my response to that and I have to do that with all of the actions I'm weighing for me to really know what will help or what will work. I don't know how you will know what might work. You may just have to try things. The point, though, is to give up control over the abuse and simply focus on protecting yourself. In other words, I measure success against how I feel afterwards and not whether it changes the other person's actions--while, at the same time, knowing that standing up to an abusive person will terrify me to no end when I am doing it. >  > You mention you get stuck at anger and go back into denial. I wonder if something very bad happened to you either regularly or on a single significant occasion because you got angry and if it makes you afraid to be angry now. It's just a thought. It may be useful to go back in your mind and think about how you felt and what happened when you were angry as a kid. I've been more aware at a deeper level of exactly how much terror I lived in continually as a child and it's a lot more than I ever realized--the extent of it really kind of stuns me--but for some reason I've felt a lot better since I started to think about it and remember it. >  > Finally, I wasn't the one who said you have no " shock response. "  I don't really have one either. I don't think it's really necessary to have one. What you are talking about is really indignation and it implies a basic assumption that you deserve to be treated a certain way and that people will treat you the way you deserve and that way of thinking just does not make very much sense to me. >  > The way people treat me very often has very little to do with me at all and almost nothing to do with my worth. It often has something to do with me, but generally it has even more to do with them and what they feel or believe in that particular moment. >  > Not having a sense of indignation doesn't mean I allow myself to be abused, because I do have a sense that failing to treat others with dignity and respect is a kind of violence, and that violence is morally wrong and it is morally wrong to allow it. I often cannot stop or prevent violence against myself or against others, but I don't have to allow it. >  > So, I don't have any sense of, " How dare you treat me that way! " because I turn on the news and I see how human beings often treat one another. A man was shot a block away from our high school yesterday. When individuals kill others for almost no reason at all it makes no sense to me to be surprised that someone might belittle me or think badly of me from time to time. However, I do have a strong sense that I will not be treated a certain way.  I won't allow myself to be harmed anymore than I would allow the gunman who fled onto our campus afterward to come into my classroom and harm my students. >  > I think whatever way you have of understanding that you are worth protecting and acting on that feeling is fine. >  > Best, > Ashana > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Own a website.Get an unlimited package.Pay next to nothing.*Go to http://in.business.yahoo.com/ > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 Annie, Emotional preparedness training sounds wonderful...but I don't know about the martial arts training, I might be tempted to use it on either nada or my dil...lol. 2 > > > How does one ACT when confronted with repeated abuse? Someone once told me, perhaps you or Annie, that I possess no type of " shock response " that normal people do...where they would say " How dare you treat me this way! " Its true, I don't have that and I have no idea how to get it. I've had no healthy role model for this and I am truly clueless. > > > > Not only that, but I don't even have the internal radar to see the abuse coming, it broadsides me every time. Its like bpd's sense the minute I've let my guard down and then WHAM, they slap me upside the head out of the clear blue and I never see it coming. Fada told me a few years ago that I never could sense it coming when nada was about to attack. (Gee Dad, thanks for teaching me the warning signs!) > > This happens to me not only with nada, but my npd/bpd dil does this too. > > > > How does one even build in that internal radar or recognize when thye're about to blow? I am so clueless. > > > > 2 > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 Jackie - I'm so sorry to hear about your beautiful, magnificent dog. I know you did the best you could for her. My heart hurts for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 6, 2009 Report Share Posted June 6, 2009 Lol! Um, no, I didn't mean give nada a karate chop in the neck, tempting as that is. I only meant that martial arts training teaches a person how to deal with an immediate threat instead of freezing up or dissociating or panicking. It also gives a person self-confidence. For those of us whose minds and bodies go on automatic pilot when we are around our nadas, particularly when they start in on flinging emotional abuse at us, I was just thinking that having some martial arts training might help un-train our automatic reaction to nada as though we are children and give us more ability to stay in the present, stay in the moment and deal with nada as one adult to another. So, you are right: I didn't mean being psychoanalyzed by a sensei who is also a psychiatrist, who is asking you about your childhood as he is showing you a proper heiko dachi (ready stance). Although the sensei-psychiatrist idea conveys intriguing possibilities! -Annie > > > > > How does one ACT when confronted with repeated abuse? Someone once told me, perhaps you or Annie, that I possess no type of " shock response " that normal people do...where they would say " How dare you treat me this way! " Its true, I don't have that and I have no idea how to get it. I've had no healthy role model for this and I am truly clueless. > > > > > > Not only that, but I don't even have the internal radar to see the abuse coming, it broadsides me every time. Its like bpd's sense the minute I've let my guard down and then WHAM, they slap me upside the head out of the clear blue and I never see it coming. Fada told me a few years ago that I never could sense it coming when nada was about to attack. (Gee Dad, thanks for teaching me the warning signs!) > > > This happens to me not only with nada, but my npd/bpd dil does this too. > > > > > > How does one even build in that internal radar or recognize when thye're about to blow? I am so clueless. > > > > > > 2 > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 7, 2009 Report Share Posted June 7, 2009 At 03:49 PM 06/07/2009 sarahsmom72585 wrote: >Today we were browsing a flea market and saw lots of little >signs that contained cutsy phrases about Mothers, such as: " A >mother fills the world with love. I found myself rephrasing >them in my mind...A mother (IS SUPPOSE TO) fill the world with >love...and so on. My nada used to give me that type of thing to hang on my wall, except with cutsy sayings about daughters. Once she even gave me a throw -blanket with some mother-daughter poem on it. Even thinking about these things makes me want to puke. She hasn't done anything like that lately, so I suppose I should be wary when Christmas comes around. -- Katrina Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 7, 2009 Report Share Posted June 7, 2009 Hi Katrina, I know what you mean. I recently went to a friend's house and did karaoke. One of the songs was a kid's song; and it was the A-B-C alphabet song. In the beginning, it says: Come dear mother, come and listen to me sing...and in the background on the TV, there is a cute cottage. There were no people in the picture, but I imagined kids playing and being watched over lovingly by their mothers. I felt sad and resentful. Hmm...once I gave my Nada a plaque when I was 15. It said: " Rule #1, Mother is always right. " Rule #2, if Mother is wrong, see #1. " It was meant to be cute of course because it was a gift. But looking back on it...it is very true and in the most destructive possible way. Hehe. That's the only thing with a mother-child themed thing I gave her. Back then, I though " this is how mothers are " , but now I realize how disillusioned it was. -Joy > >Today we were browsing a flea market and saw lots of little > >signs that contained cutsy phrases about Mothers, such as: " A > >mother fills the world with love. I found myself rephrasing > >them in my mind...A mother (IS SUPPOSE TO) fill the world with > >love...and so on. > > My nada used to give me that type of thing to hang on my wall, > except with cutsy sayings about daughters. Once she even gave me > a throw -blanket with some mother-daughter poem on it. Even > thinking about these things makes me want to puke. She hasn't > done anything like that lately, so I suppose I should be wary > when Christmas comes around. > > -- > Katrina > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 7, 2009 Report Share Posted June 7, 2009 Hi Katrina, I know what you mean. I recently went to a friend's house and did karaoke. One of the songs was a kid's song; and it was the A-B-C alphabet song. In the beginning, it says: Come dear mother, come and listen to me sing...and in the background on the TV, there is a cute cottage. There were no people in the picture, but I imagined kids playing and being watched over lovingly by their mothers. I felt sad and resentful. Hmm...once I gave my Nada a plaque when I was 15. It said: " Rule #1, Mother is always right. " Rule #2, if Mother is wrong, see #1. " It was meant to be cute of course because it was a gift. But looking back on it...it is very true and in the most destructive possible way. Hehe. That's the only thing with a mother-child themed thing I gave her. Back then, I though " this is how mothers are " , but now I realize how disillusioned it was. -Joy > >Today we were browsing a flea market and saw lots of little > >signs that contained cutsy phrases about Mothers, such as: " A > >mother fills the world with love. I found myself rephrasing > >them in my mind...A mother (IS SUPPOSE TO) fill the world with > >love...and so on. > > My nada used to give me that type of thing to hang on my wall, > except with cutsy sayings about daughters. Once she even gave me > a throw -blanket with some mother-daughter poem on it. Even > thinking about these things makes me want to puke. She hasn't > done anything like that lately, so I suppose I should be wary > when Christmas comes around. > > -- > Katrina > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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