Out of the Mire

Empathy vs. Sympathy

Posted on February 22, 2016 by MJ

I’ve written about Brené Brown before. Her PhD and research are focused on shame. In one of her books, she identified herself as a ‘shame researcher’. I find this fascinating. Shame is part of the human experience as is its cousin, humiliation, and its brother, guilt. It takes a lot of insight to parse out our internal experiences when it comes to these three emotional experiences, doesn’t it? If shame is a full-contact emotion, then I would say that humiliation and guilt are as well. I feel physically sick when I feel guilty, and my entire body feels on fire when I feel humiliated. What are the differences between these emotions, and what are their antidotes? And, why is it so hard to overcome something like a shaming experience or even a humiliating one? Why is it so hard to let go of guilt?

My own therapist, who is excellent, said that shame is legitimate. It is? Is he talking about guilt? I’ve had past therapists talk about illegitimate guilt and legitimate guilt. And now shame is legitimate?

I gotta say, this is getting confusing.

I am headed into some intense therapy territory. Healing and growth are dependent upon shedding shame and overcoming humiliation. We even have to confront our guilt.

How do we do this?

Before I try to define these terms and experiences, I want to define something different. I want to start with empathy. Empathy is the antidote to shame, and Brené Brown provides us with an excellent definition for empathy. More than that, she provides us with a solid differentiation between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is not empathy. Most people somehow know this, but then…how is it not the same?

Watch this very short and rather entertaining animated video narrated by Brown herself. You will then see exactly how sympathy is different from empathy.

In my mind, the one thing that sympathy does that is primarily hurtful is minimize. It minimizes the other person’s experience by ignoring their pain. Why? Because empathy is about connection, and we have to connect to our own pain in order to connect to another’s. That isn’t easy. It requires insight and emotional intelligence to do that. It also requires mindfulness. Mindfulness is about being present. We must be present to ourselves to a degree in order to be present to another person.

The practice of empathy is not easy. Before we can address our personal shame issues, however, we need to start with empathy. Why? Because the road out of shame, humiliation, and guilt is paved with empathy. Not empathy with others. Empathy towards ourselves.

Practicing empathy with others is a good place to start if feeling empathy towards yourself seems too hard.

Eventually, you will be able to ask yourself, “If you would show empathy and kindness to your friend, then why not show it to yourself? How are you so different?” And the answer to those questions can provide an immense amount of insight into your personal struggles and move you forward.

Resources:

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brené Brown
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

Name It to Regulate It

Posted on February 11, 2016 by MJ

The Secret to Getting Better

Posted on February 8, 2016 by MJ

2 Comments

I have been trying to figure out how to explain how I “got better” in multiple spheres of my life as I have been asked on multiple occasions. Oh, it’s taken a long time, but I did it and continue to do it. Trauma no longer rules my life. I do feel anxiety. I struggle with negative self-talk. I have my moments of self-doubt. I do, however, have insight. I have actualized. And when I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, then I phone a friend who will set me straight and get me going again.

How did I get from Point A to Point Q? How does one even sum up how to recover from Complex PTSD and long-term exposure to myriad types of abuse without sounding trite or like an insensitive asshole?

I came across this quote this morning:

“Our brain is not cut out for nonlinearities. People think that if, say, two variables are causally linked, then a steady input in one variable should always yield a result in the other one. Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For instance, you study every day and learn something in proportion to your studies. If you do not feel that you are going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized. But reality rarely gives us the privilege of a satisfying linear positive progression: You may study for a year and learn nothing, then, unless you are disheartened by the empty results and give up, something will come to you in a flash. . . This summarizes why there are routes to success that are nonrandom, but few, very few, people have the mental stamina to follow them. . . Most people give up before the rewards.” (10 Overlooked Truths About Taking Action)

In other words?

“If you train yourself to be emotionally rewarded for actions taken rather than outcomes you may be able to lengthen the time you can spend in active “failure” and increase your chances of success.

A possible solution is to reward yourself for following your system rather than achieving a specific outcome. Select a system you know will lead to success and follow it.

Eating right vs. losing 20 pounds. Building a business vs. achieving financial independence. Going on dates vs. having a successful relationship. The first are systems, the second are goals.” (10 Overlooked Truths About Taking Action)

This is why I so recommend therapy. Therapy, and whatever therapeutic approach works for you be it CBT, DBT, or what have you, is a system by which we attain our goal which is healing. Therapy is absolutely not the goal. My own recovery and health are the goal. What I do to attain my goal is the system that I choose to get there.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, asserts in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big:

“Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.”

I am a highly goal-oriented personality, but where I will argue with Adams is that I do not exist in a state of pre-success failure. One can be a “systems person” and goal-oriented at the same time. I understand systems, and I understand that we do not achieve our goals without using systems. I also know that most things in life are not linear and neatly causal. The If, Then way of thinking works in elementary school when you are teaching a child about cause and effect. It starts to lose its meaning when you adhere to it as an adult and find that it doesn’t hold true much of the time. “If I work hard enough, then I’ll be rewarded.” Gee, I worked really hard, and I got laid off. “If you love someone with all your heart, then they’ll love you back.” Gee, I loved that person so much, and they left me. And, we were married. “If you make a ton of money, then you’ll be happy.” Gee, I have more money than God, and I’m lonelier than I’ve ever been.

Essentially, it is the systems that we use to achieve our goals that determine how we feel about our lives, ourselves, and destiny as we move in our intended direction. Why? Because you will never be as whole as you expect to be. That is something that no one will tell you. I had to learn that the hard way, and it was very painful.

I used to have these little statements I would say to myself like, “If only I could forgive my father, then I know I would be free in my life,” or “If I could just learn to enjoy sex a little more, then I know I would be over being raped,” or “If only I could say no to people with confidence, then I would know I am really better,” or “If only I felt better about how I looked, then I would know that my mother no longer held sway over me.”

Guess what? Most of those statements are true for me in my life now, and I still want more. I see so much more room for growth and improvement. The goal isn’t about recovery anymore. My life has become about taking action. Choosing a system and implementing it, and there is a bit more adventure now, too. Sometimes I pick a system just to see what will happen. “If I take this action in this fashion, then where might I end up? How will my life look in six weeks if I do this?”

What does that look like? Choosing actions rather than focusing on a goal. In the case of recovery from trauma or mental health improvement leading to greater well-being or even something like dealing with domestic abuse, present actions matter more because recovery takes a long time. If you find a therapist, for example, who suits you, then you will improve in some way. There will be some measure of recovery in your life. The benefit of the systems approach then is to take your view off the goal (since you know that you are moving in your intended direction now) and put your energy into your present efforts. Suddenly, the present pain associated with doing the work becomes meaningful.

The energy to move forward and make the hard choices comes from the implementation of your chosen system not from whether or not you have or will “arrive”. If you continue to derive energy and empowerment from taking action, then you will begin to feel encouraged and even find that your self-esteem is increasing because you are doing something. It is the action that matters more; not the perceived distance between your status quo and your goal. Why? Because your actions are what close the gap between the two–not your planning, your discouragement, your self-assessing, or even the depth of your personal suffering. Your actions. And it’s finding a system that works well for you that will enable you to take the most necessary actions.

Sometimes the very act of taking action on your own behalf is the catalyst to your recovery.

This is the secret to getting better. Change your paradigm around what success means. Choose a system or systems, or create your own. Act on them.

You will see changes in your life.

For Further Reading:

A Systems Approach to Life

Something Practical

Posted on January 25, 2016 by MJ

4 Comments

Yes, yes, I can be practical. Recall that I wrote in The Reboot of feeling aimless and desirous of doing nothing. Well, this does not fit my personality. I tend to be much more machine-like in disposition. Sometimes even bordering on hypomanic. I make plans! I get it done dammit!

That has not been the case for me lately. I just want to lie around like a giant vegetable. I failed to include one very important variable in my assessment. Chronic pain. I don’t know if any of you live with chronic pain, but it’s a bitch. I have Chronic Migraine Disease along with some other weird diagnoses that I like to pretend I don’t have. The migraines though? There is no getting away from those. I have tried everything short of acupuncture. That may be next on my list. I was hit by a drunk driver and sustained a serious neck injury. Thus my “disease” was born.

What is my point?

Medication cocktails can also cause feelings of aimlessness, melancholy, and feeling like a giant mushpile, and doctors, as much as we need them, are not necessarily experts in pharmacology. In fact, unless your doctor is a pharmacologist, assume that they know little to nothing about the drugs you take and how they behave in your body when you combine them. To prove this point, I’ll tell you this. I once had a neurologist tell me that she preferred to consult with a pharmacologist before prescribing any kind of medication to any patient because medical school and subsequent training provided her with little to no training on pharmacology. This was why she did no prescribing herself. Her practice staffed a pharmacologist. The neurologist diagnosed. The pharmacologist prescribed. Isn’t that a fantastic way to practice medicine? In fact, this is often how it’s done in oncology particularly in pediatric oncology.

In my case, I take many medications daily to manage migraine headaches. Without those medications, I would be plagued with about twenty migraines a month. And, I don’t mean the kind of headache where I can pop an Advil, lie in the dark, and call it good. I’ve never had a “migraine” like that. I mean the kind that leaves scars on one’s brain and shows up on an MRI as a T2 lesion. Emergency Room visit migraines. Trepanation migraines. “I think I’m stroking out” migraines. I know other people who suffer like this, too. You live in fear of having one. They are a special kind of suffering. So, you take your meds because the meds bring down the intensity when you have a breakthrough event.

And, what happens when you fall into a migraine or cluster headache cycle because that happens? This is when you must pay attention to that “cocktail” effect. Triptans (i.e. Imitrex, Zomig), which are migraine abortives, are very effective most of the time, but they can cause depressive side effects. No one tells you this. I will randomly cry after taking a triptan. I’ll feel not quite right, but I won’t be in pain. I’ll feel like a zombie. A neurologist might tell you that it’s the aftermath of the migraine because a migraine is a neurological event–not a headache. It’s like the post-ictal feelings after having a seizure. You just feel weird. I have a seizure disorder. I’m down with that explanation. When you are, however, stuck in a migraine or cluster headache cycle, you usually have to add other medications to your regimen in order to halt the progression in addition to all the other medications you might be taking. An NSAID like naproxen is often recommended. Naproxen can mess with your nervous system causing symptoms of depressed mood and feelings of fogginess. This is well-documented. If the pain is still a problem and your doctor has given you narcotics to fill in the gap when all else has failed, as mine has, then you may add something like Vicodin. Narcotics are known depressants. So, there you are, days into a neurological event, managing your pain, waiting for it to stop, taking three depressants in addition to your other medications, and wondering why you feel aimless, ambivalent, foggy-headed, and somewhat tamped down.

tumblr_static_bugs-bunny-bugs-bunny-26143775-500-355.jpg — Well, gosh, I wonder why?

Sometimes when we are so accustomed to living with certain realities, we fail to see the one thing staring directly at us. I am so used to living with chronic pain management that I failed to even consider that this could be why I have felt so “off”. In part, I think I was looking too hard in other places. Also, it’s discouraging. I don’t know what else I can do to improve myself so that these migraines get better. Alas, one keeps moving forward.

All this is to say, sometimes the answer you’re looking for is right in front of you. It isn’t complicated. It’s easy. It might not be the answer you want, but it is nonetheless ever present.

Sort of like looking for your lost glasses. You look everywhere, up and down, side to side, inside and out, when all the while, they were sitting atop your head.

That’s practical, right?

Overcoming a Sense of a Foreshortened Future

Posted on January 24, 2016 by MJ

3 Comments

I have been thinking about this idea of The Reboot, which I wrote about in my previous post. Clearly, I’m not entirely empty in my old noggin. I had an actual thought and pondered it, too! Have I ever felt like this before in my life? Why, yes, I have!

After I graduated from college I felt a lot like I do now. Aimless. Anxious. A bit scared. That’s a good question to ask by the way: “Have you ever felt like this before?” It helps you gain insight into what’s going on internally and responsively. We often know a lot about ourselves with the advantage of hindsight. Looking back upon my 22 year-old self, I know exactly why I felt so untethered and aimless after I graduated. I can blame that lesser known symptom of PTSD called ‘a sense of a foreshortened future’. I’ve written a few blog posts on this topic over the years. It has dogged me relentlessly, and I’ve never been able to fully shake it off. It’s very difficult to even describe how it feels.

I think that the best way to describe what living with a sense of a foreshortened future feels like is to relate it to the concept of object permanence. Object permanence is the term used to describe the concept that objects exist even though they can no longer be seen or heard. This is why, for example, babies love the game peek-a-boo. Very young infants have not yet developed object permanence so they, therefore, do not know that their mother, for example, exists when they cannot see or hear her. Peek-a-boo must then be a very thrilling game for babies if you think about it.

Apply the concept of object permanence to your own concept of survival. Imagine playing a metaphorical game of peek-a-boo with your life. One day your sense of security is in front of you. The next day it’s gone. Another day, it’s been given back to you. Another day, it’s vanished. This endless game of “Will I live or will I die?”, or at least a perceived sense of dying, begins to define one’s reality. Nothing is permanent. Security and a sense of being loved, the most coveted and needed objects, are never permanent. What happens to a person who lives like this? If a person can develop Stockholm Syndrome in as little as 72 hours which shows just how little it takes to completely break down a personality, then what do you suppose happens to the neural networks of a person’s brain who is exposed to long-term trauma?

“Children learn their self-worth from the reactions of others, particularly those closest to them. Caregivers have the greatest influence on a child’s sense of self-worth and value. Abuse and neglect make a child feel worthless and despondent. A child who is abused will often blame him- or herself. It may feel safer to blame oneself than to recognize the parent as unreliable and dangerous. Shame, guilt, low self-esteem, and a poor self-image are common among children with complex trauma histories.
To plan for the future with a sense of hope and purpose, a child needs to value him or herself. To plan for the future requires a sense of hope, control, and the ability to see one’s own actions as having meaning and value. Children surrounded by violence in their homes and communities learn from an early age that they cannot trust, the world is not safe, and that they are powerless to change their circumstances. Beliefs about themselves, others, and the world diminish their sense of competency. Their negative expectations interfere with positive problem-solving, and foreclose on opportunities to make a difference in their own lives. A complexly traumatized child may view himself as powerless, “damaged,” and may perceive the world as a meaningless place in which planning and positive action is futile. They have trouble feeling hopeful. Having learned to operate in “survival mode,” the child lives from moment-to-moment without pausing to think about, plan for, or even dream about a future. ” (The Effects of Complex Trauma)

What can we learn from this in order to overcome something as complex as a diminished future orientation? I think that asking questions of ourselves is the place to start:

How do I feel about myself (do I feel worthless or inherently bad?)
How would I rate my self-esteem?
What is my self-image like?
Do I blame myself for any past mistreatment or abuse? Do I make excuses for the person or people who hurt or neglected me? (e.g. “Well, s/he had a hard life.” or “They didn’t mean to do what they did.”)
Do I feel hope about my future?
Do I feel that my present actions can affect change somewhere as in what I do matters?
Do I feel like what I say or do matters?
Do I feel powerless?
Do I feel competent? Do I feel capable?
Do I feel like damaged goods? Do I feel broken? Has anyone ever told me that I was broken?
Do I feel like no matter what I do it won’t make a difference anyway so why bother?

Anything that disempowers you in the present will detract from your ability to see into your future. It keeps your mind looking into your past. You become locked into a past/present paradigm because the mind, from what I have understood, wants to solve the unsolvable problems . And, what are these unsolvable problems?

mother/hate
father/abuse
uncle/sex
grandmother/neglect
teacher/shame
grandfather/violence

We are supposed to be loved and nurtured by the adults in our lives so that we can grow up to reach and even exceed our potential. The mind will never be able to resolve and overcome the impossible and diametrically opposed realities that we knew. There are no answers for them. There is no way to balance these equations. Then what? We get stuck in an endless feedback loop of shame, self-blame, sickness, and slow deterioration seeking attachment because we are made for attachment, and, yet, we can’t. We survive. In the now. Stuck in the past because we need to find an answer. We must fill in the variables. Solve the problems. Do we exist outside of what we experienced? Are we defined by these bad experiences? Are we permanent? Is anything that anyone says even real or believable?

Who are we anyway?

It is like living in a constant identity crisis. Until we find a way to stop the cycle.

How do you put a stop to this and begin imagining a future? Oh, isn’t that the question!

I can only speak for myself. If you were exposed to complex trauma for an extended period of time, then I would suggest taking those questions to a therapist trained in dealing with trauma. Not every therapist is equipped to help you. I would also suggest meditating on the idea that you do have a future. There is time ahead of you. Also, there is no rush to figure it all out today. Whatever dreams you may have held dear at some point in your life might still be possible, and, before you naysay, ponder this. Even if it takes you ten or twenty years to accomplish something, don’t be so quick to give it up.

The time is going to pass anyway–whether you pursue your desires or not.

The question then is: What do you want to do while the time passes? You do have a say even if you feel like you don’t. This is how you begin to overcome a sense of a foreshortened future. It’s not easy. In fact, it might be incredibly daunting.

It is, however, oh so possible.

Further Reading:

Effects of Complex Trauma

51x9MmK2PiL._SX333_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg — click for link

The Reboot

Posted on January 23, 2016 by MJ

4 Comments

“Can you burn out a brain?”

That was my question to my therapist on Tuesday. He just leaned back and knowingly stared at me. Dammit, but why won’t he just give me a straight answer for once?!

Have you ever felt like your brain has decided to just stop processing information? I do not mean a depressive episode. He actually quizzed me on my “symptoms”. No, I do not feel sad. I am not crying for no reason. I hardly cry at all unless I’m premenstrual (sorry for meeting that stereotype, but it’s true). I’m not failing to practice basic self-care or anything else that might meet the criteria for depression. It’s like my brain suddenly became a blank slate, and it’s happy about it. I have zero motivation to do anything, and I feel troubled by that because I feel absolutely no motivation to do anything about my lack of motivation. Were it up to me, I would do nothing. Eating is even questionable.

This is the polar opposite of my inborn personality, and it’s freaking me out. It takes a Herculean effort on my part to accomplish anything. Making my bed feels like climbing Mt. Everest. Getting dressed and leaving the house feels like winning the Ironman. Reading…anything feels like earning a PhD. So, I asked him a second time:

“Can you burn out your brain?”

Maybe I have a dopamine deficiency, I posited. That’s a real thing. I did all sorts of research (yes, that’s me earning my PhD). He shook his head at me and explained why that wasn’t possible based upon what I was describing.

“What’s wrong with me? I’m a mushpile! I’m not…me!”

Again, he sits back and makes his thinking face except he looks a little smug. A bit like what your opponent in Trivial Pursuit looks like when they’re reading the question card to you, the answer being fully available to them, while you have no clue what it is.

It was a therapeutic tête-a-tête. Was he really going to sit there looking like the Sphynx, or was he going to help a girl out?

“What if your brain is perfectly fine? The brain knows how to heal itself. What if your brain is actually regenerating right now? What if it is, for lack of a better word, lying fallow because it needs to heal, and your experience of the healing process manifests itself as feeling as you do in this moment?”

The last four years have been characterized by incessant, inconceivable intensity. The last year capped off the last four years with quite the flourish. There wasn’t a break. There was little support. There was some trauma. I’ve burned out my body in a sense. I’m perpetually exhausted physically and trying to rebuild my health. What of my brain? How do you heal a brain?

“Can you go with it? How hard would that be for you?” he asked.

Oh, that advice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Just sit with this feeling? Accept it?

“What if I get stuck? What if it never goes away?”

Then we talked about what that might look like–symptoms of getting stuck in my current state of being a mushpile with no motivation. It almost feels like cognitive inertia mixed with ambivalence. Just make all my decisions for me. Tell me what to eat, where to go, what to wear (well, maybe not what to wear. I’m still in here somewhere), and what coffee to drink. I don’t know that I would mind. I just want to sit somewhere and do nothing. My mind wants to go blank and think on absolutely nothing. Until it doesn’t. This phenomenon makes me feel panic. I don’t feel like myself.

I had to go home and think about it. I came back with a metaphor that made sense to me. “Am I rebooting? Sort of like when you update the operating system on your machine? The update can take freakin’ forever because you’re dealing with the kernel. Then, the machine has to reboot, and that can take a while, too. It looks like nothing is happening, but a lot is happening. The entire system is undergoing an upgrade. Ideally, you are actually going to end up with a better machine, less bugs, and new features. Before you get to access any of that, however, your machine has to reboot. Does the brain go through anything like that?”

The Sphynx liked this analogy. A lot.

“You are rebooting. Don’t fight it. Your brain is actually healing from the intensity you faced with your daughter and her illness, enduring the abuse in your marriage, and doing the hardest thing–getting out of that while protecting your children–not to mention in the middle of it you sent your oldest child to college and helped her make that transition while helping your two highest needs children make the middle school and high school transitions which did not go well. Plus, you got very sick. You need to go through this now. Allow it. Let yourself be upgraded, debugged, and, then, rebooted.”

The Reboot.

Okay, but how? His most basic advice was to begin with mindfulness which is the buzzword in our culture right now. It made the cover of TIME magazine last year, but mindfulness has been around for centuries. If this is indeed what is happening, then I in no way want to fight this process. This is necessary. I’m a very mindful person as it is, but how could I upgrade that?

“Give your brain a task,” he said. “A brain without a task will either 1) drift to the past and ruminate 2) go to the future and worry and perseverate or 3) obsess about something in the present. The brain needs a task in order stay present in a healthy way.”

This is true. From my experience, this is not opinion. This is fact. My mind does this all the time.

“Focus on one thing at a time in order to practice not engaging in multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is corrosive to the brain. Pick any one thing. Breathing is a helpful thing to focus on because you are always breathing. Simply tell your brain to focus on your breathing as you do things that do not necessarily require its attention. If your brain wanders, don’t judge it. Just bring it back to your breathing.”

He said that this is one way in which we build a mindfulness practice, and it’s one way to begin to see the value in The Reboot. Neurons that fire together wire together. To heal a brain, it’s vital to build new neural connections. Practicing being present and disciplining the mind by not allowing it to run to and fro, chasing every rabbit down every hole, creates opportunities for those new neurons to fire together. That is the one benefit of a mindfulness practice–practice being the operative word.

It does not work to say, “I won’t think about my ex-boyfriend anymore,” or “I will try not to linger in the memories of my past trauma for too long today.” You have to give yourself another option so that when, for example, the Giant Rabbit of Trauma hops through your mind, tempting you to chase it down, you know what to do. You have a task lined up for your brain. “Let’s do this now instead, brain.” Being able to gracefully move into mindfulness during moments like that is the result of practicing it. My therapist is asserting that my current state of mind is a perfect time for an extended practice in mindfulness. It’s time to allow my brain to let go of some things while providing space to build something new. There is no problem here. It just feels problematic.

Perhaps some of you might find this helpful particularly if you feel aimless, lacking in motivation, or just existentially fatigued. All is not lost. You may be “rebooting”.

Resources for Your Reboot:

It might be weird, but coloring is a great way to build a mindfulness practice. There are myriad adult coloring books on the market now, and some of them are almost works of art. Like these:

Mindfulness is also a foundational principle in the therapeutic approach Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) as well as a component of EMDR, a highly effective therapeutic approach used in addressing trauma-based memories. There are many reasons to pursue a mindfulness practice particularly if you are looking to pursue deeper healing in the future.

Can You Nullify A Person?

Posted on January 14, 2016 by MJ

3 Comments

My therapist is wise. I appreciate him. Sometimes we chip away at our therapeutic process for months, even years, and we get good results although we’d like to move faster. And, then, our therapist says one thing that busts everything wide open. It isn’t necessarily that their words are profound. Their words, however, seem to bring all our effort into alignment. Something feels solidified. Suddenly, our journey, or our experiences, make so much more sense than they did before. That’s what happened for me this week, and perhaps his words might do the same for you.

He inquired after my mother’s recent letter. I didn’t want to discuss it, but he felt like poking at it. So, I let him. Go ahead. Poke me. I did admit to attempting to write a response to my mother. I supposed that if she had the chutzpah to write a letter, then I ought to respond to her except that I had no idea what to say. There was nothing new to add to our conversation because she had said nothing new. We were just setting ourselves up for another round in the ring. She said/she said. I was not going to penetrate her logical fallacies. She has her story. I have mine. There is no reconciling the two.

What now?

He observed that I was angry, and I agreed. “Your mother can still cause you to feel anger and even disappointment even though you know what she will do. You know what she has done, what she’s capable of, and, most likely, what she will do in the future. And you are still hurt by her? That’s interesting.”

I know. I felt a bit stupid. That’s a self-judgment, but I felt it nonetheless. It’s like being surprised that a cat scratched you. Cats scratch. They have claws. It’s what they do. Why be surprised? Sure, scratches hurt. Feel the pain. Disinfect the wound. Feel surprised though? Why?

I didn’t know what to say. He looked at me for a moment. Then, he leaned in and asked: “Can you nullify a person?”

His question took me aback. Can I nullify a person? I could answer him without hesitation. I knew immediately: “No, I can’t.”

“So,” he continued, “no matter what someone has done to you–no matter how bad–you will still continue to believe that a person might be capable of good even though you cognitively know that they will not act in line with their potential? You will see their potential until the day they die, and this is what pains you? You know that your mother lacks the capacity to choose to act in line with her potential goodness, but you are hurt and disappointed because you see something else in her. And when she makes choices that hurt you then, what hurts you more? Her hurtful behavior or the fact that she, once again, did not choose to act in line with the potential for good that you see in her?”

He named it. He described my internal turmoil so well.

“My mother ,” I said, “has always hurt me, and she always will. I have settled that. What pains me in some weird almost existential way is that she continually chooses to act opposite to what I see as good in her. That is what hurts me the most. The utter loss of potential and, thus, her future suffering.”

And there it was. I cannot nullify her.

“There are pros and cons to this,” he said.

” I know,” I said while playing with my fingers. I know that all too well.

“Can you nullify anyone?” he asked me.

I was silent. I shook my head.

“Even the man who abducted you? Could you nullify him?” he pressed.

“He was a human being. No one is 100% evil.”

He sat back and said, “And this is why your mother’s actions will always cause you to suffer. This is why it was so hard for you to walk away from an abusive marriage. It’s not a bad trait. Not at all. It is, however, good to know this about yourself. Because you can’t nullify a person, you will suffer more. Sometimes, you must know, it is okay to nullify a person. For your own safety and well-being. It’s okay. It doesn’t make you a bad person. This, however, is how you are wired. Be aware. Simply be mindful of it.”

It was a shocking session for me. I do think, however, that knowing how we are “made” helps us understand our own suffering and our journey to health. Why are certain things harder or easier for us? Why is it so hard to let go of relationships sometimes? Why do we feel what we feel?

The question of nullification is an interesting one. No one has ever asked me that before. Perhaps to make the idea less distasteful, change the phrasing to, “Can you nullify a relationship?”

“Can you nullify a relationship? Permanently?”

That is a very good question. It’s worth asking and seriously pondering.

The journey to well-being and health isn’t easy, and it’s full of hard questions with few easy answers.

This is a hard question, but I found it very helpful. I learned something about myself and my journey. And my future, too.

Perhaps you will as well.

Opening The Vaults

Posted on December 24, 2015 by MJ

6 Comments

I am still in therapy. It’s no longer something I remotely enjoy not that I ever enjoyed sitting in the Hot Seat before. Now, however, it’s work, and I can feel it. I can feel myself becoming defensive when my therapist asks a question that I don’t want to answer.

This week, I decided to discuss my mother’s letter with him, and I knew that this would be difficult because my therapist knows little to nothing about my mother. Trying to catch him up felt too daunting a task which is why I’ve not mentioned her. So, I took five minutes to try and describe a lifetime of pain and abuse, and I think I came off as a cynical smart ass. I fully admit to being a smart ass, but I’m not cynical. I’ve given up on trying to look cognitively sound. He’s going to think what he’s going to think.

He doesn’t deal in pathologies, thus, he never says, “Your mother’s personality disorder caused…” You will never hear him mention a DSM diagnosis unless it’s very necessary. He just lets me talk. I am not fond of the client-centered approach–talk therapy–because I have an irrational fear of revealing too much. I don’t know what “too much” might be, but it’s unnerving to sit in a chair and talk while someone stares at you. Please, ask me a question. Direct the session. What’s our goal? I don’t like feeling adrift as if there are no boundaries.

There is, however, a method to his approach, I have learned. He’s looking for something, and he found it. “I hear one common theme. You have said about your mother’s letter and your ex-husband that you are not crazy. Is that something meaningful to you? Feeling like you’re crazy? Is that what her letter caused you to feel over and above every other emotion? Is that how interacting with your ex makes you feel? Like you’re crazy?”

I just sat there and tried so hard not to feel the emotion rise up. I wanted to bury my face in a pillow and cry. I felt ashamed, and I don’t know why.

“Yes, that is exactly how I feel.”

He nodded. “Can you tell me about that?”

How could I even begin to explain a lifetime of being made to feel this way? So, I chose specific events in an attempt to paint a picture.

“After my mother would try to commit suicide and call on me to talk her off the proverbial ledge, no one would talk about it. She would come out of her bedroom, and I would usually say something like, ‘So, are we all gonna talk about what just happened?’ I was 13. Everyone would look at me like I was the one with the problem. I wanted to tell the truth. I mean, I wasn’t the one overdosing on narcotics and taking a revolver into a closet and screaming. I thought that it was crazy to pretend like nothing ever happened, but that became the rule. Never talk about it. That is so contrary to my nature. That same rule became the norm in my marriage, too. Never discuss anything. I would try, and he would deny and shut everything down. It then became a false reality. I would try to challenge that reality, but, as with my mother, the line, ‘It’s your word against mine’ was used; and, suddenly, every abnormal behavior became normalized, and I felt somewhat insane all the time.”

The truth is that I have spent most of my life trying to prove that I am completely sane, and most of my family members seem to believe that I am the black sheep among them. I won’t argue with that. I might be the black sheep, but they’re more like ducks pretending to be sheep. Nothing is remotely normal about anything that they say or do. So, I come along and point out a problem (which I’ve stopped doing), and they all quack, “There wasn’t a problem until you pointed it out! You must be the problem! Get her!” And, the cycle of crazymaking continues.

My mother insisting in her letter that it was her word against mine was the trigger for me. Her word against mine? There are facts. She could certainly say that her perspective on said facts might be different than mine, but she can’t point at a fact and say, “No, Mr. Fact, it’s your word against mine.” That’s like pointing at the sun and saying, “No, Sun, you do not set in the west. It’s your word against mine. No, Water Molecule, you are not made up of oxygen and hydrogen. It’s your word against mine.”

It’s the damndest thing to be on the receiving end of this kind of behavior. “No, I did not do that. It’s your word against mine. You just do not remember it properly.” Or, worse, “I did that, but I had my reasons, and you have no right to be mad at me for it. Get over it.”

In the end, you feel erased. Like you don’t matter. Only I know that I do matter, and I know what happened. I have an excellent memory. I used to have a nearly perfect memory.

So, what do you do? What do you do when you know that you are not crazy but you feel like you are? This is serious stuff.

I told my therapist some of the things that my mother had done. Some of her worst offenses. The things that she had been claiming never happened. Frankly, if I had done those things to another person, then I might deny I had ever committed those actions as well. I told the truth. We must tell our truth to someone who will listen to us. We need a witness. I found myself asking him, “This is a bad thing, right? What she did here was bad, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, this is bad.”

After you’ve told your truth, you need to hear the words: “You are not crazy.” That is what my therapist did for me. I know that I’m not crazy. I know that what I witnessed and endured in my family of origin was painful and abusive. I don’t need my mother’s validation in order to heal or move on. I’ve never had her validation. We do, however, need to receive validation from someone. We don’t live in a vacuum. We are social creatures. A lone primate is a dead primate. So, find a safe person whom you trust, and tell your truth as hard as that might be. Fear of judgment can be a strong motivation to keep everything to yourself. I am immensely private, and it’s almost painful for me at times to open my inner vaults. It is essential to our healing, however, that we engage in this process.

Let that be the gift you give yourself as 2015 draws to a close.

Shalom…