My hubs rocks. As in, he pays attention and quietly works to show me he hears me and THAT rocks! I say this because he is forever trying to give me the best August memories ever. You see, I haven't liked August for awhile. It's my birthday month and I think it always sort of hit me like everything else as a middle child. It's supposed to be about me, but never really was... And that went a step further that year when my grandfather died and the funeral was held on my birthday. It was like the creepiest family reunion and the memories play in my head of member after member still crying and verbalizing their happy birthdays to me. The oddness of the mixed emotions forever set that into the crumbling stone of my memory. Years after, my widowed grandmother was remarried on that very same day. Lovely. I was growing up and I got to choose a fancy dress and my first set of heels, but then that year it wasn't about me either. So birthdays continued.
Things seemed to fall apart around my bday maybe just cause it was August and there is a lot of back to school bustle, but none the less, every year there was something. Hurricane Katrina didn't help August for me either... 6 week old newborn and an evacuation from our home, friends, church, comfort, degrees, jobs, "normal"--even the writing of this triggers a bit. Again with the love hate. I remember being in one of my favorite places... my grandmother's home in the fancy room with a slate blue velvet couch and portrait of my dad as a child hung over my bed. I remember the feel of the linoleum under my feet in her kitchen and the familiar smells. I remember us all gathering at the breakfast table straining our eyes and neck to see the small kitchen television perched near the ceiling in the eat in space. And I remember the processing speed slowing down quite a bit when I started to attempt the making sense of yesterday nights going to be conclusions and that morning's realizations.
I was grateful and felt loved being surrounded by so many precious to me and that cake! My all-time favorite cake that my great grandmother was famous for... My grandmother, without prompting and in secrecy, made that cake for me! Angel food cake from scratch with fulffy white, egg-whites only icing that was like marshmallow fluff! (y'all as a side note, if you forget about that last bit of cake and leave it on a plate in the cake holder on top of the fridge for several months, it is concrete... straight up hammer it off the plate concrete) But the kicker is that I was still send scrambling that year. Straight into mom of a new born with nowhere to go, mastitis sufferer cause I also didn't have clothes, a home, somewhere to wash. Hubs was driving hours to work to he could find a permanent job, so I was single newborn parenting in lines for vaccines, for red cross for diapers, assistance in whatever form I could find it!
I remember finally getting to go out alone after the baby was about 4 months. I needed clothes... that I liked and that fit. My dad offered to babysit. I drove to the mall. Parked the car and started crying. Crying cause I was finally alone. Crying cause it had been pushed down and overridden so long due to survival instinct. I remember wandering the stores and then calling my sister telling her my mind couldn't fathom what to even look at to buy cause I was in brain fog! It was August.
August is all about the brain fog and this year was no exception. I literally started the month's August with serious brain fog. I could tell I was struggling to make actual sense and real distinct intelligent thought, but I could not find my way out. Running... fast walking could have helped actually, but hindsight isnt all that helpful in this case. I struggled with work and getting it done and accomplished. Still am struggling through August. I can't even go through last year. I was quite on the verge of a full mental breakdown last year at this time. Sooooo many issues with W then. I cried most of the way to a friend's house 4 hours away one weekend. Hard to parent these babes and their neurologic difficulties!
This year is better. It's still August and I'm not loving it. Not at all. Been a rocky climb but I have been injured on this trek this year. W is ticcing... a good bit. His behavior lacks a great deal of inhibition. He is blurting...and we watch for copralalia. We long for structure and order in his schooling and that has been all over the place! But August will be over soon and September will come. It WILL ease and we will progress. This too shall pass.
Monday, August 21, 2017
I don't know what to do with Therapy...
WOH! Found this in my drafts! Intense! It's been a few months since I wrote this.
I LOVE therapy... or at least the idea, purpose, and general outcome of therapy! In fact, I was studying in my graduate and undergraduate classes toward a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy. And yet...
When it is my turn I almost don't know what to say. My first private session as of late was awkward for me. I was floundering around trying to figure out why I was there and what could I say that would be most beneficial. I suppose I'm not the type of person that is comfortable sitting on the couch and telling you my life story from start to finish. The truth is that I do a lot of intense purposed processing on my own. If I'm coming to you for therapy then I desire to get to the seriousness... to the real point pretty quick and get the work started! BUT... and this is a BIG but... I have to feel safe in a thousand ways on a thousand levels. This HAS to be pretty common.
I am incredibly intuitive. I balance my spirit with logic and knowledge, but I trust my spirit a thousand times more because I don't view it as my own spirit, but the Spirit of the Holy One with in me. I have been able to clearly hear from God for a loooong time (as long as I'm in a spiritually healthy and engaged place). When there is an intuitive connection its hard to deny. When I build friendships, there is a certain level of the spiritual intuition that is reached and understood that will send the valued few into my deep friendship circle!
I'd love for my therapist to fall into that category, but we haven't found our way there. I view her with amazement and respect! She is incredible at what she does! But she is an older woman and that alone is a bit of a wall I have to get past. The kind of woman who certainly knows far more than me! I'm inclined to just listen and ask for advice rather than do personal work and personal soul searching. I LOVE her! I sincerely do. But I'm having trouble finding my way to my authentic self with her. But then there is the idea that maybe I'm not sure where my authentic self ends and my polished self begins and what is so bad about the mixture anyway.
I have been challenged by my son's therapist to try harder and take a leap of faith with her. Trust her with my fully disclosed self. But I think I fear her reaction or difference of opinion or insight on faith and religion. I actually LOVE a discussion on theology and differences BUT in therapy this is not ideal. My understanding and relationship with my creator bleeds into every part of my life. Hard for me to inspect most parts of myself without finding faith there.
So tonight, I find myself frustrated. And therapy day can be like that. I should come to expect it. Here I sat for nearly 1.5 hours without saying much of anything with true depth. Yes, I explored things! I celebrated familial victories, I expressed some worries... but all in all I kept my inner child safe. And let's talk about that inner child while we're here...
I always kind of thought that whole concept was kind of weird. I'm good with weird... in fact it's usually a compliment, but in this case I suppose I simply mean that I don't comprehend it or it's reality. I do get it's purpose to an extent... BUT THEN! I am listening to Abba's Child by Brennan Manning and my brain gets it for the first time! Christ says to come to him as a child! I truly think that my son's therapist brought this up, but I suppose I wasn't in a place to hear it then! Full faith, no inhibitions. Like a child... gut wrenching honesty! For me, this is the purpose of constantly being brought back to the inner child. I have all but discarded her. Truly. I read those verses about growing up in the faith and leaving childish things behind and that was it. I kissed that "baby" goodbye! I constantly ridicule her, ignore her, roll my eyes at her. She annoys me... gets in the way of my mature self.
This is a bigger problem than I realized BECAUSE this is exactly the way I deal with my own children if my anxiety is high or I'm pretty exhausted! And as I see it, if I can change the way I treat mini-me, then it will spill over into my other relationships! Love your neighbor as yourself right?!
I LOVE therapy... or at least the idea, purpose, and general outcome of therapy! In fact, I was studying in my graduate and undergraduate classes toward a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy. And yet...
When it is my turn I almost don't know what to say. My first private session as of late was awkward for me. I was floundering around trying to figure out why I was there and what could I say that would be most beneficial. I suppose I'm not the type of person that is comfortable sitting on the couch and telling you my life story from start to finish. The truth is that I do a lot of intense purposed processing on my own. If I'm coming to you for therapy then I desire to get to the seriousness... to the real point pretty quick and get the work started! BUT... and this is a BIG but... I have to feel safe in a thousand ways on a thousand levels. This HAS to be pretty common.
I am incredibly intuitive. I balance my spirit with logic and knowledge, but I trust my spirit a thousand times more because I don't view it as my own spirit, but the Spirit of the Holy One with in me. I have been able to clearly hear from God for a loooong time (as long as I'm in a spiritually healthy and engaged place). When there is an intuitive connection its hard to deny. When I build friendships, there is a certain level of the spiritual intuition that is reached and understood that will send the valued few into my deep friendship circle!
I'd love for my therapist to fall into that category, but we haven't found our way there. I view her with amazement and respect! She is incredible at what she does! But she is an older woman and that alone is a bit of a wall I have to get past. The kind of woman who certainly knows far more than me! I'm inclined to just listen and ask for advice rather than do personal work and personal soul searching. I LOVE her! I sincerely do. But I'm having trouble finding my way to my authentic self with her. But then there is the idea that maybe I'm not sure where my authentic self ends and my polished self begins and what is so bad about the mixture anyway.
I have been challenged by my son's therapist to try harder and take a leap of faith with her. Trust her with my fully disclosed self. But I think I fear her reaction or difference of opinion or insight on faith and religion. I actually LOVE a discussion on theology and differences BUT in therapy this is not ideal. My understanding and relationship with my creator bleeds into every part of my life. Hard for me to inspect most parts of myself without finding faith there.
So tonight, I find myself frustrated. And therapy day can be like that. I should come to expect it. Here I sat for nearly 1.5 hours without saying much of anything with true depth. Yes, I explored things! I celebrated familial victories, I expressed some worries... but all in all I kept my inner child safe. And let's talk about that inner child while we're here...
I always kind of thought that whole concept was kind of weird. I'm good with weird... in fact it's usually a compliment, but in this case I suppose I simply mean that I don't comprehend it or it's reality. I do get it's purpose to an extent... BUT THEN! I am listening to Abba's Child by Brennan Manning and my brain gets it for the first time! Christ says to come to him as a child! I truly think that my son's therapist brought this up, but I suppose I wasn't in a place to hear it then! Full faith, no inhibitions. Like a child... gut wrenching honesty! For me, this is the purpose of constantly being brought back to the inner child. I have all but discarded her. Truly. I read those verses about growing up in the faith and leaving childish things behind and that was it. I kissed that "baby" goodbye! I constantly ridicule her, ignore her, roll my eyes at her. She annoys me... gets in the way of my mature self.
This is a bigger problem than I realized BECAUSE this is exactly the way I deal with my own children if my anxiety is high or I'm pretty exhausted! And as I see it, if I can change the way I treat mini-me, then it will spill over into my other relationships! Love your neighbor as yourself right?!
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