Tag: therapy

Ambiguous Grief

“People don’t become estranged from safe people.” – Josh Connelly

I’m not going to go into details, but I’m sad to say that I have been estranged from certain family members for several years now, and the choice to go no contact with these family members is the most difficult, yet most necessary decision which I have ever made in my life. And although this is definitely the right decision for me to have made, it is something that pains me greatly. It feels like a grieving process that never ever ends. When someone is still alive whom you grieve for, it is called ambiguous grief and it is sad, and confusing and never ending, and still filled with a tiny twinge of unhelpful hope. It’s hard to come to complete acceptance and closure in this situation. It’s hard to assuage the feelings of guilt, realizing that you may have inflicted some ambiguous grief on to someone else, only because for your own health and sanity, you had to make the choice to disengage completely from the relationship.

I knew that these particular relationships were unhealthy since I was a child. When I was a teenager I would comb the library trying to understand what I knew was wrong, but I didn’t have a name for it. When I first entered therapy in my twenties (hiding my car in a separate parking lot, terrified someone would know that I was there) I learned the term narcissism. This was in the 1990s. The internet was hardly what it is now. I had never heard the term “narcissism” before and it was such a relief to have an understanding of what was clearly happening in some of my closest relationships. I also learned terms like “enmeshment” and “boundaries” and “emotional abuse.” I know that you can find a gazillion resources about these terms on the internet now and that is a Godsend, but at the time, these resources were not so readily available.

It took me another twenty years, until I was in my mid-forties, having gone through years of therapy (two different therapists, plus group therapy, plus codependency help groups, plus online support, plus reading every self-help book available to me about the subject that I could get my hands on), and having tried every boundary suggestion possible, in order to make these relationships still work in my life, that I finally hit my bottom. My pitcher was full, and I could not take another drop of pain. I finally realized that nothing was going to change, and for the health and sanity of myself, and to be the best mother and wife for my immediate family, I had to go no contact with these people. It broke my heart. I’m a “fixer.” I wanted to “fix this” more than anything else. But it couldn’t be fixed. It took every bit of strength and courage that I had in me to make this decision to go no contact with these family members, and to stick with it. It still does.

Like I said, I don’t want to get into too many personal details, but I wanted to write this for those of you who may be questioning someone else’s choice to be estranged from their family members. (It’s more common than you think.) I assure you, these decisions are NOT made easily. They are grueling, and long in coming, after years and years and years, of trying and hoping and enduring great suffering. And estrangement isn’t even a perfect solution. It’s just the better of two evils. And once the decision is made, more societal shame is often heaped upon the victims for making this decision. It’s interesting to me that people are quick to “guilt” people who leave toxic relationships with people whom they are related to, but these same people are also quick to “guilt” people who are in toxic romantic relationships, to get out and to stay out. Why should anyone remain in any toxic relationship, no matter what that relationship happens to be?

I am happily married for almost 30 years. Our four adult children are thriving in their adult lives and we have great relationships with all of them. We live in a nice house and take nice trips and walk our nice dogs. I have sometimes gotten the insinuations from people that since I have a “great” life, I couldn’t have possibly lived through decades of abuse. If you could only realize how hard I have worked for my “great” life, making it my biggest goal and priority above all else, working on myself and my feelings and my understandings, every single day of my life to this day, you would understand better. People hide the hard stuff they go through. It’s our human nature. It’s our survival instincts. Often we hide the truth from ourselves, keeping ourselves in denial of the bad stuff, and of the toxic degree of the bad stuff, because it’s our only way through it . . . . until it isn’t.

I’m fortunate that I have dear friends and family who have supported me wholeheartedly throughout this experience, and I am forever grateful to you all. I love you all so much. I know that a lot of people don’t have this same kind of support and understanding. You all have helped me to heal in so many ways, and to open my heart to trust, more than you could ever understand. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I am writing this today to help others in my position, as you’ve gotten to know me and my heart, throughout my years of writing this blog. If you can accept and support me with this revelation that I have made today, please extend this same love, acceptance and support to others who have also had to make this dreadful decision, in their own lives. We really don’t know what anyone is dealing with in their private lives. This isolation and abuse is a lot to bear, without the extra pain of quick judgments, and guilt trips heaped onto a situation that you have not personally lived through, and you can’t possibly understand. People rarely lie about abuse. And accepting abuse is self-abuse, and no form of abuse is okay.

If you are a person struggling in any toxic relationship, please reach out for help. There are thankfully so many resources available now, thanks to the explosion of the internet and the new focus on the need for advances in mental health. Abusers thrive in secrecy. Accepting and sharing your truth, the truth, WILL set you free. It won’t be easy. But you deserve your own love more than anyone else in the world deserves it. You are the only one who can save you, and when you start doing that, you will be shocked at all of the support coming out of the woodwork to hear you, and to help you to help yourself.

“Less ‘You’re so strong’ and more ‘That looks heavy. Let me help you carry it.” – Nate Postlewait

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1329. Where is the strangest place you have ever fallen asleep?

Tuesday’s Tidbits

+ Yesterday I received the sweetest text that I have gotten in a long time. It was a really kind, unusual, thoughtful compliment, out of nowhere, from a friend whom I haven’t seen in a while. It made my day! It made me want to do the same for other people. Don’t hesitate. Use this blurb as a nudge from the Universe to reach out and send some love to the first person who comes to mind. You won’t regret it. It’s the little things and kindnesses that keep our humanity afloat. Love makes the world go ’round.

+ I just read a really good interview that the author Cheryl Strayed did with another New York Times best selling author, Steve Almond. It was filled with good excerpts, but here are a few that I found to be interesting and sometimes relatable. Steve Almond’s words are the ones in italics.

 “That’s often how you know a piece of advice is useful: the inconsolable urge to tell the advice-giver to f*ck off.” (This is so true, isn’t it? If there is a thread of truth in a piece of advice that we get, it tends to trigger us. If the advice doesn’t apply, we can easily dismiss it or laugh it off.)

“. . . .becoming less of an a**hole. That’s what therapy did for me. I woke up to the various ways in which I was being inconsiderate to other people—and to myself.” (Therapy can be incredibly useful, when you are in a humble state of really wanting to make changes, instead of just wanting, and hopelessly waiting for everyone else to change.)

“A couple of years ago, I was taking a walk with my teenage daughter. It was winter. Beside us, the Mystic River was sheathed in a plain of gray ice. I don’t remember what we were discussing, only that, at some point, she turned to me and said, “Dad, you’re like this guy who’s always walking on thin ice. But underneath that ice is a lake of rage.”

It was the single most devastating, and precise, assessment of my personality ever rendered. I wanted to drop to my knees—in awe and gratitude. And I’ve spent every day since thinking about what I can do to drain that lake of rage, which can be properly understood as a lake of poison.

Mostly, that’s consisted of me trying to shift from reaction to reflection. That is: to recognize when I feel the lake start bubbling and to ask myself: What’s going on here? Why am I being triggered? What pain or doubt or fear am I concealing?

I’m not suggesting that I’m walking around in some state of grace. Far from it. But I am in the process of trying to identify when and why I feel wronged. There are moments when I need to speak up (to stop walking on thin ice). But there are far more moments when my contempt is simply a way of hiding my vulnerabilities behind grievance.“

(Personally, I think by middle age, it is quite common to encounter many people walking on thin ice, and underneath them, lakes of rage. I think by middle age, many people realize that they haven’t lived a life true to themselves and the waters underneath them churn with anger and resentment and regret. The remedy is to thicken the ice, by being more true and authentic to yourself, going forward. When you love and trust yourself to tend to your own best care, it’s much easier to extend your kindness and grace to others.)

“Our job in life is to esteem who we are and what we’re doing. I don’t mean by this that we should just give ourselves a big hug and pretend that solves all our problems. But I do think that people tend to be too hard on themselves, and that this self-loathing inevitably gets inflicted on the folks around us.

I see this as a writing teacher, too. It’s the reason my new book has such an awkwardly aphoristic title. Over and over, I find myself encountering students who are, in one way or another, blocked when it comes to telling the truth—about their own experiences, and that of their fictional characters. The reason they’re blocked is because they felt guilty about breaking a long-held silence, fearful of the reaction they might receive, ambivalent about all the emotional disruption that comes with writing into deep truth. I tell them that the only path forward is through mercy. If they write with the intention of understanding, and forgiving, everyone involved, they’re going to travel further into the truth.

So I stand by that advice, especially for writers.“

Steve Almond’s latest book is Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories.

+“We want to be present to the beauty of our life, not the story of it.” – Ashwini Narayanan

This is an important quote. We tend to start telling ourselves stories about what is happening right in the moment. We start with the labels and the judgments and the categorization and comparisons (I wish I had a dollar for everytime I said, “This reminds me of” . . . . ugh!), and instead of just feeling our feelings, we start telling ourselves more stories about why we are feeling what we are currently feeling. The next time that you are having a beautiful moment, and you catch yourself narrating it, in that very moment, tell the inner narrator to “hush”. You will best be able to vividly remember the moments and then later tell stories about them, only if you allow yourself to fully be present for the instantaneous “beauty” of living your life, in each and every moment.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

896. What is the coolest nickname you’ve ever heard for someone?

Get Your Sh*t Together, Portia

I am an ardent fan of this new season of The White Lotus. Sunday’s finale can’t come soon enough, even with everything that I need to be getting done this week. If you are squeamish about sex and nudity, avoid the show, but otherwise, indulge! The White Lotus is so intriguing and the characters are fascinatingly flawed, and thus extremely interesting to get to know. Jennifer Coolidge plays Tanya, the only main character from the first season to return. Tanya is an insecure, emotionally immature, aimless, only child who has inherited half a billion dollars. She is ridiculously needy and oblivious. In short, no one really should take any advice from Tanya, but in the scene below she doles out advice to her assistant, Portia. Her bottom line is “Get your sh*t together, Portia.” (I imagine that this line is quickly going to become one of those cultural meme taglines, if it isn’t already)

There was a time in my life, that if I were Portia, I would have thought, “You must be kidding, Tanya. Who the hell are you to ever tell anyone to get their sh*t together?” I would have scoffed and brushed it off quickly. In short, I would have “shot” the messenger.

However, I am older and wiser now. Some of the best advice I have ever gotten has come from people who have learned things the hard way, through difficult experiences. Their advice comes from an earnest hope to help others avoid the same miserable difficulties which they have gone through. Experience is always the best teacher, but if you can vicariously learn from other people’s experiences, this really helps to dodge some scary bullets. As an eldest child, I have always felt a special empathy for my own eldest child. The eldest child tends to make a lot of mistakes that the younger siblings (if they are smart) learn to avoid making themselves.

For years, trying to work through “stuff” on my own, I avoided therapy. I was told that therapists just went to school to study psychology in order to fix themselves. I wasn’t going to take any advice from any messed up person who needed fixing. But then I lived long enough to realize everyone needs some fixing. I have never met one person in my life who has all of their “sh*t together” in every facet of their lives. So then it occurred to me that perhaps it is not such a bad thing to get advice from a person who is self-aware enough to admit that they need some fixing, go to school for it, and then try to help others with their gained knowledge. So back in the 1990s, I went to therapy for the first time, and I learned all about narcissism, boundaries, gaslighting, codependency, etc. And now I look at the internet and I see that the whole world is just catching up to these terms and their meanings, which helped me immensely, decades ago.

The gist of this post is “Don’t shoot the messenger.” But don’t put the messenger on a pedestal either. The messenger, no matter who they are: a therapist, a minister, a priest, a yogi, a rabbi, a writer, a relative, a friend, a boss, a mentor etc. is just another flawed human being, just like you and me. Trust your own intuition. If the message resonates deeply, the message is meant for you to learn from it and to gain knowledge and wisdom from it. If the message seems a little “off” to you, trust your inner judgment, even if the message is coming from someone whom you deeply respect. Messages often come from the most unusual, and unlikely sources. And don’t discount good messages either, just because you later find out that the messenger was not the perfect angel of God whom you had built them up to be. (That’s on you.) The message itself was always the gold that shows you that the answers that you need, are always deep inside of you, yourself. The messengers whom we come across in life are just people, who are working on their own sh*t, who are used as the vehicles to pass on this gold of unveiled understanding and wisdom that resonates from the depths and the portals of our own souls.

So I say to you (and to me) today, “Get your sh*t together.” If you feel like this message resonates, run with it. If not, discard it. And know that I am just a writer, a scribe, a person with a passion for the written word. I have my merits and I have my warts, but my message is its own separate entity. Don’t shoot the messenger.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Trying

Friends and I were having a discussion about different frustrations going on in our lives. I blurted out “That’s why it is so hard trying to be healthier in a world that mostly isn’t!” My friend said, “That’s a profound statement.”

By the time we reach middle age, my husband likes to say that pretty much everyone has gone through at least “one major biggie.” Something happens that rocks your world. Whether it be a major health situation, a relationship breakdown, or a career crisis, or something of the like, these are the pivotal moments in our lives. These are the moments where you either decide to get introspective and mindful, owning the parts that you play in the situation, and coming to the realization that the only person whose thoughts and actions you have any control over, are your own. Or, you stay mired in the victimhood of the situation, casting blame and moping in despair, on the throne of martyrdom, until the next crisis rears its ugly head.

It’s lonely to work on getting healthier in mind, body and spirit. There are plenty places to do it: nature, gyms, health food stores, churches, therapists, self-help books, support groups, yoga studios, etc., but oftentimes, if the quick fix doesn’t happen, we swiftly go back to our old habits, patterns and beliefs and feel sorry for ourselves. We always want the quick fix – a magic pill, with an absolute 100% guarantee.

It’s difficult, in any situation, to feel like you are that only kid who sees/accepts that the emperor obviously isn’t wearing any clothes. It feels lonely. Whether it is noticing all of the processed crap in our grocery stores, or facing all of the unhealthy communication styles in every social institution that we have (such as manipulation, passive aggressive comments, sarcasm, bullying, and sneaky half-truths. It’s funny that we’re so afraid of “direct communication” because we think that it is “mean”, but direct communication is the kindest, most honest and clear form of communication which we can utilize. People can deal with being disappointed that you aren’t able to go/do/be something that they want you to go/do/be, and you can live and deal with the knowledge that the person is disappointed. We’ve all coped with all sorts of disappointment in our lives, and we’re all still standing.) When we can sit with our own difficult emotions, instead of lashing out, or doing mindless, addictive behaviors to avoid feeling our feelings, or depressively shaming ourselves for having negative feelings, we are on a healthy road to acceptance and self-love and compassion for ourselves and for others. The ability to sit with our own difficult emotions is a simple process, but not an easy one. It’s actually pretty grueling. It takes constant practice and discipline to decide to work on being the healthiest version of ourselves. And that’s why it seems to be such a rare phenomenon in our society. Any family, social group, institution is usually only as healthy as its least healthy member.

It’s not our jobs to “fix” anyone but ourselves. Self improvement is a lot in itself. And when we keep the focus on ourselves, we can notice the unhealthiness in the people and the organizations and institutions surrounding us. We can use these observations to place boundaries to keep a safe path for ourselves to continue to grow and to heal and to prosper in our own lives. A great question to start with, to really get a detached view of yourself, and your individual beliefs, is to take a look at a situation that bothers you, and ask the question, “What story am I telling myself about this situation?” You may be incredibly surprised about some of the falsehoods, silliness, and level of emotional control you have given to others, in this particular happening.

Our “stories” often aren’t full of facts at all. They are mostly our own perceptions, based on our own emotions and past experiences. My eldest son and I love watching indie films and thought-provoking shows, and talking about them afterwards. My husband and I recently watched “The White Lotus” and we really liked it and we recommended it to him. As expected, he loved the show and he binge watched it. When my son and I discussed the show, I was amazed at what stood out to him (parts that seemed relatively inconsequential to me). He made a lot of references and analogies to meditation, an interest of his that has he has been spending a lot of time on lately. I laughed to myself. My son is 26 and I’m almost 52. He’s half my age. Of course, what stood out for him in the show, would be different than what made an impression on me. I imagine if we both wrote reviews of “The White Lotus”, people might wonder if we watched the same show.

When I am being mindful, I notice when I am judging others for their lack of self-introspection, and then I can notice my physical, mental, and spiritual response to my judgment. What story am I telling myself about this person/situation/experience?

The sewing project above, if it were truly healthy (and not just cute and funny) would read, “People in therapy are often in therapy to deal with their own perceptions about, and need to control the people in their lives who won’t go to therapy.” But that of course, would make the sewing project above much more time-consuming, difficult, and expensive, wouldn’t it now? That would be quite a demanding project.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Scarface

If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.
— Thich Nhat Hanh

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
— Leo Tolstoy

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.
— Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst

All therapy is grief work. – Edith Eger, famous therapist who survived the Nazi Camps

About five years ago, I went to a therapist, as I was working through some “stuff” that was happening in my life, and I was wanting some professional insight on how I could better deal with my “stuff”. Living with the fears and the uncertainties that come from my son’s epilepsy, was a major part of that “stuff.” Despite completely believing in the value of therapy, and despite knowing that it is the strongest people in the world who admit that they have problems, and seek to change for the better, I still felt vulnerable and embarrassed about being in therapy. I take pride in “keeping it all together.” I consider myself to be a pretty responsible person. I became extremely concerned about what my therapist was writing in “my chart.” So, one day, I point-blank asked him (with some admitted trepidation), “So what’s my diagnosis? What are you writing down there?”

“It’s simple,” he said, “You are grieving.”

Grieving is hard. And it’s not just about losing the ones we love. It’s about coming to terms with how truly vulnerable we are in life and what little control we really have in what happens around us. We grieve different stages in our lives being over with. We grieve lost opportunities and relationships that end. We grieve about mistakes which we have made. Grief is exhausting and overwhelming at times, but if we don’t let ourselves do it, we shut off the valve to all feelings and sensations and emotions. A lot of people who end up shutting off that valve to the normal cycles of feelings and emotions, end up with terrible personality disorders and debilitating addictions, which ironically, ends up making relationships, and even life itself, even harder to navigate and to experience. We have the ability to cycle through, and to experience our feelings, even our grief feelings. Our minds, and our bodies, and our souls were designed to experience the awe of all of it. We must trust this fact, in order to experience the true fullness of our lives.

This same therapist gave me a visual for grief that I have always found to be the most helpful information that he ever gave to me. I believe that I have written about this on the blog before, but this visual analogy is good enough to be worth repeating. It truly helps:

When we first experience a trauma, our wound is deep, and bloody, and so painful that it’s scary, and often overwhelming in its ugly searingness. Anything that even comes close to touching that wound, puts us in scorching pain. We are fearful and sensitive to anything that might so much as graze our vulnerable wound. Eventually, though, that wound starts to scab over. It becomes a little less sensitive to the touch. It doesn’t need as much hyper-vigilant protection. But of course, as life goes on, something happens related to our initial trauma, and that scab gets ripped right back off, and the healing process has to begin all over again. This can happen many times. But finally, after enough time and patience and growth and love and self-care, the wound becomes a scar. The scar never goes away, but it is not nearly as painful to the touch, as it was, when it was a fresh wound, or a even when it was a scab. The scar serves as a reminder of the pains which we have survived. The scar serves as a reminder of just how strong we truly are, and the truth about just how much we really feel and love and give, to the one and only life which we have been gifted to experience. In that sense, scars honestly can be the most beautiful parts of us. Scars remind us of just how much we have lived, and how much we have loved.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.