Getting Lost.

Once again I find myself not wanting to go to therapy tomorrow. I will go, and won’t even entertain not going, but I am aware that I don’t WANT to go.

I am troubled, still, from last week’s session. I recall one moment when C said something about something that had to do with her life …. but all I actually recall is her putting her hand to her chest while saying the words “my life” …. I don’t remember anything about the context …. I don’t remember what she was talking about …. I just know that I am left with the feeling of being accused of something …. of somehow doing, or maybe even “being”, something that caused her to feel that I was trespassing in her life …. somehow …… so much of this us unclear to me, but the feeling has been overwhelming all of this week.

My response has been to want to just disappear. I no longer want to be seen or to be heard. I regret having revealed myself.

It has occurred to me that my recent conversations with C about believing that when I walk into a room I believe that I will not be liked has been incorrect ……. I think, in part, it had to due with timing. This conversation began almost directly after a conversation at work regarding how I felt when I am in a room of predominantly black people. In this context, it would be true to say that I expect to not be liked, but it is not because of who I am, but more because of the social context and a bias I feel against me in this situation due to the color of my skin.

What is more true, I believe, is that when I walk into a room what I expect the most is to not be noticed at all. In fact, this is what I have come to hope for.

I also note that over this last week, I feel as if I am “splitting” …. not necessarily into personalities, or dissociating etc., but I have a sense that there is a “me” that watches another “me” go about my daily life. But there is this “inner me” that seems to be disappearing …. or getting lost ….. as if this inner me is traveling down a tunnel further and further away from the me that is involved in my daily life. I sense that whatever connects these two “me’s” is getting stretched further and further. How long until it breaks? Which of the “me’s” will remain and which will drift off, unconnected and lost?

Psychic disintegration.

While looking for something else, I came across this article cited below.

This idea of “psychic disintegration” sort of hit home [oh goodness, what am I talking about -- it "sort of hit home" -- it pierced the very center of my being!] …. it feels as if this is what may be behind my contemplation of swallowing a bunch of pills …. like the idea of the total disintegration of my “self” is beyond even being unbearable.

I also wonder if I am being at all successful in conveying to C the strength of this feeling of needing to protect myself. The words feel too simple to convey the message. I can see, I think, why people need to act out ….. unfortunately, I keep it all inside — drama just is not in my nature …. maybe I would be better off if I were able to act out more …. but instead, I seem to just turn deeper inwards ….

Ehrenberg (1992) describes patients who have a desperate desire to feel desire, but are petrified in a kind of psychic death in order to protect themselves from psychic disintegration, breakdown, or suicide.

The need to protect from the psychic disintegration alluded to by Ehrenberg is also an
important component of an avoidant attachment.

trauma can cause a child to avoid developing reflective functioning, the ability to conceive of what is in the other’s mind, in order to avoid the devastation of imagining that his parent wants to hurt or kill him (Fonagy, 2000).

WHERE RELATIONAL THEORY AND ATTACHMENT THEORY INTERSECT: A REAL RELATIONSHIP AND A REAL ATTACHMENT
Ruth A. Sterlin, M.S.W., L.C.S.W.1
Clinical Social Work Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer 2006 (Ó 2005)
DOI: 10.1007/s10615-005-0018-0

Tomorrow’s session.

I am not really looking forward to tomorrow’s session. There are a few things that I am more inclined to just “let slide”, but with what I have been reading lately, it seems that I need to bring them up.

I am absolutely flummoxed over my reaction to this whole bill thing. …. I actually found myself in tears over it … Really?! Tears?! That just seems to me to be a really disproportionate response. I think my response may have had something to do with feeling as if I could be accused of lying. I hate lying. [OK, so I realize that as a child I was accused of lying when I hadn't -- I get the connection] So I think that I am reacting to being unwittingly pulled into someone else’s untruth.

Then there is just the whole phone call thing all together… I hate bringing it up – it feels like I am beating a dead horse. (as the saying goes … I guess it is better to beat a live horse????) But, C, you did mention in passing that there is probably something there to work with …. just WHAT is my issue with talking to the person on the phone? I don’t know …. I just know that I am loathe to do so …. to have to say anything beyond “Please have C call me” just feels unbearable. I realize that being asked if it is an emergency could possibly just be so that they can relay that to you so that you, perhaps, would make a point of returning the call sooner than later … but I think that in my mind, I have seen it as a way to determine if they are going to relay my call to you at all. If I say it is not an emergency, then they may simply tell me that they will not put through the message. So, in a sense, I think I am reacting against there being an intermediary between us that is deciding whether or not to relay my call to you.

I think what I have heard from you is that it is the call from your service that is most likely to get your attention. So, I hear that that is your “modus operandi” … so it is the way that you are most intuitively “tuned in ” to your patients outside of work hours, so to speak … but even that has not worked so well in relation to me.

I do appreciate your giving me your cell and home numbers … I acknowledge and appreciate your attempt to …. to …. to … hmmmm, I don’t know what word to put here …. to appease me? to accommodate me? to meet my need? to assure me? Still, I am appreciative.

But when you said something about how I now had as much of a chance to get a hold of you as anybody, I heard that as you saying “Good luck with that! I’ll give you these numbers, but they won’t do you any good.” I also thought at that time that you sounded either angry or exasperated … I wasn’t sure which. I had a similar feeling when you said you did not want to be tied to a pager. (pagers are SO outdated, anyway!!)

You also made a comment that roughly said “Maybe I am just not a dependable enough of a person for you.” Ouch. Maybe it was moment of frustration on your part (and in my heart I believe that is what it was) …. I could understand that …. but I have to ask myself if you are questioning your being able to work with me …. perhaps I fear that you will reach a point where you are just too frustrated with me and will want to give up …. This is one of those things that I generally just dismiss as being not important enough to bring up …(yep, that insecure-avoidant-dismissive attachment type!) or it is not until after I have processed the session that I realize something like this and I don’t think to bring it up in the next session.

So, I have been asking myself, “what would constitute an emergency?” (in my mind, anyway) The answer I come up with is that nothing short of imminent danger to my physical well being would be an emergency. Therefore, I think I might call if I were about to jump off of a bridge. Now, that is a highly unlikely scenario for me …. so that call is not likely to be made.

But I was thinking about this the other night when I picked up my bottle of sleeping pills and thought “I could easily really just take all of these (they are quite small) …. and …. just .. go …to … sleep.” Living alone, it would really be a couple of days before anyone really would be concerned enough to find me.

Now, C, this really scares me, because whereas jumping off of a bridge is something I really don’t ever see myself doing …. swallowing a bunch of pills IS within my realm of possibilities …. especially when I feel as low as I was feeling when I attempted to contact you last January. Now, this must be opening something within me as while I am typing, the tears are just welling ….

I recognize that before, self-medicating was pretty much a social activity for me …. something I never did alone. Since this past January, it has become pretty much a daily habit. Sometimes I do it simply out of habit … but other times, when I reach that emotional place where things feel rough, when my instinct tells me to reach out to you, it is then that I most particularly self-medicate…. to ameliorate that feeling. So far, this seems to have worked for me as a strategy for “holding” my emotions from session to session.

But the other night, when I found myself contemplating that bottle of pills, some small alarm went off somewhere in my head that just said … this is not good.

I have this overwhelming sense that as I walk this inner path, there is some darkness that I think I need to walk through. I don’t know what it is. I sense that I have been skirting around it, but there is just some sense that I can try as much as I like, but my inner journey will not proceed until I actually screw up the courage to walk into it …. I think this is the place I am most hesitant to ask you to walk with me …. or if it is even possible to have anyone walk it with me … perhaps I need to do it alone … my innermost fear is that if I attempt to go it alone, I will not survive it — quite literally. Is this what it is to face one’s shadow self?

Oh my, as I set off writing this, I had no idea that this is where I would end up …………. it will be interesting to see if I’ll get this far tomorrow in session, or if I will run out of time…..

Just Rambling.

So, I sit down to write today without any real thought about what I want to say. I guess it is a “stream of consciousness” kind of a day.

Something is really moving or changing or something within me …. don’t know for sure what it is … I have been intrigued a bit lately with my limited bits of understanding about neurobiology. I remember, C, first noting that you were left-handed and wanting to talk to you about what that is like ….. starting way back with when you were growing up, did anyone try to make you be right-handed??

More recently, in reading Wallin, and his description of the “unthought known” I have had a different understanding, or experience, of what occurs in the right brain. So much of what I have studied in regards to learning disabilities has focused on the left brain. That one elusive area that always seemed less understandable was the area of non-verbal learning disabilities. I am guessing, that the literature in this area is pointing to some problem, then, with right brain functioning.

So today I am a bit fascinated with what occurs in the right brain … and wondering if at some point in my earlier development I actually made a a choice to focus on those left brain skills of language, analysis and linear thinking. After all, it was these skills that provided with me a sense of success in school and eventually at work.

But as I was reflecting on this this morning, I keep seeing myself as a young girl and remembering that I was rather a bit of a dreamer …. I read voraciously from an early age. I remember my delight at my 6th birthday of getting a bunch of books as a present from my mother. It seemed as if reading was able to transport me to so many different places. I also remembering spending time just sitting in tree limbs watching clouds and letting my mind just wander.

Now, I wonder, is it the right brain that holds all the sensory input from all of my life experiences? Is this why sometimes I find no words for what I am feeling/experiencing? Is the right brain, then, the seat of the unconscious? Does this mean that what resides in the unconscious is not necessarily “hidden” or “buried”, but simply does not have a sufficient enough of a connection to the left brain …. to language … that allows it to be expressed or “known” in a way that can be talked about? Are emotions more of a right brain phenomena than left brain? Could this be why exercises that involve “consciousness awareness” seem to generally lead to experiences that often seem to be indescribable? This could explain why it is so difficult to use language to adequately describe one’s contemplative experience to another unless you share similar connections between language and the experience?

I know that there has been some talk, some speculation about a “God spot” in the brain ….. so now I wonder … does God, the Divine, the True Essence, the Universal “whatever” …… live in the right brain????

Goodness, C, this is where I get so frustrated with the boundaries and time limits of our relationship …… so many ideas I would like to explore with you ….. but I am working so hard to mold myself into what I believe is acceptable to you …. to fit myself into the limits inherent to this therapeutic relationship. It never seems to get any easier.

Attachment Theory.

So, I guess all-in-all, I would agree with my therapist that I am, in fact, attached to her. Great. After our last session, I was thinking about this and I thought that what bothered me was that I do not FEEL attached. Upon further consideration, I considered that what was the issue for me was that I DON’T LIKE feeling attached to her. Now, I realize that this feeling has nothing to do with her, actually, but is simply my historical response to attachment …. it is not a good thing. (Does this mean I am taking a “Reflective Stance?”) Let’s face it …. for me, becoming attached has never ended well.

So, I guess what I really need to do now is to allow for the possibility that this particular attachment need not follow what seems to be a set pattern in my life.

I need to remind myself to stay in the “now”.

Reading about Attachment theory seems, however, to help me understand that emotions that are activated by this feeling of attachment seem to be more historical than current. As I read about the insecure avoidant/dismissive attachment, it was as if the author had traversed the inner landscape of my psyche and written about what he saw there. The descriptors resonated so intensely that I was aware that emotions were surely being activated …. damn those tears!!!

It is interesting to me how some theories just really seem to hit home, and others … not so much. This particular theory, for me, seems to give me an understandable construct from which to understand my own inner experience. Perhaps it gives me left brained expression of my right brained “unthought known”.

May 7, 2009

I am still intrigued by what I notice within myself as the dissipation of a feeling of “urgency”. Prior to this, I would experience the arising of an emotion with an overwhelming sense that it had to be addressed immediately or something dire was going to happen. Now, I don’t have any idea what I percieved that “dire” something to be, but it was certainly overwhelming. At times, it felt as if I would actually explode if I did not do something about it. The problem was that I did not know what to do with the emotion.

Now, however, I don’t have that feeling of urgency when emotions arise. Well, maybe, sometimes, for a moment or so, but it does not last. Rather than the emotion taking over my very being, it becomes something I can observe about myself. I guess it is safe to say that I no longer so much indentify myself AS the emotion, but as EXPERIENCING the emotion.

In my work with children and adolescents, I have worked with those who are “hoarders” … in the simplest of examples, there are those who often do not know where their next meal is coming from, so they hoard whatever food they can find. Without any trust in their needs being met in the future, they do what they can to fulfill that need in the present moment. I am thinking that my experiences of emotions are kind of like that. Without trusting that I will be able to deal with the emotions at some future time, I sensed that I HAD to deal with it right in the moment. Perhaps, going back further in time, judging that I could not deal with it in the present moment, I would surpress the emotion.

Now, however, I seem to be better able to stay with or hold the emotion, trusting that it is not going to be my undoing as well as I will be able to deal with it at a future time.

SO, it seems to me, here is the progression of my emotional growth: in my earliest years, I learned to surpress emotions simply to survive. This response of emotional surpression became so habituated that it continued even after there was no actual threat to my survival, but with the habituated response came a habituated perception of threat which may or may not have been rooted in reality. With still no real trust in the future, as I began to refrain from surpressing emotions, I became overwhelmed with a sense of immediacy in dealing with emotions. As emotions arose, and in some cases very strong emotions, they were overwhelming and because I did not have a sense that I could “hold” the emotion until there was a time/place to deal with them, I was immersed in a sense that I could not handle them and that they would, indeed, threaten my survival. Most recently, however, I have begun to experience that it is possible to simply hold and/or observe the emotion without becoming the emotion and without that emotion causing me to lose all control over my life and becoming my very ruin.

To what do I attribute this particular change? I am thinking that it is in the very nature of the consistency of the therapeutic relationship. It may have taken me 100+ sessions for it to just BEGIN to sink in that there is a point of time in the future (generally the upcoming session) in which I will be able to address the emotion, whatever it may be, thereby reducing that sense of urgency that was once so overwhelming. It is in the same way that the “hoarding” child may eventually let go of the need to hoard food from one meal when they are able to trust there will be enough food available at the next meal.

Of course, the still persistent problem for me is when I can’t “get through” everything in one session …. and the time “between” meals just gets to be too long. But that is a different conversation.

Plus, I do wonder about the nature of the “self” that experiences the emotion and the “self” that can observe the experience of the emotion ………. or might it be the “self” that has the experience and the “no-self” that observes it? …… but again, a different conversation ….

May 3, 2009

::::sigh::::: Perhaps I am just hung up on the idea or concept of therapy as being something that is done in order to correct something that is wrong … or treatment for illness ….. maybe if it were just called something else … maybe in the evolution of psychotherapy too much is now gathered under a very general umbrella. It seems to me that the continuum from addressing/treating significant pathology to supporting/guiding personal growth is vast.

I also wonder if the guidance that individuals once received from “elders” in their communities and extended families has been lost in our modern society. Perhaps the “connections” that were once fostered naturally are now the connections that we seek out from professionals …. God help us if we do not have the financial resources to do this.

Well, I can’t put my finger on it, but there is just something here that is disturbing to me ….

Here is a thought …. as I grow older I am aware that relationships go through different stages and there seem to be shifts that may be just a part of what happens over time. I am aware of people in my life who were adults when I was a child and how my relationships with them have changed as I grew into and through the different stages of my own adulthood …. and I am now old enough to have been the adult who has related to children who have now become adults … these relationships are dynamic, not static. There are paradigmatic shifts in these relationships … shifts which are seemingly necessary for growth. Maybe it is when we hold these relationships in some form of stasis that growth is halted. For example, the parent who tries to maintain their child’s dependency on them … or vice-versa.

Maybe it is just that I don’t know enough about the therapeutic relationship, but to this point, I am not aware of any literature that addresses shifts in this relationship for those who engage in long-term therapy. This may be particularly true in the this day and age of managed care and time-limited therapy.

Or, maybe I am just living in some particular state of delusion …..

Who knows???