My Book Review

I bought this book last night. I cautiously opened the pages, remembering the therapist's caution that it might be "too much" for me right now. Hmmmm. I think the reverse was true. I think it was "too little". Here is my review... "Codependency...blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-BLAH!"


Make sense?

Yeah, me either.

A Prayer

My friend's husband, 32, is fighting cancer. I visit their caringbridge.org site often to encourage and uplift them. I saw this amazing prayer someone left for them today. I printed it out and have it hanging over my computer so I can remember to pray big prayers during my own personal struggles. Especially now. I've edited the verbage to fit me. Feel free to do the same.

"Lord of Heaven and Earth, God of All Creation, you are the Holy One who looks at us and in us and sees all. Infuse me with your perfect Spirit and encourage me with your perfect love. Draw me and my children with cords of loving kindness to yourself and to each other. Create peace in us we can't even fathom, especially in this situation where others often find confusion and fear. Mend my body and keep infections and symptoms away. Place your angels to guard my children and keep them safe. Develop their faith as they watch their Mother try hard to walk in fellowship and joy with you. Envelope the whole family in confidence, blessed assurance that you are abiding with them as this experience unfolds. Grant financial peace to them as they obediently serve you and each other. Give us the patience we need to wait in the waiting times and energy for the very long days we must sometimes face. We love you and trust you and thank you in the midst of this. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

A Little Break...

Feeling a little overwhelmed with stress at the moment. Shall return shortly. Muah.

Psychobabble?

Sigh. So, as I said, therapists LOOOVE the word "codependency". If they could marry that word and have it's babies, they would. That's how much they love it.

Both therapists said I MUST read the above book. Well, this new guy said it may be "too much" for me right now... "too overwhelming"... but that eventually I should read it.

I watch a lot of tv. I watch a lot of Intervention. They seem to love the word "codependency" too. I don't even know whatintheheck it even means!

I guess I will have to scrape together my 9 dollars and invest in this holy grail of psychobabble and see how it changes my world.

Will report back on it later.

Some songs I like to keep on constant iPod rotation:

"R.E.S.P.E.C.T." (find out what it means to me!)

"I Will Survive" (first I was alone...I was petrified!)

As I sit here I have blistered and bloody hands from getting all the yardwork done. Mowing (with the cheapest damn mower known to mankind!), weeding, trimming, clipping, cleaning... As I was about to pass out, ha-ha, I was singing in my head, "I can bring home the bacon! Fry it up in a pan! And never never let you forget your a man, cuz I'm a Wooooooo-man!"

I'm from Pioneer Stock MoFo. Watch out. I'm from sturdy people who tilled the ground, birthed babies and then buried them soon after, crossed the plains, starved...but survived. Survived, then flourished. (all without therapists fyi!)

My maternal Grandmother lost her first husband (to a first, poisonous swig of moonshine) when she was young and had 4 little children at home. She lost her second husband when she had 8 children. She went blind... but still cleaned and cooked and sewed and married a third husband.

My father went from a hayseed plow boy without indoor plumbing to a college-educated Executive Mechanical Engineer...traveling the world. Putting himself through college scraping wax off floors and selling chocolates door to door to make ends meet.

Nothing about my heritage is weak.

I am strong.

I will survive.

Yeah... I rock.

Word.

Needy, Needy, Needy

I love this cartoon. First, it reminds me of an awesome Dixie Chick's song "Hole in my head! Hole in my head! I need a boy like you like a hole in my head! Let's just say we will and then DON'T instead!"

Secondly, I feel like a giant, shapeless mass of neediness lately.

That sucks.

I feel like I am a bottomless pit inside and I just need to be filled, but there is nothing to fill me right now. I'm afraid to get too near to people because I feel like I will suck the energy right out of them because I'm so deficient.

The therapist mapped this experience I'm having out for me on a piece of paper. He calls where I'm at "No Man's Land." I've been so low for so long. Then... then, I found a way to cope. It gave me really extreme HIGHS (no, not drugs!) followed by plummeting lows. I would keep going UP and dowwwwn in a downward spiral. Now I've stopped the unhealthy coping mechanisms but I'm lower than I was when I started. Also, it's going to take a loooong time before I start seeing results from my current growth and actions.

It really sucks. I miss the highs. They comforted me and made me feel better. But he promises that if I hold on and don't indulge in unhealthy coping mechanisms that EVENTUALLY I will get higher than I was emotionally in a healthy and productive way. I just have to do a lot of work to climb out of the hole I'm in (both from my own actions and from my husband's actions...)

So. This therapist I'm seeing is pretty great. I love it when you can't shock someone with anything you think or feel. I tell him a lot of shocking things.

For instance, I told him today, "I consider myself a pretty sensitive person. Sometimes I lay awake tossing and turning at night just at the possibility I may have said something that might have hurt someone's feelings...but when my husband of 13 years tells me that I have broken his heart and our marriage I think 'well, too bad, so sad my friend, sorry 'boutcha luck!' "

I made eye contact with Mr. Therapist after I said that expecting to see concern or dissapproval. He just shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly and says, "Yeah, that's a healthy thing. If you cared too much you'd get sucked back into the whole abusive cycle again. Shame, blame, pain. You are protecting yourself. Keep doing that right now. You're vulnerable."

Sigh of relief.

This guy is much more extensively trained than the last therapist. He has a PhD is trauma and abuse and addictions and all sorts of delightfully wicked and painful things. Anytime I think I'm springing something totally crazy and shocking on him, he pulls up a slide on his laptop and puts words to my pain and my experiences and explains why I reacted that way or feel that way. Hello!? Where have you BEEN all my life? And the BEST part???? He knows how to fix me! He knows how to pull out all the junk and re-build me from the inside out. A new improved model of me.

Unbelievable.

It's nice to have someone who understands and can see the pathway out of this mess clearly. He puts it all in a gospel perspective as well. Putting my feelings and experiences into an eternal perspective and a God vs. Satan context that I can understand.

I told him I felt self-indulgent sitting around whining about my problems and discussing them ad nauseum. He said, "Nope, it's more self-indulgent to be co-dependent (note: therapists LOVE that word!) in an abusive relationship. Wanting to please someone who is hurting us so we can have our needs filled." Oh! Okay.

Here's the truth. We all have a breaking point. If we don't have the proper tools to handle trauma and abuse and pain and shame... we break. That is just a fact. No way around it. The only thing that differs is the method by which we break.

The day I broke turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I feel like it shattered the lie I was living and allowed me a new landscape to heal on.

Therapy. Don't knock it 'til you try it kids!