Belated Welcome, Shavtay2007

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Belated Welcome, Shavtay2007
1100
Tue, 03-20-2007 - 10:32am

Hi Tziporah,


I am so sorry that this is such a belated welcome to you. I've been absent from the board for nearly a month - so many things have been happening in my life that it was difficult to also come here. The good news is that life has somewhat calmed down (but I'm still crossing my fingers and my toes), which means that I'm back on iVillage.


I am so very happy to see you here, participating and sharing in our conversations! I hope that we'll get to know each other better in the coming weeks.


Welcome again!


(PS: I love the sound of your name!)


Please visit these other great message boards:
Cranio-Facial Abnormalities
In Vitro (IVF)



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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-12-2007
Sat, 03-20-2010 - 1:57pm
Hello Karen,
The reason you think the blind people on campus and I are so amazing is because you cannot imagine yourself coping without sight. This is because you are so dependent on sight that you think you would be "lost" without it and that you would "simply vegetate" in fear.
This is a very common, but stereotypical tittude held by many sighted people.
The truth, however, is very different. Many people who lost their sight did not just vegetate and disappear. Instead, like those who are born blind, they enrolled in programs that teach individuals how to function in the world without sight. It is a question of alternative techniques.
One of the most progressive websites that offers a positive attitude on blindness is: nationalfederationoftheblind.org. They have a lot of literature on how blind people cope. an interesting series is their Chernel Books which introduces the sighted public at large to blind people who share everyday experiences about blindness.
I had a therapy session on Thursday. my t. was very interested in my thoughts on the exercises i did from that Phil Mc'Graw book. I wasn't sure he would be open to it. i thought he was going to just go back to working on my insecure thoughts. instead, he was very attentie to it and asked some very penetrating questions i am still working through.
fingers starting to heal again--even the really sore ones.
Tziporah
web: www.life-ladders-coaching.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Tziporah
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Avatar for cl_nawleansdarlin
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Sat, 03-20-2010 - 9:47pm

Hi Tziporah!

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-12-2007
Sun, 03-21-2010 - 3:58am
Hi Karen,
terrific with what happened to your son in the competition! i'm really glad he came in so high up on the rankings. i'm glad life is good for him right now.
i'm sorry you're breaking out in hives again. take the typing slowly.
i have heard of blind painters, believe it or not. but i can understand why you'd be afraid of losing your sight--seeing it is so connected toyour lielihood. anyway, there are a lot of things blind people can do that would, at first sight, seem impossible. there is even an autobiography of a blind doctor, which you can get from the website i directed you to. i guess they're redoing their website, but it will be up again pretty quickly, rest assured.
therapy stirring up a lot of thoughts, but i am starting to consider things ihaven't thought of before, so i guess that is good.
too bad another break is coming up--the Jewish holiday of Passover is coming up and he has to go out of town and that will interfere with our schedule for a few weeks. it's frustrating. months of not really doing much, and now that i'm finally moving, there's this break. very frustrating. but then, maybe it's a good thing. it will give me time to work through things in my mind without the pressure of a session every three-four days. time for more contemplation.
right second finger and left third finger are both sore and driving me crazy. giving into the urge and picking at them. tense. maybe it's connected to therapy--the tension, i mean.
i don't know if i wrote before on this subject--but i finished typing up the material i needed for my new class. horray!
Tziporah
web: www.life-ladders-coaching.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Tziporah
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Avatar for cl_nawleansdarlin
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Sun, 03-21-2010 - 9:20pm

Hi Tziporah!


I'm glad you finished the typing of the class material!

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-12-2007
Tue, 03-23-2010 - 1:17pm
Hi Karen,
Hope you're feeling better today.
The only connection I can make between Passover and Catholics is Palm Sunday and The Last Supper. Is that what you meant by your sentence about Passover and Catholics?
Anyway, as for myself, I was doing more or less okay until yesterday. Then the anxiety came back. What am II going to do when this holiday is over and all my typing projects are finished? My therapist had kept telling me to try to replace this insecure thought with the secure thought that something will come along, as it always does. I tried it. It worked for awhile, but the anxiety kept coming back. WhenI told him about it in therapy, he said that was a "success". I should keep it up. Naturally, the anxiety got me to picking at my fingers.
Then we worked some more on what we had started in the preious session. For the thousandth time I told him about how I saw my past. He said as long as I stayed with this negative interpretation, I'd remain stuck. I started to tell him about my parents. That riled him up. He shouted: "I don't care one shut about your parents." You gotta understand--this guy's very restrained, so if he yelled it really means he was frustrated, or very emphatic--probably both. Maybe it was just good therapeutic technique to shock me. In any event, it worked. Wow--was I sore after that session!
Anyway, I have a break till a week from Thursday. A lot of time to think about things.
He said I have got to come up with a positive interpretation, or at least, a retelling of my personal story. I said to him, "You come up with a retelling." he said, "That's for you to do." Typical, typical. But I know he's right. If it's his words, not mine, it won't work. But I can't seem to come u with any alternative. Not yet, anyway.
Well, I finished that typing project I've been working on. Really, nearly finished. Just a few pages to go. No hassle.
And the illegible parts--I checked them out with someone and it's really no big deal. They couldn't make sense of it either so I'm just skipping that part.
So, that's where things are holding with me.
Also, still watching movies. A bit addicting, but ery relaxing.
Tziporah
web: www.life-ladders-coaching.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Tziporah
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Avatar for cl_nawleansdarlin
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Wed, 03-24-2010 - 10:55pm

Hi Tziporah,


I am currently trying desperately to keep my hives at bay.

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-12-2007
Thu, 03-25-2010 - 4:21am

Hello, Karen,
Warning--this is a very long letter!
Thanks for your reply. It must be difficult being in a constant state of sleepiness-vs.-itchyness from the hives. Why do you want to avoid going to the ER or the clinic? Maybe they can help. Or, maybe they can't and you see it as just a waste of time. Whatever.
Chronic conditions can make a person depressed, so try to keep positive and give yourself credit for whatever you can do, cosiderig the state of your health right now.

I appreciate your respose. I know that my mother feels guilty about my being blind, although in reality she had no part in it. After all, it was something that occurred in an incubator, not a result of something that occurred during pregnancy6 or the birth itself. Logic doesn't seem to work, though, when such overpowering emotions are involved. That much I know. She doesn't talk about it very often, but when she has, she gets very emotional.

The real challenge is trying to work out all the hurt from the discrimination I faced as a kid--all the times I was left out of thigs, all the tokenism, all the dishonesty because people didn't want to hurt my feelings as a blind kid and therefore let me get by with poor academic performance and misdirected career choices. Too long to go into the all the details, but that's a lot of it.

I've continued to watch different movies and they are stimulating my thinking. I have watched Dead Poets Society several times. It's about a group of teen boys in a prestigeous prep school run according to strict discipline and conformity. A past graduate, an English teacher, comes along and he challenges the students to think for themselves. The results are tragic. A student ends up committing suicide, another is expelled, and most of the remainder defy the authoritarian rigid school master.

Anyway, I watched this movie again last night, and reading your last post I was reminded ofit. The student who killed himself did so because his tyranical father wanted to run his life, force him to go to med school, force him to give up extracirricular activities he had wanted to do, etc. etc. etc. Relevant point--where was his mother during all this emotional abuse? A silent witness, thus a co-participant. It gradually dawned on me that she was probably under her husband's tyrany, just as much as the son. I kep asking myself: "why doesn't she intervene?" She was probably as afraid of him as her son.
Or, maybe she even agreed with her husband and let him handle it.
That's what abuse does. Silences everyone in the face of the perpetrator.

And yet, even though the movie is tragic, it is empowering, because each of the boys, in their own ways, begin to awaken within themselves, to think for themselves. At the end, they defy the dictatorial school master. He ends up being ineffective in controlling them.

After that, I started watching another movie I hadn't seen before, Swing Kids, a film about teens who like big band music. Only problem is--in pre-Nazi Germany this kind of music is banned, mostly because the great big band musicians are either Jewish or black--an affront to Hitler's "superior race" theories. So, engaging in this kind of actiity is potentially dangerous.

While I was watching it, I kept thinking, "wht would I have done if I lived in pre-World War II Germany?" Answer: I have no idea. For all I know, maybe I would have conformed to all the rules, just like mostof the population. and then I thanked G-d a hundred times that I've never had to be tested like that! Then I had this thought, that both of these films had the same theme: standing up to tyrany, standing up to authority, thinking for oneself in the face of rigidity and conformity. The only difference being--one was in the safe environment of a prep school, the other in the dangerous environment of the Nazi state. Both of them--extreme forms of emotional abuse.

After that, I fell asleep. When I woke up, I had a new thought I had not had before--that what made me different from my sisters and my friends was that I had experienced oppression and discrimination, things they really haven't had to go through. Till now, Ihave always been angry over all the injustice. For the first time, I started to think that that helped me make the choices I have. That awareness, that experience has somehow made me better. Not that I would wish it on anybody. I wouldn't. But it is an important realization that I have never really had before, and I need time to internalize it. In some strange way, I think seeing these films has helped me to come to this awareness and realization.
The other thing from your letter that helped was your sentence about not knowing the full truth. This has been a real hurdle for me in therapy. I have always seen my experiences as the truth--after all, I went through them. How could there e any other interpretation? But if I don't have all the facts, which I can't possibly hae, then I can't say Iknow the whole truth. I know a good deal of it, but I can't possibly know all of it. I am going to have to think about that and digest it. However, reading this point in your letter felt like something opening up inside.
A very good example of how analternative iewpoint is possible is found in the film, Ordinary People, which I have also seen several times. In this film, atwo brothers out sailing. A storm develops and in their attempts to return to shore the sails get jammed and one of the brothers is drowned. The other one feels responsible. He ends up going for therapy. The climax comes when the psychiatrist, portrayed as a positive, caring therapist, suggests an alternative possibility to how the accident could be seen, thus freeing the surviing brother from his guilt.
That part, about the alternative viewpoit, the alternative possibility--it wasn't lost on me. I caught it.

I've always seen myself as being different and have always interpreted that difference as being a bad thing, negative. These films have started to challenge me to consider this is not an all-or-nothing, black-or-white thing. And that is one kind of thinking I have very susceptible to, black-and-why thinking.
Tziporah

web: www.life-ladders-coaching.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Tziporah
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Avatar for cl_nawleansdarlin
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Thu, 03-25-2010 - 10:17am

Hi Tziporah,

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-12-2007
Sun, 03-28-2010 - 4:34am
Hello Karen,
I've read your last message several times. I really can't relate to the part about the egg and the egg-shell, the weak and strong point. I might need to think about it for awhile and then maybe it will register. Maybe not. I don't know.
It is hard to accept that all the discrimination was just ignorance. Prejudice would be a better word. Was all the discriminiation against the blacks just ignorance? I don't think so. A lot of people, including me, equate the discrimination against blind people similar to that of black people. Ignorance just sounds too easy. It had more to do with a certain way of thinking, a rigidity in perception, a close-mindedness.
Children are very vulnerable, and as a blind perso I was more vulnerable than sighted children. After all, I had no way of traveling about independently. I had to depend on others until I learned how to walk with the cane, and that didn't occur until junior high.
There is also a lot that had to do with decisions made by school administrators--a very pard kind of authority to fight or challenge.
I am grappling with the choices I have made, trying to work them out. This book by Phil Mc'Graw has really stimulated that kind of thought, and in that way it's been good. Slow going, but good. Painful, but good.
Sometimes my therapist and I take a break during the Passover holiday. Either because he wants a vacation or I want it. This time he suggested a session and I agreed. My husband would have preferred I skip it but I finally told him I planned to have one session this week. Otherwise, it's almost three weeks without a session. Too long. Not that my husband is the dictatorial type--he is not. But I was glad I could be assertive.
In any event, I'm finding therapy difficult and challenging now. Like last time: when he let me go on and on about all the injustices and I got the feeling I was breaking ground. Then, he said: "every time you tell this story it gets bleaker. How many times are you going to keep doing this?" I felt, as often happens, as if I had wasted the whole session just going over old hat, that he had smartly led me into a trap , instead of stopping me befoe I started. To be fair, sometimes he tries to stop me, but I feel like I have to go through the narrative.
Sometimes he asks what my goal is in therapy, whether it's even helping me anymore. Then he'll turn around and make another appointment.
It's all so confusing.
I've been biting and picking at my fingers again. A bloody mess. Feel better when I do it. As Chris, Why140, used to say: "it's not the best coping mechanism, but it is a coping mechanism nonetheless."
Although I can't connect it to anything specific, I suppose it has to do with the iner turmoil.
I guess the proper name for this would be: rewriting my persoal history.
Tziporah
web: www.life-ladders-coaching.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Tziporah
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Avatar for cl_nawleansdarlin
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Mon, 03-29-2010 - 11:57am

The biting goes back to your inner child.

 

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