Belated Welcome, Shavtay2007
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Belated Welcome, Shavtay2007
| 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!)

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I had this crazy idea--while I was reading your last message--why not write up a story about yourself and send it to Good Housekeeping. I don't know why this idea came tome. I used to read that magazine. They have stories about interesting people. You never know.
Anyway, I can totally relate to what you are saying about the economy. Hiring a life coach is not exactly on the necessity list of most people. Most of the people, although not all, who hire life coaches are said to be white baby boomer women. They have money to spare. I guess the same could be said for portraits.
Anyway, you might try promoting yourself on a website.
About that bridal shower that's coming up--my thought at the time was: well--if your mother thinks it's only going to cost two hundred dollars, let her organize it. that is, give her the job of organizing it. then she'll discover for herself how much it really costs!
I watched the movie Ordinary People again today. There is so much in it I can relate to.
There is the psychiatrist, who portrays very well what a good therapist should be like. anyone who has ever gone through serious therapy will recognize the technique and tactics he uses. the teenager's reactions to the therapy are also quite typical. that is what is good about it--a very realistic portrayal.
but there are other things in the movie as well. the way the teen feels he can't relate to his mother and his expectation that somehow she should change, that with time she might change. that has always been a dominant theme in my therapy, wishing that somehow she could understand me, which she and my father really can't. not because they're dense or dumb. they are not. they are quite intelligent. it's just their world and mine are so totally, radically different. not that my world is better than theirs. it's just our value systems are different. it has taken so long for me to accept that.
every time i come to the part where the psychiatrist tells the teenager that it's not that his mother doesn't love him, but that she loves him as much as she can and he has to accept her limitations, it strikes a chord and i think about myself.
there is the issue of how the mother relates to the two brothers--something you touched on in your last post. i have two sisters, one who is three years older than i am, and my twin sister, who was born a few minutes after my birth.
all three of us were premies and all three of us were put in incubators. that's how i got blind.
needless to say, that occurrence had tremendous impact on the relationship with my two sisters, but most strongly with my twin and myself. it would take a book to write about all of it. rest assured, it's been gone oer in therapy. laugh. today, i have the same distance-thing you talked about with both of my sisters. they've followed in the path of my parents. added to that, is the simple fact that i live in Israel and they are in NY--it's very hard to maintain any kind of long-distance relationship so far away over many years.
you're right. i feel like this new period of therapy is going to bring about a lot of breakthroughs. i felt it from the first session after the Passover break. i guess you could say i'm not "resisting". I let him do the work and i try tohonestly answer all the questions and share my thoughts.
he doesn't miss an opportunity to point out when i persist in thinking or talking in the patterns he wants me to change. to be fair, however, i must add that he does praise me when i do make a positie change. he says part of my problem is that i do't give myself credit for those positive changes and says i have to accentuate them much more.
the session yesterday was more of this kind of drilling, probing, assessing eery word. he was trying to give me a strategy for protecting myself after my parents' phone calls. the last one, on Friday, was depressing and threw me into a downward spiral for a few days. so he is a topnotch therapist who covers all bases.
anyway, towards the end of the session, after feeling nothing for most of it, (i mean, feeling no pain), he said something and it felt like he was scraping away something inside my stomach. i guess you could say it was like a dentist who touched a raw nerve. anyway, i didn't say anything. my first therapist, every time the pain started, i'd say,"it hurts", and start to cry. i'm past that now--way past that. so i just felt the sensation and told myself it was probably because he was hitting a central point and tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
well, beliee it or not, in the last two days several deelopments have occurred which hold potential. you could say they are successes. that will give my t. something to cheer about for a change when i report it in my next session.
it might sound odd, but i think you will be able to understand and relate, somehow, when i watch that movie, Ordinary People, and see how the therapist works with this teen, it gives me the strength to keep going through my own therapy.
the issue about your husband returning to therapy. interestingly enough, this theme is also covered in this movie, Ordinary People. after awhile, the father of the teen decides to go see the psychiatrist treating his son, obsensibly to "shed some light" on the family situation and the events surrounding his sons. in the end,he realizes he has come really to talk about himself. the film shows only the part when the therapist and father are talking about the sons, but from what happens afterwards, it is easy to understand that the therapist helped the father initiate several imp[ortant discussions with his wife--the mother. in one of them, he suggests they go as a family to see the psychiatrist. he is very open about it. she, however, is opposed, on the grounds that it's a private family matter and that families should be able to solve their own problems. it is clear she has psychological difficulties that would lend themselves to therapy.
so, i think it is common for spouses to disagree about this.
my husband would never go to therapy. thankfully, he doesn't need it. but even though he voices some hesitation with it, he went with me to see my first therapist several times and respected him. he's talked to my current t., but it was not a great rapport. so he has less than favorable feelings about him, but he has never told me to change therapists. this may be because our rabbi has always told me to keep working with him, and my husband has great respect for this cleric's judgment. it was this same cleric who initially suggested i enter therapy.
maybe that's why i spendso much time watching these movies. beyond the fact that i am truly interested in the psychological workings of the mind, when it is done properly, i think the therapy process can be very good and healing and empowering. i guess i need that emotional strength.
maybe that's why my fingers are also a crutty mess. i'm going through such an intense time. it's n outlet for that intensity. but that doesn't stop me from feeling ashamed and disgusted about it.
time for bed.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hi Tziporah,
I’m glad your therapy sessions are becoming more fruitful.
I'm not sure what's happening until Monday--see the beginning of your last message. I'm assuming it's that shower.
That sentence about how we can't change others, but have to accept them as they are. I could have closed my eyes and heard my t. say it--same exact words. how many times has he said it? thousands of times! if I could just really accept this truth, my parents' reactions wouldn't hurt me so much. i've been working on that one for years! believe me.
sounds like you've caught up a lot. considering that only a few days ago you were really stressed out about the art show and all of that, sounds really good.
happy anniversary. we celebrated our 32nd a few weeks ago.
i've been having a successful week for a change.
tonight i typed up a complicated graph and ran about 60 copies of it for a community project. when i was done, i recalled how this project used to take me an entire day. i got almost to the end when the printer jam.med. i don't like to have to ask for help, and like it even less when it's at a late hour, as it was this time--almost 11pm. i live in an appartment building that has 4 floors. most everyone helps everybody out here. so when i am really in a jam, if someone is available, they are usually willing to help.
i found myself going back into the old negative self-talk, "they're always a jinx. i can never get this done without a snag somewhere."
still, i overcame this thought--rather, ignored it, and finished off the copying.
best part--i got it done on time.
that was a success.
i've also confirmed plans to start a new class on this community phone line that i'm teaching on and i'm looking forward to it. no money involved, but i enjoy doing the teaching. that will be starting in two weeks and is a weekly class. as of now, i have four hours a week on this phone line teaching three different classes. one class is twice weekly and the others are once a week.
i'm having Sabbath guests again this week after a long break. i think it will be a good group. i hope so. i do better when guests are here--my husband is right. i make more of an effort to go to religious services than when they aren't.
only thing is, my fingers aren't in such great shape and that's embarrassing.
maybe by Friday the sores will be a little more decent, if I can just keep them away from myself--not biting them or picking at them, or starting a new sore on another finger. not easy. and tomorrow i have therapy again. i know he's going tomake a big thing out of my successes, really push me to amplify them. sounds easy enough, but for me it isn't. that's why he keeps working on this--as if you couldn't figure that out. he has a knack for working on the things that are the hardest for me to do. i guess that's their job. laugh.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hi Tziporah!
I like your last post.
I slept in late. was tired. now i'm up. fortunately, i don't have to prepare anything today for the Sabbath. we're having guests and I ordered all the food from the cateror. i still have to prepare a lesson for tomorrow, but that should be okay. it's only just before 8am, so i have a whole day to do that. will start on it when I finish writing you.
definitely yes. one of the reasons i moved to another part of the world was to get away from my mom, although at the time it was a subconscious motivation. my reason for coming to Israel was to study, and after that, to specifically go to seminary. then i made the decision to stay because i loved the country so much. after a few years, it was time to start thinking about marriage and i naturally wanted to look for someone who wanted to stay in Israel as well. my husband's family lives here, so that wasn't a problem. so, at the time, my desire to be far away from my controlling mother didn't figure into my calculations at all. but since then, whenever i have to talk about my relationship with her, i often will say something like: "it's no accident i live on the other side of the world."
i doubt joining the Peace Corps would have meant you would never have contact with her. even if you lived elsewhere, you'd still call her occasionally, or write. you have no idea how many times i have thought of totally disconnecting from them. i even told a previous therapist once i wanted to kill her. this remark fills me with shame when i remember it, but at the time i was so angry, so full of pain. i would openly weep about it in session after session.
whenever i have really been tempted to just disconect, my rabbi and therapist have absolutely insisted i do no such thing. if it wasn't for them, especially my rabbi insisting i maintain a connection, i can guarantee you, i might really have done it.
but even if i would have done it, which i have not, that doesn't mean she wouldn't still be present. she'd be present in the messages i tell myself in my thoughts. all her hurtful remarks still haunt me. how many people, whose parents are dead, arestill haunted by them?
my mom also has OCD. she has an excessive perfectionism. everything has to be EXACT down to the millionth of a centimeter! i am not exaggerating. she also nags constantly, will repeat the same thing endelssly, has a preoccupation with health issues. etc., etc., etc.
we must remember that our parents grew up in an era when very little could be done for OCD/ in that way, they really had no resources or aids in the form of medication or therapy available to them. our generation is much more fortunate in terms of mentalhealth treatments.
still, i think there is much you can do. what if you did refuse your mom occasionally? have your brother pick up some of the burden? why does it all have to fall on you? you might not be close to him, but perhaps you could negotiate. after all, she does have contact with him. or,if you find that unpleasant or hard, tell your mom simply you are too busy now and she is going tohave to turn to others for help sometimes--like to her son/your brother, or some volunteer group. in fact, by always being available to help her, you're just persisting in the pattern.
ask yourself this question: "if you were to die, Heaven forbid, before your mom, who would help her out then?"
you supply the answer. let me know what you come up with.
as for therapy--yeah, they learn a lot of phrases and strategies in therapy school. tools of the trade, you might say.
examples:
The Clock. almost every book or film I have read or seen on therapy has this part in it. therapist has clock positioned so he can see it and patient can't.
phrases like: "how does it feel?" and "what are you thinking?"--patient responds--and then therapist continues--"what now?"
"tell me more about that."
or, as the patient is talking, therapist says, "uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" every minute or so.
or, just as you're at a critical moment, a really critical moment, the t. says, "time is up." you want a few more minutes and they refuse.
"we'll continue next time."
in every movie I've seen, all of these things are portrayed. i guess that's because they are so typical and are standard practice. i've gone through every one of these. i bet my bottom dollar you have too.
last night's session was rough. he was trying to get me to confront my fears about asking for payment from coaching and for teaching. my fear is that if i ask for money, people will say they can't afford it and i'll be left with no clients and no stdudents. later on in the evening, i talked about it with my husband. he essentially agrees with the therapist and while we were havingthat talk i felt this fear grab hold of me. it was terrifying. a palpable force. i have a lot of work to do on this issue, just like i still have a lot of work to do on many issues.
putting a plan into action for nail-biting. i 've discussed that in therapy too. his approach is twofold. first, the practical side. put on bandaids or wear gloves when i get the urge. sometimes i do, most times i don't. second, once the underlying triggers are dealt with, the anxieties, the depressive thoughts, it is his belief that the nail-biting, finger-biting will stop. it's my way of beating myself up, showing how much i still dislike myself, my way of coping with the stress--instead of lighting a cigarette, for example. as i read this part of your post, i was actually biting a sore, trying to bite off a hanging piece of skin. really gross. i know it sounds gross, and it is.
the plus side of having guests is that i don't have to cook. negatie side--i'm still sore from therapy. i'll have less private time with Shabtai. and, everyone will see my messed-up fingers. very embarrassing.
now to the final part of your post. you can divert to other topics. Poppy and I used to do that a lot.
try to tell a deaf person what sound is. there is no way they will be able to comprehend it. it's just like telling someone what the afterlife is like. since nobody has really experienced it, there is really no way one can have a true or accurate concept of it. the deaf person has never experienced sound, so they really can't conceive of or understand it.
because blind people live in the real world, they will use phrases like: "i watched TV." "I see that." but they really don't--not in a physical sense of the words.
colors mean nothing to totally blind people. people who used to see and are now blind often retain the memory of color.
as far as textures and colors go, matching textures with colors--that's a lot of bunk. i think she is just assigning textures to colors in the way she conceptualizes this artistically. in reality, there is really no matching between color and sound, just as there is no matching between texture and sound. this is artistic license.
when i dream, or "visualize" objects, i see them in the way i experience them--tactually. all the dimensions of the object are there, minus the color.
of course, some things i can only talk about, but have no idea what they are like: things like an eclipse, a burning building, a rainbow, etc.
ask me anything you want. if i really don't want to answer, i'll tell you. but i'm so used to these questions, they usually don't bother me.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hello Tziporah,
First I wanted to thank you for answering the color and tactile question I had.
Hi Karen,
It's Sunday morning. Watched a movie after the Sabbath and went to bed late. got up at about 10am. very unusual. my husband also went bqack to sleep after coming home from morning services--so i had a good excuse--being with him! laugh.
i read the part about your mother. i understand all of it. just the line about you being afraid to write her from the Peace Corps. that part i don't get. why would you be afraid to do that?
i would probably also chicken out if i had to confront my parents. in fact, something like that happened to me. on one of my parents' isits, my dad asked me to tell him what mistakes they had made as parents. i would rather die than have done that! i mean it. it would hae opened up a pandora's box. i mumbled something and got out of that corner fast!
from what you describe, it sounds like your mother is mentally ill. or at least, she has a lot of phobias. probably at this point,it is going to be ery hard to change anything with her behavior, but i still think the question i asked is a valid one and worth considering. if, Heaven forbid, you weren't here, what would happen to her? how would she manage? people like to think they are indispensable. they aren't, you know. what would hae happened if, in the hurricane, you had been hurt or worse, and she would have survived intact? so this is not a farfetched question.
i certainly would never tell you what to do. i respect that this is one of those things that each person has to work out for themselves. it's just that by always catering to her needs you get her used to the fact tht she can always rely on you. it sounds like that thing you did in high school with the free lunch was an act of assertieness on your part. you can't be responsible for her life. if she wants to trust only you, that is her choice, but you don't have to be at her beck and call every single time. it may happen that she'll have to do without when you are not available. that isn't a bad thing for her to experience. she might then realize it is time to avail herself of other resources.
it's a fine line, because we do need to honor our parents. but that doesn't give them the right to make us into their serants or slaves.
i'm not sure whether you're still in therapy. are you?
if you are, and want to, perhaps examining this issue again would be worthwhile.
the kind of relationship you hae with your brother--civil, cordial and surface--that's the kind of relationship i have with my parents.
occasionally, my therapist has ended sessions early. but usually i go the full hour. i also have silences, pauses, when i need time to think and absorb and interalize what he is telling me. i guess they also learn that in school--how to mask ending the session.
the sores on two of my fingers are still pretty bad. on Friday afternoon, i picked at the fingers and made them worse. maybe it was anxiety over having guests after such a long time. i don't know. felt shame afterwards. the guests were okay, so there was really nothing to be anxious about.
Friday night, i had a vivid dream. i take my meds before bed. i had trouble swallowing the pill and chewed it up and swallowed it. so, i'm not sure if the dream was a result of the lack of adequate meds. the last vivid dream i had, about two weeks ago, came een when i had taken the pill properly. maybe it's the therapy--getting more intense. i don't want to take a higher dose.
anyway, i saw my grandmother in the dream and she gae me a message--which was connected to the issue i had discussed in the previous session. i'm not sure whether i should listen to this message or just ignore it. maybe it was nothing more than my unconscious trying to work through thismessage. but then again, i know that sometimes dreams contain important messages, and maybe this is one i should listen to. i wanted to discuss it with my husband, but didn't find the opportunity to do so. too busy with the guests.
maybe i wrote this before--anyway, a few hours after the session on Thursday, i was discussing the issue we had dealt with, and i had this real fear about it. i felt really terrified about doing the thing the therapist was recommending. so, the issue we are dealing with is really critical.
last might, i watched this movie about a high school in the inner city. the main thing i got out of it was when the principal talked to the students about the need for self-respect and for not being inferior. i know i still need to absorb these ideas. at the time, i thought, "if i really had self-respect for myself, i wouldn't bite my fingers."
it's not the first time i have heard of or thought of thisidea, but i haven't thought of it for a while.
just got up and already feeling tired.
and i have work to do.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hi Tziporah,
You asked why I would be afraid to write to my mother.
Now I understand why you were afraid. it makes sense. i have read that a lot of kids who go through abuse don't just hate the abuser, which makes sense, but also the parent who stoodby and let it happen. often the parent who stands by is also intimidated and risks being abused if they step in. however, the child, unable to grasp this, cannot understand why the bystanding parent justlet the other one inflict the pain and not raise their voice in protest or protect the child. in that way, the child sees the bystanding parent as a collaborator. i imagine this is what was going on with you.
right now, things are hrd for me mentally. i kept biting my fingers yesterday. they are one bloody mess--perhaps as bad as they were when i first started writing here on this board--i haven't been back to that level since, but i'm getting back to that level now. not that i'm proud of it. i'm not. i'm ashamed and disgusted.
after getting up, which was awhile ago, i thought of putting bandaids on them. but i'd have to put a bandaid on almost every finger! instead, i finally submitted to wearing plastic gloes, which i don't really like to do. as i put them on, i thought, maybe this is what i have to do, wear these gloves which i hate, and that is sort of like a behavior modification device. every time i pick my fingers i have to put on the gloves, which i dislike.
as i said before, the onlyproblem is, sometimes i need to use my hands and can't just always put gloves on them. that's not an excuse per se, just my reality.
well, if i really kept my fingers gloved for an entire week, theymight stand the chance of healing sufficiently.
trouble is--as soon as i take the gloves off, i start inspecting them again, or something happens, and the whole downward cycle starts all over again.
i agree with you totally about dreams. i liked how you compared the brain's use of dreams to the immune system. it is a beautiful paradigm, especially since this is a self-injury board.
the issue is about whether to charge for my services. in my dream, my grandmother said not to. what makes this complicated is that after she got married, she never worked--very typical of wome in her era. she didn't have to work. her husband was a faithful provider. it's hard for me to interpret whether this message is just in line with what my grandmother's viewpoint was, or means something more.
once i told myhusband's grandmother i was on my way to work and she said, "you're crazy. why would anyone, any woman, want to go to work?" she really believed that. that's the way it was in their generation. women were satisfied devoting themselves to the home and wereglad they didn't have to bare the demands of work. i have been thinking of talking about it with my husband--the dream, i mean--but just haven't seemed to find the right moment. maybe i'm not ready to tell him yet.
my therapist listens when i tell him mydreams, but he seldom analyzes them.
this thing about therapy being a priate matter. that's the attitude expressed by the mother in OrdinaryPeople: "it's a private matter. we don't need counselors. we'll solve our problems ourselves." i think it also has to do with the fact that for families where abuse is present, the greatest threat is that somehow the word will get out and then the kids will be taken away from the parents. the golden rule is: what happens here stays in this house--even if you are getting beaten eery day. and that is one rule that is usually upheld. the kids are terrorized and dare not violate it for threat of the consequences. i guess in your case it could be a combinatio of the two.
you're right. he's really forcing me to take a hard look at myself. i don't have easy answers to any of the questions. just sit there and feel the pain and the shame and hate myself nd then bite my nails--the way i hurt myself, devalue myself. he keeps tellig me to gie credit for my accomplishments, even the small steps. none of it is easy--the therapy. all the outer layers have bee pealed away and it's all core central stuff.
long ago i accepted the fact i might always need therapy. sometimes i think, if i had only done this work as a teenager, it would have been so much easier. if any teenagers should be reading this, please, please,don't wait till you're all grown up. it's so much harder then to do the necessary repairs. so much harder.
Tziporah
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
web: www.istillhavemylife.com
blog: tziporahwishky.livejournal.com
Hi Tziporah!
I’m sorry I didn’t get here yesterday.
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