Gratitude for Six Years

I am aware of the pull I have, when I post, to feel like I need to say something inspired.   But in true  anti-guru form, I just want to write from the heart, from vulnerability, from rawness.  In the last three months I have left my therapist of six and a half years.  Money and desire to work in new ways were the driving forces but I think there were other driving forces there too.  Our relationship will eventually, I think, transition into something different once we have surpassed the two year ethical threshold for a change in relationship-probably a more deliberate apprenticeship.  It feels organic.  I am not waiting on her doorstep - no part of me hanging on.  Just feels like the truth of what may be.  I see the ways we are different and well...why am I writing all of this?

I am writing all of this because I had my last session with her today.  I feel heavy hearted but not heartache.  I feel the goodbye.  The session was half consultation on some of my client work and half good bye.  But I wanted to write about our work because to not save space for her on the this blog would seem like a shocking miss- a kind of enactment in and of itself. 

First off, at the end of our relationship, she dropped me.  She dropped me in the way every good therapist needs to drop their client so the client can a) test their skill b) feel how they have and have not grown c) test the relationship they have inside to them self and d) test the relationship with the therapist.  After all, therapists are human too and if we are lucky we find one that has just the right mix of holding us, dropping us, skillful repair, and skillful confrontation so our own wounded sense of self becomes more whole. 

What do I mean by whole?  Whole: the ability to own all our holes with a calm nervous system, self compassion, acceptance and humor.  Sometimes holding holes means having skills for holding our self, sometimes holding holes means having skills for reaching out, sometimes holding holes means having skills for boundary and limit setting, sometimes holding holes mean noticing where there are no holes, and sometimes holding holes means seeing, honoring, and accepting the holes in others - all of this done without having to fill in any holes inside of me or inside of you.  There is this sweet little book I have called The Prayer Tree.  I want to share a sweet poem that speaks to the simplicity of being with holes.  It goes like this;

When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open

Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting.

Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring

I  might add to this poem the relational piece to read something like this:

And let trusted souls see it
Together vulnerable and courageous
To walk through not around
Without needing you to be it

Sweet eh?  The second thing that happened in the course of my long relationship with this sweet human soul of a therapist is I learned a lot, enacted a lot, was held figuratively and literally and healed a lot.  Today I was confronted and repaired with.  Sweet confrontation: I was dropping myself.  In Freudian terms I was confronted with my own compulsion to repeatedly grease people's hands up with baby oil or seek out people with well oiled hands and then leap my naked body wiggling into their arms.  I really got to own how I actively grease people up today in our closing session.  Moreover, what I communicate in the greasing process to that friend is "You don't matter."  A heartfelt relationship I trash because the fighty part is determined to not feel every be vulnerable again.  So "go fuck yourself" is her stance to the world.  Hers, mind you, not mine.  THUD.  Feel that one in my gut.  Yep.  I participate.   I have known that for some time but today, for the first time, I didn’t feel ashamed of it.  I just accepted it.  Hmmm…and I don't want to do that anymore. 

Sucks that it took so long as I am sure I have been confronted many times by many others on this topic but these ah hah's really do need the right ingredients in the soup (timing, internal resources, and relationship) for it to fully be ingested. (Hence the limits of cognitive behavioral therapy).  Well the soup is in, I am full bellied and as I sat in my car writing notes after my session I asked myself, "well how do I stop greasing people up to drop me and stop dropping myself?"

There were, of course, a lot of brainy responses I could make here, but you could go get a good self help book for those.  The answer for me was I had to absolutely hold this fighty part of me rather than hate her or pretend she doesn't exist.  She is this very angry bitter girl who in her effort to protect me from the more vulnerable feelings keeps callous building by dropping and being dropped.  She wants to keep me callous stiff and impenetrable.   Wow!  Yep.   I have to help this poor kid out.  She is like a feral cat.   Here I am again being invited to actively hold such an insidious creature.  I get her twisted goal to help but fuck, really, creating more suffering to prevent suffering? What a misguided strategy.  Poor thing! 

I wasn’t sure, as I sat there in my car, if I knew how to hold such an angry, temperamental, impenetrable child.  And here is where mothering comes in.  Immediately an image of my oldest son’s angry face flashed into my mind and several memories where I DID have the capacity to hold his anger with a great deal of skill, compassion and respect.  “Oh”, I thought, “I can do this.”   I am reminded again of the priveledge of parenting blog post about the profound teacher parenting is.  Thanks son!  And I am also aware that as I get better had holding this part of me, I will also get even MORE skillful at holding him so he doesn’t feel burdened to squish his anger.
In the moment, I feel shame free.  Just honest and accepting.  This is what it is.  I am doing my best.

To my old therapist, deep love and gratitude for being one of my trusted souls!  You matter to me, deeply.

And let trusted souls see it
Together vulnerable and courageous
To walk through not around
Without needing you to be it

I Think You Are Crazy

Yep.  A mother in our longstanding playgroup has said on four separate occasions that "When I first met you I thought you were nuts." loudly in front of the whole group.  Once, funny - multiple times, one starts to wonder.   It sort of is the "worst case scenario" for me with other mothers.  It IS what my own mother has told me verbatim the whole of my life.  I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog that I went ahead and wore the "crazy" hat with my own mom because if I did, then my connection to her was not in jeopardy or it wasn't nearly as exhausting. 

Many years of therapy later what I have learned is there is nothing crazy about me.  As mentioned, I get hyper aroused in trigger situations that send me into fight, flight, freeze, submit or attach (cling) responses.  I made a best attempt at what is biologically wired in to all humans; to attach to my mother. What looks crazy is highly intelligent.  Learning about being in authentic connection, my triggers and how to calm my nervous system  have been my life's work.  I notice as I type this I am hyper aroused.  My sacrum is clenched as I hold back the fight/flight response.  So I will close my eyes and ; track very subtle body sensations and breath, then see myself quite literally pushing against that sentence "You are crazy" - push it out of my boundaried space and look squarely at the person saying it.  If needed,I will have the wise adult self in me hold the fighty and frighty kid that has gotten so aroused so she can be helped in calming down (or ask my husband to throw his arms around me as he is sitting here next to me.)  Will pick up writing in a second.  

Ok, did above and then husband held me, then we moved to a position where I just laid on my back while he had one hand holding my sacrum and the other holding my hand as I just released.  Lots of sadness came up there in releasing my sacrum.  I got an image of a little girl leaning forward, hands on her hips, enraged, screaming "you can't talk to me that way."  She was seven and while well defended yet she was alone.  As if this screaming were hapening in a sound proof box, no one really hearing seeing or getting her.  An angry and alone seven year old was what was all being held tightly and quietly inside my low back.  Yep, I know her all right.  Come sit in my lap.  I know how to hold you, sweetheart.  And by the way, thank you for holding on to this anger.  You made sure inside we didn't get squashed!

On to this playgroup mother.  I am writing about this because writing about it is another way to clarify to the world that I am no longer interested or willing to ingest "crazy" judgements from others.  I am also no longer interested in being in relationship with folks that need me to hold that for them.  This most recent run in happened on valentine's day and as I have been successfully pushing the comment out of my body/mind what I have reflected on is a lot of empathy and clear seeing about the other woman.  Prior to my own sequencing work with my nervous system I would have bounced around in an obcessional circle of I suck to she sucks until it got exhausting and I would then ride around in hopeless land.  Sensorimotor psychotherapy really has changed my life.

Reflecting back on my first meeting with clear seeing, I realized that this first meeting with this mother took place at a Shaman led sharing group three years ago.   This woman dropped in to this group that was intensely deep but loosely held and discovered it wasn't for her by judging it because she herself got hyper aroused.  Her drop in occurred precisely the day I announced to the rest of the group that I had "divorced my mother".  I remember what a landmark proclamation this was and I needed the support so I took a risk.  I felt good.  I felt embodied.  I wasn't even overwhelmed and shaky as I can get when vulnerable in groups.  She left early and I didn't see her around for a year and did not remember her when I met her in our sort of "vanilla" playgroup. 

Spending a life time trying to either make my mother or other people wrong, as I had, in response to their hurtfulness is such a long suffering road.  It is the stuff of hyper arousal though.   I am proud to say, I am not interested in making this mother wrong for her experience or even for what she keeps saying to me.   I can simply send the judgement back, say no thank you and calm myself.  In cases where I am committed to the relationship I get curious and see what I need relationally.  In this woman's case I haven't gotten too curious just because our social interactions haven't been inspiring enough for me to want to deepen connection. But for other relationships my curiosity and empathy lead to a clear "Oh they see the world differently than me and I need this in order to stay in connection."  I can work out any relational nits when I can calm my nervous system making room for empathy to lead the way. 

Blogging creates another avenue to "send it back", have a voice, show empathy, set a boundary be vulnerable and try out safely relating... and maybe along the way I will feel less triggered around other mothers to do the same face to face - even if it means getting hurt.  After all, mother's are my favorite people to project this "I think you are crazy" story the fight part of me has held so dearly for my mom.  And many of them will willingly pick it up and mirror it right back to me.   No wonder I am on high alert around them.  I am deeply grateful to this woman.  The pain I experienced by her comments lit a fire under my ass in my own therapy.   It has given me lots to work with.  And it motivated me to start this blog several weeks ago.  Really, her comments were the beginning.  My own therapist deserves the credit for my blog name.  She said to me "Wow.  These mothers are your dojo."  I expanded that.  Mothering is my dojo.

Connection Soothes Us

I have been steeped in reading for my job today.  Reading Trauma and the Body by Pat Ogden.  I have a post in the works that will detail more about Sensorimotor Psychotherapy but just wanted to say how over stimulating relating to little kids can be to our nervous systems - certainly to mine.  Calming our nervous systems is a process we do both on our own and in relationship.  In my case, I am getting better at both forms of calming down and supporting my often over aroused nervous system.  I also have to be accutely aware of how I am caring for myself since I am a fragile bee and ironically when I get too frazzled I compensate by defending myself by pushing people away at the exact same time I reach for them - very very confusing for them - they think I am nuts when I do this.  I used to think I was nuts but now know it is just a trigger that has my nervous system so hyper aroused my only option for being in connection is to connect and push away at the same time.  It is what was involved in connection when I was young so it is how I do it now.  I have spent over 15 years in therapy and am now a soon to be licensed therapist who practices every day how to feel calm and less trembly or less "fighty" in relationship.

All this being said, I made an attempt at starting a mother's group a few years ago where I wasn't the leader but participant.  The intention was to create a place to talk about real issues related to parenting and a place to off steam emotional upsets so we could be supported and held by one another and not carry them forward into how we were relating to our kids.  Two things happened though;
1. The group turned quickly into the "let's be nice and not too vulnerable" and without a group leader no one challenged us sliding into this "nice girl" morose and it lost its vitality for half of us so the group ended
2. I discovered that being vulnerable with a bunch of mothers was a trigger for shakey fighty - push pull hyper arousal stuff.  Being around mothers whom I had let down my guard with left me both longing for connection and defending against it at the same time. 
It was a painful experience to be so exposed, shaky and socially awkward at the exact time I was over taxed by two toddler boys trying to ransack eachother at any moment but I couldn't stop the fight flight and attach responses.  It is only now that I don't obcess over what these women think of me and instead turn all my attentions to that young girl inside of me with deep emapthy and holding.  The reading in Pat Ogden's book just expanded my own empathy and I integrated more about how biological this reaction around other mothers is for me.  It is a bummer.  And it is why I named this blog as I did.

Perhaps more than parenting my kids, motherhood has become my dojo because this mothering group has become a face to face confrontation with how shaky I get in when I am in vulnerable connection and working through that skillfully with my own therapist opens up new connection possibilities for me with other mothers that I haven't yet been able to safely experience in all my relationships. I have had to table the mother's groups for awhile because the level of triggering I feel, doesn't seem kind to put myself there without some good somatic resourcing in my body and a strong Mama self holding the shaking and fighty parts of my nervous system.  I am working on it and making huge progress.