The Rebel Yell

I have not written on this blog for a while.  Shortly after my last post I had to close my psych practice because in my home state they have let go of so many people at the state board that they can't renew licenses for therapists so what normally took weeks, took months. 

Here is the funny thing though, I do think some part of me knew I needed to go through some extra hoops but my unconscious needed a break. I had been suffering from depression since the birth of my second son and instead of genuinely taking care, I worked harder.  I am grateful some part of me knew to slow down and frankly, it isn't hard for me to be in a slow rhythm.  I am a heart centered person who has never lived a heart centered person's flow for sure.

I won't recap everything that has transpired except to say that I have gotten a lot of support, am enjoying being home full time with my children, and have been even braver in going deeper into what underpins some of the behaviors I readily engage in that feel reactive or just plain not me.  I am stepping away from the traumatology and somatic resourcing model I have been steeped in for ten years and now working very psychodynamically with a new male therapist on myself and working the same way as a client.  What does that mean?  Means I am looking at unconscious patterns rather than the "here and now" stuff that I was trained in.   It has been breathtaking to say the least to work in this completely new way.  I will no longer remain so dogmatic in my humanistic and existential loyalties.  There really is something to how the unconscious moves us. 

Second, I started taking some anti depressants five months ago and they have created some solid ground beneath my feet so I can go deeper in my own therapy.  I think it has been useful, as a therapist, to find a very skilled psychiatrist who has worked with other therapists and for me to really witness the power of psychiatry.  Another modality I used to poo poo.  Drugs are absolutely not a crutch but rather the medicine of courage for they have increased my ability to witness myself with greater clarity, to sit longer with feelings so they can work themselves out rather than analyzing and obsessing - which have proven only to keep things stuck.  I appreciate what my new therapist said to me the other day, "Sometimes we are repeating to repair, sometimes we are repeating to repeat".  I am wresting with the difference right now.

I decided to write today of all days because I was able to get enough distance from my own shame and had a massive enough "ah ha" last night that has left me feeling like a hollow wind blowing inside my core.  To readers it may seem like no biggee and for me there have been other big ah ha's but this one took the cake.
First, what happened?  Well, groups, as I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog have been a major sticking point.  I come up with theories, think I have figured it out only to be baffled again.  I diagnose myself as narcissistic or histrionic - neither of which help me heal anything.  Yesterday, I went to lunch with one of my closest girlfriends and her friends, mostly all therapists, for her birthday.  A group of fabulous, interesting, open, complicated, wise, conscious and wounded women.  I had a ball but I did my usual thing:  This kind of bigger than life persona comes out in groups, a ball-buster, if you will.  It doesn't feel like me always.  It has a tinge of aggression and it serves to keep people away while simultaneously entertaining or irritating.  None of this behavior is new to me.

Then I went to a second group event, way more triggering because they were women who, for the most part, I have never felt safe, comfortable, like minded or good in.  It is the playgroup moms from my son's playgroup.  A couple of moms in attendance are tricky figures for me to be around.  I made an interpretation after arriving that this group had been planned and I was "the outsider" - the last to be invited.  My heart started racing but I managed to calm down and settle in with the one or two people I felt safe with and somewhere inside I gave myself permission to leave early if it was just too triggering. 

After being there 45 minutes, I decided it was time to leave.  I felt an obligation to say goodbye to a couple people but in that side group were some triggering women and I do what I always do when I have some judgement, projection or general disdain for someone - I say something "shocking"  - something sexual, inappropriate or rude but in that "ha ha aren't I funny sort of way".  I came home feeling terrible about myself.  Why do I act like such a buffoon? I was also clearer about the role of anger and aggression that belies this behavior.  Well, for once, I was able to set the self criticism and shame aside and went in my kitchen and sat down and closed my eyes at the kitchen table and just felt what I was feeling.  Not with the intention of "figuring it out" per se but with the intention of giving attention to the part of me that was so hurt and pissed off that she continually needs to give people in groups the bird, so to speak. 

As I did a flood of all the groups in my life I have been in came back to me. There was a pattern.  The pattern was that I either put myself in groups where I am not a fit or made myself an outsider in groups that are potentially good fits.  I did this in high school, in a therapy group, two work groups, my school cohort, my mom's sharing group, the playgroup, church group...my god!  How many times do I have to do this over and over again before I can look?  Again, looking requires being willing to feel the stuff without being swallowed up by the feelings. Your head and heart are both still in the game as you just bare witness to the past and the present.  It hurts to process this way which is why most of us would rather analyze but this is the way of healing stuff.

An image of my brother came to me - just the image.  No story.  See my mother was married 5 or 6 times, I can't remember any more.  I have never met my biological father.  She married a man when I was four who adopted me but they quickly had a son together, my brother.  We used to lie and not tell anyone I wasn't his biological child.  So I played along and my rage out being the outsider went underground.  I was so much the outsider that the rule was, "She is mine, don't discipline her nor should you intervene when I am abusing her."  I had some disturbing acting out behaviors on the sly, was very depressed but was also a perfectionist, church going, straight A student, so not much attention was paid.  As I sat at the kitchen table, it was like a mathematical equation that was missing part of the equation got a huge piece added.

Of course, I have complained my whole life of never feeling like I had a family - a home base.  Even my friends with really dysfunctional ones often had a base.  My one friend who can relate to me the most also lacked a "base" or sense of "place".  I can't make it linear here for others of you that are reading because my adult brain isn't that impressed with my awareness but my guts and heart and innards are writhing in sadness and rage.  And my adult brain just nods with "Oh, yes that is yet another reason for funky dynamics for you in groups and more particularly, your need to rebel with your verbal 'fuck you's' to group dynamics, group norms, group rules that historically have sucked the life out my own self hood.

I can't say where this awareness will take me.  I am kind of discombobulated, but I am hopeful of my direction and have complete confidence in my therapist and psychiatrist who unearthed some of this this week during my homeopathy assessment.

To be continued.

The Group

One of the things I am confident we all need to heal, to tolerate exploring what lurks in our unconscious is connection.  Connected attuned relationships are like a life line when we are being sucked into a tornado.  And while we may do some funky stuff in some of those relationships because our brains are wired to not fully receive we instead avoid, smother or reject out right the other person who could ultimately helps us rewire our brain. It is a challenging road for friends, partners and therapists as they weather the storm with our "strange and difficult ways" but their willingness to be strong in themselves and in their own presence while in connection enables us to take hold of our life and use our internal human resources which go off line in the tornado.  We internalize them as one of those resources that keeps us safe.

With that said, what weighs heavy on my heart is just such a relationship with a group of women I initiated two three years ago to meet weekly to share parenting experiences.  That group was perhaps more important to most of us than we realized until after it ended.  We were diverse in beliefs, personal growth interests but similar socio economic status and similar parenting goals.  I think we all, for the most part, believed in connective parenting rather than behaviorism.  We had an RN, an environmental activist, a therapist, a teacher, an admin assistant and a psychotherapist.  We all add vastly different faiths.   I was the first to have two children. 

Early on in the group I had an expectation of what I wanted the group to be and blindly thought that is what the group would be because I started it. It did not occur to me, at the time, that I actually did not get to decide, rather the group did.  So when the group drifted from a place of deep personal processing on what this right of passage is into motherhood to parenting best-practices to let's have wine and laugh I felt not only deeply rejected and hurt but deeply longing for a place to take my heavy heart and be heard without being told to get over it (yep the same message from my own mom).  For a place to have some empathy and holding without the "get over it" kind of impact advice can have on me. 

This hurt lurked beneath the surface since our eighth meeting or so - pretty early on.  Still pushing forward that my expectations would come to pass, that they could magically read my mind and that what I wanted to for the group was somehow better for everyone anyway I overly risked sharing more deeply than maybe all members wanted.  I am learning unequivocally the last year that non everyone wants to do this deep looking that I do or that my clients do but too late.  I had shared in the group leaving me feeling utterly exposed and setting the group up to completely drop me - which they did unknowingly by all the advice giving and light hearted banter.  In the meantime, inside I went completely mute.  I couldn't actually ask the group for what I needed because even I believed what I needed was "crazy".  Yeah that theme again.  I still, to this day, have no idea if the group would have been able to do deep processing because I never fully and specifically said exactly what I needed because I was terrified. 

Of course, in all of this, there were other wounds that were getting played out in the group - other peoples wounds - not my own. My pain blinded me  - it swallowed me up in a way that I could not constructively hold space for and even produce the same level of empathy I was so deeply craving. I am a very insightful and deep therapist who is masterful at making order out of chaos or seeing deeper meanings in the subtly but all of this ability completely went off line in this group.  I was IN THE TORNADO at this point and had no way to grab hold of the lines they kept tossing in to me.  We were all in the tornado.  In spite of its imperfection, the group was magical.  We could have built an underground bunker together if we only risked being specific about what we each needed, how to do it, and who was going to do what.  I did feel a genuine love and I think others did too but we couldn't quite name the under toe that began sucking us into the sea of unconscious enactments - playing out different stuff with different members. I began to witness some of this in myself and others when it began to heat up.  We were in the tornado and instead of building shelter we lit a match.

But I was still so hurt by this story I told myself inside which said something like "you need too much.  you are too intense.  you are crazy. and the fact that these women don't want to be in connection in these deep places proves it."  So, you know what I did?  I stopped going.  Yep, this group of women who threw me a surprise baby shower, who extended themselves to me in the ways that really are so gracious and loving...I gave them my middle finger or threw gasoline on that fire.  Some of it was my own struggle with post partem depression and most kept tossing me lines and I would burn them p.  Or to say, the youngster in me gave me the middle finger.  For many months I have mourned my behavior and self flagellated over it. 

Recently, however, it has been brought to my attention that I will often act things out for groups.  In classical group dynamics thinking, if the group is feeling something, often it will choose a scapegoated member to act it out for the whole group so something can be made conscious that has been largely unconscious.   This was, of course, music to my ears  - to not have to hold the crazy bag.  I am a responsibility-taking junkie but taking on so much responsibility leaves others at a disadvantage. They don't have to feel their part.

What was I acting out for everyone?  I can't know for sure without talking this through with all of them.  Perhaps a desire to go deeper but fear about doing that?  Fear that if we started truly stating what it is we felt and wanted we would be left?  Fear that if individuals that were in conflict stated their truth, their differences would destroy rather than strengthen the group?  But week after week I went; having all these feelings, on occasion naming a desire for something but then pulling back because I felt so childish, so vulnerable so ridiculous!  I told myself "you just want these women to be your mama.  get over it !"  Really what was happening was so much more complex than my longing for a mother figure and involved way more of their stuff too. 

Finally, after sorting through some of this, I did get to a place where I could put out there what I wanted.  I guess the group didn't change fast enough because I felt compelled to leave, I was exhausted at having finally felt the underlying group process but aware we just weren't going to talk about it and that scared the shit out the girl in me.  I felt sure about this departure but sure came coupled with doing it in a way that was deeply honoring and slow.  See, I am a firm believer in saying goodbye and especially with such a profound group.  So I gave the group a month's notice but the announcement came a week sooner than I had wanted because coincidentally, another mother announced her resignation from the group and it made sense I piggy back on her announcement.  I stated clearly I wanted to stay til the end of the month, goodbyes being important and all...

But...two members of the group - the two who I had connected most deeply with because of the poor mothering they received, talked over kicking me out of the group earlier.   Some miscommunication, some clear communication and  the end result was I was left feeling hurt and totally rejected to a degree, frankly, I haven't felt since my very first break-up.  You know, like your heart has been yanked out your throat on a meat hook?  Yeah that kind.  I, of course, didn't let any of my hurt show.  Instead, I erupted into a rage I have NEVER unleashed on anyone except my mother one time when I was 17.  It was pretty raw, pretty yucky and pretty eye opening for me after I hung up the phone with the woman who initiated the "kick her out" idea.  "Wow" I thought, "these people must matter to me more than I was giving credit to.".   I was so so hurt at my openness to continue but me experience of not being wanted I just couldn't go back.

Where are we now?  It is six months later.  I for one, am aware of so much more with the space. I wish, I wish that there could be a shared responsibility taking.  I am aware, more than ever, how my expectations blinded me to really seeing who everyone was.  There were wounded souls in this group - as wounded as myself with a lot less runway on that healing lift off than I have put in.  I wish we could have a skillful repair.  Why?  Sure, partly because I don't want to hold the blame but I am not holding that any more anyway.  Maybe some saving face.  But honestly, I miss these dear women.  Their connection, regardless of it being inperfect was my lifeline in the midst of the tornado of mothering and if I had it to do over again I would have done a better job holding the little girl inside of me so the group didn't have to and more importantly so I could bear witness to the little girls in each of them that were showing up week after week scared shittless, just like me.  (or feeling something of a deeper nature I wasn't aware of). 

To them, I say, I honor you, I am sorry for my own and our mis attunements and I forgive you as I hope you will forgive me.  But most of all, I want to forgive myself. 
God Bless You Fellow Travellers of Inanna's Path.