Dear calisister:

I am feeling excited at the idea that you are taking on healing this seriously. I am excited. And again, it is you taking on this healing, you having the distress that you will be having, and so, I understand the difficulties to come.

Again, gentleness with yourself. I am okay with you changing your mind if you do. Be okay with yourself as I am okay with you, please.

Regarding healing options, a retreat is what you mentioned. Can be a jump start point. I never attended a retreat, have no such experience.

Regarding other healing options, what ideas do you have? I can comment on those next, if you list them, or brain storm them.

anita

* Dear Cali Chica (and calisister, of course):

Thank you for your appreciation of me and you are welcome. What an informative, accurate, I believe, and supportive post, above. Glad you posted it. You wrote that calisister endured pain all her life, since she was a young child. She had a precocious understanding as an adolescent, an understanding that came with lots of guilt and confusion. She is currently at a crossroad, a rock bottom. She has been at such in the past but at those times, she returned to work, to interacting with her parents and to getting more abuse from them. Therefore, in the past, no enlightenment, no healing took place.

Your advice to calisister to not tell your parents about this is excellent for all the reasons you listed.

My input at this point, to calisister: you shared with me before how during a concert, when you intend to enjoy yourself, you give yourself instead a hard time, putting pressure on yourself with: are you enjoying yourself? Is this the best time ever?

That voice in your head abuses you even when your only job is to have fun.

When you expressed yesterday your intent to take a break from the post doctorate program, the rotation phase, you wrote that you must take on healing, once you take that break. I think that this voice I mentioned, that voice will abuse you when intent on healing as well, just as it does when you intend to have fun. No matter what, there it is, that voice. It may say something like this: are you healing now? Are you making this break worthwhile… or are you wasting this time, failing…?

This voice has to be dealt with in the process of healing as soon as possible. Can’t eliminate it. Have to notice it when it speaks, then disengage it, dismiss it. Replace it with your own voice, stating other thoughts that at true to reality and congruent with healing.

It is your parents’ input into your brain that gave birth to this voice. They keep fueling this voice every time you have contact with them.

Even if all contact with them was eliminated, there would still be that voice. And it can be noticed and dismissed through practice.

But there is more to it: not all of your brain, outside this voice, believes in what you knew to be true since you were a teenager. Only recently you posted on your thread here, that if you ended all contact with your parents, you would be truly alone. This means that part of you still finds comfort in them.

This comfort, this feeling of not being alone when in contact with them is in your way to healing. Congruent with healing is having comfort somewhere else.

Safety is what we all need, a feeling of safety. As long as your feeling of safety, calisister, is with your parents, you cannot heal. Safety must be located away from your parents.

As a child you had no other option but to find a way to feel somewhat safe with your parents. You had no choice. You have that choice now, as an adult, to form the intent to find safety elsewhere, an adequate sense of safety.

I hope to read from you soon, wondering what you are thinking and feeling…

anita

Dear calisister:

How you feel matters. That you don’t suffer is very important. The goal of healing and you taking a break is that you don’t suffer.

Your value is not in you going to work, functioning that way. There is much more to you than your function. There is a person in you that is hurting and shouldn’t. That person needs to be attended to.

It is not shameful to feel weak, to need a break, to need help, to need to be loved.

Growing up unloved, you did your best. Can’t run on empty so long, need to take a break. One day you will function better than you ever did. If you keep going now, you will not get to that much, much better functioning in the future.

Take a break now, take your healing very, very seriously. There is a person you need to get to know, a person lost for too long. She doesn’t want to be “like this lady going to work”. She doesn’t want to be her. She wants to be who she is, not anyone else.

This break is about meeting this person, getting to know her, caring for her, attending to her. Finally taking a deep slow breath and being okay with who she is. She wants your acceptance and deserves it.

It is time to give her what she always needed: to be seen, to be known, to be approved of, to not suffer anymore. She needs you to do whatever it takes to  make this happen. Let this be your singular focus.

Don’t turn your back once again to  this little girl in you, face her, help her. There is absolutely nothing better you can do with your time.

anita

Dear calisister:

I started my healing process with a new routine: yoga classes three times per week or more, tai chi three times, other classes, weight room, other exercise classes, all in the YMCA, Mon-Sat. Did hiking on Sundays. Psychotherapy about twice a week, homework given to me by my therapist done in between sessions.

So I would recommend physical activity on a regular basis, a routine of it (not necessarily as much as I did!). A routine is very important, a new routine all geared toward healing.

So you don’t stay home all day.

But when home, also a routine: from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed: a shower or bath at about the same time, meals at about the same time, even unstructured time can be part of the routine.

You made an apt with a therapist. If it is a good therapist, she or he will help you with scheduling your days, deciding on a routine that works for you. As you follow a routine, you evaluate what works in it for you and what doesn’t, and make changes along the way. Your therapist can recommend certain activities to compliment the therapy.

Who  you interact with, parents, other people and what would be the nature of the interactions- this needs to be decided on so it is congruent with healing.

If you find it helpful to express yourself typing, like I do, this will be part of your activity daily, be it homework assigned to you in therapy or otherwise, your thoughts and learning throughout the time.

How about my answer so far?

anita

Dear calisister (and Cali Chica):

Your most recent breakdown (the word your sister used) started Jan 27 and ended Jan 30. Here is a selection of quotes from your writings and one from your sister’s:

Jan 27: “On Monday, I start a very tough rotation… how do you recommend I can get through until June 30 (to finish this post-dc program).. the approaching of Monday is causing me severe anxiety.

Jan 28: “I have this anxiety… how do I get through the next couple of months doing something I hate…  The reason I am not quitting (is) because I would have no source of income. That’s the only reason… I would love to quit.

“Jan 29: “It is the middle of the night. I’ve made a decision to take a leave from the program. Not quitting. But asking for a mental health leave… I am so unhappy… I cannot keep living like this… I felt the body of pain today so intensely. I felt the anger so  intensely. I am MISERABLE… My body hurts so much I can’t move. ..I don’t want to feel tortured anymore… I am hurt. Traumatized. Severely. And I need healing time. I truly need to heal.

“I am sad. scared. lost. This is who I am? A person that can’t function? A person who needs to stop working? I am having trouble accepting this person… My sister and I have decided to ask for a 3 month leave… I go to therapy (which I made an appointment just now for tomorrow) and then what? I am frightened at the idea. I stare at my apartment and dog all day? I can’t…I see this lady going to work. I want to be her. I want to be normal… I feel like my patients I work with in the psych ward. Troubled and crazy.

Jan 30: “I understand I have to heal.. but how.. will all these amazing things happen?…

“I know I have to heal. But I did not like the way I was going about it. It was inducing even more stress upon me…. I can keep the job security and all I have worked for and still heal maybe?… Yes, I have been working. But have I actually been trying to heal? No. Psychiatry. Therapy. No…

“My goal is to function. To eat. To survive… I am not sure I truly hate what I am doing as much as I make it seem.. I can finish this program. I know I can. I want to… My director arrives… He made me feel calmer that I have ever felt in the past 5 months… He stated how my therapy appointments, psychiatry appointments- will all be dealt with and accommodated.

“This entire time when I was making the decision of leaving and only healing, I knew in my heart it was not right… Next time this happens, because it will, I will go in to work… And this is what I want my focus of therapy to be. And my conversations with you… I am continuing. But not the same way as before. With more honesty with my director… and with ACTUALLY healing.

Jan 29, Cali Chica:  “She (calisister) has reached this rock bottom before, but had to go back to her normal ways (work, interacting with parents, getting abuse from parents) that these breakdowns never led to any enlightenment- how could they.

My input today: Clearly functioning is your very high priority. You value functioning well, that is, completing the rotation phase and continuing your employment. And so you decided to do just that. But you also decided to heal while functioning. You mentioned having made an appointment with a psychotherapist on the 29th for the day after. That appointment should have already happened then two days ago. You wrote that your director told you that he will accommodate therapy appointments you make.

This breakdown need not be one of many preceding it and yet to come, where you let off some steam, relieve yourself from distress, receive some attention and empathy, feel better, continue to function…until the next time: another breakdown, letting off some steam, relieving yourself of distress, feeling better, and back to functioning… and then back again to breakdown.

It shouldn’t be this way because there is no healing in it. This pattern is similar to a child throwing a temper tantrum, the parent giving the child candy, the child calms down until next time.

I need to change the way I interact with you, calisister, so to encourage your healing, and to not encourage this pattern of breakdowns.

I will no longer give you input that belongs in a psychotherapy session, such that you made an appointment for, intent on healing. I will let this kind of input be between you and your psychotherapist. My input therefore will be different than before.

anita