Last edit of this page 24/02/06
Analects Archive 2002
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I place them here as reminders for the people with whom they were shared and for others who may resonate with the themes. Characters , when depicted, are fictional composites.The NH&MRC guidelines for publishing sensitive health information.
Those of you who have been visiting this page for months will know it is in the tradition of the web log or blog. So I thought I would intoduce you to a selection of other weblogs, starting with a master of the form Rebecca, then a books and literary blog, a photo blogger, a linguist's blog, a homely blog by Radhika Nair amd one that's cheaper than church. Here's a potluck list kept by a music blogger Simon. Enjoy.
- The lightness of being: 'they say we all lose 21 grams at the exact moment of our death. Everyone, 21 grams ..... the weight of a hummingbird, a chocolate bar" quoted from Guillermo Arriaga's script for the film: "21 Grams". Carl Sagan's reflections on a mote of dust. Is there a God spot in the brain?
Week 48 - 49
I'm not recommending homeopathy but this site is interesting for differentiating symptoms.
'You've transformed your crutches into a violin' - said to a person recovered from PTSD.
Some career women say to me, 'I don't want to have to think when I get home, I don't want to plan or problem solve or initiate' and their relationship's in a mess. Yet doing it 'her way' correlates with marital satisfaction, so maybe the partner has to mind read? 30 years ago I used to hear the same lame exuse from the guys, not problem solving at home because they did it all day at work.
Take a close look at the 7 people you spend most of your time with. They are your future. From Kiyosaki's 'Cash Flow Quadrant'
Demographics of divorce can be misleading, for example, which of the following are right:
- A. For every marriage that occurs in USA there is about one divorce.
- B. In 1990 there were 4.7 divorces for every one thousand people.
- C. In 1990 there were 20.9 divorces for every 1000 married women over 15 years of age.
- D. Forty percent of the women born in the 1970s will divorce.
- E. All of the above are correct. (E is the correct answer) For more visit this university site
Week 46 - 47
"OK. First the good news. And it is good and deserves repeating. Therapy works. Over the last 40 years, study after study finds that the average treated client is better off than 80% of the untreated sample in those studies. Now for the bad news. In spite of years of careful research, the same data has not found any one model, method or approach that results in reliably better outcomes for specific diagnoses." talkingcure.com
The world's most comprehensive list of feeling words, now amounting to over 3000 words.
A vivid account of the experience of uncontrollable rage and fear that can engulf a person who might identify with the borderline experience - people who desperately want to be loved, but whose behaviour makes them seem unlovable. You could try to restrain the rage with medication, with complementary medicine or by developing developing core strength with moolabandha and other yoga postures with meditation.
'Friendships like marriages are dependent on avoiding the unforgiveable'. Today I am reminded that in practice this partial truth means maintaining respect and trust in oneself in the other and in the relationship. Progressive, long term erosion in those areas of trust and respect is for some more damaging than a single instance of an unforgiveable wrong. The unforgiveable in that context may then function as the trigger to fire a relationship loaded with distrust and disrespect. Without the trigger, relationships sometimes can endure terminal malaise for a long time, just teetering on the edge of survival, both people keeping themselves busy avoiding the chasm between them. I have seen more couples heal the unforgiveable than recover from chronic disrespect.
This is by way of answering a question from a couple with over 30 years of marriage behind them and possibly not many years in front of them - how did it get so bad and is there anything we can do about it? In part the answer includes the quote below. We have conscious control of the person we become as result of being in a long term relationship with our partner. But that control is in the small picture, in every little choice we make about everyday events. Changing those habitual, small choices with a 30 year head of steam is also an act of will. It will call on all the resources of the couple concerned to hold together through that real storm, the end of the years of fake ones. Have they ever fully exposed what it is really like on the inside and risked the meeting or the dissapointment in their partner's response? Are they willing to surrender even that privacy to reverse the trend of hiding? Are they willing to risk shame and would they want the marriage, even if it did work? So much of my job is to help the couple construct the question, the answers then flow clear.
"You don't marry one person; you marry three: the person you think they are, the person they are, and the person they are going to become as the result of being married to you." - Richard Needham. The latter is so hard, if not impossible to predict when you are young.
On other topics this week, traumatic brain injury following a car accident.
Veno Cardio Facial Syndrome VCFS one of the most common genetic disorder in humans occuring in one in 1800 births and in 5% of children born with a cleft palate. Most share a cluster of mood, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms and a significant vulnerability to developing bipolar disorder. "Despite the involvement of a very specific portion of chromosome 22, there is great variation in the features of this syndrome. At least 30 different problems have been associated with the 22q11 deletion. None of these problems occur in all cases. The list includes: cleft palate, usually of the soft palate (the roof of the mouth nearest the throat which is behind the bony palate); heart problems; similar faces (elongated face, almond-shaped eyes, wide nose, small ears); learning difficulties; eye problems; feeding problems that include food coming through the nose (nasal regurgitation) because of the cleft palate; middle-ear infections (otitis media); hypoparathyroidism (low levels of the parathyroid hormone that can result in seizures); immune system problems which make it difficult for the body to fight infections; weak muscles; short height; curvature of the spine (scoliosis); and tapered fingers. Children are born with these features which do not worsen with age."
Week 45
He expected that after they were married she would be his companion in building the place and she thought that, once married he would be fully committed to her. He can't commit to her whilst she's not involved in building and she won't put off her other life to help until he's committed. She thought that when they were married he'd stop screwing around and he thought, once married she would understand him. He thought that after they were married she would feel secure and she thought after they were married, she would be his number one.
Six people with the best hearts and good will, made a pact at the outset and are later disappointed. Each one re-cycles those issues in the quiet, yet intractable conflicts of otherwise well matched people, who to all the world appear the perfect couple. What's wrong here? We make an arrangement with another person to meet our deepest needs in relationship, often as an extension of a childhood dream of how and when happiness will come. We know it's there when we talk about getting together but have no idea how deep it runs until we're disappointed. What to do about it? There is no substitute for awareness, self honesty, self responsibility and telling it like it is - at the beginning! That's a big ask when so much is at stake. It takes time to know someone. Both change and the unexpected intervene without invitation and upturn our prior assumptions.
In any voluntary arrangement we always have choice, but we don't always tell ourselves or the other what's involved in that choice at the outset. Nor can we as a consequence of change. What's involved sometimes needs frustration and disappointment before it's cooked and out of the oven. Some hold onto each other and work it out, some fly apart and some bring in a third party.
'All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never viscious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principle of equal partnership'. - Ann Landers
'It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages'. - Friedrich W. Nietzsche
For all the therapists who read my analects here's one for us - Does Your Kid Have A Childhood? - the Therapist As Parent. And a related subject, boundary violations in the therapeutic relationship.
Week 44
The maddening thing about long term relationships is that we (and I mean 'we' because it takes at least two people to do it) re-create some of the painful situations that characterised our family of origin and don't recognise it. I had this experience recently with a couple. I said to them, as they were trying to find a word to describe the troubles in their marriage, 'just like home' and they said, 'oh no home was ......', and they described things that happenned when they were kids. To which I replied, 'but that's exactly how you both describe the crap in your marriage. The very things each of you complain of the other doing, create the very experiences which your family of origin inflicted on you as a child.' It is almost as if we quaranteen memory of our childhood family from our experience of the family we create as adults.
Signature article on sensorimotor processing of trauma - 'teaching the person how to self-regulate by mindfully contacting, tracking and articulating sensorimotor processes'.
Bali psychological trauma 24-hour hotline 1800 337 744
A 'joke' as key to the unconscious and to the dominant discourse on gender? A French Lesson:
A French teacher was explaining to her class that in French, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. "House" is feminine-"la maison." "Pencil" is masculine-"le crayon."
A student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?" Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups-male and female- and asked them to decide for themselves whether "computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The men's group decided that "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computer"), because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("le computer") because:
1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realise that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
Week 42 - 43
Having the courage of your timidity is saying you're scared. This can allow the other person to disclose their fears. If instead they attack you for being weak, the courage of timidity is then to gently say how that affects you as well. That persistence in speaking from the heart can disarm the attack or inflame it. If the latter and you survive, you will have a clear choice from the reactions you get. If you choose to ignore that negative feedback and persist in relationship to a rejecting other or you keep trying to make peace, then you can either diagnose yourself as co-dependent (someone who ignores negative feedback to their detriment), thick or a peace maker. It takes incredible courage to commit to dialogue when the other side responds to not being heard with violence.
Hypothyroidism - any number of these symptoms: fatigue, depression, memory loss, coarse dry hair, cold intolerance, decreased libido, weight gain, muscles cramps, iriitibaility, abdnormal menstrual cycles, hair loss.
He has gone so far up the valley and into the mountains that he can't hear us down here. He has gone so far out of reach, lost to contact, 'lights on and nobody home' and yet he remembers making a decision to do this, to leave here, when he was just a boy.
Paradoxcically, by building a life for healthy separateness you reduce the chances of separation and increase the likelihood of togetherness.
Week 40 - 41
I love one liners, it's the school holidays here so I have added a delicious list on my site for example:"Not all who wander are lost" - Tolkien and 'Often, the test of courage is not to die but to live. - Conte Vittorio Alfieri and 'We're Americans, we're a simple people but if you piss us off we'll bomb your cities'. - Robin Williams and 'Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent'.
Dear ...
If your partner sees the counsellor to who you will both go later, alone and discloses something he does not wish that counsellor to share with you, then the counsellor is risking keeping a secret. I hate having done that in the past, it poisons the trust. I now warn the person who comes alone, not to tell me anything they would not wished shared with the partner who is also coming for counselling. Not all counsellors have come to that view and you may need to check that out with the people you are considering.
If he needs to discuss that sort of confidence in private with his counsellor, better that he has his own counsellor and you two see a couple counsellor, who has not met either of you before. Then you are on an equal footing and the trust will, hopefully, remain sacred.
Week 39
When you do something that you feel ashamed of, you get the guilts and can address the problem, make amends etc and feel better. But what do you do to feel better when you were born with shame, for example being unwanted. Perhaps it is to do things that you will feel guilty about so that you don't feel the original shame. The contemporary shame covers the old. Of course the down side of that method is that you have to keep doing things that you feel guilty about in order not to feel the unwanted, unacceptable, rejection of your beginnings. The upside is that it only just works, some of the time, in not feeling the abonimable nothingness you fear lies beneath your life.
An international Watchtower observer of Jehova's Witnesses (JW) and their alleged protection of JW paedophiles, and a web ring for recovering JWs.
Week 38
The rose scented oil weeping from Madonna of Rockingham WA, yet to be proven a fake.
A not uncommon observation: the health practitioner hears their patient's self-diagnosis of depression and prescribes for it. Rather than question and differentiate other factors such as thyroid function, iron deficiency, post glandular fever CFS, bereavement, etc.. Or significantly, in this case, exploring other symptoms of anxiety and understanding that anxiety is the primary, long term condition, not necessarily best treated with an anti-depressant. Anti-depressants tend to be uppers and this anxious patient also drinks coffee and caffeinated soft drinks - thus further winding up their anxiety. Life style change first! A person who also has the initial insomnia of lying awake worrying and does not feel a reduction of symptoms with exercise, has distinguishing symptoms of core anxiety not of primary depression. They get depressed because they can't stop the anxiety symptoms, not the other way around. The other side of medication and a self help site for anxiety.
Week 37
EIGHT SIGNS OF SQ, the spiritual quotient - that ability to solve problems of meaning and value:
1. Flexibility
2. Self-awareness
3. An ability to face and use suffering
4. The ability to be inspired by a vision
5. An ability to see connections between diverse things (thinking holistically)
6. A desire and capacity to cause as little harm as possible
7. A tendency to probe and ask fundamental questions
8. An ability to work against convention
Amnesia can happen within seconds of a tragedy and it may take generations to re-member, to re-constitute the historical experience. We are still unravelling the holocaust. There is more to September 11 beneath the twin towers than above. Much like unravelling the secret story of a childhood, atrocities have a comet like tail, leading forward in time and back from the moment of impact. Sometimes just uncovering an alleged conspiracy of silence, close to the event will be sufficient to understand it. Other times one has to go way back in the past to know the intersecting influences that point to the tragedy. A New Zealand press gallery 'conspiracy' site and the whatreallyhappened web site.
Week 36
I was struck by the persistence in one man's belief that he can afford to let the relationship capital of his marriage run down, in order to build the financial capital of his family. Man as the provider is one of the more virulent lose/lose dilemmas people are trained for. I'd call it divorce training, but it is also potentially lethal when all a man's eggs are in that basket and it fails. Atr the extreme I wonder if this belief doesn't have a cult like grip on people who then, without apparent conscience do an HIH or an Enron.
Loyalty to particular beliefs, families, leaders and even nations can have a cult like quality. An essay with wider application than its theme of traumatic abuse in cults - particularly read on emptiness and the 'magic helper' [see below]. A critique of cult like processes in the psychotherapeutic relationship from the ethnopsychiatry of George Devereux [translated from the French] - "The psychoanalytic experiment not only elicits the behavior which it studies, it actually creates it." And a remarkable and hopeful story of a psychologist's recovery from paranoid schizophrenia.
And for a cult of global exploitation with strong adherents read the Oxfam report on the destruction caused by the US $1b/day farm subsidies (it's simple: if you subsidize our farmers and not theirs, theirs starve).
"Erich Fromm calls the power one submerges oneself in the "magic helper." When one feels helpless and hopeless to express and realize one's individual potential, dependence on a magic helper provides a solution which shifts the emphasis off the self, which is experienced as empty and worthless, to the magic helper. The magic helper, in our fantasy, has all the answers, can take care of everything, and loves and accepts us perfectly, thereby confirming and validating our existence. Merging with the magic helper banishes emptiness, loneliness and anxiety -- and magic security is established. Then separation, individuation, and its accompanying terrors can be averted altogether.One can join a cult and effect a kind of separation from one's family and background -- but the actual task of individuation is not undertaken. The pseudo-separation attempt degenerates into a regression to deeper levels of dependence and enmeshment." Daniel Shaw in his essay
Week 35
Compassion fatigue : (if link broken go here) we are used to thinking about ambulance officers, counselors, nurses, aid and aged care workers getting it, but parents and other family carers? It comes on you after months or years of empathizing, worrying and working with a sick or troubled partner, parent or child. You get to the place where you just don't care any more and you've numbed out on feeling. Even feeling or thinking about your own life hurts, so you don't go there. You just want everything to stop. Take a compassion satisfaction and fatigue self test. To break out of this you begin small, getting your life back. A life coach is good - could be a friend, someone from a support group who struggles with the same role - someone who will help you set small, progressive steps to climb out of it and keeps you on track to the next life goal. You don't have to give up whilst the world is falling apart around you. You may not be the only one who is keeping it together. An accelerated recovery program
Week 34
We could sit around and work out what in your family backgrounds have made it more likely that you would be hooked on alcohol and computer games rather than talk together, but the duty you have to your children and to each other, means you have to change the way you relate now. So take an hour for each other most days, when the last child is put to bed, and have really low expectations of each other's communication for a start. Just sitting beside each other for even half an hour, holding hands, without interruptions will put you ahead of where you were yesterday. Ask concrete question like 'did you feel a little bit sad or a little bit angry when you ....', rather than global questions like 'how do/did you feel', and follow it up with 'tell me more about that?' If you wait for the other to read your mind, to guess what you're feeling, your kids will be out of control teenagers before you get what you want. Do it now.
Archbishop Pell's accuser possibly defamatory on Sydney's independent media centre and a large archive of articles on clerical child abuse.
Sex abuse news tracker and US clergy abuse news tracker
On-line support group for partners of survivors of sexual abuse
For light relief, latest marriage and divorce statistics from the Australian Bureau of Stats.
Week 33
Dear ...this morning I began to wonder what is it about recovery from a determined suicide intention/action that indicates the person has moved on. It occurred to me that it was the same measure of any life crisis, illness, accident, loss of a loved one, divorce etc.. It is not necessarily that the symptoms have passed or even the external conditions changed. One can still be in pain, held captive but one's life has shifted, experienced a sea change, it has moved on.
My indicators for that include a significant shift, not immediately recognised, in the person's values, perceptions, beliefs, feelings and actions. Then or later understood to be around a core determination, an act of will, a manifesto - that 'THIS' (whatever that may mean) can not /will not happen again. Sometimes this is manifested in external life changes and sometimes by less observable, subtle internal shifts, just nuances that are quite surprising in their strength and persisitence. Re-mind-ing us that what doesn't destroy us, strengthens us.
Week 32
GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT LIFE, THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:
1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptise cats.
2) When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the
second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a duster and a cat at the same time.
8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10) The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa or Grandma's lap.
GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT LIFE, THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:
1) Raising teenagers is like nailing jelly to a tree.
2) Wrinkles don't hurt.
3) Families are like fudge . . . mostly sweet, with a few nuts.
4) Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.
5) Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fibre, not the joy.
GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD
1) Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.
Considering the possibility that humiliation may incur a traumatic injury with lasting effects, provides hope for healing. We now have over 50 years of clinical and research experience understanding and resolving individual and family trauma. Humiliation is one of the least considered issues in a wide variety of social ills in Australia, particularly in our culture of knocking or 'paying out' on anything that is out of the ordinary or exceptional. This is particularly venomous in school age peer groups, and amongst girls may more often go unnoticed as a form of bullying than with the physical assault boys may use to bully.
Week 31
Under that veneer of coping, the pillar of strength you are for your family and friends, is there a bit of sadness? Do you have a right to feel unhappy, a right to want to be respected and cared for when you're troubled? There is an everyday sadness, which can be spoken without shame and another, older and deeper seated, which has not been allowed to speak, maybe ever, on which we have cemented our cover of strength and coping. The cover keeps a lid on the trouble getting out but also prevents good stuff coming in. The imbalance, over time, can lead to another kind of trouble - depression.
In my experience there is a different quality to the depression that follows a recent and exhausting period of dealing with catastrophe or illness and that which is a result of a long forgotten or unresolved injury. The former does not twist the thinking as much as the latter, where twisted thinking was a way to deny and forget the damage so that we could live. There is a kind of impenetrable quality to the ill-logic of depression's hopelessness and despair. To the person in the grip of that crazy thinking, suicide can appear a perfectly logical pain killer and with only good outcomes for all, as if the homicide was not targeted at anyone else.
As depression deepens its hold, with or without a background of unresolved trauma, the ill-logic twists everything and the sufferer, the host, risks getting lost in it.
The Australian site on depression and a comprehensive alternative mental health site. Should I take on or come off anti-depressants? A case for - a guy's story and the case against effexor and the other side of psychiatric medication.
Week 30
Resources for obsessive compulsive behavior and a self help site for anxiety
Sibling abuse as unacknowledged domestic violence.
Siblings of children with special needs
Family therapy for families in business
Week 29
Self-replicating core negative beliefs and the experiences which reinforce them, underly ALL issues of low self esteem. Consider this generous inner child work site for comprehensive self-help ideas on self-healing and parenting.
Step-family link and a rich source of information for those likely to live in or relate to one at some time in the future.
Two Shame ~ links and two healthy ~ boundary links.
Dear ......
thank god you can put it down on email. I heard it all and I know it helps just to get it down and be heard. No matter what happens, you cannot ever lose your son. Blood is so much 'thicker than water' and even if you were not to see him for the next two years, and that's also impossible, he would still seek you out in adult life to find out the truth, the TRUTH of what happened in his life for those two years.
Are you depressed and a bit suicidal? That medication the GP offered may help for a month or so, like taking a holiday from feeling quite so intensely unhappy. What do you think?
Go to this link for some suicide prevention resources. Take care of yourself, your son will need you alive to make sense of this crazy world.
peter
Dear ....
having another guy in your life just inflames your husband's alpha male, territorial behavior. You can't expect to get him or you to believe you don't love him anymore and agree to leave the family, if you're waving a red flag in his face that provokes his fears. Why would any one give up someone they love and their two children if they thought the only reason this is happening is because of another man?! You aren't able to pull off a clandestine affair, he can tell you're lying and you're a lousy liar, so give it up before your husband locates and forms a close relationship with your lover's wife and the two of them cooperate to make the rest of your possible future step-family a hell on earth.
If it's possible that there is a future relationship, the other guy will still be there and all the freer of the guilt of leaving his children only if he has separated fully and cooperatively from his first wife. If he can't remain faithful to you over that time of waiting, then he wasn't for you anyway, and you've saved yourself, six kids and four families a lot of pain. Are you doing this, in part, because you have been so unhappy and alone in this marriage for so long? Is it injuring your marriage irreparably, closing the door on reconciliation? Is that what you want? Is there another way to get that result without inflicting more hurt?
peter
Shame in all its manifestations and healthy boundaries
"2. 1.3002
Dear girl_X,
Everything in my life was straight forward until I read your diary. Now I am questioning your world...........How can you live in a way that reflects your values?...........Begin your public conversation on hope and destiny. boy 3yK"
Week 27
This week began with a letter urging support for those who identify with Borderline Personality Disorder [BPD]. This describes a pervasive pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, moods and marked impulsivity beginning in early adulthood. It affects approximately 2% of Australians. One of the characteristics of those diagnosed with BPD is their frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment whilst at the same time unable to avoid the very conditions in their relationships that support that outcome - giving rise to the title of the BPD bible: "I hate you, don't leave me" by Kreisman & Strauss. BPD is nearly 50% more common than Alzheimer's, Bi-Polar and Schizophrenia combined, but less well recognised and funded. The Shack was the first Australian website offering information and resources for those with BPD.
Week 26
This week evolved into an essay on forgiveness and saying sorry to two clients.
Week 25
Guys III - [continuing from last week's issues] 'I spoke in our prayer meeting from the heart ,with tears in my eyes and yet people came up to me afterward and asked was I okay, suicidal, depressed? I just celebrated my deepest beliefs and with feeling and they freaked out. I broke the rule that guys don't express their feelings.' 'I [a guy] finally got up thecourage to tell my business partner the hell my life has been lately and he dropped the mask and told me it had been the same for him. 20 years, 6 x 10 hours a week and I hardly knew the man nor him me.'
Gals I - 'I live in a million dollar house overlooking the bay, I'm three marriages down, no kids, a sensitive lover, my own personal trainer, weekly therapist, dietitian, all the support staff for a good life, a high flying career in marketing, big package, all mod cons but in my heart I haven't a clue who I am. At night I worry about the money. Will it be enough?'
Gals II - 'As a kid the whole family relied on me, I felt totally responsible for everything. I cooked and cleaned for the little ones, looked after Dad. If it fell apart it was my fault so I had to do perfect every time. Today I've got a big career I don't want, responsible for a lot of people I don't like and I'm in a total fog in my marriage. At 50 I'm just getting to know me and how I have impacted on the guy I've lived with for 30 years. It's exciting and terrifying all at the same time.'
"Ring out those bells you still can ring
Forget the perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in"
Leonard Cohen
Gals III - 'my boss is a survivor and she imposes her struggle on all of us. I'm a survivor too and I want to stop imposing my struggle on those around me, especially those I love. I know it sounds simple but it comes down to just being able to let go and breathe. It's okay to breathe. It's okay to be alive.'
Week 24
Guys I - [but not always the guy, also the male role identified gals from last week's analects] - whose first love is their job or career; with a death like dread of debt, or of loss of control or of opening up, or of the doctor, or of asking for help, or admitting vulnerability; with a consuming commitment to provide for their spouse and children, their only friend and confidant their spouse; inflexibly solution focused, tragically disconnected from intimacy with themselves, their bodies and from their partners and children, gob smacked when it's over. Where do we start to work with this core cultural issue? For example, Biddulph at manhood online and a critique of Biddulph at XYonline.
Guys II - 'the only other guy I can talk with like this is my cousin and he's miles away.' 'I'm a sensitive guy and interested in my feelings, where are the other blokes I can talk with on this wavelength.' 'My kids tell me I'm not a typical man. They feel like they have a second mum for a father. My son in his late twenties, doesn't know how to handle it when I respond to a family issue with feeling.' 'It's very flattering to have a man confide in me but it's a bit like being mum. I tell my girlfriends it's men's business but they say the men have no where else to go.' 'It's a huge responsibility on top of running the family and working part time, to be the only person he confides in.'
Week 23
After teaching meditation in Armidale to a great group of yoga students, I've been thinking about the meaning of Tantra. This week I found myself confronted by two of the big ones in my client group. Firstly, women who were rejected by or lost their mothers from a young age [motherless daughters] and then, drawing closer to their fathers, took on the male role. They ended up task orientated, successful career women struggling mid-life with the diminished feminine side of their psyches and suffeing in impoverished heterosexual relationships or with multiple separations.
And second, 'what to do when he won't go for help', even after he's been diagnosed with a life threatening illness he dissimulates and runs from his fears. This usually follows a long pattern of ignoring signals from the body and the heart, putting the tasks of the relationship and the career ahead of intimate self-expression and personal growth. These guys also struggle mid life with relationships and multiple separation. There will be more about this theme next week.
Week 22
'A' has been sending the same hand signal for the last thirty years to say 'I've had enough, back off'. 'B' doesn't understand it and so keeps going, appearing to ignore the signal. 'A' intensifies the arm waving. 'B' misinterprets it as 'B' not being heard and intensifies the pursuit of being heard. 'A' starts to shout and tries to leave. 'B' pursues and attacks verbally. 'A' fights back. Escalation. Domestic violence and neither A nor B get physical but at the end both are shattered, confused and both feel powerless and the other to blame. Start with a neutral signal that both understand to mean STOP and make an appointment afterward stopping to discuss just one issue without interruption, at a good time of day and when both are clear headed. Use reflective listening and 'I' statements for example "I'm afraid", "I feel ashamed" and own up to both contributions to the cycle of verbal abuse and catch the blame frame before it runs the show. It's not question of who hit whom back first. 'All of life is a process of becoming humanized, of developing a humble and contrite heart about our own wrong doing'. 'There's a crack in everything, that's where the light gets in.'
Week 21
The student tries to fill herself with the teacher and the teacher tries to empty the student of everything, including the wanting to fill the emptiness.
I was struck today by the persistence of 'positive' self-soothing habits like say, a chocolate or a pizza binge followed by 'negative' self-soothing such as putting yourself down for it. This is an internal parent/child battle for supremacy : "yes I will, no you won't". I think what really changes over time is in our kindness toward our selves. The more gentle we are with our selves, the less we set up situations for such a battle like a binge for example, and find more satisfying ways of meeting the necessary needs that drive the binge. If you wonder what that is then consider what the battle interrupts. Treat your monsters with compassion.
We are the fruit of many lives. What is the fruit of yours?
I hear of sages saying that if we did not cling to things, ideas and people we would be enlightened now. The problem is that to have a physical life we have to cling to the physical body like a life raft in the ocean of bliss. The rest then follows. Ultimately, when mere mortals cease clinging to the body we die. Tantra is all about unbundling these ties whilst we are alive.
Over the last decade I have worked with a number of people who have experienced work place bullying following injury at work. Being a target consistently hinges on two characteristics of the target: 'a desire to cooperate and a non-confrontative interpersonal style'. When you add to this a work place injury, the possibilities of repeated traumatization throughout a return to work program, multiply. The very people charged with rehabilitation can 'inadvertently' transport the abuse to the victim. To quote further from the last page linked above: 'Targets who are most surprised by the baseless cruelty inflicted on them suffer the most severe effects (PTSD) and take the longest time to heal afterwards. Silent, frozen co-workers worsen the problem often by choosing to cut off support, to tacitly or directly join the bully's personal vendetta against the Target.'
Week 20
For S. a dream symbols site built around Jung and Campbell.
The 'tyranny of privacy' comment by Peter O'Connor in his interview on abc.net.au was brought home to me today when a client reported withholding a vital piece of information from her body worker for shame that he would think less of her and be hurt by his misjudgment of her.
"You cannot solve a problem from the frame of mind that created the problem in the first place." Einstein
Observe, Orient, Decide, Act - John Boyd's OODA loop theory of conflict pattern.
It seems to me that a reasonable contract would be
1. you're on my prayer list again - done
2. I provide a supportive ear and comforting words via telephone
3. we do that once a month for a year
4. I'm not expected to read your mind. If you withhold stuff that's your problem.
5. I'm not going on a fishing trip to probe your silence even if you tell me you're withholding stuff.
6. I can hear, validate, even comfort your neediness but I can do nothing else about it. Your job is to:
7. read the Rumi book "The Glance" and take in what it says about the beloved within and support this with a spiritual life eg meditation each day, yoga each week,
8. take spiritual responsibility for yourself and your little girl and YOU HOLD HER and let her know you will be there for her whenever she needs you.
9. You give up all hope that anyone else can ever make it right for you.
10. You read Kopp's list.
Week 19
Today I was reminded how the partner who discovers the other's affair develops symptoms like PTSD. Betrayal is a trauma and for many months after the symptoms can flashback or be triggered when something symbolic or actual occurs that is reminiscent of the affair.
On the subject of affairs and their aftermath, the best book I have found is 'After the Affair - Healing the Pain and rebuilding trust when a partner has been unfaithful' by Janis Abrahams Spring, Holder and Stoughton 1996.
Have you built a shrine to your bitterness? Is it hot, passionate or cold and murderous? Shrines to dead mothers and to death itself have been thematic this week. I'm reminded of Sheldon Kopp's eschatalogical laundry list from his book titled after the zen koan: 'If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him'.
Find a way to be at your best together without all the stress and drama that you have a knack for bringing in to your lives.
The real problem is that the source of your deepest connection to each other became a no go area.
Stalking death like a combatant in the cancer wars is not the easiest way to a peaceful death. Befriend death but make sure he/she stays outside your front door. You can still speak to death through the door but without having a fight in your lounge room.
There is great power in occupying the truth of who you are. If that is utterly alone then you can invite people in to that space, but if it is some place in between like needy then both you and they know it's fake, and little good comes in.What does you struggle to keep because of the artifice with which it was claimed.
Week 18
Uncover, discover, discard.
At your mother's funeral you gave up the eulogy but not your grief. Time to go to her grave side and say goodbye. Then the women who are looking for a father or a good boy in you may also move on and your leg might get strong again. Where will you belong then?
The endowment was your due, it was a gift and requires no repayment. Have you revived your father so your parents can continue to fight it out in you? It is okay to live.
Week 17
The first client of the week taught me again the power of the car body as a metaphor. Her car's fuel gauge had been showing empty for months. After a session with me resolving to leave work in good health and using her remaining time to fill up on her energy level rather than burning out, she started her car and the fuel gauge worked again and has continued to work. Notice what your car is telling you.
Look forward to boredom as an opportunity to meditate rather than as a sign of trouble.
Rather than believe I'm no good at decision making, say I make good decisions and my anxiety undoes them. Befriend the enemy.
Give up all hope that, as an adult, there will ever be someone who will now mother or father you without a hidden price tag. Become your own best friend.
In the very act of silencing you he denounces the faith he so loudly proclaims.
Some gut feelings cannot be negotiated with and in fact the enteric nervous system is like an independent brain.
It happens to all of us in the end, the brain ceases being a host for personality.
The brain is a bloody annoying organ, it picks up on something painful and goes searching in its back rooms for the associated links, magnifying it and making it worse.
On the door of our garage my daughter had drawn her name in black hair spray, which became smudged over the years. To one of my clients it looked like the word shame. He concluded that a disgruntled client had sprayed this graffiti on it and that as we felt we had nothing to be ashamed of, we left it there for ages for all to know that we were proud of our innocence. Recently, Avinashi painted the doors with a shri yantra and it was then that he was freed to tell me.
