I only completed 4,000 steps on my morning walk. My hip and back were complaining. I completed up to 7,000 by walking back and forth in the house while on the phone.
I had an appointment with Shelly. I have been working on my problem with people seeing me in ways that I don't recognize myself. I suppose no one likes that, whether the interpretation is good or bad. The problem for me was that my mother would accuse me of things that sounded wrong, objectively. The most emblematic of that was her insistence that I didn't have nice hair, my hair with baby fine and thin. People would tell me what beautiful hair I had. My mother would say they only said that because they didn't love me as she did and wouldn't tell me the truth. Besides that massive distortion, there were more ambiguous accusations: I was selfish, jealous, stupid, crazy, ignorant, never thought of anyone else but myself, the list goes on. That list was harder to argue with. Actually, her comments about my hair were hard to argue with. She said it often enough. I believed it. I would tell people who complimented me that I didn't have nice hair; I had thin, baby fine hair.
Why did my mother do that to me? I have compiled a long list. 1) She needed a lot of control and didn't like that other people might have access to me. 2) As I discovered at the end of her life, she considered any contradiction to her own thinking a challenge, a put-down. 3) She used me as a whipping boy to release her stress. I think that because at the end of her life, she said, "I never need therapy; I had children." I think she had a different idea as to the purpose of therapy than I did.
But the worst moments were when I told her she was hurting me, and she turned that around to attack me. She argued that she wasn't hurting me, and I was only saying that to hurt her. Huh? I do believe my mother would never have done anything that she 'thought' would hurt me. She thought that she couldn't hurt me unless that was her intent; her intent wasn't to hurt me, and it was to relieve her stress. As an alternative, she believed that children couldn't be hurt; they bounce back from everything. There was nothing I could say or do to convince her that she was doing me harm.
In this therapy session, I dealt with the feeling of being shoved down a tube; basically, someone was trying to kill me. Instead of fighting with it, as I usually do, I turned around in the tube and went the other way. What did I have to lose? The person who was pushing me down was upset by my disappearance. That meant to me that they were dependent on the interaction for some sort of satisfaction. I found myself sucked back to the opening of the tube and my oppressor. I popped out of the tube ass first and landed on the person who was pushing me down. I landed on top of her, my mom.
She was deflated by the impact. She was trying to puff herself back up but couldn't because of my weight. We were sort of stuck in this interaction. I had no idea what to do. Then I thought of her behavior as a temper tantrum. I've dealt with a few kids in full bloom. My reaction was to stay calm and just say nothing would happen until they got control of themselves.
Damon threw a beaut when he was six. We were getting into the car in the driveway when it hit. I dragged him out of the car and back into the house, plopped him on the sofa, and sat across him in the room. I wasn't angry. I felt terrible for him. Who likes to lose control of themselves that way? I dragged him back into the house, up a flight of stairs into our bedroom. I told him we weren't going anywhere until he calmed himself. Periodically, I would ask him if he wanted me to come over and sit by him, hold him. He would say no. I would stay in my place. When he calmed himself, we went to the car and went on our way.
I had another experience with a girl about ten, a child of a friend. I took her and her brother to a bookstore to buy books. Then we went out for lunch. Afterward, she asked to go to a nearby mall. Sure. I can't remember if I offered to buy both of them something or not. She asked to get some trinket I wasn't interested in buying for her. She let loose with a temper tantrum. I did the same thing I had done with Damon; I stayed calm and just said nothing was happening until she calmed down.
When she did, I offered to reward her. She asked for that trinket; I told her no, not that. There was a children's activity center in the mall. She asked to go in there. Sure. Her older brother and I sat on a bench in the center as she bounced around. Her brother said, "Oh, oy. She's going to be much worse now since I rewarded her for her temper tantrum." I told him I didn't think so. I also said, "We both hope you're wrong." He was. She got much better. The assumption is that the temper tantrum is no happier having it than any adult is listening to it. Now, I want to be clear, both the kids I mentioned were not violent towards themselves or me, nor did they do a runner that I had to worry about their safety. I applied this strategy with my hysterical mom; the plan was to sit on her until she calmed down.
Right before the therapy session with Shelly, my niece Shivani called. I could only speak to her for a few minutes before the call came through from Shelly. I called Shivani back. She was in the northeast for several weeks to visit her mother and sister. She was staying in a Bnb to guarantee before moving in with her mom. Her son Sidney, who will be four, is a delightful child. We were on for over 40 minutes, and only at the end did he interrupt, asking for some food because he was hungry. The whole time he entertained himself. Shivani says that the main thing he does is create stories using his cars and truck the way some kids might use dolls.
I was supposed to have a zoom session with D. today. Nothing happened at the appointed time. His mother finally texted me to apologize; she had forgotten today was Wednesday. Tell me about it. Even though I write the day and date daily, I often forget what day it is and miss appointments. I worked with him after my call with Shivani. He wanted to work on math. Mrs. B. said he did all right with math. From what I saw today, I would say that is not the case. He wanted to work on division.
I started with two problems, 2+2+2 versus 1+2+2, asking him which could be written as a multiplication problem. He chose the wrong answer. When I asked him to render the one with mixed numbers as a multiplication problem, he made something up. I asked him to compare his answers to the addiction problem and the multiplication problem. He could see they were different. I told him then something was wrong.
We had to do several problems like that before he had a clue what was going on. He lacks an enormous amount of information and concepts. Mrs.B. said he did reasonably well with math. I don't see it. I don't know what to make of his performances.
H.'s mom texted me to say that something had come up, and she had to cancel. I called Kaiser to find out about the expanded dental care they were providing. The names of the dental plan I was paying extra money for an expanded one Medicare provided sounded the same. I couldn't keep them straight. The woman in the membership department was very nice. She finally resolved to email the information. Yay!
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Musings:
Wow! I heard a Ted talk on artificial aides for mental activities. One speaker talked about designing a computer program to help people with ADD learn to not respond to peripheral distractions.
I designed a visualization to address that problem years ago. I've used it with some success. I ask the student to visualize a bullseye target with concentric circles. At the center of the target is the center of their attention. As the rings go out, their attention becomes less and less focused.
For example, if a student is in class working on an assignment, most students are not so focused that they are totally unaware of what is happening around them. (I have three members of my family that do have that kind of concentrated attention. It is another form of ADD.) Students normally would be aware of the teacher standing up and asking for their attention or the general movements of students in the class if something unexpected happens.
The students with the form of ADD, where they are easily distracted, lose their focused attention over every bit of activity around them. We talk about how something on an outer ring shoot into the center and knocks their attention off what they were doing.
Many years ago, I instructed a student to push the distractor back out to its proper place. It felt as if he was trying to lift a car. I asked him if he was familiar with the pinball machine with its spring action trigger that shoots the ball into the field. I instructed them to use that device to shoot the intruding thought to an outer ring. It works. Amazing.
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