Wednesday,June 19,2024
I woke up at 11 after going to bed at 9, exhausted. That was scary. While I felt wide awake at 11, I fell asleep until 3 a.m. I slept so soundly that the side of my face and my hand felt numb. I mustn't have moved. After that, I dozed and thought. Thinking like that, especially right before I get up, is a bad habit.
I found more lesions on Elsa this morning. One showed up about a week after her dental procedure when the vet extracted ten teeth and sewed up a hole in her gum. I assumed it was from the stress of the procedure and would clear up. When the doctor changed her food from the prescription Science Diet for digestive allergies to the Royal Canin Ultimo, her skin cleared up miraculously. Now, the number of lesions is increasing instead of decreasing. I feel terrible if she faces the discomfort of those infected wounds again.
It just occurred to me I accidentally changed her food. I ordered the Royal Canin hydrolyzed protein instead of the Ultamino. Her skin cleared up when she was on the Ultamino. She continued doing well on the hydrolyzed protein. I made an assumption it would be just as good. Maybe between the change in food and the stress, her skin was breaking down again. I'll call the vet tomorrow to find out. If that's the case, I will order more Ultamino immediately if they say it's a problem.
I was planning to work with the twins at 8:30. At 8, my phone rang, and it was Shelly. I need to remember to write down our appointment in my calendar. This was a significant session. I started saying I thought I should focus more on behavioral change. Both Shelly and I are big advocates of trauma theory. We believe that a lot of people's problems result from unresolved trauma. It's very au current now. I've thought it was worthwhile since I was in high school in the fifties. I was ahead of my time and considered entirely out of my mind. I observe that efforts to change are limited to downright futile unless underlying issues are dealt with first. Once they are sufficiently resolved, sufficient is a relative term, behavioral change can be achieved. I want to stop ruminating on issues that cannot be easily resolved. I have plenty to occupy my thoughts in satisfying ways. I don't need to upset myself with things not going my way. I decided Cognitive Behavior Therapy was a good direction for me now.
Then I started analyzing what it is that sends me around the bend. There's a consistent pattern. There are those in my life who never ask me what I think or feel but insist they know. Then there are a select few who see me in a negative light, accusing me of thoughts and feelings that don't resemble any thoughts and feelings I recognize as mine. I had a therapist like that. She made assumptions about concrete facts and acted on her beliefs without ever asking. She merely apologized when she was told she was wrong. These weren't topics that could be debated. It was things like how much college I attended, if I had ever held a job, my bra size, and how much sex I had with Mike. This therapist always lamented her inability to figure me out. But she never asked me a single question about myself. I hung on with her because I knew her function in my life even if she didn't. Had she asked why I continued working with her, I would have told her the truth. But my thoughts and opinions on anything were irrelevant.
Some people fear my judgment. They also have no interest in what I think. They prefer to torment themselves with their thoughts about what I think rather than ask me. These people actually don't care about what I think. They most certainly don't. They use me for their flights of fantasy.
At the base of that trauma was my mother, who gaslit me, convincing me I had thin, baby-fine hair, that no one liked me, including my father, and that she was the only one who would tell me the truth because she was the only one who loved me enough. I think she honestly believed most of what she had to say.
Shelly recommended a visualization. She borrowed it from a childhood experience. To get to the base of the issue, she recommended sliding down a spiral chute in my imagination. She was familiar with this from her childhood and assumed I would be too.
Her elementary school in Michigan had chutes like that so children could rapidly exit in case of fire. Since they used them during fire drills, Shelly had several opportunities to ride down one. She said she was terrified. You sped down them so fast she got Indian or rug burns. Someone had to be at the bottom of the chute to catch the kids as they came out. Holy cow! No, we had nothing like that in the Bronx.
I use a comparable image with the people I work with. I think of a well or a large hole, an abyss. We must lower ourselves to the bottom of it to face our fears. This works well as long as we control the descent. It is totally inappropriate as a therapeutic tool if it is forced. The person has to make the descent in complete control, motivated by curiosity.
I used the image Shelly suggested. I hung on to the sides of the slide for dear life. I didn't budge an inch. I was terrified to make the descent. I did what I recommend others to do in a similar situation. Back up. Leave the situation. Get to a safe location. I walked away from the chute. It led to a typical shouting match with my mother, where I fought for ground. I learned only toward the end of her life that she considered any difference of thought a personal threat. She was mad as a hatter! Poor woman! What a horrible way to live.
As I was verbally battling with my mom, I caught sight of my father on the sidelines. He had a peculiar grin on his face. He was getting off on our conflict. That was a disturbing image, but not really that surprising. My mom was a highly reactive person, quick to anger, while my dad was a very controlled person. My sister says she tried to provoke him to anger. He never responded. He also died young.
I switched my attention from my mother to my father. I saw his behavior as insidious. Because he couldn't express his own anger, he set up my mom and me as anger porn. I knew some of this when I was a child. On the day of his funeral, I thought it was a good thing he died because I would never have made it to adulthood with my sanity intact if he had lived. He was manipulative and controlling- in a very loving, accepting, and supportive way. I was committed to being more like my mom when I was younger. At least you could see her coming. I recognize some of my dad's behavior as predatory. I try to be very careful to know what motivates my behavior: how much is for me and how much is genuinely for the benefit of the other person? Just because we feel we're doing something good doesn't mean we are. I still hadn't resolved the issue with my dad when the session ended.
I had Adolescent D at noon. It was an exhausting session that went nowhere. Hopefully, it's the darkness before the dawn.
I ate some lunch and did some weeding. Some miscellaneous blades of grass are impossible to kill. I use boiling water. they say, "You and who else?" I try to pull them out by hand. They say the same thing. They're tough.
Then, it was a Ulu Wini Day, as it is every weekday, except for Tuesday, when there are no organized activities for the children. Today, all the children were sitting at the long tables. The noise level was terrible.
I continued working with going-into-fifth-grade CL. I moved on to addition with regrouping. She was somewhat comfortable with that. Going-into-sixth-grade RM joined us. She did a few more problems using repeated subtraction to solve division problems. She did something a bit weird. I realized she was trying to use the standard division algorithm. I went over that with her. She got it somewhat, but I wouldn't bet on it yet.
Going-into- third-grade MV came by. I hadn't seen her all summer. She was also having severe problems with low-level math. She came from the same group of islands CL came from. There is much more 'backward' culture than the Marshall Islands' culture. There is little use for any formal education. I suspected MV had the same poor number sense that CL did. I asked CL to do the exercise with MV, which I had done with her. I meant for her to go around and count objects and write down the number. Instead, she did several double-digit addition problems without regrouping. I hope it did something.
Going-into-second-grade JM came to me to work on math. She did single-digit addition and did it well. Going-into-first-grade TR also wanted to work on math. She did single-digit addition problems on her own. If they're having fun, I can't imagine anything better.
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