Please Identify Yourself
Inpatience began to set in amongst my friends re: the time devoted to therapy with TGD and the lack of any change in my lack of happiness. Of course it had only been a matter of weeks, but good friends began to question whether or not this kind of "therapy" would do any good.
"Why can't you just move on and let it go,"? was the most familiar chant.
"It happened over 50 years ago, it can't be undone." "Deal with it".
In all honesty this had been my mantra my entire life, but these sessions with TGD unleashed 50+ years of sadness that seemed to me, was going to take another 50+ years to rid.
"Why do you think your friends are so impatient with your therapy,"? TGD said, after listening to me whine about my life and my friend's time frame ideas about therapy
How could TGD sit and listen to this stuff hour after hour? I couldn't stand to hear myself talk, week after week. I couldn't do this job for love or money. What kind of person can do this exhausting work day after day, hour after hour? Didn't it make them crazy, sad or just want to give up?
"Don't know," I said. "They just seem to be poking at me all the time."
"Describe poking," TGD said. Was every fucking word going to be analyzed? I just told TGD what they said. Why was any further interpreting needed?
"It's like they're looking for answers I don't have and keep asking the same question in different ways and won't let up"
"I'm not saying you're wrong with the way you feel about this, but just for a moment I'd like you to think about when you were a child and try and remember when your brother or mother, as you describe, "poked" you. Can you do that for me?"
"My friends have NOTHING to do with my mother or brother. They are complete opposites," I barked back.
"Is it possible that this "poking" you are describing is a very real love and concern your friends have for you"?
"All I hear is their dissatisfaction and disapproval with my therapy process," I answered as I cried. "And what does that remind you of." "Who in your life were you always seeking approval from and never got," TGD softly said.
Dear sweet Jesus. Classic therapy bullshit. This woman knew how to get to me. Was I that easy?
"Yeh, fine," I said. "I suppose my mother and brother."
"But these friends ARE not your mother and brother, TGD continued. "Is it possible that these words are just feelings of how you were mistreated as a child, and that what is actually happening is that you are going back and these are just memories and not what is presently happening."
Now it seemed I was unable to decipher whether or not I was reacting to family bullshit or friends.
I didn't want to talk about this subject anymore. I didn't have any answers. Talk about poking. This was the Olympics of Poking. WTF????? Was TGD as pissed as I was? This was one pain in the ass ordeal.
I felt like I was in one of those movies where a prisioner of war was caged and the enemies would come by and ram sticks through the cages to try and jab the prisoners. Good luck getting out of the way.
I thought there would be some relief in therapy, instead it became another war, another method of survival I would have to manuver.
Even sitting there I was craving my isolation as I did as a child.
"Everybody leave me alone," I wanted to scream. But no one could or would hear.
I was invisible to everyone except for the poking and beatings.
For some bizarro reason I was suddenly thrown back to a time where I was 8 and would sometimes take the bus to downtown New Haven. I remember like it was yesterday. I was wearing a gray sweatshirt with a blue v neck collar and my I had just had my haircut from Johnny the Barber. Hair cut so short I looked like a little boy.
As I got on the bus and threw my nickel in the money changer, the bus driver looked at me, and loudly said, "hey kid, are you a boy or a girl," and then gave a big belly laugh as the others on the bus joined in.
I remember the faces of the people seated on the bus laughing, as I walked in shame to the rear of the bus.
Jab, jab, jab.
A circus act. Half girl-half boy.
Stick me in the cage with the tigers and lions and jab sticks at them too.
No identity to anyone except for the jabs and the pokes.
Isolation is so much safer.
God damn therapy and TGD.
"Why can't you just move on and let it go,"? was the most familiar chant.
"It happened over 50 years ago, it can't be undone." "Deal with it".
In all honesty this had been my mantra my entire life, but these sessions with TGD unleashed 50+ years of sadness that seemed to me, was going to take another 50+ years to rid.
"Why do you think your friends are so impatient with your therapy,"? TGD said, after listening to me whine about my life and my friend's time frame ideas about therapy
How could TGD sit and listen to this stuff hour after hour? I couldn't stand to hear myself talk, week after week. I couldn't do this job for love or money. What kind of person can do this exhausting work day after day, hour after hour? Didn't it make them crazy, sad or just want to give up?
"Don't know," I said. "They just seem to be poking at me all the time."
"Describe poking," TGD said. Was every fucking word going to be analyzed? I just told TGD what they said. Why was any further interpreting needed?
"It's like they're looking for answers I don't have and keep asking the same question in different ways and won't let up"
"I'm not saying you're wrong with the way you feel about this, but just for a moment I'd like you to think about when you were a child and try and remember when your brother or mother, as you describe, "poked" you. Can you do that for me?"
"My friends have NOTHING to do with my mother or brother. They are complete opposites," I barked back.
"Is it possible that this "poking" you are describing is a very real love and concern your friends have for you"?
"All I hear is their dissatisfaction and disapproval with my therapy process," I answered as I cried. "And what does that remind you of." "Who in your life were you always seeking approval from and never got," TGD softly said.
Dear sweet Jesus. Classic therapy bullshit. This woman knew how to get to me. Was I that easy?
"Yeh, fine," I said. "I suppose my mother and brother."
"But these friends ARE not your mother and brother, TGD continued. "Is it possible that these words are just feelings of how you were mistreated as a child, and that what is actually happening is that you are going back and these are just memories and not what is presently happening."
Now it seemed I was unable to decipher whether or not I was reacting to family bullshit or friends.
I didn't want to talk about this subject anymore. I didn't have any answers. Talk about poking. This was the Olympics of Poking. WTF????? Was TGD as pissed as I was? This was one pain in the ass ordeal.
I felt like I was in one of those movies where a prisioner of war was caged and the enemies would come by and ram sticks through the cages to try and jab the prisoners. Good luck getting out of the way.
I thought there would be some relief in therapy, instead it became another war, another method of survival I would have to manuver.
Even sitting there I was craving my isolation as I did as a child.
"Everybody leave me alone," I wanted to scream. But no one could or would hear.
I was invisible to everyone except for the poking and beatings.
For some bizarro reason I was suddenly thrown back to a time where I was 8 and would sometimes take the bus to downtown New Haven. I remember like it was yesterday. I was wearing a gray sweatshirt with a blue v neck collar and my I had just had my haircut from Johnny the Barber. Hair cut so short I looked like a little boy.
As I got on the bus and threw my nickel in the money changer, the bus driver looked at me, and loudly said, "hey kid, are you a boy or a girl," and then gave a big belly laugh as the others on the bus joined in.
I remember the faces of the people seated on the bus laughing, as I walked in shame to the rear of the bus.
Jab, jab, jab.
A circus act. Half girl-half boy.
Stick me in the cage with the tigers and lions and jab sticks at them too.
No identity to anyone except for the jabs and the pokes.
Isolation is so much safer.
God damn therapy and TGD.
posted by Suzy at 2:58 PM
12 Comments:
Oh, Suzy. This is SO real and SO raw my muscles tightened up til my shoulders were touching my ears by the time I got to the end.
It's all incredible, the work, the writing, you. Lordy, Lordy, What a journey.
SWEET JESUS! Let me at that f'ing bus driver and every other poker in your life!
Shame on them Suzy. Not on you.
Great work here.
P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
me too
(as in, I'm with jerri, CWLink & MO'N - not much to add)
Thank you for unfolding that memory. It's mythic. Like walking in the dark woods. But we see so clearly the innocense and worthiness and goodness of this girl. And that's where we experience redemption, where we all take her hand and right the situation....and where you, by looking back and going back, right it , too. Amazing work, Suze.
Blessings and Happy Birthday.
Abuse impacts every inch of our being, physical, emotional, spiritual and onward. Any trigger (and there are so many) can send us right back, and it will be like this for our entire lives. UNLESS, we have the courage to move beyond the intellectual reasons, for why things happened (hey, it makes sense in our brain) and move into the emotional level. This is the scariest thing to do, and I so admire you for you courage to hang in there with the therapy, but also to be able to share your story. I think it is always the most difficult as you start getting deeper and deeper into the issues and more and more of the layers are uncovered and looked at.(Boy does your therapist really look, doesn't miss a trick) This is where true healing really begins and freedom from all the pain and the past really starts. Please hang in there and know you are on the right path, you are not alone and are in a very SAFE PLACE.
P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
TGD is a genius. You are one of the bravest people I know, to have stayed and let her lead you down this path.
Once again you have me sitting with you in that office, and following your vulnerable little girl onto the bus.
So proud to know you. Hope your birthday is a celebration worthy of your greatness.
Ditto the whole gang. I read this yesterday, but am often so overwhelmed I can't comment until later.
Man, she's good! Kudos to you for sticking to it and not retreating into your isolated safe place. The constant judging is so insidious, especially when we can hear that tape being played inside our heads at every turn. Good for you for resisting the urge to scream and run away or slap someone. Methinks Ms. Link might have had to fight those urges, too ;-).
Happy, happy, happy birthday. So glad you are spending this one surrounded by a circle of people who will stroke you instead of poking you. Consider me one of them.
This is so powerful Suzy, and ditto Carrie--that bus driver would not want to meet me in dark alley.
This is such a clear window into the amazing powers of therapy when you are with the right person. What incredibly hard work, but wow is it so worth it.
I just love the opportunity to be right there with you every step of this journey, and hope that you can feel us all as a buffer against those awful pokes, as you continue to build your own personal buffer as well.
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY SUZY!! I am SO SORRY I spaced yesterday!! I am sending you so much belated birthday love!
Incredible work, Suzy. In life and on the page.Like Terry, I read and had to come back and read again to comment - twice.
Your courage tearing apart every last fucking painful piece - so inspiring.
Holy shit!
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