Posted by Dinah on September 2, 2004, at 10:48:51
In reply to Re: A question please? For any/every one » Dinah, posted by Larry Hoover on September 2, 2004, at 7:14:22
> I well remember the first time I caught myself becoming angry, in real time. It used to so automagically get sucked into my anger pit (my storage area, where I once thought my anger went away....no, it was stored) that I thought I never even got angry. No, I didn't even recognize anger as an emotional state.
It's funny you should use that imagery. I always say that my memories get stored so that the visual images are kind of tossed into a file in no particular order, but not until they're completely stripped of their emotional content. The emotional content goes into pits, I suppose. And what used to happen a lot, and still happens some, is that something will unlock the anger door or the sadness door and *all* the anger (for example) would come out, not just from the incident at hand, but from this big untapped well of anger. While my memories are related with no affect whatsoever, and I can't seem to connect them with affect.
> By that, you mean you were the fixer? Or the emotional punching-bag?
Fixer, I suppose would be closer. I was the one that everyone loved. My parents were unhappy with each other but stayed together (so they said) because of me. It was my job to gauge the emotional climate, and then either tease (charm) a parent into a better humor or listen to each parent's story of woe and soothe them or reframe one parent's behavior so that it would appear acceptable to the other (no easy task). So I was a combination of the beloved joy bringing daughter and the family therapist/marriage counselor. Which didn't of course protect me from either parents rage, because much of their rage was as undirected and impersonal as the spewing of a volcano.
It wasn't the easiest role, but I think I preferred it to yours, which was taken up by little brother. He didn't respond the same way you did though. It's a shame, because in my family I think he could have changed his fate if he did.
>
> Aside: One of the things that makes me a really good scientist is this ability. "What's wrong with this picture?" I recognize patterns, and things that don't fit the pattern, like they were fluorescent. A sucky childhood isn't all bad.And I came away with the ability to take subtle environmental cues and guess relatively accurately at mood and sometimes things other than mood as well. It made me "intuitive" I suppose. Although there's nothing intuitive about it, really. It's pure logic, however quickly applied.
> Think of your counsellor as a professional friend. You hire them to get mired in your muck with you, so that you can leave it there with them.
I do sort of. Though I frame it as viewing my counselor as the person who protects the people in my life from the more unpleasant aspects of me. The person who plays the role I played for my parents. I suspect a large percentage of the population could use that sort of person, and that too large a percentage use inappropriate people (like their children) to play the role.
> That begs the question: Why did you start therapy in the first place? Remember what that was about, and I'll bet you can answer your own question.
I did get a taste of that this past week when I was so firmly in rational work mode. I was walking around perfectly happy to my own mind, but with these odd feelings that I detected within me but that didn't seem to belong to me. I was perfectly happy and well occupied, but I wanted to burst into tears. That sort of thing. When anger was involved, it interfered quite a bit with my life. So it was a timely reminder of the downside to losing touch with my emotions. I well remember how scary it was to not know why I did the things I did. And how utterly consumed I was with discovering "why".
Your dirt under the rug simile is a good one. Right now it is just a small unnoticeable pile. But I do remember when it got too large to ignore.
There are so darn many rewards to being a chicken!! It's hard to put those aside for the more intangible rewards of facing my fears. :)
I'm not a perfectionist in general. Just in specific areas. My work is frequently less than timely because I don't prioritize well and I do like things to be as correct as possible. And if they're wrong, I want to have a good idea of how wrong they are. :) I was a straight A student who had an absolute panic attack and burst into tears at an A-. And not just any A. It had to be the highest A. :) Everywhere else in my life imperfections rule.
But words... Ah, I love words and phrases. My best friend and I had vocabulary contests in third grade. I love to pick up foreign or arcane phrases that do a much better job describing a particular situation than limiting myself to this era and language would. And I collect idiosyncratic phrases that describe things perfectly but are counterproductive in that I'm only describing them perfectly to myself. No one else has ever heard of the phrase. lol.
I'm not sure it's perfectionism as much as a love affair with words. Not poetry or prose, but words and phrases. Now I just need to learn to translate for other people, so that everyone can know the joy of the absolute perfection of the phrase "There's more there than asparagus." :))
poster:Dinah
thread:380351
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040828/msgs/385650.html