Posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 23:27:05
In reply to Re: validation in ''Courage to Heal'' » badhaircut, posted by Daisym on June 9, 2005, at 21:01:48
>I wanted the ABC after-school special where the "ah ha!" happened and that was that.
What a great way of putting it. I think I relate to a lot in your post, but right now this story is stuck in my head, and it's got to come out: I read in "Sean Astin"'s autobiography that when he was 8 years old, he starred in his first role, in an ABC After-School Special, with his real mom, Patty Duke. She played a mother who beat her kid and he played the kid. He was flat & affectless during the abuse scene, take after take. Finally, his mother took him aside and scolded something like, "This is my entire life! My whole career depends on this scene and you're ruining it!" Well, *then* little Sean started crying and they filmed that. He said it was easy then to run around in front of the cameras looking scared – because it was so much like his real life at home!!
Sigh. I'm sure their *fictional* relationship got fixed before the last commercial break.
> I don't want to defend the book.
And I don't want to put anybody where they feel a need to defend it or their important experience of it.
> I've asked a million times, "what does 'working it through' mean?"
I'm only at 900,000, but I gave up on my analyst before I got that far. ;) "Working it through" seems like a promise that is never fulfilled. I've come to the point where I do not believe there really is a working-through. Analysts will often (believe me, I know) come back with, "Well, it's the *process*." But what is a process toward a goal that can never be fulfilled except a waste of time?
Telling a trusted person about a secret burden like that can be very liberating, and should be. But I've come to think that that's more or less it, as far as benefits go, from the sharing of secrets. It's very important and genuine and should be encouraged, and tho' I don't know you I'm glad you have this trusted man in your life whom you finally could tell. But I think therapy often sets it up so that we keep trying to milk the phenomenon of secret-telling until our lives will be happy again. We feel so much better sharing a burden like that after so long, and so happy to see that the sky didn't fall in after all. I think maybe there's a temptation there to think, Well, if I share more secrets and have other feelings & thoughts that I can share with my trusted friend, maybe I'll get more of that relief and it will last longer and spread through more areas of my everyday life. After a while, I may even run out of secrets and have to "uncover" some new ones to keep the sharing going.
This is a situation I know pretty well. My experience: the benefit is a carrot-on-a-stick.
Sorry to leave it there, but I just realized I'm about to conk out.
> To not feel so alone with the burdens God seems to think I can handle.
I've heard that we're actually the test models. They're trying to see how well we hold up. ;)
-bhc
poster:badhaircut
thread:508459
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050606/msgs/510342.html