![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 9 to 33 of 34. Go back in thread:
Posted by B2chica on June 7, 2005, at 10:40:34
In reply to reading in secret » B2chica, posted by ghost on June 6, 2005, at 19:57:28
Posted by B2chica on June 7, 2005, at 10:53:17
In reply to Re: got the book... » B2chica, posted by Daisym on June 6, 2005, at 13:22:55
>... Trauma is trauma. (practice so you don't cry when you say it.)
this is where my T and i go round and round. i REFUSE to use the word trauma (or CSA) for myself and what happened. i feel like Trauma's what you see on TV. a kid watching their parents killed, a brutal rape (with weapon) etc. THAT's trauma, not what happened to me.
but sunday i went to my safe place, the library and found some old books that gave 'definitions' of csa, and in both a couple books it fit. it was me- not father daughter but siblings and older boy. also they listed things that fall underthat. i fit. i cried. i went to session and blabbled all this out. last night when i got home i was SOOOO exhausted. i ended up having 5 or 6 beers and a couple xanax, four ambien and two propanerol. this morning i jumped a couple curbs coming to work. normally i'd be lmao, but i knew it was cuz i could barely stay awake. so groggy.at session my T even tried a little role playing, he asked me if i were a therapist and someone came in with the same symptoms would i tell them it's their fault? well of course not, and i went through all the jargon, he said i was right on the money with those answers. but of course at the end i said nope, still doesn't apply to me. i don't know why but i can't except that it's truama, maybe it's cuz i still don't fully accept it?? who knows. but i do have strong compassion for others.
ya, i guess i'll do the library and car thing cuz i'm kinda ansy to read it. he's out of the house alot, maybe i can just keep it in my mega purse til he leaves then start reading it??
anyway, thank youfor all your suggestions.
much appreciated.
b2c.> Don't dismiss the body sensations. Tell your therapist. Could be a flashback trying to break through. Skip ahead to the section on crisis phase, read it, book mark it. This book can trigger you in horrible ways. I take it out and read it in small doses. I think this is why my therapist wanted to work on it together -- doing the assignments and talking about them. I felt pretty undone by it all.
>
> Figure out your own rules. Mine are: Don't read this before bed. Don't read the stories in the back on a non-therapy day. Flip open a section and pay attention to how my body feels. If my chest hurts, I'm done for awhile.
>
> I hope this helps you. Go slow. Take care of yourself. I'm open to questions if you think I can help too.
>
>
Posted by Shortelise on June 7, 2005, at 13:08:44
In reply to got the book..., posted by B2chica on June 6, 2005, at 11:38:53
go back to the used book store, buy a cheap hardcover romance novel (or maybe some sort of thechnical book - just something that your DH would never pick up and browse) with a nice dust cover on it that will fit the book you're reading, put the romance dust cover on the other book - with a little glue just in case, and Jack's your uncle.
ShortE the deceptive
Posted by pinkeye on June 7, 2005, at 13:47:36
In reply to Because it also helps normalize things » pinkeye, posted by Daisym on June 6, 2005, at 19:47:55
I thought B2Chica has been recently hospitalized with suicidal intentions? So that is why I thought it would make sense for her to stay away from anything too triggery for now. Maybe later it would make sense to read it - or even read it with her therapist in the same room.
I don't know the book, so maybe it is not that big a deal. And if her therapist has adviced her, I am sure he has thought about the possibility. I was just concerned of it beign too triggery for her.
Posted by Daisym on June 7, 2005, at 14:40:51
In reply to Makes sense Daisy. But is it the right time though » Daisym, posted by pinkeye on June 7, 2005, at 13:47:36
I could sense that. I think it is so sweet that you are worried and concerned. I think that is why I at first posted all those "be careful" with this warnings.
You make a very, very good point. I have had occasions where my therapist will say, "let's not deal with that today. There is enough out on your plate." And there have been others where I have said, "but I can't think of anything else..."
Timing, as they say, is everything.
Posted by pinkeye on June 7, 2005, at 14:48:38
In reply to Re: Makes sense Daisy. But is it the right time though » pinkeye, posted by Daisym on June 7, 2005, at 14:40:51
But I am sure B2Chica's T knows better about her.
B2Chica - Use your own judgement when you read the book. If you feel it is triggering you more than you could handle, maybe you can stop at that time.
Posted by B2chica on June 7, 2005, at 18:12:48
In reply to Thanks. Yes timing is key. Especially for treating » Daisym, posted by pinkeye on June 7, 2005, at 14:48:38
first, shortelise...Great idea! about the cover, will try to do that.
Daisy and pinkeye are both right. i was recently hospitalized BECAUSE of THIS issue. My T did recommend it and think i'm coming along, but he wants me to still have more 'coverage' and notices i'm not 'handling' things cuz i'm turning more and more to mixing my pills and alcohol. i wish i could stay numb all day. i don't want to go to work, i want to stay home and read and drink (probably couldn't do both huh?:)
anyway, i do feel that i need to read it. the only way i can really admit it is if i 'research' it to death.
there is still a big part of me that just DOESN'T want to believe i fit in the category. i can't remember if i told you this but over the weekend i went to one of our libraries and looked in the CSA section, found definitions of sibling and 'neighbor' abuse and started bawling cuz i realized at that time that i AM a human being, which i've never really felt like, AND that reading those definitions...i do fit.
yesterday after session, i didn't 'close' well and went home and had a six pack(red beers) and about 8 chocolate chip cookies....yes together.so you are both right, i do need to read it, but i'm not stable.
i have an 'intake' eval tomorrow before my T appt. for substance abuse counseling. my T said it's more than that and that would give me more 'coverage' than just seeing him.
if i don't stop of change soon i will end up dead. right now i don't want that.
i will fight.
i love babble and WISH!!!!!!! i could have met you all in chicago.b2c.
Posted by pinkeye on June 7, 2005, at 19:06:59
In reply to both of you..., posted by B2chica on June 7, 2005, at 18:12:48
Posted by badhaircut on June 8, 2005, at 13:32:36
In reply to got the book..., posted by B2chica on June 6, 2005, at 11:38:53
> i've heard several of you at one time or another mention the book called "courage to heal" as an 'essential' book...
B2chica, especially if reading this book is so disruptive to your life and sobriety (it sounds like an awful experience), you may want to consider some different perspectives on 'Courage to Heal.' Some of my comments may not apply to your situation, especially if your therapist is not trying to recover memories of abuse but simply using this book to support you in developing compassion for yourself. But even then, you might still be wary of this book.
I hope you will be compassionate to yourself. A neat question I came across the other day is to ask about any other people, "What do they *really* need?" ...then turn around and ask it about yourself. I don't know if I can offer what you really need, but I know I can offer something a little different to think about.
"Courage to Heal" is one of the most roundly criticized pop-psych books ever. It's considered by virtually all university-based psychologists who research in memory to be scientifically unfounded, theoretically dubious, and clinically destructive. The scientists' chief complaint is that it promotes "recovered memory," but I think that even beyond that it is a non-compassionate book that works against what any patient really needs.
Therapists using the book and its techniques have been successfully sued by their patients for using it to conjur and support patently false memories of abuse. As if life were not troubled enough! Is there anything to be gained by remembering even more suffering than we have actually experienced?
Bass & Davis do not even address the possibility of false memory as a RISK: how can their certainty of results be taken seriously? They say, "If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, then you were." Isn't that a reckless assertion? (Bass & Davis, I should note, operate at one remove from legal liability because they merely wrote the book. It is the therapists using its techniques who've gotten in trouble.)
Even for someone who has verified, unbroken (i.e., not "recovered") knowledge of abuse, the techniques in this book can still manufacture additional but false memories and create unnecessary additional suffering.
Eliabeth Loftus and others have produced a ton of elegant research showing how easy it is to create and implant vivid, strong, and completely believed memories in *skeptical* people (as well as in believing people) about both trivial events and horrific traumas, both recent and long ago in the person's childhood. The best ways to create, shape, and color deliberately false memories in the laboratory are exactly the methods used in this book to "recover" memories. E.g., read or hear "authorities" claim there's some evidence that you have such memories; be questioned in language that assumes the existence of the memories and the events; be prompted to look for clues & triggers in things having no direct connection to the supposed events; be encouraged to speculate on and describe such budding & wispy memories as may come to mind...
Sound familiar?
You may want to check out Loftus's "The Myth of Repressed Memory" before needing to hide in cars or laundromats to read Davis/Bass. Maybe you could even read & discuss her book openly with your husband? But "recovering memories" may not apply to your situation. (I've read your posts in the last month, but I'm still not sure this applies...)
Another of my objections to Davis/Bass is that their basic thrust is anti-individual, dominating and authoritarian. They've already made up their minds about you (and me and all their readers). Their attitude is that they know what's best! And you better go along with it! Well, what if I don't want to? I'll be rejected, I guess. And if you don't want to? Therapists adhering to their dogma may condescendingly or brutally label patients as unmotivated, resistant, uncooperative, and "in denial."
Another objection: The therapeutic assumption in 'Courage to Heal' runs something like this: «If life is bad in certain ways, there is a true cause. When the true cause is known, true emotions will flow from it and healing will take place by having these emotions flow freely.»
The work of Carol Tavris and others has shown that simply *having* intense emotions is not itself therapeutic, no matter what their "cause." Cathartic experiences of anger and grief and so on actually make people feel worse both short- and long-term. Tavris first spelled this out in her classic "Anger: the Misunderstood Emotion."
B2chica, I think the basic question for anyone in any therapy must always be, Is this making my LIFE better? Is it moving me toward the things that I know are most important TO ME for living the life *I* want to live now? Not just in an intellectual way, and not trying to metamorphose into somebody else, but my best-chosen life with my head & my heart, right here. Not the life somebody else (even a therapist) tells me I should live, and not the head somebody else (like Davis/Bass) tells me I should have.
Being compassionate is only possible in Action; compassion as a feeling is something else. It could be that being compassionate to yourself could include questioning a book that nauseates, shames, and upsets you and leads you to drink & pills with only more of its imperious demands foreseeable.
Sorry this was so long, but thanks to anyone who read this far.
-bhc
Posted by pinkeye on June 8, 2005, at 19:03:47
In reply to ''Courage to Heal'' » B2chica, posted by badhaircut on June 8, 2005, at 13:32:36
If I were you, I wouldn't touch this book. Two negatives don't make it right. Ask your therapist to filter it out for you if you need. But honestly, I don't think you are in no condition to read something like this now.
Maybe when who are strongdf and want to heal you can read some cathartic and intesnse books. But definitely not now, reading what badharicut has written
> > i've heard several of you at one time or another mention the book called "courage to heal" as an 'essential' book...
>
> B2chica, especially if reading this book is so disruptive to your life and sobriety (it sounds like an awful experience), you may want to consider some different perspectives on 'Courage to Heal.' Some of my comments may not apply to your situation, especially if your therapist is not trying to recover memories of abuse but simply using this book to support you in developing compassion for yourself. But even then, you might still be wary of this book.
>
> I hope you will be compassionate to yourself. A neat question I came across the other day is to ask about any other people, "What do they *really* need?" ...then turn around and ask it about yourself. I don't know if I can offer what you really need, but I know I can offer something a little different to think about.
>
> "Courage to Heal" is one of the most roundly criticized pop-psych books ever. It's considered by virtually all university-based psychologists who research in memory to be scientifically unfounded, theoretically dubious, and clinically destructive. The scientists' chief complaint is that it promotes "recovered memory," but I think that even beyond that it is a non-compassionate book that works against what any patient really needs.
>
> Therapists using the book and its techniques have been successfully sued by their patients for using it to conjur and support patently false memories of abuse. As if life were not troubled enough! Is there anything to be gained by remembering even more suffering than we have actually experienced?
>
> Bass & Davis do not even address the possibility of false memory as a RISK: how can their certainty of results be taken seriously? They say, "If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, then you were." Isn't that a reckless assertion? (Bass & Davis, I should note, operate at one remove from legal liability because they merely wrote the book. It is the therapists using its techniques who've gotten in trouble.)
>
> Even for someone who has verified, unbroken (i.e., not "recovered") knowledge of abuse, the techniques in this book can still manufacture additional but false memories and create unnecessary additional suffering.
>
> Eliabeth Loftus and others have produced a ton of elegant research showing how easy it is to create and implant vivid, strong, and completely believed memories in *skeptical* people (as well as in believing people) about both trivial events and horrific traumas, both recent and long ago in the person's childhood. The best ways to create, shape, and color deliberately false memories in the laboratory are exactly the methods used in this book to "recover" memories. E.g., read or hear "authorities" claim there's some evidence that you have such memories; be questioned in language that assumes the existence of the memories and the events; be prompted to look for clues & triggers in things having no direct connection to the supposed events; be encouraged to speculate on and describe such budding & wispy memories as may come to mind...
>
> Sound familiar?
>
> You may want to check out Loftus's "The Myth of Repressed Memory" before needing to hide in cars or laundromats to read Davis/Bass. Maybe you could even read & discuss her book openly with your husband? But "recovering memories" may not apply to your situation. (I've read your posts in the last month, but I'm still not sure this applies...)
>
> Another of my objections to Davis/Bass is that their basic thrust is anti-individual, dominating and authoritarian. They've already made up their minds about you (and me and all their readers). Their attitude is that they know what's best! And you better go along with it! Well, what if I don't want to? I'll be rejected, I guess. And if you don't want to? Therapists adhering to their dogma may condescendingly or brutally label patients as unmotivated, resistant, uncooperative, and "in denial."
>
> Another objection: The therapeutic assumption in 'Courage to Heal' runs something like this: «If life is bad in certain ways, there is a true cause. When the true cause is known, true emotions will flow from it and healing will take place by having these emotions flow freely.»
>
> The work of Carol Tavris and others has shown that simply *having* intense emotions is not itself therapeutic, no matter what their "cause." Cathartic experiences of anger and grief and so on actually make people feel worse both short- and long-term. Tavris first spelled this out in her classic "Anger: the Misunderstood Emotion."
>
> B2chica, I think the basic question for anyone in any therapy must always be, Is this making my LIFE better? Is it moving me toward the things that I know are most important TO ME for living the life *I* want to live now? Not just in an intellectual way, and not trying to metamorphose into somebody else, but my best-chosen life with my head & my heart, right here. Not the life somebody else (even a therapist) tells me I should live, and not the head somebody else (like Davis/Bass) tells me I should have.
>
> Being compassionate is only possible in Action; compassion as a feeling is something else. It could be that being compassionate to yourself could include questioning a book that nauseates, shames, and upsets you and leads you to drink & pills with only more of its imperious demands foreseeable.
>
> Sorry this was so long, but thanks to anyone who read this far.
>
> -bhc
Posted by Daisym on June 8, 2005, at 21:20:49
In reply to ''Courage to Heal'' » B2chica, posted by badhaircut on June 8, 2005, at 13:32:36
I find myself wanting to defend the book and agree with you at the same time. My therapist uses parts of the work book and only to help someone like me, who prefers to write, to begin to talk about the memories. He was very careful to work with me, not let me go off on my own with it.
I think the idea of recovered memories is really a confusing one. I think most of us have memories we've supressed, but speaking for myself, I always *knew* parts of it. Sort of like when you are talking with a friend about an event and the more you talk about it the more you recall into consciousness. I guess I would say that I read the book in pieces and parts, holding it ten feet from me (so it wouldn't hurt so much). I never even saw the part about "if you think you have, etc." Absolutes are *always* a bad idea. (sorry, had to).
The part I HATED about this book is that part about forgiving, and the way they advocate for a "survivor" (hate that term) to confront their family or abuser. And it felt to me, like if you weren't out there carrying a sign, vocalizing your past in a proud loud voice, then you were still "under" it all. Ick. I can't see myself as one of those militant kind of people who wear their abuse as sort of an "I dare you to flinch" kind of calling card.
But, like I said above, it was validating for me to see that other people fell apart when they first started to talk about this stuff. If nothing else, the chapter that says, "don't kill yourself when you feel like this" was worth the price of the book. I truly thought I was having a psychotic break the first few months of talking about it.
And I also wanted to thank you for your last paragraph. It was so eloquent and so true I printed it out. :)
Posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 7:07:48
In reply to Re: ''Courage to Heal'' » badhaircut, posted by Daisym on June 8, 2005, at 21:20:49
My experience with 'Courage to Heal':
In the mid-1990s I was seeing a psychoanalyst daily (gasp). My analyst said that everyone has repressed memories and that accessing them is key to successful analysis even in these post-neo-neo-Freudian times. So I was trying very hard to let repressed memories come through, looking at dreams and emotions and speaking lovingly to the child inside me and so on.
And, years earlier, a different therapist had casually said that maybe I'd been sexually abused as a kid because I was so randy as a teenager. (Oh, that explains it.)
I picked up the 'Courage to Heal' workbook on my own and really threw myself into it and discussed it with my analyst. I looked at old pictures, made a diagram of our old house, and stuff like that. I considered suspects. ("How about weird Uncle X? He could've done it!" Yes, but he lived 1,000 miles away and never ONCE visited...)
I really, really tried to dredge up something. I actively went at it from every angle, using 'Courage to Heal' among other things, for MONTHS. I was open to the idea for years.
My doubts about the process of recovered memory and the goals & practices of psychodynamic therapy and catharsis accumulated. I read authors like "Robyn Dawes" and "Frederick Crews" and Elizabeth Loftus and gradually, sadly, reluctantly said goodbye to the world in which the mind holds a secret buried key to making me feel better.
I no longer think that because an idea or topic is emotionally upsetting that such a topic provides insight or is any kind of road to mental health. Trying to avoid feelings & memories doesn't work, certainly, but neither does riding them or harvesting them or mining them.
> And it felt to me, like if you weren't out there carrying a sign, vocalizing your past in a proud loud voice, then you were still "under" it all. Ick.
Yeah. That sort of stuff is why I call Davis & Bass domineering and authoritarian. Giving in to an authority, even it's them, doesn't seem "empowering" to me. I don't think they even care about making people truly free and independent.
> And I also wanted to thank you for your last paragraph. It was so eloquent and so true I printed it out.
Thank you so much for saying so, Daisy.
-bhc
Posted by B2chica on June 9, 2005, at 9:22:37
In reply to my ''Courage'' story, posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 7:07:48
thank you SO much for all your support. you are all wonderful. i haven't even been able to crack the book, just breeze over contents page. but i've been at the library and looked through a couple other CSA books, giving 'definitions' and such.
i think this book IS a lot for me to tackle right now.
and i love hearing contradictary information. i knew not everyone would 'love' this book. and it's nice to hear as a safeguard just what others think.
thanks.
Posted by pinkeye on June 9, 2005, at 12:47:42
In reply to Re: my ''Courage'' story, posted by B2chica on June 9, 2005, at 9:22:37
And I didn't even mention that I knew this book. I was crying in the whole session today about how my body feels so very uncomfortable to me and alien and how much I hate my own body, how I feel so bad etc.. and she started digging deeper and I started crying and cryting thourhg the whole session going over everything that happened with my dad. I kept defending him and saying he was inncoent and well intentioned, but she said that it is csa. I hate to hear that. But I guess I have no choice now. She asked me to read this book - that it is needed very much for me. So now I am trying to figure out what to do.
Posted by Tamar on June 9, 2005, at 17:52:25
In reply to My thereapist asked me to read this today as well » B2chica, posted by pinkeye on June 9, 2005, at 12:47:42
> And I didn't even mention that I knew this book. I was crying in the whole session today about how my body feels so very uncomfortable to me and alien and how much I hate my own body, how I feel so bad etc.. and she started digging deeper and I started crying and cryting thourhg the whole session going over everything that happened with my dad. I kept defending him and saying he was inncoent and well intentioned, but she said that it is csa. I hate to hear that. But I guess I have no choice now. She asked me to read this book - that it is needed very much for me. So now I am trying to figure out what to do.
Oh pinkeye. I'm sorry to hear you had such a hard time in session.
I can really identify with the idea of hating one's body... it was the thing I talked about most in my therapy.
There are people here who can understand better than I can what it means to think of your childhood experiences as csa. Even so, I'm thinking of you and hoping you're getting through it.
Keep taking it one hour at a time...
(((((pinkeye)))))
Tamar
Posted by pinkeye on June 9, 2005, at 18:12:51
In reply to Re: My thereapist asked me to read this today as well » pinkeye, posted by Tamar on June 9, 2005, at 17:52:25
Thank you Tamar. You have been so very helpful to me. Thanks a lot.
Even mild form of CSA like I had (my therapist actually thinks it is pretty profound, but I disagree), is so awfully hard. I think the sexuality related problems are the hardest to overcome. The feelings of hatred towards your own body is the extremely hardest to get rid of in my own experience. And the self guilt and blame. I feel everyone would blame me - my father, my hsuband, even my ex T, if I tell them about it. I feel only women would understand the significance of what happens. Men would probably just ignore. I think that is why even my ex T didn't reply. He would have just blamed me.
Posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 18:21:50
In reply to Re: ''Courage to Heal'' » badhaircut, posted by Daisym on June 8, 2005, at 21:20:49
> I never even saw the part about "if you think you have, etc."
It may depend on what edition you read. This is one quote that's actually worse in context. In the 1988 and 1992 editions of "Courage to Heal," the paragraph reads, in full:
<quote>
Often the knowledge that you were abused starts with a tiny feeling, an intuition. It's important to trust that inner voice and work from there. Assume your feelings are valid. So far, NO ONE we've talked to thought she might have been abused, and then later discovered that she hadn't been. The progression ALWAYS goes the other way, from suspicion to confirmation. If you think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, then YOU WERE. (page 22)
<unquote>The words are Bass & Davis's, but I capitalized some for comparison with the last half of the same paragraph in the 1994 edition:
<quote>
...IT IS RARE that someone thinks she might have been abused, and then discovers she wasn't. The progression USUALLY goes the other way, from suspicion to confirmation. If you GENUINELY think you were abused and your life shows the symptoms, there's A STRONG LIKELIHOOD that you were. If you're not sure, keep an open mind. Be patient with yourself. Over time, you'll become more clear. (page 26)
<unquote>In a long addendum to the 1994 edition, they say, "False allegations have been made. Such transgressions need to be confronted."
But how they could be "confronted" using any of the assumptions or techniques in these books, Bass/Davis don't say.
For me the basic problem in these books is not the "recovered memory" question (although I have an opinion on that). For me it is Bass/Davis's inhumane attitude toward their clients. In looking back over the books today, I find them among the most intolerant and bullying self-help books I have ever read, with their uncompromisable demands dressed in words about "honoring yourself" and "healing." Talk about a double bind!
It seems that almost any assertion they make can be made just as plausibly if not moreso and more humanely by replacing the particular Bass/Davis keyword with its opposite. Where they say, for example...
"One of the by-products of forgetting is a feeling of being divided into more than one person." (1994, p 48)
...I'd rather see this:
"One of the by-products of being a conscious human is a feeling of being divided into more than one person."
And so on.
-bhc
Posted by Tamar on June 9, 2005, at 19:13:01
In reply to Re: My thereapist asked me to read this today as well » Tamar, posted by pinkeye on June 9, 2005, at 18:12:51
> Even mild form of CSA like I had (my therapist actually thinks it is pretty profound, but I disagree), is so awfully hard. I think the sexuality related problems are the hardest to overcome.
Absolutely. I find the same thing. And you know where I'm coming from!
> The feelings of hatred towards your own body is the extremely hardest to get rid of in my own experience.
It takes time and energy. And I'm not pretending I'm there yet. But it's been worth the time and energy just to hate my body a little less.
> And the self guilt and blame. I feel everyone would blame me - my father, my hsuband, even my ex T, if I tell them about it. I feel only women would understand the significance of what happens. Men would probably just ignore. I think that is why even my ex T didn't reply. He would have just blamed me.
Yeah, that's one of the hardest things to cope with. Part of it is self-blame that we project onto other people. But part of it is the certain knowledge that many people simply don't understand and have preconceptions about these things that almost always involve blaming the woman.
In 19th century literature, women who experienced non-marital sex usually died or went mad. It didn't matter if they were innocent; sexual experience makes a woman guilty in certain cultural contexts. Even if what they did was not overtly sexual. And that idea of blaming women for being desirable is still part of today's cultures. No wonder there's a fear of disclosing experiences like csa.
I imagine your therapist might worry that you're minimizing your experience. I wonder if you might think about it in terms of the effect it has had on your life rather than just your father's intentions.
Posted by pinkeye on June 9, 2005, at 19:37:19
In reply to Re: My thereapist asked me to read this today as well » pinkeye, posted by Tamar on June 9, 2005, at 19:13:01
Thanks Tamar. Your post is very validating.
Only now I have realized that this has been the main cause of my depressive attitude all along and self loathing. I wonder how long it will take for me to recover from it - if ever. And for all this I know my father is innocent.
And it is true about the cultural thing also. But I guess it doesn't apply to kids when they go thorugh it in any culture. Atleast that much sense people have. But when we talk about it as adults, I wonder if people would say, "So what - Everybody goes through it" kind of dismissing. Actually now I regret even telling my ex T about it. He didn't reply to my mail, and it has made me more ashamed of it. I keep feeling he would blame me for this as well. He was the first men that I told this to, and the response wasn't that great.
My current T keeps saying that I am trying to minimize it. But it is incredibly hard for me to blame my dad, especially when I think he was innocent deep down. She highly suspects it though. Especially since my mother's father had tried telling my father several times not to touch a girl child all the time and stuff like that.
Posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 20:15:19
In reply to the ''Courage to Heal'' quote » Daisym, posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 18:21:50
Okay, one last comment on this subject and then I'll stop boring your pixels off about it. (LOL)
Several people in this thread have spoken from the heart about the validation they found in "Courage to Heal." I know about that, the reassurance, the calm, the.....happiness of it. If others tell us all our lives and we come to tell ourselves all the time that our inner states must be just a certain way (resilient, confident, logical, loving, whatever) and our outer lives should be just a certain way (successful, orderly, assertive), we can become very, very distressed when ours seem almost never to be those ways. It can be a personally validating relief to be told, "Hey, your inner state and your life are just the way they ought to be under the circumstances!"
I think, though, that looking to these books for validation is not a good method. The validation Bass/Davis provide is extremely conditional. Only if you meet their criteria and go along with their program, is validation given and continued. If my rotten feelings and screwed-up life have nothing to do with such abuse, then I'm still out in the cold. Worse, if I first "genuinely" (their word) suspected I may've been abused and now I doubt it, it's Bass & Davis who will then, in effect, be calling me crazy.
As I see it, their validation amounts to, "You're just the way you ought to be UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES." It's that last clause that's the problem. No person, no authors, can require any historical or current circumstance to make it "alright" for you to feel what you feel or think what you think. If no one else in the entire world has felt the way you feel, your experience is still I don't want to say "valid" the experience is still *yours*.
Bass & Davis are playing the same game their demon patriarchy plays; it's just that they want to be the dealer, giving out chips for their chosen cards and for following their rules.
I've talked elsewhere about "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy," which I'm interested in. It ponders a different approach than Bass & Davis. 'ACT' raises questions like:
What if validation is not a feeling? What if it doesn't have to feel either good or bad? What if it doesn't come from anyone else nor even from yourself? What if it requires nothing? What if validation is simply being who you are right now...
...and taking any action toward something that's already important to you?
-bhc
Posted by Daisym on June 9, 2005, at 21:01:48
In reply to validation in ''Courage to Heal'', posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 20:15:19
The validation for me was about how torn up I felt "just" talking about it. I thought I should handle it better, I thought it was so old that it shouldn't hurt anymore. And the fact that it felt like a fresh wound shocked me. I was glad to read that this was a "typical" part of the process.
I don't want to defend the book. My experience with it is in parts and pieces and more from the work book exercises, which I did to augment therapy. My therapist was pretty adamant about being sure I was working with him as I did any of this. I admit to a great deal of grief when I discovered that saying things outloud and weeping about them did not "cure" me. I wanted the ABC after-school special where the "ah ha!" happened and that was that. It took me awhile to focus on the goal of trust and allowing emotional support instead of "brave enough to say it." I thought I just needed to get brave enough to say it. My therapist is very clear that he wants to hear whatever I want to tell him. We do talk about the details now but he is equally clear that "telling" is about not being alone with it, it is harmful to be keeping it in your head and conducting your life in a way to maintain the secret.
I've asked a million times, "what does 'working it through' mean?" He tells me that we talk about "it", the memories and the feelings, until "it" doesn't have such a hold on me. The thing I hate the most is to look back at the list of things I've done or choices I've made "because" of "it" instead of "inspite" of "it." Depression, midlife crisis, regressions -- it all comes back for me to the fact that I'm tired of carrying the weight of my life myself but I don't trust anyone enough to share it with.
This is the ultimate goal for me. To not feel so alone with the burdens God seems to think I can handle. I want to love and be loved without fear, without strings and to feel pure joy in small moments. I hope that isn't too much to ask.
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
Posted by badhaircut on June 10, 2005, at 13:25:22
In reply to behind the After-School Special » Daisym, posted by badhaircut on June 9, 2005, at 23:27:05
(I'm back awake now.)
I'm attracted to the new therapy I mentioned because it says there may be a different way of dealing with my burdens & regrets & shame besides simply trying to lighten them or get rid of them or work them through or cure them. And toughing them out hasn't exactly provided a great life, either. The suggestion is that we can have our pain experience it more-or-less "fully" but have it in such a way that it's separate from us. The horror won't control us, but the catch is that we don't try to control the horror, either. It's a mindfulness approach, and when applied to actual life I think it's scary.
For me regret often starts deep in my abdomen and rises like water in a giant pipe; I feel it go all the way to the top of my scalp. If I "have" the regret, if I let it alone, it feels awful, but if I'm not struggling against it, there's some other, less-noticable relief from the usual situation. The regret then is something I contact from my scalp to my gut, but it's not something that says "I'm crushing you."
It helps me a little to see the regret as "mine." When it occurs, it's mine. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just mine. It won't obey me, I don't understand it, it might make sense or not make sense, it comes & goes on its own, but it is *mine*. Otherwise I may see the regret as actually being me, or I see myself as Crippled-by-Regret-Guy. But a mindful, willing, observational stance allowing regret to occur ironically takes power away from it. Mindfulness does NOT make the pain of regret go away; regret can be a major presence. But separating "me" from my regret while still allowing it to freely occur... this transfers its enormous power to other things in my life, to external things that are important to me, things I want to "go for."
For feelings of regret, I can do this. But for my scarier demons, like the fear of certain types of rejection, I'm just talking. But this new therapy (ACT) says that as long as talk is directed toward actually experiencing that fear, it's helpful. But if my talk is directed toward "understanding" the fear, or finding its origins, or weakening it, the talk is a prison. This is a prison I sneak into all the time.
Thanks again to anyone who read this whole message. (I'm not sure I did.) <ironic shrug, sigh>
-bhc
Posted by pinkeye on June 12, 2005, at 18:34:05
In reply to Re: validation in ''Courage to Heal'' » badhaircut, posted by Daisym on June 9, 2005, at 21:01:48
I read the first 100 pages of this book. And I liked it. It wasn't as bad as I thought. Maybe it gets worse in the later part, but I liked the first 100 pages that I read so far.
It helped me so much to realize that nothign was really my fault. That was the huge validation for me in this book.
Posted by pinkeye on June 13, 2005, at 13:52:45
In reply to This book is actually pretty good » Daisym, posted by pinkeye on June 12, 2005, at 18:34:05
Yesterday after I read this book, I totally gave up on life. Felt almost there was no point in living. So be cautious.
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