The Couch 148: Boby

I really wish my class was starting sooner than 8/23, I need something to keep me busy in the evenings and studying will do that.

btw, it just feels wrong to be awake this early on a sunday morning ha ha

Art I am pretty envious of your shamanic clearing thing. It sounds nice.

Art - I, of course, could be wrong - but it appears to me - from the outside and just from my interpretation - that you often have strong feelings but immediately-ish act on them or try to distract from them. Do you ever have them and just sit with them - not doing anything? Just feeling them and then going on? They seem to buffet you around a lot.
I am probably not explaining this well.

SD, I think you explained your thinking very well.

I am the long nailed couchie. H loves when I scratch his scalp or back.

Mmmmmmm I cannot argue with a superior scratching experience

you explained it very well. and that is something that i have been working on for a long time in therapy - learning to just sit with the stronger feelings - obviously i have not learned yet huh. i do ok with the ones that aren't the strongish sort! when stronger ones have come up during a session and t says to just sit with it - just close your eyes and sit with it - i get all fidgety and nervous and frustrated. i guess she just got tired of trying to get me to do that. i can't blame her.

eta: yes, i realize i am ping-ponging again. don't mind me.

thanks anais. i really love this group of folks and the stuff they offer over there (well except for that last time, the cake incident with that one woman haha) i'd stopped going for awhile again for some reason and am glad i started going again.

I think you are interpreting her without getting her input and it may not be accurate.

I know this is something that is mine which is probably why I keep giving my opinion- I have someone in my life I care about who does this with me a lot -and it drives me crazy and she is 99.9% wrong about it - but in her head she has done all sorts of things and then acts on it and I have no idea what is going on. So I then don't respond the way she has set up in her head and she gets all worked up and does it more and it becomes a mess. Not for me so much - I am more just baffled. But it causes her a great deal of distress that I think could be avoided.

that may be true. thanks for the perspective.

The cake incident >:[

I sometimes wonder if I could find a similar group. Not shamanic specifically. I tried journeying once and maybe it was just an awful facilitator/drummer, but I had a terrible time. It really shook me up, what i experienced, and so I brought myself out of the trance but he kept instructing me to go back. It was bad enough to write it off for good. At least for now. But that was ten years ago.

I really enjoy you and your woowoo ways (in the nice way). I just wish you were not so often in so much pain about everything and that I could help.
It seems I am not so I will go walk the dogs.

But you do help, SD. You help me get perspective on stuff. I appreciate that.

I'm sorry you had a rough go with it. In my group, all the facilitators are very conscious of what people experience and they always say if something isn't feeling right let one of them know and they would never tell someone to just "go back". we've had people have extremely difficult emotional experiences where they've had to leave and one of the facilitators always checks on them. i've never had to leave, but i have completely fallen apart during a journey and just laid there sobbing loudly and received nothing but support during and after. I love my group. I just happened to find them on meetup.com while searching for shamanic stuff in my city, and it took me about a year to get brave enough to attend my first meeting, but i've loved it ever since and it's more than 3 years now.

I was having a similar conversation with my mother in law yesterday. For some reason we assign feelings and motives to people without any evidence that this is how the person actually feels or what they are motivated by. It's easy to say that we don't know your people well enough to make a judgement, but you may not either.

Example. The errand I was running for H yesterday was taking my mother in law some groceries that he had purchased for her. She was saying that she was mad at H because he refused to buy her trash bags because he didn't want her to be able to clean her house. That didn't sound like H at all, so I texted him and asked. Unsurprisingly, he just forgot she needed trash bags. That sounds like my H.

So I was saying to my mother in law that she has this tendency to assume the worst in people and that people are plotting against her, and sometimes she needs to take a step back. I mean, she thought her son was purposefully trying to keep her from doing something.

I think a lot of people do this with people in our lives whether we're cognizant of it or not.

It's semi related. Sorry for rambling if it isn't. I don't feel well today.

thats what i always get. with a shot of espresso added in

It's all well and good, Art, for people to say don't read into other's behavior so much, but your therapist should be able to help you see what's going on in the worst of it, not tell you she wants a break for a month but can't do that because other people are scheduled, then leaves it to you to give her the break making it look like your idea. I am sorry, but I can't make excuses for therapist behavior like that. If she was/is not feeling any of the things you ascribe to her, then she is either not a very a good therapist or--as you suspect--her personal turmoil is leaking into your therapy.

I guess I just really sympathize with you because I know how intense the distress can get. And I also know that you really like this therapist and that adds to the pain of it all. I wish it could be different. Maybe when you see her next time, you will feel more balanced and steady in yourself and can see what's going on more clearly.

Just watched the last half of Good Will Hunting on HBO and am all weepy now. I would have had such bad paternal transference for Robin Williams' character...

Art, I saw you deleted your other thread. If my comment upset you, I apologize!

Thank you SO much ruh roh. I know others are well-meaning. And I do understand that I am the one who asked to end in November. I'm not complaining about that. But I really got blind-sided by this whole I need a break thing but I can't cuz of other people - that made it feel very personal like "I just need a break from YOU".

You completely hit the nail on the head and understand where I'm coming from with your last paragraph. Exactly those things.

to everyone: I know I am reacting badly right now to some things and for that I apologize. I'm struggling.

Also, I heard back from my grad advisor. She seemed excited for me and is willing to write the letter. She has two conditions. She wants me to write a draft of what I think would be good for her to say, then she'll edit it. The other is that I won't ask to read what she wrote. I can live with that. I mean, I'd like to think, if someone wouldn't give me a good recommendation, they wouldn't offer to write a letter. So guess I was worried for nothing, as usual...pretty sure this ties into my issues with/fears of female authority figures...

Not at all. Yours was wonderful and I appreciated it SO much. It made me good-cry and feel a little hope and for that I am thankful.

I just felt accused by someone else and I shouldn't have. Like I just posted, I've been reacting badly to some things. My fault entirely.

I love that movie! omg I would have too!!

That's awesome, LT!

I'm so happy for you LT! That's great!

And I swear you and I are so alike - one of the first little tiffs I had with my t was because she said to me a long time ago in a moment of frustration "I can't help it if you have a problem with women in authority." I just remembered that. Maybe I should have paid more attention to little **** like that and not stayed with her this long.... hindsight being 20/20 and all that....