I so wish I could obtain my PsyD by going to the library 3 days a week. I love the library. I don’t disagree that much of what we learn in college is not applicable in the real world. But, the way it works is that if I ever want to be a therapist I have to take the required courses to earn the required degree.

Tonight was my first night back in school. Stats. Ugh. And that’s all I have to say about that. Well, that’s not true or there would be no blog post.

I tried taking this terrifying excruciatingly boring useless required course last time around via an online class. I couldn’t keep up without an actual professor in a classroom setting. Math is not my strong suit. It doesn’t interest me at all. I understand why it’s required for a psych degree. If I ever decide to get into research and conduct experiments I will need it. I don’t see myself doing that but you just never know.

So that is why on this Monday night I was trying to stay awake in stats class while the season premier of Anthony Bourdain; No Reservations was on.

 The professor is….odd. I expect that from psych professors. I even enjoy it. It makes talking about psych, especially abnormal psych, that much more interesting. But this class was awkward and mind-numbing from the beginning. She had printed little name cards for us to put up in front of us like in kindergarten. Of course mine said, “Cynthia” because that’s my legal name and how I am registered in their system so I had a chip on my shoulder right away. No one EVER calls me that. Ever. I can’t stand it. She insisted that we crowd into the first three rows of the classroom for reasons that were never made clear. She said several inappropriate things while struggling to come up with examples in which we would ever use the particular type of survey samples we were covering. She is not a great public speaker or even a great communicator.

On the plus side, because it only meets one night a week, I have only 13 more classes to attend and then I’m done. Provided I pass of course….

After all this bitching and whining though, I have to say it felt great to be back in school. I know I’ll be around 73 when I finally finish and am able to actually practice psychology with real patients but at least I feel like I’m doing something about it. It’s what I want to do. Not taking classes does not get me any closer to that. Taking even one horrid class does get me one step closer.

And now I have something to look forward to tomorrow night. Anthony Bourdain, with all his snark and shenanigans is patiently waiting for me on my DVR.

Thanks for stopping by!

Oh but if I take my heart’s advice I should assume it’s still unsteady

Oh I’m never really ready, I’m never really ready

I’m in repair, I’m not together but I’m getting there”

- “In Repair” by John Mayer

Today, November 3rd would have been his 72nd birthday. The 10 year anniversary of his death was last month. We received a piece of junk mail addressed to him today. He never lived here. We bought this house 2 years after he died.

Ten years. It seems like a lifetime ago.

I don’t believe one of the things I said in last year’s post. I know I believed it at the time.

“I forgave him and grieved for my lost childhood a long time ago.”

No. That’s simply not true. I have never grieved for him or my lost childhood. It’s too much. Whenever I come even close to wrapping my brain around any of the emotions that surface when thinking of him I have to back away. The many forms of abuse I endured when he was healthy are so complicated and so much a part of my identity that I have to deal with my recollections in small doses.

I’m not even sure how to go about grieving for him. It’s so surreal, losing a parent. The hospice nurses told me that it’s actually more difficult for children who lose parents with whom they had a less than loving relationship. They warned me that I may not grieve at all but that somewhere down the road, “maybe even 10 years from now”, it will hit me, and hit hard.

I moved out just as he was beginning to get really sick. After I moved out I mostly only saw him at the occasional obligatory holiday and the seemingly endless emergency hospital visits and eventually in the nursing home. My only memories of him as an adult revolved around pretending everything was normal and his illness. That’s it.

I think that’s why it’s been easier for me to reconcile my relationship with my mother. She’s still here (thank God…or whoever). I never got to know him as a healthy adult.

I wonder how different my life would be if he were still here and healthy. I wonder how he’d have treated my sons. I wonder how he’d have treated me. I’ll never know.

I have to deal with all these conflicting feelings at some point. It’s obvious that avoiding them has caused most of my problems, especially my weight and body image issues, my anxiety and my trust issues. It’s just so overwhelming that I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do it. I’m in repair. I hope wherever he is, he is too.

Thanks for stopping by!

We can’t (or won’t) always avoid chronic manipulators in our lives. They may be family members, bosses, co-workers, friends or acquaintances who, for a variety of reasons, we cannot or will not simply cut them out of our lives. My mother is a perfect example of this. There are no circumstances under which I will ever cut her out of my life.

When I first began my quest for understanding my own depression, anxiety, insomnia and overall feelings of hopelessness, I had to go way back to figure out where my thought processes started and that, of course, was in childhood. Once I came to the realization that my mother was not a co-victim of my father’s abuse but in fact, a co-abuser, I was extremely angry. During that period of time I learned to distance myself from her, to the point where I sometimes wouldn’t return her calls for weeks. This was as much self-preservation as it was an act of kindness towards her. I recognized that I was dredging up all sorts of pain from the past, that my anger was about things that cannot be changed or fixed, and I didn’t want to completely lose it and unleash all that anger on her in the present. I was working on myself not on blaming her forever.

Before I realized all that, I had a lot of questions for her about different events from my childhood. I asked them of her when I was feeling calm and was not accusatory. I would wait anywhere from several days to several weeks to actually ask the questions that came up in order to be certain that I didn’t start the conversation off in a hostile manner. I was open and honest about why I was asking.

I finally stopped asking due to the manipulative ways in which she would answer these questions. I wasn’t gaining any real insight and was actually feeling much worse about myself and angrier towards her. There are hundreds of examples but the real value in those seemingly pointless conversations was that I learned how to stop being manipulated.

This cooling-off period not only served as a way for me to avoid venting all my pent-up anger at a 64 year old woman for things she did or didn’t do over 20 years ago. It also served as a break from the manipulation game we were still playing. She used many different tactics, I always gave her what she wanted, and then I was left feeling used, pissed off or depressed.

Once we resumed more regular communication, I was more honest and open with her than I had ever been. She seemed to be as well. When I started to recognize a manipulation ploy I would call her on it or simply not respond to it at all. I would either calmly refuse, tell her I’d have to get back to her or sometimes even laugh at the absurdity of whatever she was saying. She learned that I was no longer allowing her to pull the strings. I wasn’t even upset about it. It just wasn’t happening anymore.

She still tries once in a while. The most recent example I can think of involves this blog. She does not like that I write about such personal things, particularly if they have anything to do with her. She is still of the belief that everything should be kept secret and only the false image should be shared with the world. Obviously, I disagree. I have never really felt compelled to explain much to her about why I do this and she rarely acknowledges that she reads it at all if she does. But she does throw in little barbs about how I should be careful about what I write, sometimes requests that I not write about specific things she tells me, and one time suggested I try a different type of writing. Are you ready for this one? Harlequin romance novels.

She set it up well, claiming that my grandmother was the one who suggested it because I’m such a good writer and I could make quite a bit of money from writing these types of novels. As in all good manipulation attempts, there is a grain of truth to it. My grandmother does read Harlequin romance novels. That’s where the truth ends. My grandmother has no idea what a blog is, has never been on the internet and has never read anything I’ve written.

If this conversation had taken place two years ago I would have been enraged. I would have angrily accused her of not understanding me, not supporting me and trying to tell me what to do. She would have become defensive and blatantly criticized me for the things I write about. I’m certain she would have gone so far as to imply or outright tell me that I am intentionally trying to hurt and/or embarrass her as a guilt-tripping tactic.

Instead, since I have learned to ignore this nonsense and do as I please, I calmly and even amicably, called her bluff. I laughed and explained that I have no interest in fiction writing, find writing about personal issues therapeutic and have no intention of stopping. I scoffed at the idea that my grandmother has any clue if I’m a good writer or that she could possibly even know what a blog is or what mine is about.

That was the end of that conversation. She may or may not have been happy with me. I’ll never know. I was happy with the way I responded and since there was no payoff, she did not pursue it again.

It takes two people for a manipulative transaction to be completed. Both people play a part in the game. The manipulator wants something. The target doesn’t want to give it but does so anyway just to avoid the manipulator. In this game the target always loses twice. First, the target gives the manipulator whatever it is they wanted even though the target does not really want to give it. Secondly, the target experiences negative feelings for having given in.

Therein lies the answer to how to deal with a manipulative person that you are not able to completely remove from your life. You stop playing your part in the game. The only reason manipulation works is….well, it works. If the target stops allowing it to work, there is no payoff for the manipulator. The relationship changes dramatically once the payoff is removed.

Thanks for stopping by!

I was watching The Penguins of Madagascar with my sons the other day when a hilarious line made it’s way onto my radar and I immediately knew I must use it in a blog post.

If you aren’t familiar with this cartoon, the penguins live in the zoo and believe themselves to be some sort of army, patrolling the zoo and making it safe for the children who come to visit. They take their roles very seriously and believe themselves to be quite brilliant, resourceful and in charge. Because they are in fact, not well-versed in the ways of the world, not an actual army, and seriously overestimate their knowledge and abilities, shenanigans frequently ensue. It’s no more or less formulaic than any other kids’ cartoon but there’s some good stuff in there to keep the parents slightly interested too.

This particular episode involved a hornet’s nest and a group of vindictive hornets hell-bent on stinging the crap out of the penguins and their beloved visitors…kids. The penguins failed at every attempt to get rid of the hornets, getting stung repeatedly and ending up in quite a bit of pain. They noticed that their not-so-bright friend, Mort, was stung multiple times but felt no pain. The scientist in the penguin army decided that Mort must have a Field Of Ignorance surrounding him that protects him from feeling pain. He is so clueless that since he is unaware that hornet stings cause pain, he doesn’t feel it.

I thought this was a hilarious metaphor for two different reasons. The first one being the obvious…there are ignorant people out there who simply don’t realize they are not bright, socially inept, fashion-challenged or just plain moronic. It’s not nice to say, but it’s true and you know it. Just check out People Of Walmart for about five minutes and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

The second one is not so funny or so mean. The field of ignorance that we live in called denial. We refuse to acknowledge that which we can’t handle, don’t want to deal with or that simply confuses us. Breaking through this field of ignorance can lead to a much simpler and peaceful life, although the process itself can be excruciatingly painful.

The quote I chose and the overall message of this very long-winded post that started with wisdom I gathered from a cartoon about talking penguins (possibly I have a field of insanity that I haven’t noticed) is really about how to deal with the manipulative people I wrote about in my last post. It may not always be immediately apparent, but I usually do have a point.

Actions speak louder than words. That’s how we can all learn to deal with manipulative people. I myself, choose to get rid of them altogether whenever possible. As I mentioned, I consider them to be a waste of my time. If you must deal with one or more of these game-playing-time-sucking-brats, the best way to deal with them is to ignore what they say and focus on what they do.

Do they say they love you but then repeatedly do things that you have told them you don’t want them to do. For example, say your husband is a manipulative individual. He may say he loves you, you are important to him, blah blah blah, but if he stays out all night, doesn’t tell you where he is, and doesn’t answer his cell phone, are you really that important to him? In this same scenario, I imagine a big old fight would ensue once he did come home. He would have all sorts of excuses and lies (he lost his phone, he was too drunk to drive, he crashed at his buddy’s house who for some reason also had no phone, he didn’t want to wake you, you are a nag, he doesn’t have to explain himself, he did explain himself so just drop it already, you’re overreacting, etc….). All of that is nonsense. The truth is that this is not how a loving husband behaves. You can now remove the field of ignorance he has tried to place around you and focus on the truth. The truth of his actions.

His words are meaningless and time-wasting. What I have found, time and again, is that when someone doesn’t make sense, when their words don’t match their actions, they are either downright lying to cover up something BIG or are simply attempting to manipulate me. Ignoring them and focusing on their behaviors is much more telling and can help you determine if you, like I do, want to just cut them out for good.

Thanks for stopping by!

We’ve all used manipulation tactics to get what we’ve wanted from time to time. Most people don’t even realize they’re doing it. It’s become a built-in defense mechanism. Other people, such as my personal favorites (narcissists) not only realize it, they plan it. They use as many as they can in quick succession or even simultaneously in an effort to confuse their target to get what they want. I’ve only come to understand and recognize many of these tactics fairly recently. I’ve had to acknowledge that I’ve used some of them myself.

Dr. George K. Simon, author of In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People (excellent book by the way), wrote an outstanding series of posts on manipulation tactics on his blog, Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life. He explains each one in significant detail and much more eloquently than I ever could. I am including links to some of his posts and brief examples from my own experiences here.

Minimization:  This one is possibly the one that has been the most damaging to me. Examples I am familiar with:  ”you’re so over-sensitive”, “you’re overreacting” and “why are you making such a big deal out of this”.

Playing The Victim: I’ve written about this myself recently. My father used to pull this card when he realized he crossed the line by telling me about all of his problems, as a way of excusing his own abusive behavior towards me. “Poor me, I had a bad day at work, your mother did this or that to upset me….see how pathetic I am? I’m really a lovely person but I’ve had such a bad day/week/life.”

Vilifying the Victim: Another very familiar tactic. “You are vicious and angry”, “You don’t really care about me”, “What is wrong with you?” and “You act like you hate me” are some of my personal favorites.

Dr. Simon writes about several others and I highly recommend reading them all if you even suspect you are dealing with a chronic manipulator. I sometimes still fall for them and sometimes still use some. I fall for more than I use and I normally catch on pretty quickly these days. Ever since I took a stand, I find myself behaving much differently and it has turned out to be fun ridding myself of these time-sucking individuals. I now refuse to even attempt to reason with a chronic manipulator. It’s a pointless waste of my time and energy.

Thanks for stopping by!

Last week was not a great week. In addition to learning that my friend’s breast cancer has spread to her liver, I also had an overwhelming load of work to do here at home while my son was sick with the H1N1 flu. Good times.

I began listening to Byron Katie throughout the week. At first I really liked what she had to say. The Work is not difficult to understand. It’s basically an extremely simplified form of cognitive behavior therapy, which is one of my favorite forms of psychology.

As I continued to listen, I was struck several times by how the person with whom she was working ended up blaming themselves for problems they had and that they were grateful to her for showing them the way. In some cases, this seemed completely rational and I could completely understand why they started out angry with someone else only to realize that they were the perpetrator themselves.

The example that pops into my head first is the man who was angry with his ex-girlfriend/neighbor for reporting him to the authorities for illegally renting out a studio apartment in their building. By the time he completed The Work, he realized that he was the one that had broken the law, his ex-girlfriend/neighbor was simply following her own integrity. He still loved her and continuing to blame her was causing him the pain of being separated from someone he loves. That one made sense.

I’m a fan of her tough-love approach, her belief that no one is a victim unless they choose to be, and her assertion that we can find more happiness in life by questioning our own thoughts and beliefs.

However, her overly-simplistic approach and application of the exact same formula to every single person and every single problem just doesn’t do it for me. I’ve already mentioned how I cannot see how any of her “teachings” (she is not a trained counselor, just a self-help guru) apply to someone who has been diagnosed with a horrible disease. I also listened to a most disturbing workshop in which she was able to get a woman who had been horribly sexually abused as a child to say that she was actually the one who allowed herself to be abused in order to obtain her mother’s love.  That was when my BS radar went up and I started to do a little investigative work of my own.

I found several critics of her work, the typical criticism reserved for self-help gurus and people who claim to have all the answers for anything that troubles you in life. I also found several message boards with posts from people who have actually doled out the approximate $5000 for her 9 day “school”. Many of them indicate that the school had a decidedly cult-like atmosphere and that it was not at all as described on her website.

Here’s an example from my own thoughts and how it is supposed to go if I do the work prescribed by Dr. Katie….

My thought:  ”My former friend abuses his son”

I am then supposed to ask if that thought is true.  If I say yes, I am supposed to ask if I can know that for sure. In every workshop I’ve listened to, the participant ends up answering, “no”, that they can’t absolutely know it’s true because after considerable coaching from Katie and reminders that they are not God and therefore, cannot know that anything is true, they are backed into a corner where the only possible response is, “no”. I’m not backed into a corner. I know that my former friend abuses his son because I’ve witnessed it. So, my answer is still yes.

I’ve never heard one workshop in which a participant has insisted that yes, they do know the statement they made is absolutely true so I have no idea where she would go from there.

I am supposed to ask myself how I feel when I believe the “story” that my friend abuses his son and how I treat him when I believe that “story”. I feel angry, sorry for his son and helpless. How do I treat him? I don’t have any contact with him. I cannot pretend that I don’t know about the abuse or his refusal to stop it. Since I found out about the abuse he has no contact with me either. It was a mutual decision reached at the exact same moment with no notification to each other.

I’m also supposed to ask if I can think of any reason to keep believing that “story” that doesn’t cause pain. No, I can’t. However, I don’t see how pretending that this “story” isn’t true is helpful on any level either. She talks a lot about facing reality and claims that our only suffering comes from not facing reality. I’m now being asked to ignore, or not trust what I know to be true. I believe that’s what psychologists would call manipulation and/or crazy-making statements.

After that, participants are supposed to “turn it around”. This means to re-state the statement in at least 3 completely opposite ways. In my example, the turnarounds could be:

“My former friend does not abuse his son”

“I abuse my former friend”

“I abuse my son”

“I abuse myself”

The only one of these four statements that come close to being true is the last one, “I abuse myself”, since I frequently beat myself up, don’t work out when I want to, eat junk food sometimes, smoke, etc. However, I do not abuse my friend or my son and my friend does abuse his son. So, my original thought is still true and now I’m also faced with the shameful truth that I abuse myself. If I hadn’t already known that, it could be extremely painful to come to that realization in front of a room full of strangers and then be sent on my merry way. Furthermore, the fact still remains that my friend abuses his son and the thought I have brought up has not even been addressed, except that I am supposed to stop believing it.

So, while I am all about working on moving on from the past and reframing our own negative thoughts and do find some value to be gained from some of her opinions, I just can’t jump on the I love Katie bandwagon. As far as the quote I chose for the beginning of this post, that is the biggest bunch of nonsense I have read in some time. I want my friend to have cancer? Nope. I want my other former friend to abuse his son? Never.

It seems, as is the case with many self-help gurus, pop-psychology celebrities, tv shows and radio call-in shows, those who are desperately seeking answers and/or relief are lured in by the promise of a quick fix. The answer to all your problems can be found in this one book, exercise, workshop or school. I’m not buying it.

I’d love to hear from others who have read her work, done her work and/or actually attended her workshops or school. What do you think? Am I missing something?

Thanks for stopping by!

As I was reading along about self-worth, I was kind of on auto-pilot.  Much of what I was reading was familiar already. Worthy of review but familiar nonetheless. Suddenly within a passage about repressed anger I was snapped out of auto-pilot when I came across the dreaded phrase, “People Pleasers“. Dammit. Not that again.

Breaking out of anger and rage often means having to break those patterns from childhood that said, “You must stuff feelings rather than fully express them.”. Expressing anger will help a person get “unstuck” and be able to go and feel other feelings.

Blocks To Expressing Anger

1. Dependent people are afraid that being angry will prove them unlovable. They are afraid people will reject them or abandon them. They struggle half-heartedly and tend to whine and complain rather than get angry and use that energy constructively to work toward resolution. They waste much energy and often feel depressed and apathetic.

2. Controlling people tend to intellectualize their anger and remove all feelings from it. They confuse the issues, look at every possible perspective and verbalize or avoid instead of feel. They stockpile so much anger that occasionally they vent out irrationally. Their fear of “loss of control” is often justified since they have so little consistent healthy expression.

3. People pleasers are people who often disguise their anger. They hint around about being angry, all the time smiling through clenched teeth. Often, the feelings manifest themselves as physical complaints. Headaches, muscle tension and stomach upsets are all signals of held-in anger.

-Learning to Love Yourself: Finding Your Self-Worth

Since I was in self-awareness mode while reading, I had to re-read this part of the book after I read #3. It sounded like me but I had to go back and make sure I wasn’t just attached to a label that no longer made sense. I re-read #1. That isn’t me. Then I re-read #2. That isn’t me either. What I did realize though, is that #2′s are the people with whom I have the most conflicts. #2′s drive me crazy. This makes sense since I was completely controlled my whole life, first by my parents and then by my own behaviors that I took with me when I left home. I hate being controlled. I want to crawl out of my skin when I feel as if I’m being controlled in any way. Every sentence in that description got under my skin. I can name a dozen people in my life, past or present, that fit into this category and each one elicits a strong emotional response when I even think about my interactions with them.

These days when I encounter controlling people the first thing I do is determine if they may possibly be narcissists. I know narcissists are to be steered clear of at all costs. Once I’ve determined that they are not and are just control freaks, I write them off as such and try not to take their behavior personally. This works fairly well. However, I have to admit that when I’m forced to deal with these people in a way that I don’t want to deal with them, I revert back to people pleasing. Smiling through clenched teeth. I don’t want them to know they’ve gotten under my skin. Why? Because if they know that then they will know that they have succeeded in controlling me and I don’t want to give them that satisfaction.

First of all, this is absurd. It doesn’t really matter if they know it or not. The mere fact that I react so intensely means that I am allowing them to control me in some way. I am basically regressing when I do this. I used to swear I was not going to let my father see me cry and always beat myself up when I did cry. I thought if I could control my outward reaction then I could have some control over the situation and lessen his control over me. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. This is called repetition compulsion.

Secondly, and this is possibly the key to diffusing my strong reaction to controlling people, is the understanding that they have simply learned to stuff their anger in a different way than I have. We are both hiding our “bad” feelings but are going about it in two different ways. They are actually more like me than different from me.

Wow. All this from a tiny little book that I was almost embarrassed to purchase. Stuffing feelings, especially anger….that I can relate to, no matter how it’s done.

Thanks for stopping by!

When I went to the bookstore last weekend to pick up The Shack, because it has been so highly recommended by two people, I couldn’t not go into the psychology section. It’s how I roll.

I haven’t started reading the book I went there for yet because while in the psychology section, I picked up another book. Also how I roll. This book looks and sounds like your typical psych-lite, self-help book. It’s short, only 122 pages. It has a purple paperback cover and was quite possibly self-published, based on the graphics and design of the cover and book. There are even cutesy little cartoon drawings every few pages used to demonstrate specific points. Strangely, I picked it up and flipped through it for a few minutes anyway. It’s called Learning to Love Yourself: Finding Your Self-Worth. Ugh. By all accounts this book should not be of any interest to me at all. But it is. As I was leafing through it, I read a few key points that I liked.

Some of the points I read reminded me of when I first started on this whole journey to self-awareness thing. Back then the idea that I had the power to change my life simply by changing the way I think about things was a brand new concept. It was life changing. It reached me for the first time in the form of another book I would probably find objectionable (or at least way too simplistic for me) today. I’m even embarrassed to admit it now but that book was Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside Out by none other than the infamous Dr. Phil. You heard that right. A book written by the quackiest of all tv quacks changed my life. No, I’m not kidding and I’m not drunk (yet).

I read it in January of 2008. Only a few weeks after hubby and I separated. I know this because there was an exercise (come on, you know all self-help books have exercises) that I actually did and I have saved the e-mails. The exercise required me to ask a series of 10 questions of 5 people who I trust. The questions were all about their perceptions of me. One of them was, “Tell me what you think my strongest traits are.” I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was to send these 5 e-mails. I even put this in the subject line: “This may seem weird…”. The premise behind this exercise is a concept that is now hard-wired into my brain and that I understand completely but at the time it was completely foreign to me. It’s the concept of reframing your negative self-talk. We all talk to ourselves constantly (hopefully just in our heads) and we don’t even realize it. The tapes are recorded early on and become background noise. We don’t notice them at all. Anyway, the idea was to find out what 5 people who I care about and trust think about me in order to disprove my own negative perceptions about myself. I had to answer the questions first. Luckily none of the 5 chosen ones called the men in white coats to come take me away and were all extremely open, honest and more than willing to participate.

Their answers blew me away. I know these people well. None of them are the type to sugar coat things and they all gave me concrete examples and reasons explaining why they answered the questions the way they did. What was most striking was how similar all their answers were, when they are each from a different circle. None of them are close friends themselves. Some of them have known me since I was a kid, others I met after I’d already become a mom. They answered the questions so similarly that I couldn’t help but buy into their answers, and they were drastically different from my own answers to the same questions. I carried those e-mails around in my car for months. I still have them saved on my computer. I will never get rid of them.

Reading what they said made me start to realize just how negatively I viewed myself and also how completely off the mark I was. While that did lead to confusion, (what the hell else was I completely wrong about?!) it also lead to serious work on my part, questioning everything I thought about everything. It lead to massive personal changes, many of which I am still struggling with.

So that is why I picked up this silly little book about self-worth. Self-worth can’t be bad. The book isn’t too bad either. It’s a good idea to remind myself of some of the basics I learned from good old Dr. Phil. There are even some concepts that I hadn’t considered in the same way that they are presented in this book. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten them in my quest for enlightenment. Particularly…how we deal with anger.

Thanks for stopping by!

I’m happy to see how far I’ve come (and how far my marriage has come) in the past year but I can’t believe I was so self-involved that in the wee hours of the morning after the election of President Obama, this is what I chose to write about!

November 5, 2008:

“Who said nights were for sleep?” Marilyn Monroe

Yes, I know Obama won. I will probably post about that tomorrow but right now what is most important to me is the fact that it is 1:30am and I am still awake.

Ever had insomnia? It sucks.

It started in late 2006. At first, I’d occasionally have a hard time falling asleep. Then it progressively got worse…and worse…and worse…and worse. My lowest point was somewhere around March of 2007. I would literally go days without a decent hour of sleep, let alone an entire night. I had a difficult time falling asleep and if I was lucky enough to succeed at that, I would wake up repeatedly, or wake up and be unable to fall back to sleep. It was awful.

I went to my doctor. There was no medical reason for it. After she tried several different types of medications that either didn’t work at all or resulted in horrific side-effects, I realized I had a serious problem.

I started reading anything and everything I could get my hands on the subject and everything pointed to anxiety and/or depression. Yeah, I slept MUCH better after THAT revelation.

Turns out it was BOTH. Great. I tried helping myself by reading books and on-line about causes of anxiety and depression but I finally had to admit that I couldn’t do this on my own. I entered therapy.

About a month into it, another very calming realization…I was seriously unhappy in my marriage. After much drama and even less sleep, we started marriage counseling and separated. We were separated for 5 months. We are still in marriage counseling.

I’m happy to report that we are doing MUCH better and as a matter of fact, have a COMPLETELY different relationship then we had before. It’s funny how you don’t realize how miserable or dysfunctional a relationship is until it’s better. I believe that’s called DENIAL.

I’m also happy to report that my insomnia has greatly improved, but I still have some bad nights. Tonight is one of those nights.

And no, I’m not in denial about the fact that Marilyn wasn’t talking about insomnia!

Thanks for stopping by!

I’ve struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember. I was a chubby kid, then a constantly dieting teenager. As an adult my weight has been an almost perpetual yo-yo. I lost a lot of weight right before my wedding, promptly got pregnant, got pregnant again, ignored my weight for years, then lost a lot of weight again a few years ago. Now I’ve put some weight back on. I’m not near my heaviest but would love to lose about 20 pounds.

Looking back at pictures of me as a teenager, when I thought I was a huge disgusting cow, I realize I was probably one more diet pill away from an eating disorder. In those pictures I now see that I was thin. I can’t believe I thought I was obese, not just overweight, I seriously thought I was grotesquely fat. I vividly remember taking Dexatrim and No Doze and going as many as 4 days without eating any actual food. I would only drink diet coke or an occasional Slim-Fast shake. The headaches and stomach growling made me feel good, like I was accomplishing something. Fighting off the hunger felt like a victory. I stopped all that after I met hubby (then high school sweetheart) during my junior year of high school and thankfully never went back.

Today I have a realistic view of my body. I don’t see myself as disgustingly obese, even now when I’m not happy with my weight. I want to lose some but don’t think I’m an elephant either. I just really enjoyed being a size 6 and want to get back there.

I’ve read about emotional eating and figured I probably am an emotional eater but never gave it much more thought than that.

Emotional eating: Emotional eating is the practice of consuming large quantities of food — usually “comfort” or junk foods — in response to feelings instead of hunger. Experts estimate that 75% of overeating is caused by emotions.
- medicinenet.com

A few weeks ago, as I was looking longingly at my size 6 jeans, I started to seriously think about emotional eating. I decided to begin asking myself each and every time I went to the fridge, pantry or vending machine if I was actually hungry or not. I noticed that much of the time the answer was no so I stepped away from the food.

This was an important step and a good one. The one thing I didn’t even think to ask myself though was why I was reaching for food when I wasn’t hungry. This came up during the same intense conversation I mentioned a few days ago in my post Did I Really Say That. As a result of that conversation I am going to start trying to figure out what I’m feeling when I get to the fridge, ask myself if I’m really hungry or not and determine that the answer is no. What emotion am I experiencing that I am attempting to avoid by eating?

After pondering that conversation some more I remembered that this was the topic being discussed when I inexplicably said, “Men are scary.“. I was talking about the fact that I have been ignoring myself lately and that one of the things I have stopped doing for myself was working out regularly. I also mentioned that while I enjoy the extra male attention I receive when I’m thin, it makes me nervous too. Why? Apparently because men are scary. That’s how that conversation went.

If you had asked me three weeks ago if I was afraid of men, I would have laughed and said, “No way!”.  If you had asked me three weeks ago if I intentionally put on weight in order to avoid male attention because they are scary, I would have thought you were nuts and said, “HELL no!”.  Now, I have to seriously consider the possibility that my truthful answers to both of these questions are, “yes” and “yes”.

Yikes.

Reading all of this I can come to the conclusion that as a teenager I had a distorted image of my physical appearance that disappeared when I felt loved by a man. I can also conclude that much of my self-worth is derived from continuing to receive positive male attention but at the same time, that attention scares me. Seriously, Daddy Issues AGAIN?! I need to learn to feel good about myself on my own and that male attention is nothing more than what it is. It’s not that important and certainly nothing to be feared.

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