Yes, I am still going to talk about mental health and Taiji. Family dysfunction as well, and perhaps therapy.This is continuing my week(s) of musings about the topics, and here is the last post in which I discussed lots of things.
I must say, therapy has been more miss than hit for me. I went to my first counselor when I was fourteen and profoundly depressed. I will give my mother credit that she got me into therapy. Hoqwever, unfortunately, she chose a therapist at a very conservative Christian college, and a man to boot. Who was white. He was not in any way equipped to deal with someone like me. Especially as I had a broken brain in so many ways.
I will say, though, that he was a very nice guy who tried his best. I do not hold it against him that he didn’t know what to do with me.
After that, I had a series of therapists/counselors who just sucked. Here’s the problem. I have a psych background. I know a lot about psychology. I am very smart. I know how to think on different levels. Which means I am a terror for some therapists. If I can run rings around someone, I will not respect them. Unfortunately, this was the case with many of the therapists/counselors I had. To be honest, it’s one reason I stopped going to non-psychologist therapists. Social workers just didn’t do it for me.
It took me forever to find a therapist who worked for me, and then I saw her for a decade or so. What I liked about her was that would suggest things that weren’t considered traditional. This included body work, tarot card readers, EFT, EMDR (before it hit mainstream), electroshock therapy, meds, and more. In her opinion, anything that worked was fine with her. She also discussed CBT and introduced DBT to me as well.
What I really appreciated about her wsa that she cut through my shit. She knew when to let me talk and when to cut me off. She did not let me get away with shit. This was annoyingat the time, but it was what I needed.
I would talk about all kinds of nonsense, going off on my family dysfunction and other things that were not helpful to my mental helath.
Here’s something you need to know about me. I don’t respect people who allow me to manipulate them. IMind, I rarely do it on purpose in my day-to-day, but when I was in therapy, I needed to know that my therapist would actually see though my bullshit; otherwise, what was the point?
The problem was that I had been so programmed to appear ok, I could not break through it–not even in therapy. One of the issues in my family was that my father was the only one allowed to show any negative emotions. Well, my mother showed plenty of negative emotions when my father wasn’t home–and she dumped it all on me.
She did yell at my father when he finally staggered home around midnight, but it did no good. he would shut down and turn to stone as she yelled at him. It was the eeriest thing to watch because he simply disappeared right before my eyes.
Side note: I learned it from him and I do the same thing when I can’t fight or flee. This is the thing that is rarely talked about when we talk about abuse–it’s not always one-sided. My mother’s way of fighting back was to shout her frustrations or nag endlessly until you capitulated to whatever she wanted.
I learned that arguing with her was folly and useless, and it was better not to say anything. Was I always wise in this matter? No. My mother (and my father, too, come to think of it) was very adept at pushing my buttons. I mean, it makes sense because parents were the ones who installed your buttons–of course they would know excatyl how to push them.
An example. I was raised in a very fundamental and consservative evangelical Christian faith. It was extremely damaging to me, and I rejected it when I was twenty. That was when I first had sex, and when I realized that sex was a beautiful and wondrous thing (not to mention so much fun), I completely lost any shred of faith I still had–which was none. Well, maybe one shred.
When someone lies to you that deeply, consistently, and with such conviction, i’ts such a betrayal when you find out how utterly wrong they were. I’m talking about sex itself, in case you can’t tell.
Anyway, I told my mother I had left the church a few years after that. Big mistake. Again, I should have just said nothing. But then I would have had to go to church with her, which was not going to happen. I was so full of anger at the church in my twenties. It really did feel like a betrayal, and I was furious with God (yes, with a capital G).
During this time, my mother was fervently searching for more within her faith. It’s my private belief hat she clung to it in part beacuse of how terrible my father was. She needed something to obsess with that didn’t involved pain and angst, which is what I think the church did for her.
She talked about God and Jesus constnatly, which, as you might guess, did not go over well with me. I would tell her, barely politely, that I did not want to talk about it–and she would ignore me. That’s what she always did when she did not want to do what I asked. She ignored it and pretended it never was said. Or maybe she truly did not hear me. I don’t know, nor do I really care.
We were in the car (she was driving) and going to the bank, I thkn. She would NOT stop talking about her god and blah, blah, blah. I tried to diplomatically change the subject, but she would not let me. I recognize that as well, by the way. I can fixate on something, but I try to keep it under wraps most of the time. After several minutes of this, I finally snapped. I raised my voice and said, “I don’t give a damn about your god!” I might have said ‘fuck’, but probably not. I don’t swear in front of my parents.
She slammed on the brakes and told me to get out. We were only a mile away from the house so I had no problems walking home. Stomped, more like. It helped me let off some steam so I could at least pretend to be calm by the time I returned.
Other times, she’s chastized me for something or the other minor, and I knew better to say anything. I sat there with a blank look on my face while I tried to tune her out. She didn’t like that, either, and scolded me when I did that. Probably because it romended her of my father, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? I was not allowed to disagree with her, but she did not want me just to sit silently, either. I know what she wanted–enthusiastic agreement. But I couldn’t go that far (to out-and-out lie). I truly felt like I was between a rock and a hard place.