Sunday, August 3, 2014
I went for a brunch cruise on Lake Minnetonka today. This was my first time actually venturing out on one of Minnesota's countless lakes. It was nice to enjoy the scenery of Minnesota during the warm season.
While sitting in the back of my friend's parents' car I found myself again having one of those experiences in which numerous memories from my early life history came flooding into my awareness. It wasn't exactly an unpleasant feeling but sometimes the quality of what I experience seems a bit reminiscent of intrusive flashbacks.
Though no particularly painful memories passed through my mind I nonetheless felt saddened by what did pass through my awareness. I remembered feeling that I was not getting very much attention shortly after my younger brother was born in 1986. He was born a few months after I had turned thirteen years old. Adolescence is often not an easy time even under the best of circumstances. My adolescence was complicated by the timing of my younger brother's birth. I felt that my father and stepmother never paid me sufficient attention as I was becoming a man. But this pattern of what I will kindly call benign neglect was in keeping with how my father had behaved previously. He never really knew how to be a father to me. He himself once acknowledged to me he felt he had behaved too much like a friend would do and not enough as a father should do.
My sadness temporarily consumes me once again today. I take solace in the fact that I am creating a new life for myself. As each day passes I am creating something new and better. I find comfort in the dedication to my journey I continue to maintain.
......
I'll be going to see my therapist again tomorrow. Thereafter he will be on vacation and I won't see him again until the following Wednesday.
I've been reflecting on some of the work I have been doing with my therapist in the last several months. We did what my therapist called 'impasse work' in our last session. Since seeing him last I have clearly discerned part of why I am feeling a bit befuddled by the work we have been doing. In the past he has invited me to identify the age of my inner child and then write all I can about my inner child's physical appearance, attitude, clothes and the like. And I have been doing that. For example, throughout this summer I have been reflecting a lot on the summer of 1982 when I wasn't quite nine years old. I have tried to remember that boy I was that summer.
While this technique has been of benefit to me because I have done what my therapist invited me to do I have realized more recently why I am nonetheless feeling aggravated. I realize there wasn't one singular age from my childhood in which I felt any number of unfortunate feelings and believed any number of unfortunate thoughts. The shamanic practitioner I met with last November noted I had experienced soul loss at a few different ages...and some of them were very young ages. When this is the case how do you go about healing yourself? How do you prioritize the tasks of healing when the project is quite demanding?
The age of eight wasn't the only age that was difficult for me. My parents' separation and divorce in the late 1970s was also extremely difficult. And then of course there was my adolescence when I also didn't get my needs sufficiently met because, as I have noted above, my father and stepmother were focusing a lot of their attention on my brother who was an infant at the time. Given this history it seems to me that my healing journey is indeed going to be quite a journey.
I've come a long way. And I have a lot of work yet to do.
I went for a brunch cruise on Lake Minnetonka today. This was my first time actually venturing out on one of Minnesota's countless lakes. It was nice to enjoy the scenery of Minnesota during the warm season.
While sitting in the back of my friend's parents' car I found myself again having one of those experiences in which numerous memories from my early life history came flooding into my awareness. It wasn't exactly an unpleasant feeling but sometimes the quality of what I experience seems a bit reminiscent of intrusive flashbacks.
Though no particularly painful memories passed through my mind I nonetheless felt saddened by what did pass through my awareness. I remembered feeling that I was not getting very much attention shortly after my younger brother was born in 1986. He was born a few months after I had turned thirteen years old. Adolescence is often not an easy time even under the best of circumstances. My adolescence was complicated by the timing of my younger brother's birth. I felt that my father and stepmother never paid me sufficient attention as I was becoming a man. But this pattern of what I will kindly call benign neglect was in keeping with how my father had behaved previously. He never really knew how to be a father to me. He himself once acknowledged to me he felt he had behaved too much like a friend would do and not enough as a father should do.
My sadness temporarily consumes me once again today. I take solace in the fact that I am creating a new life for myself. As each day passes I am creating something new and better. I find comfort in the dedication to my journey I continue to maintain.
......
I'll be going to see my therapist again tomorrow. Thereafter he will be on vacation and I won't see him again until the following Wednesday.
I've been reflecting on some of the work I have been doing with my therapist in the last several months. We did what my therapist called 'impasse work' in our last session. Since seeing him last I have clearly discerned part of why I am feeling a bit befuddled by the work we have been doing. In the past he has invited me to identify the age of my inner child and then write all I can about my inner child's physical appearance, attitude, clothes and the like. And I have been doing that. For example, throughout this summer I have been reflecting a lot on the summer of 1982 when I wasn't quite nine years old. I have tried to remember that boy I was that summer.
While this technique has been of benefit to me because I have done what my therapist invited me to do I have realized more recently why I am nonetheless feeling aggravated. I realize there wasn't one singular age from my childhood in which I felt any number of unfortunate feelings and believed any number of unfortunate thoughts. The shamanic practitioner I met with last November noted I had experienced soul loss at a few different ages...and some of them were very young ages. When this is the case how do you go about healing yourself? How do you prioritize the tasks of healing when the project is quite demanding?
The age of eight wasn't the only age that was difficult for me. My parents' separation and divorce in the late 1970s was also extremely difficult. And then of course there was my adolescence when I also didn't get my needs sufficiently met because, as I have noted above, my father and stepmother were focusing a lot of their attention on my brother who was an infant at the time. Given this history it seems to me that my healing journey is indeed going to be quite a journey.
I've come a long way. And I have a lot of work yet to do.
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