Fourteen Year-Old Girl

This particular girl
(you don't know her, but
I do)
she is alone
she doesn't know this yet.
I know it for her and weep.
She is only fourteen
already with multiple
sex partners
the scars arch sideways up
her wrists and forearms, the
residue of abandonment.
When with her my tears harden
like stones,
like hers. When with her
a golden string of knowing extends
from my heart.
She cuts it too.
Who should know this deep a
gorge at only
fourteen?
The building stones of identity
kicked like trash to
the curb?
No one.
When I am with her
we hold this
together before she knows
she is being known--
leaves us both.
She doesn't know this yet, but
she is really
not alone.

By Melissa Greene
photo above found at:
http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=lonely%20teenage%20girl&order=9&offset=72#/dmr12k

Being Humam 101

It's been a little while since I've come here to blah onto the page. This is such an effective and useful coping tool for me, I should come here more often. I hope that I do. I've got lots of ideas, inspirations, and recent events floating around in my head that I could write, but I often give my own sweet self this advice, "First thing's first and one thing at a time." Ok, well, I kinda melded that statement based on good things I heard at various Alanon meetings. :-)

Let's talk about being human for a little while. Why is it I keep forgetting that I am a human being? I absolutely do this and work with families and children who do this. I do not want to just BE. I want to be DOING something. I want solutions and an action step to work on. Just tell me what to DO and I will fix anything. This is my hope, but not at all the way my Creator made me to function. I was created with these annoying things called feelings that seem to have no other function but interrupting my attempts at being a Super Hero. If I just wasn't feeling so overwhelmed I would be able to attend one more meeting and keep people happy. If I just wasn't feeling so angry, I could do your job for you again today and keep the peace. But, no, being human stops that every time.

Here is what I have learned about humanness-- If I try to push myself beyond my own reasonable capacity, it will always end in depression and anxiety. It might take a few months before I wind up there or even a few years for some people, but it never ends good. I cannot deny myself of basic human self-care for extended periods of time and think there are no consequences for that. By basic human self-care, I mean we take care of our bodies. We eat healthy, avoid excesses of all kinds, sleep, and get routine medical care. But I also, and especially, mean taking care of our feelings. Our creator gave us these beautiful, fragile, and indispensable feelings that are there for our own good. Although our feelings are not FACTS, they are ours, completely and utterly ours. It is not weak to have feelings nor is it weak to attend to them the same way I would attend to my body's needs.

I want to clarify that I don't mean I coddle my feelings. Caring for them means I first acknowledge that they are present! Feelings become loud and dangerous when routinely ignored. Then I listen to them and hear where they are coming from. Honestly, for me, that usually settles them down pretty quickly. Our feelings are our friends. Our feelings want to let us know when we are being taken advantage of. Our feelings want to let us know when there is a hurt that needs to just spill for a little while. Our feelings are there to act as friendly guides, especially the uncomfortable feelings like grief, anger, and loneliness.

When I ignore the friendly and helpful feelings of grief, anger, or loneliness, they evolve into the crazed and unhelpful feelings of depression and anxiety. How many times do I need to ignore my feelings and watch them turn into depression and anxiety before I finally get it? If I could count how many times I've done this in the past, it would have to add up into the thousands. I am HUMAN and it is good to have feelings and respect them. Today I will choose to honor even the uncomfortable feelings because I love myself. It may have take 30+ years, but I finally figured out how to derail some depression and anxiety!

Photo above found at:
http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?q=being human&order=9&offset=24#/dt1ydn

Arrival

Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.
I land to stay here;
And the windows flock open
And the curtains fly out like doves
And a past dries in a wind.

Now let me lie down, under
A wide-branched indifference,
Shovel-faces like pennies
Down the back of the mind,
Find voices coined to
An argot of motor-horns,
And let the cluttered-up houses
Keep their thick lives to themselves.

For this ignorance of me
Seems a kind of innocence.
Fast enough I shall wound it:
Let me breathe till then
Its milk-aired Eden,
Till my own life impound it-
Slow-falling; grey-veil-hung; a theft,
A style of dying only.

By Philip Larkin
Photo above found at:
http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?q=curtains blowing&order=9&offset=24#/d188q6r

Midwife to Tears

As a therapist, you know it's been a good week of productive therapy when you've gone through an entire box of Kleenex in your office. This is not to say that tears alone produce healing or progress, but I know that tears sometimes will break down barriers. I have many clients that all began treatment with me around March of this year and all of them are reaching a similar place in treatment right now-- hitting the core. It's been emotionally draining for me to help them contain the heaviness of what we are reaching. It never fails to amaze me, though, watching the human spirit heal itself. I am in awe each time it happens, kind of like the miracle of watching a child being born. It's really beautiful to watch someone travail in pain, produce a nugget of truth, work through it, and emerge someone whole. I love my job!

I wonder-- what is it about tears? I have seen some people whose tears seem to be meaningless. They cry over most anything, all the time, to no benefit. The tears have come to mean nothing and produce nothing. It's like they are stuck in grief and crying. That's a very sad place to be. More often, however, particularly with children, I find those people who refuse to cry. I can't tell you the number of people I have met in therapy who tell me crying is for wussies, both girls and boys alike. It's unfortunate that somewhere in their lives they have been given this message. It really requires great strength to let yourself cry. You have to have the confidence of knowing you can contain yourself within the grief. Crying is a release and, thus, a trusting that as you let this part of yourself go, there will still be a self standing once the tears stop. For most of us who have this innate understanding of tears, that they come and they go, we are able to allow them to work for us as needed. Imagine what it's like for those who never get that release and how terrifying it must be to believe you cannot cry for fear of losing yourself.

This week I've had the wonderful opportunity to play midwife to the tears of children. It's been such an honor to sit by them and coach the tears that have been welling for years. We have sat together in the quiet while tears crowned and spilled. I am so proud of these little people who finally felt brave enough to let that part of themselves go. They have learned crying is not weak. From a place of true strength, they have allowed the tears to do their own work. No one has been lost this week, but with the help of a box of Kleenex, lots of people were found. :-)

Photo above found at:
http://gemini-soul.deviantart.com/favourites/#/d2gav1c

The Escape

Wade in the water, children,
beneath the twinkling drinking gourd move
like fire your feet through the lapping freedom.
Don't stop till sweet Ohio grass
brushes your ankles, wade, wade,
God's gonna trouble the waters.

You'll see Mr. Johnson's girl standing
in white, free as the children of
the Israelite, let your steps thrush
the ground
their energy quiet and swift
the same energy of the sun
pounding your back the day before
while splintered fingers dig
for cotton seed.

There is one chance
for the angels to stir the pool
fall deep into its healing
the very soul of God
freeing first the spirit now
the body. Be sure
you get your chance this year
Wade in the water, children,
wade wade.

by Melissa Greene

photo above found at:
http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?qh=§ion=&q=African+American+slavery#/d23lh0h

A Week Later

A week later, I said to a friend: I don't
think I could ever write about it.
Maybe in a year I could write something.
There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school. And in my dream
someone was playing jacks, and in the air there was a
huge, thrown, tilted jack
on fire. And when I woke up, I found myself
counting the days since I had last seen
my husband-only two years, and some weeks,
and hours. We had signed the papers and come down to the
ground floor of the Chrysler Building,
the intact beauty of its lobby around us
like a king's tomb, on the ceiling the little
painted plane, in the mural, flying. And it
entered my strictured heart, this morning,
slightly, shyly as if warily,
untamed, a greater sense of the sweetness
and plenty of his ongoing life,
unknown to me, unseen by me,
unheard, untouched-but known, seen,
heard, touched. And it came to me,
for moments at a time, moment after moment,
to be glad for him that he is with the one
he feels was meant for him. And I thought of my
mother, minutes from her death, eighty-five
years from her birth, the almost warbler
bones of her shoulder under my hand, the
eggshell skull, as she lay in some peace
in the clean sheets, and I could tell her the best
of my poor, partial love, I could sing her
out with it, I saw the luck
and luxury of that hour.

by Sharon Olds

photo above found at:
http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=broken hearts&order=9&offset=0#/d127m5q

Kids Gone Mad

I had a conversation with a colleague of mine this week, a psychiatrist who has been providing treatment to children for at least 35+ years. I was telling him about the difference of opinion I was having with some of my staff, regarding children who "act disrespectful" in sessions. I tend to believe that children should be able to come into therapy and feel free to say or do whatever they please during their 50-minute session. I have co-workers who do not allow tantrums or sass and are appalled that I allow that. It gets very frustrating sometimes. This doctor laughed at me and said, "We were debating that 30 years ago!"

So apparently this has been a source of conflict among psychotherapists for some time now. I don't think I can argue the other side with real conviction, but from what I understand, these therapists feel you are reinforcing negative behavior by allowing tantrums in session. For example, a child comes into therapy and begins to yell and curse about her Mom making her share a room with her little sister. There are some therapists who would say, "I know you're mad about this, but I don't allow that kind of language in here. It's not appropriate for a 12 year-old to curse like that. If you want to stay here, you need to calm down and stop yelling, so we can talk about this." One of my co-workers has explained to me that she is establishing "good boundaries" with this client and "I don't allow people to yell and curse like that at me, and this child is no different than anyone else." I can actually see the logic in this argument. It is perhaps teaching the child to get control of herself and emphasizing the importance of showing respect with adults. In this scenario, I would also say the therapist was calmly setting parameters for the therapy sessions.

Faced with a similar scenario, I tend to encourage the child's expression of this anger and may even repeat her words to show that I do not judge her anger. For example, after the child has made some loud "inappropriate" comments about Mom, I repeat it back to her with similar conviction, "You think that bitch is just favoring your brother again and you are very mad about it!" Often this diffuses children right away, because they're shocked to hear their therapist cursing. After several instances of this, however, the child becomes settled in knowing that their anger and tirades are not going to be shut down or judged, and they will express themselves freely. After several sessions of this, I've seen children gain a comfort in knowing that their anger is heard and respected in this room by this therapist, and the need to yell and curse about things tends to diminish. I think it's important to note that there has to be some realistic limits to what a child can do in treatment. These limitations should not feel restrictive and are there to keep the child safe and to protect property from being damaged.

I take this stance because I want children to bring all their ugly stuff into therapy. I want them to say the vile things for which other therapists might reprimand them. It's my opinion that giving a child this kind of freedom, allows them the space to bring everything that is inside to the outside. There we can look at it all without judgment, and children tend to sort it out for themselves. The fear of many therapists is that aggressive behavior acted out in therapy may transfer to the home or school environment. I will say that I have not had this happen. It seems that working freely through the anger in sessions actually decreases the need and desire to do it elsewhere. Often when children have been allowed to cut up drawing pictures of siblings or beat up dolls of Daddy, they have come back to me later and reported improved relationships with these people. Anyway, that's the debate!

I feel really passionate about allowing this sort of freedom of expression, because I see it work so well. I work with a 9 year-old girl who shares deeply painful memories of bullying and abandonment by Mom only after her puppet doll "beats me up" for about the first 10 minutes of therapy. I've seen another 10 year-old boy gain insight on his own about jealousy toward his sister, only after I allowed him to dump an entire bin of toys on my floor, toss them around for 40 minutes saying, "THIS is my anger!" With this child, all I had to do was stand by to ensure safety and validate as much as I could, "this is your anger! It's a lot! It's big and very messy!"

I have to say that, as a therapist, you must be really comfortable with your own anger to allow such expressions from other people. I've clipped some shrubs to pieces "working out my mads" and scrubbed some tubs to a sparkling shine while crying it out. I have to believe this has allowed me firsthand experience of physically kneading through emotions, letting them run through my body and my words until they are spent. Perhaps if a kind therapist had allowed and encouraged this from me years ago, I wouldn't have struggled with it as an adult. Nonetheless, my landscaping looks great these days! So, the debate "rages" on, so to speak, and I will continue to encourage my little people clients to come on in and let it on out.

Photo above found at:
http://nii-tan.deviantart.com/art/Tantrum-98119082?q=boost%3Apopular+tantrum&qo=56