I’m thick!

Yup, I’m thick.  I might be intelligent, but I’m still as thick as a thick thing on a thick day.  I’ve been a dissociative, anxiety ridden wreck for the last week and had no idea why.  I thought it was just S acting out that was causing me to lose so much time.  It’s only today when I was at the supermarket check-out that it clicked… The check-out operator was asking the usual pleasantries about how my day was etc.  Then she asked the big one “Did you do anything special for Father’s Day?”  How in the world could I not connect today with being Father’s Day?  I brought one of the special Father’s Day lotto tickets last week; I’ve seen the Father’s Day card stands in the shops; I’ve seen the advertisements on television; I even thought of buying a camera tripod in a Father’s Day sale.  But for some reason, the words ‘Father’s Day’ didn’t connect correctly in my brain.  Don’t ask me why, but I didn’t associate it with the father and the past.

I don’t know if this lack of connection is a good or bad thing, but it sure helps to explain why I’ve lost most of the week.  It could also explain why S was acting out so violently and challenging the power dynamics within the system.  We were all oblivious to her pain and memories…  I’m so sorry S, please forgive us.

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Now playing: Mad World – Gary Jules
via FoxyTunes
watch via YouTube

Google maps as a therapeutic tool

Several years ago we tried to create a hand drawn map to show our therapist where the different places we talked about were.  This turned into a triggering and self-destructive experience as a young one came forward and was overwhelmed by looking at the different “bad places” on the map.  Last night we tried something slightly different.  We were talking to another survivor online and we decided to try using Google Maps to show each other significant places in our present and past.  It was an interesting experience, it didn’t have the tactile component that caused the dissociative switch to a younger one who would see the exercise as a threat or a trigger for a flashback.  Instead it became an exercise for the computer literate, analytical thinkers.

The road where we grew up has been covered by Google Street View, so we could see how that house looks now.  This was probably the hardest part of the exercise.  It looked like such a normal, boring, middle class, typical New Zealand house.  Our old bedroom window is visible, but we couldn’t look at it.  The most we could do is look at the garden, this has changed dramatically.  But there was no indication that anything awful happened in that house.  In some ways this is comforting, as it helps us to understand why no one asked any questions about us.  We were the quiet girl from a sometimes rough family – we were the lucky one in many peoples eyes.

We probably ended up with about 12 markers on the map; these included schools, places where the father worked and a few other random places where abusive events had occurred.  We became very conscious that there had to be some “good” markers placed to try and balance the “bad”.  But we tried not to dwell too much on efforts to balance things out, but rather to purely put a marker in the map.  By doing this, the place became just that – a place.  It was where something bad happened to us, and that will never change.  But that place became a blue marker on a map, it wasn’t about the emotions, events or anything overwhelming.

I suppose in some ways, it was opening the door to further exploration about what occurred at each of those markers, but I really don’t think that is necessary.  Those markers became an acknowledgement.  They were the sign to us and our friend that a little girl was once hurt in that place.  Our friend respected that and some of us internally needed that…

Music, soothing and snobbery

Jennifer Riley over at Psych Scamp recently shared some links to research about music therapy.  Until this final prompt, I never really considered the role that music plays in my life. When I wrote about Oceans soothing me, Paul responded that music gave him a similar feeling.  I didn’t really think about this at the time because I was so caught up in my feelings about the ocean, but I think I can understand a little more about what Paul was meaning now.

I know many people use music to soothe and to help tell their stories – Matthew (our American friend) often uses music to indicate how he is feeling and to try and take away the pain; Secret Shadows lists music that has a special meaning for her within her blog; and Sophie used music to help tell our story when creating the Little girl lost clip on YouTube.  But for me music has often been a noise in the background, it’s not something that I really thought about, but I feel fear when it isn’t there to break the silence.  I suppose in many ways, music is a form of protection for me.  But for others in the system, music has a totally different meaning… a few bars of heavy metal and R is fronting, ready to take on the world; One prefers the blues and Motown so he can lie back and restore energy; Sophie prefers Pink, Brooke Fraser and alternative music, while  Katie loves anything that will mean she can dance around.

Our taste in music has always been fairly eclectic, with classical being one of the few genres we don’t listen to.  I know that the main cause for the lack of classical music in my life is the influence of the father.  He would make fun of those who listened to classical music, saying that they were elitist snobs.  I have no memory of us listening to anything other than what he described as, the local “rubbish” radio station.  I have no idea what his idea of good music was, but it wasn’t anything that the family listened to.  A week ago, we were sent a link to some classical music and from that list we went straight to two pieces which were in the middle of the list.  This in itself is odd, we usually have to work through lists from top to bottom.  But these two pieces (Cantique de Jean Racine and Silouans Song) were picked and recognised by part of the system immediately.

As I write this, W is telling me that we got told off for listening to the Concert programme by the father.  I think listening to classical music was her rebellion against him.  While we listened to these two pieces, there was calm throughout the system.  It was a different calm to what we experience when near the ocean, but I think this is because more of the senses are involved with the ocean experience.  But still, there was a sense of peace.  We all listened with respect to something that held importance for a young one.  It was her quiet protest and we all admire her strength and courage.  But we also just loved the music, it held a fascination for the rest of us.  I know those of you who know classical music will be able to tell me why those two pieces are amazing, but for us it wasn’t about dissecting something to understand it.  Listening to that music was purely about being there and being surrounded by something soothing.  That is a special gift.

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Shadowfeet
via FoxyTunes

My father’s chair

Note: This was triggering to write, it might be triggering to read.

One of us has said that “My father’s chair” would be an excellent title to the book of our life. This isn’t to say that we are going to write an autobiography, but rather that this chair was pivotal to our life for so many years. To give you the context, I’ll tell you a little of our family hierarchy. We were the youngest of four children and the parents had an interesting relationship where the mother was the dominant force in many ways. We were all scared of the mother when it came to discipline, she would yell at us and enforce physical punishment.  In contrast, the father sat in his chair in brooding anger.

As far as I’m aware we had two sets of lounge furniture during my life in that house.  I don’t have any memories of the first one, but I know from family stories that it was a 3 seater couch with 2 chairs.  When the renovations on the house were done, a new set was purchased.  It was a 3.5 seater couch and had larger chairs.  Even with this second couch, I was relegated to the floor as I was the youngest and smallest child.  The older siblings would simply push me off the couch and use me as a foot stool.  Because of this, I was often invited to sit on the father’s lap.

You would think that this would mean that I hated that chair.  I think some of us did and still do, but I also know that we felt some sort of tie to the chair.  When we wanted to be far away from the sister’s boyfriend one night, we curled up on the father’s chair.  I’m not sure if this was to gain some sense of strength from the chair, or possibly it was to try and kick-start the dissociation.

One of the enduring memories of this chair is the view from behind the chair, looking at the father sitting in it with his legs crossed.  Often there would be a beer in his hand.  It is amazing how his silence could fill the room.  How his anger could fill the room.  I know that some of us used to bait him by making fun of the rugby or cricket.  I tried not to let that happen too often as the consequences weren’t pleasant.

His anger could make everyone in the house walk around on eggshells.  Some outbursts of anger were expected – the sister getting a new boyfriend, the brother being in a car accident, school report time.  But sometimes he would brood for days or weeks.  During those times I had to carry and fetch for him.  I remember the mother saying we were his favourite so he wouldn’t hurt us…

When the marriage ended and the house contents were sold, the lounge furniture was split up.  The couch was kept, but the chairs were thrown away.  I remember R coming forward and saying he wanted to burn the chairs.  The mother laughed at this, thinking it was part of the game where we now all hated the father.  She didn’t see the rage behind the statement.

It’s been hard writing this without falling into a flashback.  Sometimes the flashbacks are so strong in their pull, they suck you in and take you for a roller-coaster ride through hell.  I know I’ve glossed over much of what occurred in and around that chair.  But you all don’t need to read the details.

What I will share, is that the father’s anger was thrust upon me through the actions of those around me.  I’ll never understand why they chose the youngest and most sensitive child to act as fetch and carrier for the angry force in the house.  Yes, we were his favourite, but that wasn’t a good thing.  This role encouraged me to feel responsible for his anger.  It made me feel as if his explosions were my fault.  As children, we often feel as if we are responsible for the anger of our parents and desperately try to fix things.  But most of the time we have no idea what was broken, so we look around for a miracle cure that doesn’t exist.

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Now playing: Hollie Smith – Bathe in the river
via FoxyTunes

Silence is very loud

As a note of warning, this entry could be triggering.  No event is described, but abuse is mentioned.

If you have silence in communities, I think that silence is very loud.

(Rebombo as cited in Jecks, 2009)

This quote is from Dumisani Rebombo, a man who admits to raping a young woman in his village.  He was talking about how silence within the community, enables South Africa to continually have appallingly high rape statistics.  But I think that this quote is easily transferred to almost every situation where abuse goes unreported or hidden.  Someone is keeping the silence, someone is benefiting from that silence and someone is suffering within that silence.  Through tacit consent areas within society allow abuse to occur.  In New Zealand, the most obvious case of this was the death of Nia Glassie.  Neighbours and family members admitted during the trial, to seeing Nia being subjected to the horrific abuse.  But, they never reported any of this abuse to the authorities until after her death.  The silence around Nia was deafeningly loud.

The secrets that the dissociative system keep are another form of this type of silence.  I often wonder when we learned to keep the silence.  As a newborn until about six months old we screamed whenever put down for a nap, so we obviously didn’t come into this world silent.  We were the only one of the four children that was a Plunket baby – monitored for health, well-being and development.  According to our Plunket book, we were a healthy, happy, alert and curious baby.  But by the time we reached school, we were noted as being withdrawn, studious and a loner.  The changes in our behaviour may well be nothing of consequence, but in the context of Katie being three (nearly four), it raises questions.  It is this documented change that I struggle with the most.  Why were there no questions asked?  Why didn’t anyone see the changes?  I know that there are now no answers for these questions, but it feels like we were subjected to abuse and an associated tacit consent from before the age of four.  This consent meant that for the next 30 years, it felt as if we didn’t have any control over our life.  This statement is obviously not true in the strictest meaning of the words – we went to University, got a job, moved away from the home town etc.  But none of those decisions seemed to have been made consciously, it was about meeting expectations of those around us and keeping busy – must always keep busy…

The one other area of our life where the quote from Rebombo fits, is the silent anger that the father exhibited.  I’ve mentioned the father’s brooding, silent anger briefly several times in this blog.  One day I might be able to write about it in more depth – not his anger, but the effects that it had.  Today isn’t that day, but if I keep mentioning it in little snippets, then it becomes less scary to talk and think about.  Well, that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it :)

Reference:

Jecks, N. (2009, July 29). Tackling South Africa’s rape epidemic. BBC News. Retrieved August 1, 2009, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8171874.stm

Hospitals – the psychiatric type

In the town where we grew up, there was a psychiatric hospital.  It was spoken about in hushed whispers as a scary place where crazy people were fenced in and tortured.  In reality, the hospital catered predominantly for those who were institutionalised during a time in our history when those with even minor problems were often hidden away.  We were told as part of our abuse, that if we told the secrets we would be sent to prison or this hospital forever.  So our early contact with psychiatric hospitals was negative.

If you place these experiences within the context of our rather traumatic experiences with the medical profession, you get a picture of someone who has deep seeded issues and fears about all things medical.  The young ones especially react with terror even when driving by a hospital.  We avoid dentists, doctors and nurses where at all possible.  In many ways this fear enabled us to appear high functioning for many years – if there was a threat of having to ask for help through therapy or medication, well that just wasn’t acceptable.  Time to stamp it all back down into The Basement and carry on being invisible.

Then arrives the dissociative train wreck we experienced when about 34.  Our coping mechanisms fell apart.  Then there was the final straw – we were teaching a group of 40 students when something about the interactive whiteboard markers caused Angel to come forward.  So there you have a 5 year old drawing pictures of flowers on the whiteboard while a group of adult students look on.  M comes back to find half the board covered…

So back to therapy we went.  We were in the throes of an abusive marriage and suddenly facing a childhood that wasn’t as perfect as we’d convinced ourselves it was.  These factors led to constant suicidal ideation and intent, which in turn resulted in us needing to find some support to keep safe.

In New Zealand there are a few support lines for suicide help – Lifeline, Samaritans, Youthline, the emergency number or the local mental health hotline.  Lifeline, Samaritans and Youthline are confidential – unless they feel you are in danger, in which case they will try to get your details and send around the Police.  Emergency services transfer you through to the mental health hotline, unless you are already need emergency care.  Once you’re in the mental health system, you are told to call the mental health hotline.  Usually you wait for 5-10 minutes on hold before the phone is answered – ever been suicidal during the Christmas season and had to listen to Christmas carols for 20 minutes while waiting to see if someone can help you stop killing yourself?  You can at least double the waiting time if you call after midnight, as that’s when they go down to one or two operators.

If you do manage to get through to a human, you’re asked for your details – name, phone, address, caseworker and then why you’ve called.  If they consider you to be at risk, they will send around the local mental health workers to assess you.  If they consider that you aren’t at risk, they will discuss grounding skills you can use before sending you on your way.  The problem with this is that at any one time we can have up to 5 suicide plans – apparently that means we don’t really mean to die as we’re not focused on one plan (we consider it covering our bases in case one doesn’t work).  We can also begin the phone call with one who wants to reach out for help; but by the time we get to actually talk to someone, we’ve switched to one who either won’t talk or says that everything is fine.  So in many ways the service doesn’t suit us (and a majority of the population).

If you are considered at risk, you get the joyful experience of being escorted up to the psychiatric ward of the local hospital.  Where you begin the wait for some poor registrar who has been working for at least 10 hours and is surviving on a combination of adrenaline, coffee and sugar.  This person then has to assess your level of danger.  Most registrars haven’t dealt with anyone with a dissociative disorder, let alone tried to understand if there really is a risk.  They have a thankless job of walking a tightrope – is the patient telling the truth?  To make this job more complicated, during our experiences with registrars they’ve encountered –

• Aimee (9 yrs old and carefree) who smilingly told the nice young registrar that she was too young to drink.  Quite forgetting that the body she shares is in it’s mid 30’s and sitting cross-legged on a hospital bed while drips are hanging from each arm to pump us full of drugs to counter the drugs we’d OD’d on.
• Sophie (16 yrs old) who is our safest bet for these assessments – no one would section Sophie.  The main problem is getting close enough to hear her as she talks very quietly when scared or worried.
• M who is the other safe bet.  She’s confident and knows how to work the mental health system to ensure that we are released.  Release is always her goal as the young ones she protects are violently triggered by hospitals.
• Ellie who won’t be sectioned as long as she can keep her swearing and scorn for the medical profession under control.
• Frank who is the worst one to front for an assessment.  He doesn’t get suicidal, but doesn’t understand what constitutes aggressive behaviour as seen in the eyes of a psychiatrist.  He doesn’t actually get aggressive, but his anger at being in a hospital is seen as aggression.

It’s at this point where we’ve usually been sent home.  But on two occasions we’ve been admitted or sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Event 1:  Sectioning with two nights in hospital.

1. Night of admission, put into art therapy room with triggering artwork around the walls.
2. Given a single room across from an alcoholic man in his 40’s (the father is an alcoholic).
3. As punishment for being admitted W used all of her strength to try and break the arms by bashing them against the storage unit in the room.
4. A miracle was there in the form of a part-time night nurse.  She realised we wouldn’t sleep so asked if we wanted art supplies and then she sat and talked to us.  She didn’t care who she talked to, she just sat on the floor and let us talk and draw.  She got us Arnica cream for the bruised, swollen mess that was now our arms without a fuss.
5. Then there was the daytime registrar.  We had asked to be released as the hospital was too triggering.  He went through the whole assessment again.  He asked why our symptoms made us special.  We tried to explain that we weren’t special, just sometimes experienced dissociation.  He dismissed the dissociation saying it wasn’t important.  Then when returning after talking to the consultant, said that the dissociation made us too unpredictable to release.  Yes, the one symptom that he totally dismissed, became the thing he used to keep us in.
6. That night the same part-time nurse told us how to get out – say the words “I have no intent”.
7. The following day a different registrar got the consultant to come in and talk to us.  He was going to let us out for the day, but M came forward and dazzled him with a veil of sanity.  We were outta there.

Event 2:  Admitted to the secure unit with one night stay.

1. Saturday afternoon attempted suicide through an overdose and was taken to ER by the husband.
2. Put on a drip and was overwhelmed by the dissociation.
3. Overheard the nurses say that we hadn’t really overdosed, but were just attention seeking – our bed was right beside the nurses station and strangely enough the curtains aren’t sound proof.
4. As soon as we were coherant, we asked to leave.
5. After a 5 hour wait, we were assessed by the same psychiatrist who once picked up the phone while we were in the room and told the DBT specialist that “the borderline actually turned up, do you want to come meet her?”
6. Because of all the triggers, Ellie and Frank weren’t able to control the anger very well.  We were escorted to the secure unit by the Police.  We didn’t threaten anyone or even raise our voice, but we were considered to be irrational and dangerous because of the barely contained rage.
7. We were released the next morning.

If we are ever sectioned again, we’ll request to go to the secure unit.  It was comparatively peaceful and safe.  If any of the half a dozen patients even raise their voice, they are immediately surrounded by about four staff and taken away to be calmed down.  The only downside was that the cups of tea were lukewarm – hot water being a dangerous weapon.

This is a very light hearted look at our experiences.  In reality, during the sectioning Sophie was nearly destroyed when her twin came from The Basement to tell her why they were created.  The day after we were released from the secure unit, the ex-husband tried to kill us.  Other incidents have occurred while we’ve been waiting to be assessed, including one I’d like to forget where a patient masturbated while looking through the window at us.

We sit in wonder when people say that they voluntarily go to hospital.  It’s a concept that we don’t understand – why would you volunteer for torture, ridicule and scorn?  We know our perception is warped and that hospitals help people every day.  But it’s not something we identify with.  It was once recommended that we go to Ashburn Hospital for a minimum of six months to try and break our cycle of destructive thinking.  Just the thought of that was terrifying.  I wonder if part of the reason is that in New Zealand the focus within the psychiatric ward seems to be on holding you in a safe place until the suicidal intent goes, rather than helping you in a long term way.  It’s reactive rather than proactive.

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Now playing: Dixie Chicks – Wide open spaces
via FoxyTunes

Issues that need tissues *Triggering*

Ever been thinking along harmless, innocent lines of thought only to be flattened by a new understanding or trigger?  We’ve just been reading Paul’s entry about dreaming and his question to David regarding his statement “I don’t think that’s what the dream is about at all. I rarely think that people in dreams actually represent themselves; they’re more likely, I think, to be aspects of the dreamer.”  We were thinking this statement over within our context in a very detached and subjective way.  To us, this statement means that you sometimes don’t want to face your own shortcomings, fears, personality flaws etc., so will project those characteristics onto another person within your dream – the person chosen may already have similar characteristics to create further barriers between yourself and the part of you that makes you feel uncomfortable, but it’s a self-protection strategy.  We were happily going off into a fairly well reasoned argument with ourselves about this when a little voice says “that’s why we created Frank, cos it couldn’t be Daddy doing that to us, so it had to be someone else, so we made up Frank”.  A conversation stopper if ever there was one.

As an explanation, Frank in an alter who is male and in his mid-late 30’s.  He is angry and abusive within the system – usually victimising S.  He’s rarely near the front, but when he is, it is usually as a very heavy form of protection.  I know that doesn’t make sense, but when Ellie and the other ones on the 2nd floor have to take control, Frank helps Ellie to ensure that safety is maintained.

We’ve actively worked against the idea that we were sexually abused by the father.  Some of the reasoning for this is sound, in that there are no memories of him sexually abusing us – we agree that there was a degree of psychological abuse, but not sexual.  Some of the reasoning is a little more shaky – it’s a cliché, he didn’t have the opportunity, it makes no sense and IT JUST DIDN’T HAPPEN OK!

There you have it, a long held argument as to why the father didn’t sexually abuse us.  Then little annoying facts are mentioned – what about after Nan died?  What about when the mother used to go sleep in the lounge because she didn’t want to be near him?  What about the night the ear drum burst?  How did we get to those parties if he didn’t take us?  What about all the late nights at the club?

The games the mind can play…  Two totally opposing truths sit within the one brain.  The very first therapist we saw asked us about sexual abuse, we immediately said “No”.  We’ve always had memories of some sexual abuse, but we didn’t want to look at it.  Part of this was because we thought that what occurred to us was normal.  If it wasn’t normal, then it must have been because we were such an evil little girl.  Who wants to talk about being so evil that people were forced to use you?  Management sure didn’t.  She was protecting Katie, W and SO.  No one messes with those three again without stepping over her dead and beaten body.  It was a double edged sword, M knew we needed help but knew that the help would hurt us further.  So she used the therapy as a form of wake-up call – repress all those feelings again or else we’ll be forced to look at things we don’t want to.  It worked, we didn’t need therapy for another 10 years.

Now we’ve been in therapy for about 5 years.  Once a week we go and sit through an hour of torture.  At times we regret the journey to healing that we’ve begun.  At times it feels as if it would be so much easier to end it all.  At times our desire to fight and heal is incredible.  We were once asked by a therapist if we regret starting therapy again, in many ways we do.  Who wants to know that the “little girl over there” that all those awful things happened to, wasn’t another little girl, but was you?

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Now playing: Natalie Merchant – My skin
via FoxyTunes

Airports and families

We went to pick up the mother from the airport today.  It was pouring with rain and the wind was coming as an icy blast from the Desert Road.  While we were sitting in the airport lounge we were dissociating badly and switching all over the place.  It wasn’t a negative thing, just unsettling and rather unusual.  Part of the reason was because there was a high number of families with young children in the lounge area.  At one point a girl who was about 3-4 and what appeared to be her father came and sat near us.  The girl was a typical 3-4 year old on a rainy day – full of energy and excited about seeing who was coming on the plane.  She ran up to the glass looking out over the runway and was pressed her nose up against the glass.  All the time the man with her was talking softly to her.  But he was also listening to what she was saying.  When she went up to the glass he  followed her and crouched down beside her.  He kept his hands in his jacket pockets and just talked to her as if she was a 3-4 year old.  He didn’t fondle her.  He didn’t talk to her like an adult.  He didn’t expect her to sit down and be quiet.  He treated her like the child she was and he would look after her.  She didn’t have to look after him.  She didn’t have to gauge his mood.  She didn’t have to stand in front of him for the fondling.

Is that how fathers are meant to treat their daughters?

We know that on an intellectual level what we saw today was how it’s meant to be.  We treat any child who comes near us with the care and respect that this man showed this girl.  But today for some reason one of us stared at this interaction and asked if that’s what normal looks like.  It was like it was the first time they’d seen something that didn’t involve a girl being hurt.

Soon after another family came by.  This was a woman with four children – some her own and some nephews.  She did an amazing job of managing these children.  She got them co-operating without making the older one responsible for the others.  The youngest girl was always monitored and allowed to take part in the activities of the others.  At one point the woman asked the children to sit down so that the could eat the food she’d brought to help ease their boredom during the wait for the plane.  At this point another young one of ours got caught in a flashback briefly as they heard the voice say to “Sit there and shut up”.  What the woman had actually said was to “Sit there and share your chippies with your cousin”.  The tone of voice she used was calm and questioning rather than demanding.  The different tone she used was enough to break the descent into the flashback.

I have no idea why these events affected us so deeply today.  I have no idea which young ones were so eager to watch what was happening at the airport.  I do know that it was TR who greeted the mother from the plane and went supermarket shopping with her.  That in itself is very unusual.  TR is a roamer like B, but rarely comes forward to talk to anyone.  She did talk to a former psychiatrist once, which was rather amusing considering she knows very little about our life in the real world.

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Trio meet Liz

Up until today’s session Liz has predominantly talked to Sophie.  Today, Liz got B acting as a filter for M and One.  This group present quite differently to Sophie.  Sophie is gentle, shy and talks very softly; while the trio are observers, direct and carefully consider all responses.  As an example, if Liz asked who was present, Sophie would immediately respond with her name; while the trio would want to respond with “it’s none of your business”, but would mull it over and then say “mainly B”.

This trio is what Carol used to call the no-affective response powerhouse.  It can be quite intimidating and definitely throws an inexperienced therapist.  But for the trio, there were questions and issues that needed addressing – informing Liz of what happened at the support group appointment and questioning the whole “who have you become” statement.  It also made the observations of Liz easier, as the softness of Sophie was eliminated from the equation.

It became obvious that Liz has decided that father abuse is the main issue – despite the fact that there is no mention of this abuse on our records and us not having mentioned it within session.  We’re losing approximately half to three quarter of the sessions to stress and dissociative related memory loss, so it’s possible it has been mentioned and we’re not aware of it.  Liz is looking at the family dynamics and trying to understand them – we wish her luck.  I thought that’s why they invented ambiguous labels like “dysfunctional”, so that you didn’t need to poke at some things.

We made our discomfort with the “who have you become now” phrase known.  Liz clarified that she wasn’t meaning anything about us acting different roles when there was a switch.  It will be interesting to see if she uses it again.

I’ve often thought we must be an awful client for any therapist.  We don’t attach in any sort of way to anyone and because of the compartmentalisation we appear to contradict ourselves so often it must be hard for the therapist to keep any sort of event straight.

In other news, it’s all over with Kriss and the young ones have just started a blog of their own to help increase communication and participation – worked a little too well last night with us being woken up by a young one who wanted to write that they liked the header image that was used :)

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Now playing: Audioslave – Cochise
via FoxyTunes