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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 15 of 15. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Medusa on October 7, 2002, at 8:12:29
DH dragged me to see his "family systems analyst". She took all his complaints about me, turned them on him, and gave him homework.
We went back. I said I was blocked on my job search. She rustled around a bit and pulled out ... my mother.
True enough. My mother finds it bad enough that I went to College X, married a gentle, handsome man, and have freedom and a life. When I had a severe bike accident and got knocked off the career track, my mother actually seemed happy, and congratulated me for keeping my weight down despite the inactivity.
But I can't seem to get the homework straight. First I was supposed to write a letter to my mother about her reaction to the bike accident. I had trouble with that (guess I better try again though) and then the shrink changed the assignment a bit, well a lot, and I'm having even more trouble.
In a phone call in which she asked more questions about my mother's family, the counselor suggested that mum's father's early death might explain my mother's emotional unavailability.
Dang I just want a job. But I really, truly am blocked here, and I bet the therapist is right, that the root of a lot of it is my mother's wish for me to fail. So we could be closer or something.
But ... isn't all this mother stuff really outmoded and passé?
The therapist even gave me little wooden blocks, one 'female' and one 'male', to represent my parents, or the anima and animus or something.
Any experiences with stuff like this? This counselor managed to cut DH's umbilical cord (which was wrapped around his neck AND attached to both parents, imagine!) so I have to do this work, but I have no idea how to move forward.
Rambling and lost,
M
Posted by Burt on October 7, 2002, at 14:47:26
In reply to mother - and Freud? help!, posted by Medusa on October 7, 2002, at 8:12:29
Medusa:
Would you trust your doctor if you found out that he is suffering from severe depressions and that he has a major case of cocaine addiction?
Sigmund Freud's work was very important at the time. It revolutionized psychotherapy. But he suffered from severe depressions, and he had a major case of cocaine addiction.
Your question "But ... isn't all this mother stuff really outmoded and passé?" is right on the money. Well, we are all children of our parents. Their genes and our upbringing molded us.
But even assuming that your mother is responsible for your block in your job search: Does knowing that remove the block? Or does it simply give you a reason to go on waffling?
You can't change the past. You can learn from it to avoid repeating it, but you can't change it. All you can do is influence your future.
If I were in your shoes, I would say "!@#$% the past!" And instead of writing a letter to my mother, I would send out 300 resumes.
Also, I would quickly remove the thought "My mother wishes me to fail" from my brain. Very dangerous. Grant her her wishes, and you will fail. Succeed, and you will not give her what your mother wants.
There's only one way out of it: "This is BS. I will sit down now and send out 300 resumes."
Posted by Ginjoint on October 7, 2002, at 16:33:41
In reply to mother - and Freud? help!, posted by Medusa on October 7, 2002, at 8:12:29
Holy crap, Medusa, can I relate. I'm going through a very difficult job search right now also, and I know how much fun it's NOT. Job hunting involves selling yourself (ewwwww!), and to do that, a lot of us have to overcome some psychic muck. Sometimes, I think job hunting is easy only for simple-minded folk, God bless 'em.
Anyway, I feel the same that all the mother stuff sounds passe -- my pdoc hits me with it too -- but there might be something here worth looking at. There's more to job searching than meets the eye -- not only issues of success and failure come up, but also how life has or has not gone according to what you (or your parents) had planned, and the bittersweet feelings that may follow. We also deal with this when we wonder what our parents think of us as adults, too.
I would go ahead and write the letter...but, when I'm stuck on something I have to write, I DON'T just sit down and force it all out at once. Instead, I keep a pad of paper near me at all times, even when watching T.V. or especially when I'm trying to fall asleep at night. Whenever any relevant thought hits me, I write it down, just briefly. I end up with a series of very short blurbs, and when I feel "done" thinking it out (you'll know when), that's when I sit down and put the points in some coherent order and write it out. The hard part of writing is thinking of EXACTLY what you want to say, and this can take some time, so give it to yourself. I can tell by your post that you're a very thoughtful, literate person, so I know you can do this! I think it will be worth it, too...the clarity you gain might help get you over the hump. Or not. Life's a bitch that way.
Hoped this helped in some way, shape, or form.
Ginjoint
Posted by madison88 on October 7, 2002, at 21:14:04
In reply to Re: mother - and Freud? help!, posted by Ginjoint on October 7, 2002, at 16:33:41
that kind of dr is only going to focus on your relationships with other people, not you directly. if you feel that YOU need help, i would see a cognitive behavioralist. they keep things very relevant and to the point. they don't drag issues out. of course, this is generally the way cog beh. work, you could always get a weird one. working things out with your parents and others does usually help you feel better about life in general, but in this case you have a specific problem at hand you need to work on. i would get into therapy with this issue being the one you want resolved from the get-go. stay focused and clear on what the goals are. good luck!
Posted by Tabßitha on October 8, 2002, at 0:52:42
In reply to mother - and Freud? help!, posted by Medusa on October 7, 2002, at 8:12:29
Medusa,
It may seem odd to talk about your mom when your problem is needing to get a job, but therapy can be a strange process. I've been talking about my procrastination habit for years, and it's resisted all sorts of attacks. Last week the therapist tried a new tack, she tried to get me to feel compassion for my fear of moving forward. At the time I thought it was a pointless exercise, but now it seems like the pattern is finally crumbling. My point is, you never know what will help. Blocks like you're experiencing are complicated.
You can't get away from mother issues, sadly enough. It's a lifetime task to untangle that early influence. All that stuff is worth looking at, but is the therp helping you make any progress on the jobhunt in the meantime?
When I was totally stuck on job search stuff, my therp would ask me what was the next thing I needed to do, and how long was I willing to work on it. At first my willingness was about 5 minutes, but considering I'd been avoiding the task for years, that was great progress. She'd also ask me how long it might reasonably take to complete a task such as updating my resume, and I'd realize I'd been torturing myself for months over a task that might reasonably take only 4 hours to complete. Somehow I finally got thru it all, one torturous step at a time, and ended up with multiple job offers.
I had all that fear of success, fear of happiness stuff too. Fear of losing the only connection I had to my mom, which was being like her (depressed and victimized). I'm still working on that stuff. Any progress on core issues like that makes a huge difference in the rest of your life. You have to take care of practical stuff in the meantime though.
Posted by Medusa on October 8, 2002, at 2:01:19
In reply to Re: mother - and Freud? help!, posted by Ginjoint on October 7, 2002, at 16:33:41
> Holy crap, Medusa, can I relate.
Thanks Ginjoint, this identification helps me a lot. I feel so bloody isolated!
>Job hunting involves selling yourself (ewwwww!)that, and convincing someone I really really want to do something that pales in comparison to the attraction of ceasing to exist. "what's your 10-year plan?" is not meant to be answered with, "well, I certainly hope I'll be long-buried by then!".
> life has or has not gone according to what you (or your parents) had planned,
>yeah, I was supposed to marry a missionary (at first, to be one, then my parents got onto a submission kick, whereby a woman should not leave her father's home until she marries) and instead I went to a secular college.
They fought me tooth and nail on the college thing, and had their friends all praying that Jesus would lead me back to the fold, and wrote dozens of bitter letters.
Of course, my parents now claim credit for anything I have or do that looks like success. They flaunt my Ivy degree as justification of their childrearing and education practices.
I can't win - if they think I'm happy and successful, they take credit; if they think I'm miserable and a loser, they blame my unbelief and everything I did wrong. But ... most parents do something like this. Why am I so hung up on it?
> keep a pad of paper near me at all times
Brilliant. I'll do this. The last time I used this technique was on my college app essays over a decade ago - I was frozen (almost literally, since my room was in an unheated basement) and couldn't crank out the story I needed to tell, but I had to get the heck out of there. Funny, I feel like I've regressed since then.
>the clarity you gain might help get you over the hump. Or not. Life's a bitch that way.
>I think it will. And the shrink isn't purely analytical - she's a real kick-in-the-ars kind of person. She only took 3 sessions to work out most of DH's stuff with his screwed up family. He did a 180, and he's not a therapy kind of person - he initially went to her to ask for some tips on coping with my depression.
> Hoped this helped in some way, shape, or form.
Immensely. Thanks very much, again, Ginjoint.
-M
Posted by Medusa on October 8, 2002, at 2:10:56
In reply to Re: mother - and Freud? help!, posted by Tabßitha on October 8, 2002, at 0:52:42
Hi Tabßitha,
> It may seem odd to talk about your mom when your problem is needing to get a job,
>Well ... somehow it feels right, like a spot of gangrene I've tried to keep restricted to one area, but that's been poisoning my entire system.
>feel compassion for my fear of moving forward.I'm glad that this is working ... I might just try it, too.
> therp helping you make any progress on the jobhunt in the meantime?
>I think so ... I also had a smaller block about the job search, since I felt like getting a job would mean leaving DH (or +having+ to stay with him if he gets a job in the same city), in short I was really, really conflicted, and she said to just separate the areas, and she told him to his face that it was possible that once I had a good job, I would figure out that he wasn't what I wanted in my life, and that I would figure out what I owed him and pay him back, and that none of that should stand in the way of my job search. I've looked a bit at one-person apartments in the city I'm job-searching in, and feel much better about all options. All this from a ten-minute section of the last therapy hour.
AND she said, fear is part of the job search, just accept that and move forward through it.
> what was the next thing I needed to do, and how long was I willing to work on it.
>ah, great tip! right now I'm trying to fill in the cover-letter-ish part of an on-line job app, and I can NOT get myself geared up to feeling happy about the job.
> Somehow I finally got thru it all, one torturous step at a time, and ended up with multiple job offers.
>Hey, THAT is a success story. Just what I need for encouragement. Thanks, Tabbitha!
> Fear of losing the only connection I had to my mom, which was being like her (depressed and victimized).
>yeah. I hear you. Our relationship is all about that.
>Any progress on core issues like that makes a huge difference in the rest of your life. You have to take care of practical stuff in the meantime though.
>Ah, that oh-so-hard-to-find balance ...
Thanks once more ... I really savor every bit of encouragement I get.
-M
Posted by Medusa on October 8, 2002, at 2:17:04
In reply to Re: mother - and Freud? help!, posted by madison88 on October 7, 2002, at 21:14:04
Hi Madison, thanks for your input.
> that kind of dr is only going to focus on your relationships with other people, not you directly.
>
I wasn't clear in my first post. She's not purely freudian, I don't think. She's very firm on the point of ME having to change, of ME taking responsibility for my part in the past and being absolutely proactive for my role in the future.
>they don't drag issues out.this one isn't, either, as far as I can tell. Her approach is one session per month, for three or four months. That worked for DH's stuff, which wasn't small. Sounds like snake oil, but she's intense, and he really needed at least three weeks to process each session, implement her advice and do his homework.
> stay focused and clear on what the goals are.Thanks. Getting a job is part of getting free from my parents ... my goal in this therapy is to get a bloody job and get off on the right foot in it. I'm going to find a job coach once I have a job (most likely in another city), since issues repeatedly come up in work situations, that I just need to deal with.
.M
Posted by Medusa on October 8, 2002, at 2:24:45
In reply to Re: mother - and Freud? help!, posted by Burt on October 7, 2002, at 14:47:26
> Would you trust your doctor if you found out that he is suffering from severe depressions and that he has a major case of cocaine addiction?
>
I wouldn't exclude the possibility of his having valuable insight. I'm capable of terrific work even though I suffer from severe depression.> But even assuming that your mother is
>responsible for your block in your job search:She's not responsible for the block. I am. My reactions to her are the block. So if I change my reactions, there goes the block.
>Does knowing that remove the block? Or does it simply give you a reason to go on waffling?
>Mmm, I think that gaining understanding of why she behaved the way she did, will help me to gain some emotional distance and healing, thus changing my reactions to her, thus easing the removal of the block.
Already, the little understanding I have - and the therapist repeating that I could NOT have changed my mother - has removed a lot of my objections to successful employment.
>instead of writing a letter to my mother, I would send out 300 resumes.
>Not sure what field you're in, Burt, but in mine, this would be a sure-fire recipe for receipt of 300 rejection letters. I'll take your point to mean, Take Action, and yes, I'll do that.
> Also, I would quickly remove the thought "My mother wishes me to fail" from my brain. Very dangerous.
>Acknowledging the wish isn't the same as granting it. I think that the wish has to be acknowledged in order to effectively reject it.
Denying the existence of her wish and it's importance has thus far arrested my progress. So for now, I'm going to try the head-on approach.
Thanks for your input - I didn't realise that Freud used cocaine!
-M
Posted by Burt on October 8, 2002, at 9:33:57
In reply to resume canvassing » Burt, posted by Medusa on October 8, 2002, at 2:24:45
Medusa:
Sometimes, life is simpler than it looks.
If you think, sending out 300 resumes will only get you 300 rejections, you gain nothing.
If you send out 300 resumes and indeed get 300 rejections, same effect. No harm done. Wasted: Postage. Gained: "I was right in the first place."
If you send out 300 resumes, get 295 rejections, 5 interviews, and a job, you have a job.
Posted by Mashogr8 on October 8, 2002, at 14:28:01
In reply to Re: mother - and Freud? help!, posted by Tabßitha on October 8, 2002, at 0:52:42
"but therapy can be a strange process. I've been talking about my procrastination habit for years, and it's resisted all sorts of attacks. Last week the therapist tried a new tack, she tried to get me to feel compassion for my fear of moving forward. At the time I thought it was a pointless exercise, but now it seems like the pattern is finally crumbling. My point is, you never know what will help. Blocks like you're experiencing are complicated."
***What did you mean by the new tact of feeling compassion for the fear of moving forward that your therapist had talked about? I've spent at least fifteen years trying to give up procrastination and cluttering. I'd appreciate it if you would expand on that comment. Maybe you have the magic solution......I hope.
Thanks
MA
Posted by Tabßitha on October 9, 2002, at 2:23:56
In reply to Re:New Tact therapy/TAbitha (Can't do the fancy), posted by Mashogr8 on October 8, 2002, at 14:28:01
I'm not sure I can explain it very well. I know that when I fight a habit, it usually just fights back. I've always heard the first step to change is acceptance of where you are now, but that hasn't ever really meant much to me. I think maybe the pain of not changing finally exceeded the pain of changing. It helped to try to imagine my life in 10 years without any change. Yikes, that was an awful thought.
On a practical level, I find it's helping just to do tiny things that violate my usual routine, like sitting in a different chair, or doing tasks at a different time of day. Just anything to break up the awful feeling of being stuck in a rut. It also helped to remember that I have changed other bad habits, so why not this one?
Posted by MAL on October 10, 2002, at 21:48:51
In reply to Re:New Tact therapy/TAbitha (Can't do the fancy), posted by Mashogr8 on October 8, 2002, at 14:28:01
Hey, about the cluttering- maybe you already know about this, but in case you don't- there is a site called FLYlady.net that I have found helpful. (She does sell some products, but purchase is not necessary to participate in her program). Anyway, she has a plan for decluttering your home and her general idea is rooted in routines, chores for 15 min at a time. There is also a "nagging" email service you can sign up for to remind you to keep up with the chores. Her site is full of good humor. It might or might not help you, but it is worth a shot... Good luck! MAL
Posted by Mashogr8 on October 11, 2002, at 15:01:33
In reply to cluttering » Mashogr8, posted by MAL on October 10, 2002, at 21:48:51
Mal, Thank you so much for your input. I found the website and I've bookmarked it. At this very moment, I need fly paper to make everything stiack to me so I won't lose it. I found the paper I needed earlier Thank God for small favors.
My stress level is so high I feel like I'm going to pop. I spent thirty minutes on the phone this afternoon tryhing to make appointments with different parents ofr IEP meetings. I had my planning book, a page with available times and phone numbers. Two peole got po'd because I dialed the wrong number. And on one of those wrong numbers, I forgot to mark it wrong and look up the right number so I again got the same lady who was even more po'd. I had the secretary at school dial the number, she got to the right home I must have missdialed the same seven numbers wrong two times. Then I called one family and left a message on their machine but I forgot to mark down the time so when I called the next family I gave them a time too close to the other family which I found out when family #1 called back to confirm. I had tried to write it all down to keep it streaight but it all came out wrong-I am just one stupid shthead. I just want to roll up in a ball under my desk and cry, scream, rant and rave. the meds have ruined my ability to cry for at least twelve years I haven't been able to shed a tear, happy or dad. AT this stage of the game, I'd like wail so loud that the police would be called. I won't but I sure need to.
When I'm talking to people things come out wrong and people laugh like it's no big deal, butthis is happening, way to often, in front of groups of people, just not good, especially for a speech//language therapist.
I keep working late at school and getting nowhere fast and hating myself moree and more.
My only access to a computer at this minute and since Wednesday is at school. Something went wrong with my dial-up at home and I can't get a phone line so I can't even use the computer til Tuesday (thanks to Columbus :-(!!!!!!!
I don't even know how to fix it (the dumber than me laptop.). I tried a couple of things to fix it but none worked. It's raining outside and trouble is raining inside all over me. I have to go to a business dinner paarty tonight with my husband. I sure don't feel like smiling or talking. What good is talking when I'm not making sense.
I'm trying to take enough stuff home with me so I can finish my schedule for kids, write eight IEPs and writeup five evaluations. I am so afraid that I won't bring everthing home that I need - nevermind actually do the work.
God, I'm sorry to run on but it's better than running away, then again, maybe not :-(
A way too unhappy, depressed MA
Posted by Mal on October 13, 2002, at 16:22:45
In reply to Re: cluttering, posted by Mashogr8 on October 11, 2002, at 15:01:33
You ARE having a rough day! And what will it hurt to just scream a little? Maybe in the car, in "private"?
As for things/words coming out all wrong, I know where you're coming from- I think we are neighbors. I get very frustrated with myself for sounding so stupid sometimes. Or saying things that might be insulting if they were taken the wrong way. Not that any of this helps you, I'm just comiserating (sp?)...
Anyway, I hope things get better for you soon! And try the FLYlady out. Some of her messages have religious connotations, but her plan is good. She says you can do ANYTHING for 15 minutes!
Keep us posted- good luck!! MAL
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