Posted by Lindenblüte on October 4, 2006, at 10:20:08
In reply to Re: books, boundaries, accents » Lindenblüte, posted by Dinah on October 4, 2006, at 9:57:37
> One of the best things that has come from my therapy is figuring that out. Life is so much less confusing now that I at least find my reactions (for the most part) understandable within the framework of my knowledge of myself.
>
> It all came from what might be a controversial standpoint of thinking differently about my rational conscious self and my hitherto unconscious emotional self. So that actions that made absolutely no sense to me before, although I realized I was taking them but seemed unable to stop doing it, suddenly seemed perfectly understandable given what I knew about this different layer of myself. As long as I accept the fact that I have completely conflicting viewpoints about things at times.
>Hey Dinah,
yeah- that's kind of where I'm at too. Right now it's getting easier for me to understand why I have had really strong reactions to certain strange things in the past. Like the first argument my (then boyfriend) husband and I ever had, when he asked me to iron his shirt for him, and I totally froze, (it was when we were eating dinner out with a big group of friends). He was so confused. Eventually, I said, very quietly, very tensely "DON'T EVER ASK ME TO DO THAT AGAIN. I CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT NOW." And we had a whole 3 days where we tried to dissect whether it was okay or not for a gf to spend 10 minutes ironing her bf's shirt. Now, I know why I had such an immediate panicked, outraged, and frozen attitude. At the time, it was a very very strange feeling, to have an "emotion" provoked so strongly, so unexpectedly, and despite my rational mind telling my heart - hey, it's just a stupid shirt. This guy's cool, just iron the shirt, then we won't have to discuss it again...WOW. now I'm getting a little flashback of the stereotypical fight that my parents would have where my (domestically useless) father would insist that mother iron his shirts before a business trip, and she would scream at him, and they would have a whole argument about how much money he was going to leave her (and the kids) while he was away for a month or a few days or whatever. And they would scream and yell, all over that simple question (or rather demand). "I need you to iron my shirts for me".
ha. well. I guess the next step is to kind of figure out how these uncontrollable emotions are provoked in real-time. To get a sense of what makes it happen, why, and whether I can get it under control in a way that doesn't involve shut-down.
Sorry I just took over this thread!
-Li
poster:Lindenblüte
thread:687876
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060926/msgs/691754.html