Friday, September 21, 2007

Where Do I Start??

I'll start here! Tonight we have our pre-season home opener. We play tonight and tomorrow at home. Tonight against the Ducks and tomorrow against Vancouver. I am really excited!

The rest of this....

1. Made my three year. I almost forgot about it. I was thinking about it (obviously, as I mentioned it in my last post) and then got busy with life stuff.

2. I have dealt with a lot of stuff in therapy, but have continually run, hid and escaped the sexual abuse issues. Mainly because I have minimized it (I know people who have been through a zillion times worse, etc.) and partly because the feelings are pretty much just as they were 25 years ago. This occurred to me Monday when the topic came up and so did the feelings from right after the molestation. Rob thought I was trying to dodge the topic yesterday. Nope. Just stalling a bit.

He asked me if I wanted to try EMDR again and I said yes. We have tried it a couple times with no success. The two things standing in my way have been not wanting to lose emotional control and not being able to firmly establish a safe place. The former popped into my head as I thought about the whole EMDR thing after my session yesterday and the latter we worked on yesterday and I think that will be OK.

I trust Rob and have for a long time, but I think it has taken me almost five years to really understand that. It dawned on me yesterday that I now out him in the same category as my chiropractor and that is HUGE. I don't think I have ever put trust in anyone (person) as much as I have Doug and to truly put Rob right up there is a big deal for me.

3. My aunt and uncle from Seattle will be here tomorrow. I am really glad that I work most of their stay.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

No Quizzes Today!

No quizzes for today, or at least right now. I figured I'd do a real post.

Next week I hit a couple anniversaries. Next week will be three years of no purging and my first anniversary at the HP Pavilion. Both are a little surprising. I reminded Rob about the former and I think he is as surprised as I am. Not so much that I have made it three years with no slips or lapses, but that it has been three years and the time has passed quickly. The last few weeks have been a little difficult, but the main trigger has been wanting to get the anniversary here and over.

The HP anniversary is cool because it is a job that wasn't even on my radar until it happened. I received FOCUS tokens 4 & 5 in August and that is surprising. I set a goal to get my first four in my first year, but then I came to realize it is really subjective and you really need to be in the right place at the right time. So, I did my job as well as I could and it just happened. Believe me, FOCUS tokens are not the reason I do what I do...but I have to admit is a cool way to get some feedback every so often. Our first pre-season Sharks game happens on my hire date! Go Sharks!

At the end of August, Debra resigned. I have stepped in to lead Junior High youth group. Others have stepped in to teach SS and to lead the high school youth group and SS. The position may be advertised starting next week. I can totally accept being a volunteer and I LOVE being a volunteer. However, as I sat in our first "new and improved" adult leadership team meeting last night, I also realized how hard it is going to be to step back from a lead role and just how much I still love youth ministry. Maybe this means I need to start looking.

My biggest hesitation in looking is not finishing with Rob. I have been "left" by therapists and I have left a couple myself and nothing was ever finished. I think with Greg we were close...really close, but I moved to Indiana first. November marks four years with Rob and it truly has been in the last few months that I think I am trusting that he is going to be there and therefore trust risking more in our sessions. My emails are brought up in sessions (I had a really bad habit of sending them and not talking about them) by ME and I am able to vocalize a lot more than I have in the past. Obviously there have been many times like that, but then I have tended to go hide for long periods of time afterward.

Last week I got mad. I got mad and didn't explode, it didn't kill me and I didn't lose control. I didn't overreact, I didn't lash out, I admitted it and I allowed myself to actually feel it. My mom is a rage-o-holic (seriosuly, she drops a piece of paper and she goes from 0-180 on the anger meter in .08 seconds!) and anger has always scared me. Yes, I know Jesus got mad and didn't go over the top, etc., etc. But Jesus was also not beaten with a brush when He was 4 because He didn't know what boring meant and when asked a question said, "It was boring" and paid the consequences (well...he DID...but you get the picture). But, He did get mad.

This was a HUGE thing for me. When Rob didn't reply to my emails about it (that bugs me sooo much) I figured it wasn't that big a deal. Monday he let me know it was HUGE. I do get that we feel whether or not we choose to acknowledge it or let ourselves really feel the emotion, but I have done a fantastic job of minimizing, numbing and otherwise distracting myself from a lot of emotions. It honestly felt extremely freeing to feel it and let it go rather than stressing out trying not to feel it and turning it on myself instead.

I also realized that is ticks me off to have boundaries violated and that I do actually have them! I have just been ignoring those as well.

I don't want and have no intention of going backward but this is all very scary. I have been in this place before (with Greg) and I know this means that my days (though I am guessing a year to 18 months) are numbered with Rob. I don't think I will truly freak out about that until we move from two days a week to once a week, but it's there and I can feel it. We still very much have a proper client/therapist relationship...boundaries, yada, yada, yada...but it's changed a bit over the years and while I am not going to miss the therapy part one day, I am going to miss the book, music, sports talk stuff that has been such a huge part of our therapy relationship.

I shouldn't get ahead of myself. There is still a LOT of work to do. My mind still twists what he says (i.e. we have been somewhat going through a book/hand out and haven't because of other stuff and he wants to get back to it. My head has been telling me that he only cares about the book stuff and that all the other stuff is important), food is still a struggle and I still don't like myself very much. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that IS exciting.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

How Do They Know???

Your Brain is Orange

Of all the brain types, yours is the quickest.
You are usually thinking a mile a minute, and you could be thinking about anything at all.
Your thoughts are often scattered and random - but they're also a lot of fun!

You tend to spend a lot of time thinking about esoteric subjects, the meaning of life, and pop culture.


Thanks,Brian

Thursday, September 06, 2007

LOL!







What Veggie Tales character are you?

I'm Sad...

Sometime I hate email and what it brings. I got home from a baby shower and then a movie and found and email about this man: John Healy

I remember the first show I saw from San Jose Children's Musical Theater. It was at the Center for Performing Arts (normally they performed at the Montgomery Theater) and the show was "Annie Get Your Gun." The actress playing Annie was amazing. It was Girl Scout trip and two of the girls in my troop auditioned for "The Wizard of Oz." We went to go see that as well.

I was sitting in the theater and reading the program. There was a 1/2 page add with two hands clasped and a congratulations message for "John & DeeDee." It took me only a few seconds to realize that John (the director) married DeeDee (the one who played Annie!). I thought it was the coolest thing ever and as I watched him conduct the orchestra I wanted to work this man.

My mom being my mom, it never happened. She didn't want to schlep me to rehearsals. I was pretty ticked for a couple years about it. The man was a musical theater genius and I wanted to be a part of it.

At the beginning of my senior year in high school, we were left without a drama teacher. That also meant we didn't have a teacher for Musical Theater. For some odd reason my friend Lynn and I got pulled into the principal's office to be told to tell the class to hold tight and we should have someone by the end of that first week of school. He gave us the roll sheet and off we went to try and handle a class for a few days. At the end of the week...we had him...John P. Healy. The man I had waited 5 years to work with.

In my one year with him I learned sooooo much. He had student directors so I had the opportunity to do that with "The Mouse that Roared" as well as play a small part and put together the program with another friend. Our yearly variety show was planned mainly by the students. No matter what they said...we knew the groups we were in for some numbers were very much talent based, but that was OK. We had the George M. Cohan number! A group of us did a tribute the Mickey Mouse Club (so much fun), a spoof on a new disciplinary program ("The Wizard of AIM) and got experience making quick costume changes (i.e. a clown suit into a flapper dress).

Our Spring Musical was "The Music Man" and again I had an absolute blast with that show. It was my final show at my school and I don't think I ever had so much fun while working so hard (no offense to C. Michael).

They are doing a memorial service this weekend, but I can't be there. I have youth group on Sunday night. I wish we were making the switch back to Sundays next week instead of this week.