Joaquin F. Sousa-Poza of Galiano Island BC Canada

Ex-Professeur Agrégé de Psychiatrie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada

Introduction

As you will see later in the psychospiritual section, we consider that there is only one self inflicted trauma to the human mind. This trauma of traumas or technicaly a meta-trauma is what gives rise to all human suffering and particularly to the so called neuroses (now scattered in a series of disorders).

We postulate that without the seperation of the human mind from the divinity, human suffering, including neuroses, would turn out to be unnecessary and obsolete. However, while we don't achieve reunion again with the divinity, neuroses have, of course, to be treated. Unfortunately ruled by the male-mind, "love" has always been a four letter word in psychiatry and psychology and was transmuted to sex (like making love). You can make sausages but true love is an attribute that belongs only to the divinity.

In fact you can and will become an outcast in my profession if you give love any relavance whatsoever and much less as the principal of the psyche (like the Lovability Principle).

In other words the balloning male ego obliterates by it's sheer size the most basic need of the mind as little boys and girls know all to well.

Furthermore we have observed that propely treating the wound of love considerably expedites the reunion with the divinity. This treatement involves exposing the feelings of the emotional self which, together with nurturing, leads to the realisation that the "emperor has no clothes". It's not suprising therefore that all male-mind cultureskeep a thight lid over the emotional self as a prerequisite to keep their god-like status. Faced with that dilema male-mind controled psychiatry (psychoanalysis having failed) has now enthusiastically resorted to the next fig leaf: psychochemical-psychiatry only.

Obviously in a wretched condition we are more adept at understanding things than beings because if you were to understand beings it woul inexorably follow that you would understand not only that we are not god but furthermore that the greatest craving of the human mind is not a chorus for bigger shopping malls, poweful cars and jewels but to recover the long lost total intimacy with the divinity.

Yes brother, you have presented us with plenty of evidence that you have to heel before you heal.

Text

After having traversed the Casriel (1972), Janov (1970), and anaclitic (Sousa-Poza, Eagle, Rohrberg & Steinberg 1986) stages in the development of emotional trauma theory (Sousa-Poza, 2005), I am now working with the attachment-informational model whereby intrapsychic conflict is primarily conceived as taking place between the patient's self and his or her introjects (Sousa-Poza, 2005). Hence, conflicts, rather than being "downloaded" onto the therapist via the "transference," are transacted in a series of dialogues enacted between the patient's self and his or her introjects, as well as with other meaningful persons from past or present relationships; these in turn "talk back" via the patient enacting their roles, thus rendering audible the silent hallucinations (Sousa-Poza, 2005) induced by the introjects. Instead of the recumbent position traditionally used for this type of work, a sitting position is used in a way similar to Gestalt-type "chair work," giving control of depth of regression to the patient.

Full emotional expression is encouraged, and the emotional sequence of feelings is tracked at least as carefully asthe mental/verbal content. The therapist guides the patient through five steps, constantly scanning for emotional and cognitive errors that are derived mostly from the patient's inability, due to defensive exclusion and parental deification (Sousa-Poza, 2005), to recognize primal anger. The patient is led to target that anger against the introject instead of dumping (projecting/displacing) it into everyday triggers, or "swallowing it" and turning it against the self. The therapist's fundamental role is to insure that the patient "wins" in her or his ongoing struggle to assert her or his lovability negated by the introject. Challenging both emotionally and cognitively the introject's "reasons" to wrong the self leads to the former's gradual erasing and eventual ejection.

Trained, emotionally healthy therapists and assistant therapists conduct concurrent nurturing/restitution sessions to provide validation of the intrinsic "rightness" of the self, subsumed under the rubric: "They were wrong, YES, you are lovable!" Nurturing is similar to "downloading a patch" to repair a computer's operating system. Female and male nurturers provide the necessary information to reconstruct healthier maternal and paternal introjects in the patient. Working sessions and "support" (nurturing/restitution) sessions are conducted separately and usually during alternate weeks. As discussed later, medication is prescribed as required.

Trauma to the Self Method

The trauma to the Self method described here constitutes an ultra specialized, major medical/psychological intervention, one with potentially severe risks if the leading therapist lacks proper professional training and personal experience with the procedure. Being very malleable, however, the method can be changed into an effective type of talking psychotherapy or counseling, or a problem-focused or time-conscious method. In these lighter forms (to be described elsewhere), which suit many patients, primal anger is not fully mobilized and the self's wounds are not fully opened. There is, therefore, no need for nurturing.

Stages

Treatment length, which varies according to the degree of damage to the patient's self, traverses several distinct phases:
1. The information/evaluation period, which lasts about one month.
2. The acclimatization period, which lasts a few months during which the patient becomes thoroughly fluent with the method.
3. The discovery period, which lasts up to two years or more and consists of the progressive opening of increasingly severe, traumatic emotional files (Sousa-Poza, 2005).
4. The mourning period, which lasts a couple of years during which the patient uncovers enough traumatic biographical information to make a sober appraisal of the damage to the self and its impact on his or her life course. The anger is not yet fully entitled and comes out mixed with protestation.
5. The restitution period, which lasts up to two years and is characterized by a strong bonding with the nurturing therapists and a consistent "winning" of the self over the introject in working sessions. The anger of the former overpowers that of the latter, nullifying the sacrilegious taboo of parental deification. Nurturing sessions become very peaceful, without interruptions that necessitate "working" the introject’s disruptive intrusions. Primal outrage at the desecration of the self is now fully entitled.
6. A follow-up period that permits a monitoring of the discontinuation of sessions and medication.

Setting

Required is a soundproof room with minimum dimensions of 12 ft by 15 ft (3.64 m by 4.55 m) with the capacity to sit a maximum of eight patients and the therapist(s). Three chairs, instead of the classical two of Gestalt therapy, are placed in the center. To de-emphasize the “social persona" these three working chairs are lower than the others in the room. One chair is for the self, or patient, and it faces the other two. The one to its left is the "female" chair; the one to its right is the "male" chair (see later discussion), These two chairs are slightly lower than the patient's chair.

The second component of the working room is a batting station located at one end used to express high levels of anger. It consists of a strong plastic baseball bat that is used to strike a boxer's punching bag rolled up in foam and strong cloth. The contraption lies horizontally on a soft mat to absorb the (considerable) impact of the bat and to prevent resonation onto the floor. The station has two sides: one belongs to the self, or patient, and the other belongs to whomever, person or introject (masculine or feminine), the patient is working in the primal dialogue. The patient switches from one side to the other to maintain the dialogue as necessary. Retargeting tabooed primal (historical) anger is the centerpiece of emotional trauma therapy. Working anger in total depth functions as the emotional scalpel used to incise the self's wounds, dissecting away the parasitic introject.

 

Patient Screening and Preparation

Patient population ranges in age from about 25 to 75 years old; their occupations and status represent a cross section of society. The majority, however, are females in the 35 to 54 age bracket. If after a full psychiatric evaluation the patient is deemed a suitable candidate, he or she is invited to begin the information/evaluation period. This method is of course not suitable for patients with psychotic or organic disorders. For all others, psychodynamics and motivation are more relevant factors, by far, than DSM-IV-TR (4th edition, text revision) based diagnoses (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2000). It is imperative for prospective patients to attend a few group sessions as observers. Explanations, readings, and so on fail to convey the essence and intensity of the procedure—so essential to obtaining truly informed consent. Patients are informed that "this is a nonstandard form of psychotherapy possibly involving the ‘off label’ use of medication as well as physical contact with the therapist(s)." Full disclosure includes access to other patients (with their consent) for private discussions, if desired.

Working Sessions

Training Period: General Instructions for New Patients

The terms of the patient-therapist relationship are established under the basic premise: "Nobody can know your mind better than you do. If I am the therapist here it is because we assume I have done enough 'homework' to know my mind better than you know yours." We acknowledge the patients as the ultimate experts regarding their own minds, thereby relieving them from equivocated illusions and the therapist from a godlike status doomed to disappoint. New patients are trained in the working method in individual sessions and are then integrated into existing therapy groups. The result is more "individual sessions in a collective setting," rather than the classic interactive group therapy, since the only interaction is the feedback given by other group members concerning only the last step or commitment made by the patient who has just finished working.

As the training session starts and instructions are given, the first reflex of a new patient is to look toward the therapist. He or she is told: "Look straight ahead, eye level, to the two chairs in front of you, as if there were two persons sitting there. The chair to your left is the so-called female chair, for working female characters. The chair to your right is the so-called male chair, for working male characters. The chair you are sitting on is the 'self's'chair, your chair. Be attentive to my instructions but do not look at me." With time, a patient can follow instructions even while working out a storm of anger.

Emancipating the Self from the Dysfunctional Introject:
The Five Steps of the Working Session

A session consists of five simple steps. As in the game of chess though, simply knowing the rules by which to move the different pieces (the technique of five steps here described) is insufficient to intervene in the ongoing Grand Masters' "game" taking place between the self and the introject. It is impossible to explain, within the confines of this paper, all the possible permutations of the disconfirmatory pathological premises that can unfold in the primal dialogue. Only the self-knowledge of the therapist can fill the gaps between the opening moves and the final one.

What unfolds in working sessions is akin to a "family quarrel" One or two members, the maternal or paternal introject or both, attempt to wrong and subjugate the self by irrational means. The main role of the therapist is to insure that the patient responds by making the right emotional and verbal moves to eventually neutralize the introject. All neuroses involve flaws of emotional and cognitive logic implanted during childhood. Therefore, since even the most gifted therapist works mostly by inference, he or she must, like an actor, "get inside" the characters (self or introject) to discern what these flaws are. Then the therapist helps the patient to move his or her "chess pieces" in such a way as to insure that, this time, the introject ends up cornered in a "checkmate" and, eventually, wiped off the table.

First step: the present conflict.

In neurotic life, the present is profusely contaminated by the automatic, involuntary download of past historical files (Sousa-Poza, 2005). Thus the session begins with what is called the present conflict. The patient is instructed as follows: "The present conflict is whatever is bothering you the most at the moment, or of late. Contrary to what you may think, it does not have to be something 'very bad."' As the mental self can abstract but the emotional self cannot, themes such as "nobody loves me," "my husband does not treat me well," and so on are discouraged in favor of working at the more precise, concrete event level. We often help the patient to transition from theme to event by asking: "What are the facts?"

The patient is helped in working the present conflict via a series of dialogues with the characters involved (husband, boss, girlfriend, etc.). The dialogue is constantly maintained by the patient moving to the appropriate chair. If, for instance, a female patient is working an issue with a female boss, the dialogue takes place via successive moves from the patients chair (self) to the left (female) chair, and so on. The therapist does not intrude into the ongoing dialogues, other than to facilitate the flow (such as by saying "respond now" "change chairs," "what would your boss say to that?" etc.) and to encourage, at appropriate moments, the fullest possible emotional expression.As the patient keeps working the conflict, the "emotional temperature" of the dialogue invariably rises and a distinct feeling emerges. New patients, though, tend to suppress that feeling, and the therapist must help them express it by encouraging them, for instance, to "speak louder." If an angry theme ensues, as is often the case, the therapist may ask the patient to continue at the batting station. There, the patient will strike the bag with the bat while vocalizing, switching from one side of the bag to the other to maintain the dialogue.

During the working of the present conflict, a moment will arrive when the feeling rises disproportionately beyond the implied or perceived insult. If that projection is allowed to continue, the patients confusion between what constitutes the trigger (present person or event) and the target (historical character) will be reinforced. Clearly, it is time to go onto the next step, and if the patient had been at the batting station, he or she is asked to return to his or her (the self's) chair.

Second step: "identifying the feeling" underlying the present conflict.

Being analogically encoded, feelings are better suited than ideas to retrieve by association damaged (neurotic) historical files analogous to the present conflict. Thus the feeling underlying the present conflict is used as the "tracer" to steer the mind toward the historical conflict. This would be a simple step were it not for the fact that, culturally, people tend to be somewhat emotionally mute and illiterate. Even very intelligent patients may have considerable difficulty in appropriately labeling how they are feeling. Usually they respond with a lengthy thought or explanation, and the question "How do you feel while working the present conflict?" gets lost. With consistent help, however, patients can easily overcome this pitfall. Only when the feeling is clearly and succinctly identified (as "sad " "angry" "jealous," etc.) do we move on to the third step.

Third step: the historical conflict.

The neurotic informational kernel is lodged in the historical, suppressed ("no access") files of the emotional self. When treating a neurosis, it is imperative to retrieve, open, and work through the files' concealed information (verbal and emotional completion of the original aborted experience). The relevant suppressed file that is being opened is defined as the historical conflict. Taking the present conflict back to the past constitutes the primal hop of the session.

The patient is now instructed: "Focus on that feeling. Follow it backwards in time, holding onto it as you would hold onto a handrail. Describe what was happening to you the first time you ever remember having such - or similar - feelings. Once you see the scene, describe it in detail and in the present tense, as if it were happening again—right here, right now. Trust what comes first to your mind; don't try to consciously 'choose' the 'best’ scenario. There is no 'right’ or 'wrong’ way to do this work. Spontaneity is what counts."

The patient soon localizes, often in the very first session, a valid enough historical conflict to work with. Advanced patients often abruptly stop working the present conflict and spontaneously switch, with full feeling, to the historical one—which is defined in the same factual fashion as the present conflict and is worked according to the same rules. Well over 90% of the time, the historical conflict spontaneously retrieved by a new patient is a childhood, parental-related event. It seems as if, once the matrix or template is initially created for a particular feeling, all feelings similar to that are thereafter processed through it. Once the historical conflict has been satisfactorily worked (when the feeling associated with it is exhausted), the patient returns to his or her chair, and we move to the fourth step.

 

Fourth step: defragmentation of the self via the connection.

Meaningful relationships between present and past conflicts known as the connection (akin to "insights") have to be established to defragment the self and achieve the final conscious integration of the aborted traumatic experience and its consequences. The patient is now asked: "What do you see in common between the present and past conflicts? How do they resemble each other?" Although few patients have difficulty with this step, new patients often need help to avoid long explanations and side issues. Quite reasonably, they tend to want to talk extensively because they see it as the most immediate way of obtaining relief. We encourage them to talk succinctly by explaining: "You will obtain greater benefit if you define the connection(s) clearly and succinctly. Your mind, the emotional self in particular, will have difficulty retaining a long speech." Once a clear, cogent statement is achieved, we move to the last step.

 

Fifth step: the commitment or behavioral step.

There must be an effective, corrective change in the life of the patient if there is to be an end to the repetitive, dysfunctional, and self-defeating cycle of neurotic behavior. Such a step is termed the commitment. The instructions are as follows: "This is the last step. Please take a good look at the present conflict with which you started the session. In view of your new feelings and insights, make a commitment about what might be the minimal step(s) you could take to correct, to learn to avoid, or otherwise to improve things in regard to that present conflict" The commitment "buckles up" the work, dovetailing the session onto itself and thus making it a self-contained unit, and adding a behavioral dimension to the session's experiential (feeling work) and cognitive (connection and verbalization of conflict) aspects.

Once the commitment is properly formulated, we instruct the patient (during the training period) that the session is over. We invite him or her to reestablish face-to-face contact with the therapist, and say: "What you did today was to work out a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that represents your self and the damage done to it. With time, more and more pieces will be added to the puzzle, until you have a fairly clear map of what happened to you and why you suffer the way you do. When you attend a group session the only difference is that other members will give you feedback - but only on your commitment. Nobody will ‘get on your case' or 'play therapist.' Just listen as they give you feedback about your commitment. Ask for clarification if you want, but do not engage in debate. You may decide to adopt some of the suggestions or none at all. At the end I will ask you if you want to reformulate in view of the feedback received or stick with your commitment." It should be noted that each group session begins with members reporting on how the last commitment was accomplished.

Two to three individual training sessions usually suffice to learn the steps of the method. The major obstacle at this stage is that patients may have difficulty raising their voices at all, even if very angry, beyond a socially acceptable tone due to the prevailing cultural emotional mutism and a misunderstood mandate of "politeness" And men, in particular, may choke back their tears. In the beginning, therefore, the therapist must encourage the patients; once assigned to a group, however, they do tend to learn faster simply by watching the work of more advanced patients since emotions contain a contagious or phatic resonance (La Barre, 1964).

Psychodynamics and Psychopharmacology

Each "bite size" session shaves off a thin sliver of defensive exclusion. Eventually this process will perforate the defensive neurotic armor, unavoidably leading to the core of the primal wound and the disconfirmation, by whatever means, of the self's lovability principle (Sousa-Poza, 2005). Biographic ally, the wound can be made up of beatings, neglect of physical or emotional needs, sexual abuse, and so on. Often, however, no physical violence or even classic abusive language has occurred, the emotional trauma having been inflicted "softly" as an early and persistent disconfirmation of the child's lovability. In effect, words and feelings subtly wronged the patient in the private sanctum of the parent-child bond, and that leaves no "objective" traces since feelings do not qualify as facts in most cultures. Parents do not need to lift a finger to cripple for life the self of a child.

 

As the veil of defensive exclusion is lifted, two things happen. First, childhood falsifications and hopes of retribution that unconsciously have persisted into adulthood ("One day, if I just get it right, they will love me"—or derivatives thereof) begin to collapse. The intensity of the corresponding feelings, in particular anger at the desecration of the self and the subsequent derailment of one's life, reaches an intensity impossible to describe via the written word. Second, the false mental self begins to crumble as the true self separates and ejects the introject altogether. All these factors destabilize the self of the patient because, lacking the parental "backup" (confirmatory love) of a positive introject and losing the neurotic illusory hope of ever obtaining it, the self enters into a high level of entropy. A certain degree of general hypervigilance usually ensues, affecting sleep and producing a low serotonin syndrome.

In the beginning of what our patients informally call "the dive" sleep is the first neurophysiological function impacted and 25 to 50 mg of doxepin together with 0.5 mg of clonazepam may suffice. Most patients, however, progress to a more severe, if temporary, clinical picture with anxiety, fear, and depressive elements (though characteristically the mood does not lower as in a true depressive state) that require treatment with an SSRI antidepressant (or tricyclic). In my experience, veniafaxine (75 to 300 mg am) has the widest therapeutic spectrum and seldom fails to arrest the deeper dive. Trazodone (50 to 150 mg hs) and clonazepam (0.5 to 1.0 mg hs) are prescribed. Lately, I have found gabapentin (100 to 300 rng hs) to be useful as well, in some cases counteracting somatized tension/anxiety. If patients are very damaged, such as when they exhibit borderline personality traits, I have found olanzapine (5 mg hs) to be effective in alleviating their considerable suffering. Olanzapine seems particularly effective when there has been physical abuse, such as beatings or brutal rapes or similar traumas at a very early age. When the "voices" of the introjects punishing injunctions "still ring in the head," as one patient puts it, risperidone (0.5 to 1.5 mg hs or am) seems to have the unique property of dampening them and calming the concomitant generalized state of fear and anxiety. The medication regime has to be constantly adjusted according to the stage of therapy the patient is traversing.

 

Treatment of the Inner Holocaust

Downloading a Patch

It could be catastrophic to lift the wound's scar and open it fully without doing the concurrent nurturing/restitution work. The working sessions of the emotional trauma method only incise and open the wound and then dissect the introject; they are a means to an end. Resorting again to a computer analogy, it is the therapist's self that scans the self of the patient to detect the flaws of emotional logic that prevent it from overriding the introjects injunctions. Although the step of connection (insight) carries out the "defragmentation" we now have a self in a high degree of entropy (manifested as fear/anxiety). As one patient puts it: "The amount of mom and dad in my mind has considerably shrunk" Nurturing/restitution thus has to be implemented because, as parts of a diseased introject come out, parts of a healthy one have to "get in."

Nurturing/restitution sessions are conducted sitting at floor level on firm cushions. At the start of treatment, sessions begin with the patient and nurturer talking face-to-face. Sessions soon progress to include physical contact, with the patient in the reclining position (lying backwards against the nurturer). As a patient advances and feels more at ease, she or he moves into the cradling position with the nurturer. The sessions are similar, in many ways, to a parent-child holding situation with the nurturer emotionally comforting and supporting the patient. Soon enough, the setting itself induces a natural regression in the patient to the child state, a phenomenon that can be periodically enhanced with subpsychedelic doses of ketamine hydrochloride. Since there is often very little conversation during nurturing/ restitution sessions, patients write a report of their experience, as does the nurturer.Medication-Enhanced Nurturing (Ketamine Hydrochloride IM)

The deeper the patient progresses into exposing the wound, the deeper the nurturing must be. Years ago, the question arose as to whether there were any psychopharmacological means available to enhance the nurturing process. The first products used in open, naturalistic trials in the mid 1970s at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Sherbrooke were mainly benzodiazepines and sodium amytal. None were satisfactory because they tended to cloud consciousness and their effects sometimes lasted too long for office use. Around 1981, through experimentation and proverbial serendipity, I discovered ketamine hydrochloride, using it in intramuscular doses of about 0.5 cc (about 25 mg).

Ketamine hydrochloride, or 2-(o-chlorophenyl)-2-(methylamino) cyclohexanone hydrochloride, is a synthetic drug that has been used clinically since 1970 for its anesthetic, analgesic, and psychotropic properties. The average intramuscular dosage for surgical anesthesia is 8 to 10 mg per kg of body weight; that is, 560 to 700 mg for a standard 70 kg adult (Tomlinson, 1994). My average IM administration of 0.5 cc, equivalent to 25 mg in the standard IM presentation of 50mg/ml, constitutes a very low dosage, or about 1/25th of the recommended adult dosage for anesthetic purposes.

Investigators have reported other indications for the therapeutic use of low doses of ketamine (Fine, 1999; Jansen, 1999; Krupitsky & Grinenko, 1997; Mills, Park, Manara & Merriman, 1998). In effect, repeated use has shown no serious adverse effects and may even have neuroprotective properties (Fitzal, 1997). In 1999, Jansen provided an authoritative commentary on the effects of this drug as the main agent in psychotherapy; that usage, however, differs considerably from that described here since it relied mainly on the drugs effects rather than oits participation as part of a holistic psychodynamic process. Taking into account the all-important variables of "set and setting," I would say that if the drug contributes 5 to 10 % variance of the experience, the rest (95-90 %) can be directly related to the therapeutic context and the emotional ability of the nurturing therapist to contact and gratify the self's needs for confirmation of lovability.

Psychedelic drugs are controversial, both for factual and spurious reasons, and ketamine is no exception. Nevertheless, I have now used it (prescription in Canada is not subject to restrictions) for about 20 years at the 25 mg IM dose and higher in hundreds of patients and without the slightest negative incident. As concluded in a recent review conducted by Prof. J. L Gonzalez De Rivera (2002): "... in view of the available recorded experience, it seems that ketamine is a safe and useful drug to be used in combination to the special form of interactive human support that characterizes the nurturing sessions of anaclitic [emotional trauma] therapy." The patient nevertheless has to be properly informed that this is a nonstandard procedure involving the off label use of that medication.

The advantages of ketamine are several;
1. It has a lack of negative side effects or significant drug interactions.
2. It enhances the regression towards the self of the nurturer.
3. It temporarily, but strongly, quiets down the "inner chatter" of the mental self, particularly the introject's disturbing injunctions. This chatter constitutes the major emotional and cognitive obstacles to the patient being able to "hear" and bond with the nurturer while in the primal state.
4. Patients are able to leave the office safely after resting for a half hour or so in the waiting room. Patients are advised, however, not to drive or be near heavy machinery and so on for about two hours.
5. It facilitates analogical-digital translations. That is to say, patients are more able under its influence to put words into feelings and vice versa.
6. Any slight psychedelic effects do not last beyond the second or third session, although they may briefly recur in later sessions if the dose is increased.
7. It has a lack of habituation effect when spaced in series of four sessions on a once-per-week basis. I usually conduct two series per year, and up to three or four in advanced patients.

Samples of Session Reports

Patients are evaluated from both a psychodynamic and a DSM-IV-TR criterion, yet since we are concerned only with illustrating the structures of the sessions, limited patient information is provided. (All names have been changed to ensure anonymity.)

Working Session

Brittany is a 34-year-old single woman referred because of a life derailed by failure of intimate relationships, school, career, etc. Symptomatically, she feels "depressed."

First step: the present conflict.

Brittany (B): (patient chair) "My conflict is that I've been irritated really easily." Therapist (T): "Give some examples."

B:"Yesterday I was vacuuming and I kept ripping the plug out and it kept getting caught and it just about ended up going flying through the window."

T: "What else?"

B: "I was at work and this woman that is... I don't know what her problem is with me but she's got this attitude around me that drives me nuts."

T: "Like what? Give the facts."

B: "She used to be really fine and helpful and then something happened. Like the woman who I'm looking after had a major accident in one of the rooms and I went to go and find a care aid to help get her cleaned up and I found her and I said, 'there's been an accident down here' and she said ‘I’m busy' and just walked away.”

T: "Put her in the chair, just start there."

B: (patient chair—addressing Laura in left chair) "Laura, there's been an accident down at the end of the hall and I need your help."

B: (left chair—Laura's response) "Well, I just came off my break and I'm busy."

T: "Go to her side of the bag, what's she saying, what's the message? Just start, don't think about it, what did she say?"

B: (other side of batting station—Laura) "Well, you'll have to find someone else."

B: (patient side of batting station) "Laura, you work here, it's your job to help the residents here."

T: "Speak as if you didn't have to be appropriate, this is if you could say what you really want."

B: "Thank you for clarifying."

T: "Keep going,"

B: "Look you f---- bitch, it's your f---- job to help her. Don't give me this s---- that I've got to find someone else. If there was anyone else around I would have f---- asked them."

T: "Switch"

B: (other side of batting station—Laura) "Well, I'm too busy to help you and your client gets way too much f---- attention anyway. You don't see any of the other residents having a companion in here almost every day to look after her for hours at a time. She's f---- spoiled."

B: (patient side of the batting station) "She's not f---- spoiled, she's treated like everybody else should be treated in here. She's getting what she needs."

Second step: "identifying the feeling" underlying the present conflict.

T: "So what's the feeling?"

B: "Anger. Anger and frustration."

T: "Take it back whenever you can, keep going."

Third step: the historical conflict.

B: "She doesn't get more than she deserves and it's your f---- job. Argh, I could f---- kill you, walking around here with that f---- attitude. It just reminds me of my dad. He used to walk around with this attitude in the house and you couldn't talk to him about it."

T: "Come over here [other side of batting station]... here's your father, so how did he do that attitude?"

B: "Like I should just talk what he's doing?”

T: "Yeah, like what's the message in the attitude? Let him put it out verbally."

B: (other side of batting station—father) "I'm just going to walk around here like I own the joint, like I own everybody. You see this look on my face, see how my nostrils are just slightly flared and see how my jaw is kind of set. See how I'm avoiding eye contact with you and when I do make eye contact with you it's a challenge. I'm challenging you, just f---- try me. I need somebody to get this anger out on. I know that you're going to step out of line sooner or later and when you do, I'm going to f---- unleash this on you!"

B: (patient side of batting station) "You know you scare the shit out of me so much I can't even say anything. I can't even express what I'm feeling because you scare me so much."

B: (other side of batting station—father) "Well, that's what I'm supposed to do. You're just a f---- kid. You don't f---- know anything. You f---- open your mouth, I'm going to shut you up permanently."

B: (patient side of batting station) "I'm sick of being scared! I'm so f---- tired of being scared! You shouldn't have this much power over me, you don't deserve to have this much power over me! F---- control me and you don't even have to open your mouth. I'm scared to open my mouth, I'm scared to stand up for myself. I'm scared to say what I need, and I'm scared to talk about what I need to talk about, I'm f---- scared to have any f----feelings 'cause they'll be wrong."

B: (other side of batting station—father) "You're acting like you've got some sort of right to be here. This is a f---- privilege that I let you stay. You stupid, f----, over emotional, irrational little shit head! I'm not going to give you anything to yell at either, I'm just going to be polite, I'm going to say all this without opening my mouth so you got nothing to say. You're just obviously oversensitive and irrational and overemotional just like your mother."

B: (patient side of batting station) "You f, f- , f---- a----! How dare you say that I have no right to be here! You f---- brought me here. ARGH! You don't f---- invite me here and then treat me like s---- , like you're doing me some kind of f---- favor! ARGH! I'm not here for you, that's not my job. I'm not your f---- whipping boy, I'm not you f---- slave, I'm not your f---- puppet! You don't f---- like me being here, find somewhere else. I'm sick of f---- swallowing everything that you're f---- dishing out, I’m so f---- pissed! ARGH! I can't f---- get you enough, I can't kill you enough, I can't scream at you enough, I can't f----hate you enough! It was your f---- job to look after me, not the other way around. It was your job to look after me. When did you ever f---- do that? When? Never!"

B: (other side of batting station—father) "You have no right to complain, you have a nice house, you live in a safe neighborhood, you go to a safe school, I make sure that you don't hang out. with any riffraff. I judge everybody to make sure that you're hanging out with the right people, in fact I don't let you hang out with anybody because there aren't any people that are good enough. You get food on the table, you've got a sister to keep you company, you've got me to look after you, you've got nothing to complain about.”

 

B: (patient side of batting station) "I'm so f---- sick of hearing this. You're f---- wrong! You're up the f---- creek if you think I'm supposed to be f---- happy! I don't have to leave the house and be f---- frightened by the f---- riffraff that you f---- judge, I'm f---- scared right here in my own f---- bedroom, I'm not f--- safe in my own house! I'm not even safe in my own skin! I'm not even allowed to have the f---- reactions that I have in my body, you f- prick! Don't tell me I don't have any f---- right, you're f---- wrong! You go to hell. I have so much f---- pain in my body, I have so much rage in me! It's f---- stockpiled from every minute of every f---- day that I was alive! This wasn't a one shot f---- deal, this was every goddamn day! You expect me to f---- live with that? You expect me to succeed with that? You expect me to f---- be happy with that? I cant be any of those things, there's no room! I'm so f---- filled up with your lies, I'm so filled up with all the bullshit that I had to swallow with all the feelings that I had to swallow, every time I was angry and I wasn't f---- allowed to be angry because you were going to hit me or you were going to just reject me. Every f---- time I had to swallow that. Every time I was scared with you and mum fighting, with mum f---- committing suicide, how am I supposed to live with that? ARGH! I'm not going to f---- do this anymore! I'm not protecting you, I'm not looking after you, I'm not f---- being frightened of you anymore! You're just a stupid, pathetic piece of s----. You don't deserve my respect, you don't deserve my fear, you don't f---- deserve one f---- inch of me. ARGH!"

Fourth step: the connection.

T: "So the connection between how you feel lately..."

B: (patient chair) "Its all these feelings that I had when I was a kid that I had to swallow because having them meant being rejected by my parents.

T: "You had to swallow your anger back then."

B: "Yeah, I had to swallow my anger and fear and anything so now I've kind of opened up Pandora's box, I think, and it's just rage and rage and rage and rage and I think the irritability is just the rage sitting right under the skin ready to explode any minute "

Fifth step: the commitment.

T: "So what's your commitment?"

B: "To not throw Laura out the window. And to ... sometime in the next two weeks, to talk to the supervisor at the nursing home about her not helping because it's really dangerous for my client. And to keep working this issue in therapy.

Nurturing/restitution session

Monica is a 32-year-old separated woman referred because she is going through a divorce and other transitions. She feels "exhausted and depressed." Her report of her fifth nurturing session with me (medicated with 0.4 cc ketamine IM) highlights the relevance of enhancing the emotional contact and quieting the mind to be nurtured (15th month of therapy).

At first I was apprehensive about losing my head again [the observing ego losing "control"] but as the medication kicked in I was already feeling safe in the cuddling position. I felt semiconscious, my feelings were more activated than my head and yet my head still knew what was going on, it was a very comfortable place to be. I felt like a child being held by daddy. I was safe and very relaxed. I felt like a solid person because I was loved and protected, the hugging made me feel warm, loved and contained in a very safe and peaceful manner. I don't think I ever felt that way before with a man. Interesting, at this point I became very aware of the male energy, it was strong and grounded, peaceful and protective. I felt I needed that kind of energy in my life to feel complete. I thought, how nice to be able to be myself and feel relaxed while being held by a man who is giving me love, peace, and making me feel entirely safe and protected, without asking anything of me. What a wonderful experience, I can be myself and be loved by a man. Unconditional love. I never experienced that before. I felt like a child and yet I know that I never felt like that with my real father. I was always uncomfortable in his presence because I felt that I couldn't be myself and please him at the same time. He was so critical and demanding. There was always this tension and I couldn't relax and be spontaneous, his needs definitely came before mine. Today, for the first time I felt this idea! father-like love, someone who doesn't expect anything in return and just gives love, protection, safety, and security.

 

Working Sessions

Sept 16, 2009, Wednesday

Therapist: Conflict?

D: I was going to work something else but I got triggered when (she) was saying the things that she got taught when she was a kid and how it didn’t prepare her… at least that was my interpretation.
Therapist: It doesn’t matter, it’s your scene

D: it just made me think about or feel really emotional about how hard I’ve had to work to get to this place…

Therapist: Tell them

PRESENT

D: B (Mother) and L. (Father), when I heard (her) working, it just made me think about how f**** hard I’ve had to work to get to this point right now in my life where I am just starting to feel competent like I might be able to do this life as an adult. And I’m 41 years old and it’s taken me this long to feel like I can live on my own and that I can pay my own rent and that I can trust myself to get a job and to support myself and that I don’t need to lean on other people to the point where I’m basically selling myself to be supported like I had to do with you guys. And it just makes me really f**** mad, even though I’m sitting here crying…

Therapist:  go at the bat

HISTORICAL

D: (self) It just makes me really f**** mad when I think about the fact that this is the feeling I was supposed to have when I was a kid. It was your job to make me feel like this… like the beginnings of feeling competent and like I could be myself and I could achieve just the most basic level of success in my life on a day to day basis. This is just the f***** basics of what I am entitled to in this life… is to feel competent in myself, feel confident that I can make it through the day being myself, making choices that reflect who I am. That is just the most f***** basic human right and you robbed me of that. You filled me with all that crap and you made me sell out on myself every f***** day. If I wanted your f***** love, I had to sell out. I had to be somebody who I wasn’t, I had to follow your rules, your guidelines, your f***** stupid ideas about what was success and what wasn’t success and that thing…. I just started thinking about all those rules… all those things that you taught me…

Therapist:  Switch

D: (Father) It’s my job as your parent to teach you what you need to know in life and I take that job very seriously. I’m going to tell you everything that you need to know. So I’m going to tell you how to wash the dishes and I’m going to tell you how to be nice to strangers and I’m going to tell you how you have to , even though you are really really uncomfortable, you have to go and give your auntie a kiss or hug this adult friend… or you just have to make everybody else comfortable… that’s the most important thing. I want you to make sure that you are socially adept. Don’t make any one uncomfortable, don’t cause any conflict, make sure you are giving everybody what they want and that’s what you need to do. You also need to get straight A’s… 100%, 97 isn’t good enough… what happened to the other three percent? How do you expect to get anywhere in life if you don’t apply yourself, if you don’t concentrate, if you don’t apply yourself, if you don’t pay attention. F***** pay attention! How are you ever going to learn how to be a human being if you don’t f***** pay attention!

D: (Self) How the f**** am I supposed to pay attention when every two seconds you have some other f**** rule that I gotta follow? How the hell am I supposed to pay attention to anything when I’m so full of anxiety ABOUT ACCIDENTLY SCREWING UP ONE OF THE F***** RULES??? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PAY ATTENTION TO ANYTHING WHEN I’M SO F***** ANXIOUS. YOU THREATENED ME EVERY FIVE SECONDS THAT I’M NOT GOING TO BE PART OF THE FAMILY, THAT I’M NOT GOING TO MAKE IT, THAT I’M NOT GOING TO BE SUCCESSFUL, THAT I’M GOING TO FAIL, THAT I’M GOING TO SCREW UP, THAT YOU’RE GOING TO GET DEPRESSED (MOTHER), THAT YOU’RE GOING TO BE UPSET (BOTH) THAT YOU’RE GOING TO GET ANGRY (FATHER), THAT YOU’RE GOING TO F***** SUICIDAL (MOTHER). HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO TAKE CARE OF ALL THE F***** RULES???

D: (father) the rules are very simple, just pay attention to me, pay attention to your mother, pay attention to us, pay attention to your teacher, pay attention to your friend’s needs, pay attention to any relatives or friends that we have, pay attention to your environment, pay attention to your sister, pay attention to what everybody wants. Pay attention to what we want you to do, and eat and feel and f***** everything.

D: (self) I’m so sick of you. I’m so sick of you. Do you know there were things that I wanted to do as a kid?You know that, you a**h*****? I wanted to do my music and you wouldn’t let me, I wanted to ride horses and you wouldn’t let me, I wanted to do all these things that I was interested in doing and you wouldn’t let me do any of them because I was so f***** busy making you happy, doing what you wanted. Looking after your sorry f***** needy asses. Argh. When I think about how hard it is that I have had to fight just to get to here, you know finally after doing 7 long stupid YEARS OF THERAPY I CAN FINALLY FEEL LIKE I CAN GET UP IN THE MORNING AND I CAN PULL MYSELF TOGETHER AND I CAN WALK OUT THE DOOR WITH A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF CONFIDENCE THAT I’VE GOT MY SHIT TOGETHER AND I’M FORTY F**** ONE YEARS OLD! DO YOU KNOW HOW BADLY YOU FAILED IN YOUR JOB THAT IT’S TAKEN ME THIS LONG AND THIS MUCH PERSONAL WORK TO FEEL LIKE I AM COMPETENT? YOU F***** LOSERS! HOW DARE YOU PUT YOUR INCOMPETENCE ON ME, HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME WEAR IT! AND THEN YOU’VE GOT THE GOD DAMN NERVE… ARGH…

D: (father) That’s interesting that you’re saying you’re competent because I’ve been watching you lately and I got to tell you that you may think or feel that you have your sh** together but I can tell you, girlfriend, you don’t. You don’t have your sh** together. I mean, you don’t even know what you are going to do! You were supposed to graduate this year and you couldn’t even get your shit together to do your math 12 in the summer. I mean, what kind of competence is that? What kind of an achievement is that? And everybody else at school seems to know exactly what they are going to do and exactly what courses they need to take and exactly what teachers they need to talk to and what research projects they need to get involved with to get to their goals and you don’t even know what the f****you want! Huh? You don’t know if you want to go into clinical psych or social psych or if you want to do another degree here or if you just want to quit and do something else. You don’t even know what you want. So don’t talk to me about successful… and this is entirely your fault. If you hadn’t pissed away so much energy and spent so much time in therapy, maybe you would have got your shit together. Maybe you would have been able to sit down and organize yourself and figure out what you needed to do and what you wanted to do… an quit f***** getting in debt just to get where? Where? Where are you going to? Huh? You think you can just go out there and start taking courses and everything’s going to o.k.? Well now you’re 50 thousand dollars in debt, what are you going to do now, girly? Huh?

D: (self) you are such a F****** PRICK! F*** YOU! F*** YOU! HOW DARE YOU, HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE ME? HOW F**** DARE YOU AFTER I’VE HAD TO SPEND SO MUCH ENERGY AND TIME AND MONEY GETTING WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE F**** GIVEN ME IN THE BEGINNING. HOW DARE YOU! YOU GOT SOME F**** NERVE COMING IN MY HEAD AND STARTING TO F*** AROUND WITH ME…. CRITICIZING ME ON NOT KNOWING WHAT I’M GOING TO DO. YOU F****** ASS****! IF YOU HADN’T FILLED MY HEAD WITH SO MUCH OF YOUR OWN F****** NEUROTIC BULLSH**, I WOULD HAVE KNOWN WHAT I WANTED BECAUSE I WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO FEEL MYSELF AND FOLLOW MY OWN GODDAMN FLOW THIS WHOLE TIME INSTEAD OF F***** COW TOWING TO YOU AND TRYING TO DROWN MY ANXIETY WITH DRUGS AND SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS AND WHATEVER ELSE I’VE DONE. I F****** HATE YOU! I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT AFTER WHAT YOU DID TO ME YOU ARE NOW TRYING TO PIN IT ON ME AND SAY THAT I DON’T HAVE MY SH** TOGETHER! YOU GOT SOME KIND OF F****** NERVE! IF YOU HAD EVEN PAID ONE TINY LITTLE BIT OF ATTENTION TO WHAT I NEEDED OR WHO I AM OR WHAT I WANTED OR WHERE THE F*** I WAS GOING I WOULD NOT BE HERE. JUST ONE LITTLE TINY BIT, BUT YOU NEVER F***** DID. YOU COULD NEVER GET BEYOND WHAT YOU WANTED, HOW IT REFLECTED ON YOU, WHAT IT MEANT ABOUT YOU AS A PARENT, HOW YOU LOOK, WHAT PEOPLE WOULD THINK ABOUT YOU. YOU F****** SAID THAT PEOPLE WOULD BE ASHAMED OF ME… THEY’RE NOT ASHAMED OF ME, YOU WERE AFRAID THAT YOU WOULD BE EMBARRASSED… THAT THEY WOULD BE SHAMING YOU. IT HAD F****** NOTHING TO DO WITH ME, I WAS JUST A KID. I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE LEARNING AND GROWING AND CHANGING ON MY OWN GODDAMN TIME CLOCK, NOT YOURS. AND BECAUSE YOU HAD SO MANY F****** RIGID RULES THAT YOU HUNG AROUND MY NECK WITH THREATS FOLLOWING THEM OF WITHDRAWING LOVE OR WITHDRAWING FOOD OR WITHDRAWING CLOTHING OR WITHDRAWING FAMILY, YOU F****** PRICK, YOU THREATENED ME ALL THE TIME AND I LEARNED THAT I SHOULD BE AFRAID IN THIS WORLD…. NOT EXPLORE IT. NOT GO OUT THERE AND TRY THINGS AND FAIL AND THAT IT WAS O.K. I NEVER LEARNED THAT. I NEVER TRIED ANYTHING THAT I THOUGHT I MIGHT FAIL BECAUSE I KNEW THAT IT WOULD MEAN THAT YOU DON’T LOVE ME ANYMORE, YOU WOULD THROW ME OUT, I WOULD BE ALONE AND F****** DEAD. YOU CAN’T F****** LEARN WITHOUT MAKING MISTAKES… IT’S PART OF THE DEFINITION, YOU F***. I F****** HATE IT THAT YOU DID THAT, YOU SON OF A BITCH, YOU SELFISH SON OF A BITCH! HOW DARE YOU HAVE CHILDREN WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING, NOTHING TO GIVE! F***!!!  I HATE YOU AND I SHOULD HAVE F****** TOLD YOU THAT AT THE TIME. BUT I COULDN’T BECAUSE I WAS SO F****** DEPENDENT AND THAT IS WHAT YOU COUNTED ON AND THAT MAKES YOU A F****** ASS****. THAT MAKES YOU A USER… AND THAT MAKES YOU…. I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT MAKES YOU BUT F*** YOU!! F*** YOU!!! GET THE F*** OFF MY BACK!!! AND SHUT UP!

Therapist: Very good. Connections?

D: (back in the self chair) Connection: the connection is that when (she) was talking about the expectations and the things that she was taught, it just brought back to me that real mind-f*** game of, “We’re just teaching you, we’re just helping you to grow (meant as from the parents)” and meanwhile it’s just counterproductive. It might be well intended but it doesn’t matter from this end. It doesn’t make any difference from the subjective point of view because you just hear it when you’re a kid as “you’re not good enough, you’re never going to be good enough and you’re not safe in the world and for god sakes don’t make a f****** mistake!” …which means that you can’t grow or change or do anything.

D: Commitment: is to keep working and …

Therapist: the more you know yourself, the more you will know what you want.

D: Yeah, and the other conflict was feeling ashamed while I’m in groups of people, like having a critic coming up afterwards so that kind of tied into it. Like when I’m in a group of people, when I’ve been oddly comfortable and just being myself, when I leave I get this huge critic in my head that I talk too much and that

Therapist: You save that for Saturday (next group)

D: Anyway, that was sort of the same thing and um… trying to put it on me that I should feel ashamed and it wasn’t me, it was them.

Therapist: I know what you’re talking about. When you start being yourself you then go “AH, what did I do?  “because they catch you… you did this, you said that, you should have said this…” Well yeah, you have your conflict ready for Saturday.

 

 

December 9, 2004

 PResent Conflict:

C: My conflict is that I’m just getting completely squashed and annihilated by my introject.

T: Why don’t you reenact then in the two chairs, the mother and father squashing you. You start in the maternal and then the paternal then switch, o.k. Just put out what is going on in your head.

C: (maternal chair) There’s no point in bothering with this. What are you doing? I don’t see what you are doing. You have to be like me. You’ve got to be like me. I’m your mother and you are my daughter and you have to be like me. That’s just the way it is. There’s no point. There is no point. You’re tired and you are never going to get anywhere and there is no point. There is just no point.

C :(Paternal chair) What is your problem? What the f*** is your problem? You can’t drive... I mean where were you born? Were you born in a barn? You can’t do this and you can’t do that, you can’t put your stuff away, you can’t do your dishes, you can’t feed yourself properly... what is wrong with you? You’re wasting your time and what the hell are you doing? You didn’t take that full time job that you had an opportunity to get. What the hell were you thinking? You need the money. What were you thinking? You think I’m going to take care of you? I’m not going to take care of you. You have to learn how to take care of yourself. Or you have to go and find a man who is going to take care of you. I can’t take care of you, I’m not going to take care of you. What were you thinking... where were you driving? Why can’t you remember everything at the same time? Why do you have to keep going back and forth and back and forth and you go to your car and then you have to go back in ‘cause you forgot something and then you go back out and then you forgot something else. Why can’t you get more organized? And why can’t you think about... why can’t you think ahead... why can’t you just plan things? Why can’t you keep a schedule and why is it you can’t seem to keep your appointments and why is it you cancel things and why can’t you be more organized? What you need is a schedule. And why can’t you look after your mother? You can’t expect me to be there all the time, why can’t you look after your mother? And why is it that you can’t just make this family happy. Because all I can see is you just ignoring people’s needs. I mean your sister needed a babysitter for her kids and why weren’t you there? And why is it you don’t look after your mother? You see she is working so hard, you see she is tired, why don’t you look after her because that is what your life is about... looking after us! Why the hell can’t you get that straight? And why is it you get behind these people who don’t know how to f****** drive when you’re late? And why is it that you are late in the first place because you should be more on time. And why is it that you bother with a baby bird that is sick... it’s going to die anyway. What the f*** is your problem? Why is it that you can’t control your dog when she goes barking after people? And why is it that you spend so much time with her anyway? Because you should just lock her up in the house for ten hours while you are working. Why is it that you f******  bother with her? And why is it that you are doing all these things? What is wrong with you? You should get up in the morning, you have your breakfast, you go to work, you have you lunch, you go back to work, you have your supper, you come home, you help your mother. And that is the way your life should be. You should go to bed at a decent hour and you get up at a decent hour and what the f*** is wrong with you?

C: (at the bat on ‘self’ side) What the f*** is wrong with you? You expect me to live my life the way you want me to! Well F*** Y**!! F*** Y**! I am not you! I am not you! I don’t care about the things you care about. I don’t care about that! I don’t care what other people think is right! I don’t care what other people choose to do with their life. I don’t care what society thinks is the right thing or the wrong thing. I don’t care about other people’s schedules. I don’t care that things are going to die. I don’t think that is a reasonable excuse to ignore suffering! I don’t care what your idea of right and wrong is. I don’t care what your idea of what I should care about is! I don’t care that you think that I should care about this family just because I am blood! I don’t care, I don’t care about my sister’s needs because the only time she phones me is when she’s phoned everybody else and she’s totally desperate and so she decides to pull the “Auntie _____” card. I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care about your family because the only time they want to have me over for dinner is at some unreasonably stressful time of year that they call Christmas. Well they don’t have the foggiest f****** idea what Christmas is about! It’s about Love and none of you have the foggiest f****** idea what love is. It’s all about obligation. I’m somehow obligated to do what you want me to do because I’m part of this family. I don’t want to have anything to do with this family!!! All you do is fill my head with anger and stupidity. You’re so f****** stupid!

C: (other side of the bat) You know you are not going to go anywhere with that attitude. You’re not going to go anywhere. You’re going to be put out on the street, nobody is going to want you. You’re going to be put out on the street with all of those other out of control people. All those other people who didn’t know how to obey their father. .. how to honor their mother and father. You’re going to be on welfare for the rest of your life. You want to be on welfare for the rest of your life? You know you are never going to go anywhere unless you learn how to obey me. Unless you learn how to make decisions that I think are good for you. Until you learn how to do the things that I tell you to do, you’re never going to go f****** anywhere.

C: (self side of the bat) You f****** bastard! I haven’t f****** gone anywhere because I’ve been too busy obeying you! I haven’t gone anywhere because I have been putting all of my energy into looking after you in all of your many forms with all of your endless needs. F***!!! F***!!! I can’t believe how much time I have wasted! And that f**** job I dropped, you know, I am finally moving towards what I want and I almost f**** bought it! I almost f***** bought it! 40, 50 hours a week... that would bring in some good money, pay the bills, wouldn’t it Dad? That would get me out of debt, wouldn’t it Dad? You f****** ass****! I don’t want that job! You know what f****** happens if I take that job? If I take that job, I’ll have no energy , no energy left to do what I want to do! To pursue my goals, to go to school, to do my writing, to have the energy to follow myself for once! For once in my f****** life, I’m following myself! So f****** what??? I’m intense, so f****** f****** f****** what? So f****** what? Nobody likes me, so f****** what? I look like a bum, so f****** what? I can’t afford new clothes or vacations or entertainment that all those other people can afford, so f***** what? So what????? SOOOOOO WHAAAATT????

Historical:

C: (continuing on self side of bat) If you had provided something for me when I was a kid, if you had f**** provided something except for a roof over my head and clothes on my back and food on my table.... where the hell was the attention to me???? So what, you looked after the physical body... what the f*** is that? What the f*** is that???? I’m not a f****** physical body that has some other abstract content. I am me, I have a self, I have a soul, I am me and my body is just where I live. You f****** ignored me. You ignored me!  Myself was totally turned on. You betrayed me, you turned your back on me. You didn’t want to see anything of me and I turned my back on myself and in doing so, I turned my back on God, you bastard! You bastard, you bastard! I’m not going to take that f****** job for you. And I’m not going to turn into some sort of fucking raging maniac because of you. I am not going to get buried in your anger. I am not going to find myself so squashed down that I stay in bed all day because I’m too f****** exhausted !! I’m not going to let myself slide into the position of not being able to do anything for myself except keep myself distracted from the anger and the rage and the disappointment that I am with you. I will not f****** have it! And I’m not f****** wasting my life doing what you want anymore. I have had f****** 60 hour a week jobs, I have had clothes, I have had vacations, I have been there, done that and you know what??? I was not happy!!!! I was not happy! And I won’t be happy until I have myself. And if that means that I lose every good goddamn  thing other than myself, so be it! I would rather have myself and be a nomad wandering around in the pouring rain but have myself and my faith than to have any of the s***, any of the f****** luke-warm watered down, diluted crap, any of the abusive f****** ignorance that you tried to pass off as family or love or important. F*** you! F*** you! And I will keep asking to come to group when I f****** need to come to group and beat the crap out of you. I will not be buried by you! F***!

Connections:

T: connection, commitment?

C: (in self chair) connection is that when I was growing up my parents,  particularly my dad because he was actually a strong character, whereas my mother was just passive, but they didn’t see me, they just squashed myself as a sacrifice so that they could... I don’t know... project all of their needs and desires and their sense of what was important onto me. And I just lost myself in it and I’ve been following their agenda all this time and I’m not following their agenda, even if it doesn’t logically make sense. Like this full time job and being in debt, I could take it but it’s just going after what is important to them. The money and the clothes and the house and what I’m trying to follow here is about my soul and my faith and my self and ..

T: so what’s your commitment?

Commitment:

C: my commitment is to keep following myself and keep asking for extra groups to get this out so it doesn’t squash me cause they just... the more I follow myself, the faster my introjects try and shove me down and I end up not taking care of myself and getting tired and getting sick and so I’m just going to keep working it and keep moving in this direction and asking for the support that I need to get there.

 

 

December 16, 2004

 PResent Conflict:

c: (In self chair) My conflict is that I’m being driven completely out of my mind. My head is... I just cannot shut up. I cannot shut up and I feel like I’m full of resistance and ‘no’ and... left chair?

T: mmm, hmmm put the voice out. Whatever is going on in your head that you don’t like, you put that out there.

C: (negative self chair) um.... now it shuts up.... can I start in the right chair? It’s more dad so...

T: yeah, start wherever you want

C: (in paternal chair) Now I want you to pay attention to me. You need to pay attention to me. Everything that you are doing is wrong and you need to pay attention to me, listen to all of my instructions. I’ll have an instruction for you every single minute of every single day so you need to listen to what I have to say and I’m going to tell you all about what people think and I’m going to tell you what the truth is in this world. And the truth is that you are bad and the reason why you don’t have a job and you don’t have your own place and you don’t have a community of friends and you don’t have a partner and you don’t have a career ... the reason you don’t have all those things is because you are irresponsible and you’re lazy and you are stupid and you are not devoted enough and you cause too much trouble and you talk too much and um... you are too boisterous and you’re too ... your too much. You talk to much and you want too much and you think too much and you act out too much and you create too much of a fuss and you.... you just... you make too much conflict and you just need to go along with people and get along with people and just say yes all the time. That’s what you need to do. Just say yes and go along with it and do whatever is asked of you and just think whatever it is that people are wanting you to think and just be agreeable. If you are just agreeable then you will go far in this world. But you are too stubborn and you are too negative and you’re too bad. You’re just too much.

C: (self chair) I’m just trying to think about what I need to be doing in my day here and I’m trying to get it together and I know that I have these things that I want to do in the next three hours before I leave the house and I’m trying to think about what it is that I need to do. I’m just trying to think and your voice just distracts me constantly. It’s like you just won’t shut up.

C: (paternal chair) there’s no good on blaming other people. The only person you can blame is yourself. And you know this is your fault. If you have things going on in your head it’s because you can’t concentrate and you don’t focus and you just spend too much time day dreaming and you are ... you do really stupid things. You don’t pay attention and you don’t go to bed on time and you don’t eat properly and you don’t talk about things that are interesting and you don’t do anything that is interesting and you don’t play along with the game and you are just wrong.

C: (self chair) (crying) I just get to feeling so beaten down by you. You are just constant and getting proper sleep is just f****** impossible with you. You know, my body... I wake up in pain and then I can’t get back to sleep even if I get comfortable again because you are in my head and you are just f****** constant. I’m having to battle you all the time. And you take so many different faces.

C: (paternal chair) I don’t take different faces, it’s just that these friends of yours that you are no longer friends with, I know what they are thinking because I know you and I know what a f*** up you are and I know what you should be doing and I know what you should say and I know what they are saying do I’m going to tell you all the time what it is that they are saying. That you are the problem in their life.  You are the one to blame because you just... you won’t listen and you don’t care and you don’t let them do things and ...

C: (self side of bat) For starters you don’t know what the hell people are thinking. You just made this crap out of your own fear and your own judgment and your own sh**. You enjoy criticizing me and then holding me responsible for everything and everyone else’s life. And the second thing, if people are f****** blaming me and thinking that it’s my fault and holding me responsible and being critical and judging me for things that are going on in their life or not going on in their life or f***** whatever, you know, that is their sh**. That’s their sh** just like this is your sh**. I don’t need to carry around all this crap. You have just made me so f****** tired. Not only do you keep me awake with all this crap that has nothing to do with me, but also just by the f****** emotional burden of carrying around all this responsibility that you put on my shoulders. (crying) (batting)

C: (other side of bat) Well I don’t really know what is wrong with you. I mean, your mother and I get along with everybody. We get along with people just fine. I’ve run a business for 60 years and I’m ... I get along with everybody. I don’t get into arguments and I don’t get disagreeable like you do. You know if you just do what people want you to do... if you just do what I want you to do, if you just do what your mother wants you to do and your teachers want you to do and your friends want you to do and the rest of the world wants you to do... if you would just do all that and just be agreeable then you wouldn’t have this problem. You wouldn’t have these conflicts with people and you wouldn’t have this problem in your life and you wouldn’t be so much of a big f****** failure.

Historical:

C: (self side of the bat) F*** Y**. Just f*** y**. You know I was never allowed to disagree with you... let alone not do what you told me to do. I wasn’t even allowed to voice my f****** opinion. I wasn’t even allowed to say “I don’t want to” or “I don’t like it” or “I want something different”, I wasn’t f****** allowed to say anything. I had no f***** freedom! I had no rights! But don’t f****** think that I didn’t think it all the time. Don’t think that every time you opened your mouth... well every time you opened your mouth and you said something to me, I just wanted to f****** kill you! I hated you! I was stuck every f****** time you opened your mouth. I was stuck because I wanted to say NOOOOOO, I don’t want to do that!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I don’t want to eat that!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I don’t want to wear that! NOOOOOOOO I don’t want to do that for you!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  My whole f****** body wanted to say NOOOOOOOOOOOO! GET OUT! Leave me alone!!!!!! GO AWAY!!!!!! You can’t make me do anything, YOU CAN’T MAKE ME! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! But instead I was stuck f****** doing your will. I was stuck following your instructions. I was stuck wearing the clothes you picked. I was stuck getting the affection that you wanted to give to me even though I f****** hated it because it was never affection that I wanted. I could tell by the look in your face, your body language, it wasn’t affection, it was showing off. So what you didn’t molest me... the only time you ever touched me was when you wanted to put your arm around me and say ‘oh yeah, here’s your little girl, ehre’s your little girl” Well, f*** you!!!! F*** YOU!! I’m not your little girl and I don’t like the things that you have to offer me. And I don’t like the things that you want me to do! And I don’t like any of it and I was f****** stuck and now my whole body is full! I’m full of a whole lifetime of not being able to express “NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”. What the hell was I supposed to do with it? What the hell was I supposed to do???

C: (other side of bat) Well, you just don’t... just don’t feel that way. It’s just mind over matter. It’s just mind over matter. Just think about something else. Just do what I tell you to do. Just make peace with everybody, just go along with things, just be passive like your mother, just f****** take it all. Just take it all. Just swallow it all! JUST SWALLOW IT ALL!

C: (self side of the bat) F***!!!!!!!!! F***!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate, hate you!!!!!! IHATE YOU! I DID F******* SWALLOW IT ALL. I DID SWALLOW IT ALL. I SWALLOWED EVERY F****** THING. But it wasn’t because I loved you, or respected you or cared about you, it was because I was f****** terrified of you! I was terrified of you hurting me. I was terrified of you putting me out on the street, I was terrified of you hurting my mother, I was terrified of you taking it out on my sister, I was terrified of being rejected by the only family I knew! I was f****** terrified of your criticism, I was terrified of your voice, of your hands, I was terrified of the wooden spoon, I was terrified of the stick, I was terrified of the golf club, I was terrified of rulers, and I was terrified of yard sticks, I was terrified of f****** everything that you used to control me!!! I was f****** terrified of you!

C: (other side) I was a good father, I was a good father for you. I provided for you, I never treated you with anything but respect, I sent you and your sister to a good school. I didn’t get rid of your mother eve though she was just useless and fat. I didn’t get rid of you even though you were obstinate and willful and ugly and fat. I was a good father. I stayed with the family, I stayed with this family. That’s what makes a good father. I stayed with this family.

C: (self side of the bat) I hate you. I so f****** wish. Sometimes I wish you were dead when I was a baby. Maybe somebody would have taken us in. Maybe somebody who knew what it was like to care for a child. Maybe f****** somebody would have cared. You didn’t f****** care about anybody but yourself. You had no right to have a child. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,NOOOOOOOOOOOOO,NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I’m f****** left with all of this NO and all of this resistance and you’re dead and gone and all of this f****** resistance, all of this conflicted stuff inside me! It’s stuck inside me and it drives me f****** crazy!! It drives me crazy!!! And I’m on all of the f****** anti-crazy drugs, thank you very much! And I’m still driven crazy by you!!! I’m driven crazy!! You’re stuck inside me. All of the resistance is stuck, all of my ‘no’ is stuck, all the memories of all of the times that I was forced, forced into prostituting myself, whether it be physically, sexually, mentally, emotionally f****** prostituting myself! All in the name of terror of you! I’m f****** stuck with the knowledge that I have spent my entire life living in fear! I’ve spent my entire life not knowing what love was because I was soooo, sooooo, soaked in fear in anger because of you! And it f****** still works against me.  Dead and f****** gone for I don’t even know how many years anymore, I don’t even care! I don’t even remember you on your goddamn birthday, I don’t even remember when you died. You f****** prick! You ruined my life! And now when I come up to the point when I’m f****** feeling ready to make some choices for myself, YOU, YOU, You are still there inside me, you are still criticizing me, you are still trying get me to be distracted from my self, you still want me to swallow myself, you still want me to do your will, to run around your little chicken coop instead of walking my own path, you f****** bastard! You have ruined my life and some days I f****** feel like I will never get free of you! And I f****** hate you and that’s inside me. It’s not out there where I can fight it with a gun or a spear or a sword or a f****** fork that I could poke in your eye and twist around like spaghetti! It’ s f******* inside me where all it does is torture me and make me sick and put me in pain and I gotta get you out! I gotta f***** get you out!!! OUTTTTT, OUT! NOW!!!! NOW!!!! I will f***** get you out if it’s the last thing I do! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

T: connections and commitment?

Connections:

C: (in self chair) (crying) My introjects from dad ... when I was little he demanded that I swallow myself and distracted me from myself and he threatened me with abandonment and punishment and pain and when I was trying to express myself, there was just no room for any discussion with him I wasn’t even say that I didn’t like something without being punished. There was no freedom of expression in that way at all. I didn’t do it because I loved him, I did it because I was terrified of him and my whole life I’ve been getting into situations where people are wanting things from me and even if they are not threatening me, in the moment I still feel threatened like I did from dad and so I have never been able to say “no’ and I’ve never been able to express my own opinion and my own desires and my own rejection of things. And I feel like I just have all this whole life time buildup of this huge need, huge need to say no and reject and I’m left with all of the people and relationships and situations and I’m just left with a whole entire lifetime of... of... that’s not mine, but I have to carry it. And ...

T: what’s your commitment?

Commitment:

C: (in self chair) My commitment is to just keep coming and working it and try to get it off me, get it out of me so I don’t have to carry it anymore

T: what about in the concrete? Seems like there is a lot of things going on and you’re not saying no or something?

C: (in self chair) No, I am. I can finally say no but it brings up all of the introject as soon as I ... I have my appropriate boundaries with people and I don’t care if they don’t like me but it just makes the introject attack me a hundred fold for doing it... you know, it’s all my fault and the introject just gets me in the middle of the night or all day long just trying to tell me how it’s all my fault.

 

 

December 17, 2004

 PResent Conflict:

T: what’s in you that makes you triggered by that?

C: it doesn’t make any sense because I feel so young right now talking about it and full of shame. But their adults... the experiences that I’ve had as an adult... but it’s like... the last sexual experiences that I had was a couple of years ago and I sometimes... you know... when I’m talking to the person or thinking about the person... not in a sexual way but... just when I’m thinking about them or... it’s like the sexual experience that I had with them will flash through my mind and I just wanta... I don’t want it to have happened at all... I’m so disgusted I wanna f****** kill them. And the same thing happens when I think about the sexual experiences I’ve had with other people.

T: to work that here you have to get into details

C: (crying and quiet for quite a while) o.k., when B. started talking I just had this general feeling of disgust about anything sexual... like ... uuugghhh... and like something really gross on my body and that brought to mind times more recently that I thought about this experience that I had with a person that I didn’t really want to be there at all and ... (crying) ... and it’s totally with the awareness and the boundaries that I have now that I know how much I didn’t want to be there. ‘Cause at the time I was just checked out, I guess. I didn’t really even realize how far away from the experience that I was but now in retrospect... um... I’m on the bed and we’re naked and he’s touching my body and he is just getting off on touching me and...

T: talk to her...

C: (addressing female chair) You’re like ... I don’t know what kind of experience you are having but it seems to me that you are just totally getting off on this and you’re touching my body ... running your hands over my body and touching me in really private places and ... I’m wondering what it is that you are feeling and what is going on with you and why it is that I have such a knot in my stomach and I’m focusing on this knot in my stomach and I’m trying to make it go away because I don’t think it should be here right now, I don’t think I should have this huge knot in my stomach. Why do I have this knot in my stomach?  I don’t get it. I’m safe here, you’re not trying to hurt me. Why do I have this knot in my stomach? (crying) And you’re making noises and you’re moving your body and ... and just gross!... and

T: continue at the bat...

C:  (self side of the bat)(crying)

T: start batting... keep batting and just repeat the last thing you said... it was gross..

C: (crying) F****** gross. I just feel like I want to crawl up into a ball... I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here! I don’t want you to touch my f****** body! Get your f****** hands off my body!!! Get your fingers out of me! I f****** hate the stink of you! I hate feeling this vulnerable. I don’t want to straighten up, I don’t want to uncurl, I don’t want to come out of my stomach. I’m lying here... I’m f****** lying here and all I’m wondering is, “why is my stomach tight?”, “why is my stomach tight?” “why is my stomach so tight” F***!!!! F***!!! I’m boiling myself inside. F***!! F***!!! Why can’t I just tell you to get the f*** away from me??? Why can’t I just tell you to get your stinking f****** needs off me? Why can’t I tell you that the f****** sight of you makes me disgusted?

C: (other side of the bat) Oh, you’re so young and you’re so ... so vulnerable and you’re so ... you’re so available, and you’re so innocent and you’re so easy. You’re so f****** easy. We all think so, you know. We all see how young you are. Look at those eyes... you know what’s behind those eyes... it’s like you’re only five years old, it’s like you’re untouched... it’s like you’re so pure and innocent and vulnerable and easy... you’re so f****** easy. And we like that. We like that, we like you to be so young, we like to feel so powerful, I like to feel like I’m the big one, I’m the adult and you’re the child, I like that.

C: (self side of the bat) You’re all f****** pedifiles, f****** pedifile! That’s why I feel so f****** little! I am f****** little! I never f****** grew up. When the hell did I have a chance to grow up? When did you all start screwing me? When did you start screwing me? F*** F***!!! F***!!! I didn’t know how to say no! I have never f****** known how to say NO! You tell me I want you? Well, I don’t  f****** want you! I have to shove myself off and hide in my f****** belly. Why does my belly hurt? Why is my belly so tight? Why does it feel like my belly... F*** F***!!!! F***!!!! GOD! How do I live with this disgust??? How do I live with this disgust? How many showers does it take to get your f****** fingers off me? How much scrubbing do I have to do to get your fingerprints off my body??? How many years is it going to take to get this memory of your f****** mouth, your tongue stuck in my mouth??? I f****** hate it stuck in my mouth! Get it out of my mouth!!! Get your f****** probing, intrusive, tongue out of my mouth!!!!

C: (other side of the bat) You’re just remembering this all wrong. You know, I was there, I remember, you liked it. You were enjoying it, you initiated it, you liked it. You liked me touching you, you liked touching me, you liked kissing me

C: (self side of bat)  If I f****** like it so much, why do I want to puke? I want to puke right on your face, in your mouth, I want to puke! Puke it out! I don’t f****** like it, I’m not even there! You think you’re so f****** good, you think you’re so f****** psychic or spiritual or connected or smart or whatever the f*** you think you are? (pause) Well fine.  Maybe you f***** are eh? Maybe you are, maybe you can f****** see me. Maybe you can see me. Maybe you can see me. Maybe you can see exactly how f****** young I am. Maybe you can see exactly how I don’t have any backbone to say no to you. Maybe you f****** like me so much because you are terrified of rejection and you see no sign of that in me, whatsoever.  You know by now ....  You know you can do whatever the f*** you want and I won’t stop you. That you can talk me into whatever the f*** you want. That I’ll do whatever the f*** you want. You want! You want! You want! You want! You want! F***!!! F***!!!! F***!!! I have f****** sold my soul for you!!

 T: can you take it back? The emotional part?

HISTORICAL:

C: (continue on self side of bat) crying and sobbing for a while) All I can remember is being a teenager... and wanting to be accepted so much. I need to be accepted sooo much! My life depends on it. My depends on it! You said you loved me, you said you loved me! You f****** hurt me! You said you loved me and you hurt me. You f***** hurt me. You f****** hurt me and if I say I’m being hurt then I’m spoiling it for you and I’m going to be rejected... again! Again, again, again.  (crying)

C: (other side of the bat) You’re not good enough. You’re just not good enough. You think you can get something for nothing? Huh? You think you f****** get something for nothing? You think you’re good enough? You’re not f****** good enough. You’re not f****** good enough. It doesn’t matter what is going on inside you... it doesn’t f****** matter! It doesn’t matter today what is today what is going on inside you. You’re not f****** good enough! You try harder!  You f****** harder. You try harder, you try harder. You want to be part of this family, you try harder. It’s not enough to just be here... you don’t get to be here... you have to work... You Have To Work to be a part of this family. You’ll f****** do what I tell you.  I don’t care if you have cleaned your room, you haven’t done everyone else’s. I don’t care that you practice, you’re not good enough. I don’t care that you tried, you fell short. You f****** fall short! I’m not going to f****** stop until you give me what I want! I will never stop! I will never stop! I will never stop having my eye on you. I will never stop correcting you! I will never stop punishing you! I will never stop threatening you! I will never stop hanging this over your head until you give me what I want!

C: (self side of the bat) If you want me to f****** die, you almost get your wish. If you want me to suffer, you definitely get your wish. If you want me to prostitute myself for my whole life, you don’t get it! I have spent thirty five f***** years catering to your whim. Catering to anybody’s whim who is older than me because it reminds me of you, you prick! Respect your elders! Respect your f****** elders! Do what elders want, listen to your elders! F*** You! F*** You! You f****** set me up! When you finally did let me out of your sight for five f****** minutes, it wasn’t because I was good enough, it was because you gave up on me. You f****** gave up on me! You renounced me as your daughter! You threw me out! You threw me out! What the hell was I supposed to do? What the hell did I know except for what you had taught me. Do what everyone else wants... all those f****** ass*****.... fourteen years old and I was with some thirty year old f****** drunk. And I think that I’m blessed! Blessed! I thought for thirty five f****** years that I was blessed to be screwed by a thirty year old man when I was fourteen! Fourteen! F*** I was a child! I was only a child! I didn’t even know I was a child at the time because you never let me be a child. I didn’t even know what it was like to be a child!! But they could see it! They could see that I was still a child. He could look into my eyes and see that I was as easy to mold as plastercene. He could see it! He could see no resistance right down to the fact that my own f****** mother knew what was going on and f****** endorsed it! I was abandoned by you! I was abandoned by you! You threw me away! Now what do I do? What do I do with these years of disgust? With these years of being scrunched up into my belly? What the f***** do I do? All I can do is keep coming here and keep trying to kill you and keep trying to f****** get it out of me and have all these reactions. Thirty five f****** years of reactions that I swallowed! I swallowed!  I’ve never been able to fight for myself. I never even knew I had a self, you bastard! I fought for your rights, not mine! Well, it’s my f***** turn! It’s my f****** turn! And I’m not taking any sh** and I’m not taking the blame and I’m not taking any of that crap any more! F***!!! F*** You!!!

T: Good. Connections?

Connections:

C: (in self chair) My connection... I don’t really know but... when I was little I was just trained to just try and try and try and try and try and try and put all of my energy into trying to meet someone else’s needs... namely my parents and any other adult that came into my life. And that transferred over to sexual relationships really early on with much older men and I was so far removed from those experiences because I had learned how to just detach myself from reality because of how horrible it was to be with my parents. And it’s only as I start re-attaching to myself and having boundaries that make it safe to do that and having the support that I start realizing how horrible these experiences were and how disgusted I am and how far away I was from the truth.

T: commitment?

Commitment:

C: (self chair) to not let that happen ever again and to just keep fighting to have my self back.

T: good.

 

 

January 22, 2005

 PResent Conflict:

C: My conflict is kind of with my neighbor and kind of with myself. He’s been making sexual innuendos and pushing that edge and I have not been liking it. I’ve been feeling really uncomfortable. I tried... I’ve been wanting to talk to him about it but I’ve been feeling really scared and the other day I went over to let my dog play with his dog and I thought this is the perfect opportunity to talk to him about it. So I was trying to get up the courage to talk to him about it while he was telling me some other story and then at the end of his story came another one of these comments that...

T: right chair.

C: (in right (male) chair) I had to go and fix this friend’s flat tire because he has a cast on his foot and he can’t drive his car. So I drove into town and I took his car to the gas station to get it fixed and it was really nice. It was a 12 cylinder engine... that’s a lot of power. And it’s the kind of car that it would... it would make a bad person feel like taking that fast car and finding a fast girl and getting out of town. And ...

C: (self chair) Oh, as if you would take off out of town.

C: (male chair) well, I couldn’t find you anyway, you were busy so that was that.

C: (self chair) so what’s that supposed to mean? You know I’ve been trying to talk to you about these inappropriate comments that you are making and now you are making inappropriate comments like you would like to come and pick me up in your fast car like I’m a fast girl and you are going to drive out of town with me? What the f*** is that? I haven’t invited this at all. I haven’t...

T: go to the bat

C: (self side of the bat) I haven’t invited this sh** at all. It’s taken me a long time to talk to anybody in this neighborhood . it’s taken me a long time to talk to you. It’s taken me a long time to feel strong enough and sure  and trust myself enough to make sure I wasn’t going to make some kind of stupid flirtatious moves just to get your approval.  It’s taken me a long time to be able to get that out of my system... it’s taken me a long f****** time to get rid of that! And I haven’t invited this for one f****** second. I have been nothing but straight with you. I have not injected any kind of that poison into this relationship.  And still I have to deal with your crap! Still I have to deal with the fact that all of you men in your sixties who .... I’m as old as your daughter... you all still want to f****** play your fantasies on me.  And I’m left trying to look at my own behaviour. What am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? I must be doing something wrong? I can’t say anything about it because I must be doing something wrong. That’s the stupid f****** feeling that it leaves me with. I’m frozen like a f****** rabbit! What did I do wrong to make you treat me that way? What did I do wrong for you to not be able to see me? Or I got to f******  flip it around and you can’t be my nice kind neighbor and owner of my favorite dog. You can’t be that nice man who is married to the nice woman who has the nice garden, who talks about interesting things and cares about birds and cries when his cat dies. You can’t be that man because I have to make you into some big monster. I got to make you into some big f****** monster because I can’t even put up a boundary because I’m silenced by my own fear. F*** I hate it! I hate it! I’m pretty sure that if I said, look, I am so uncomfortable with that and I really don’t appreciate you making those sexual comments at me... I’m pretty sure you would back off... but when I wanted talk to you after that... after that last one, all I wanted to do was rip your head off! I was going to cut you down... I was going to take you out! But it’s not your stuff. You’re just some f****** middle aged man having some fantasy about your f****** neighbor who is half your age. You know you’re just like any other f****** middle aged man I’ve met who has f****** fantasies about young girl because he’s got to feel like he’s still virile. That doesn’t make you bad, it just makes you pathetic. This is just the fact that I’ve been so  f****** frozen with this sh** and I know this time it’s not going to happen. I know because I would rather die... I would rather take the f****** hedge clippers to you before I let anyone touch my body ever again!

T: keep taking it historical and threading it

HISTORICAL:

C: (self side of the bat) This isn’t about you... this is about all those f****** men... this is about all the times that men made sexual overtones on me. This is about every time... about the hundreds of times that men have made sexual overtures to me and I stood there like a fucking deer in the headlights with a f****** grin on my face because daddy likes a little girl who’s happy and I want to have a daddy who’s happy with me. So I sit there and shut up and let you do what you want with me. I let so many men cross my boundaries. I have let so many men take my clothes off. I have participated in so many acts ... I’ve slept with men that I don’t know, let alone like! I don’t know if I like them or not because I don’t even f****** know them. They’re just some guy I met on the ferry or in the bar or at the store or at school or on the street or at the swimming pool or f****** whatever! It doesn’t matter. They play their fantasy on me and I’m f****** frozen!!!!! Solid!!!! That’s my rage!!!! EVERY F****** TIME THAT I COULDN’T STOP IT!!! I couldn’t stop it

T: because?

C: F***! F***! All of those men standing in front of me looking at me, with those eyes wanting me to fulfill their fantasy and I’m terrified! Terrified that I wouldn’t live up to what they wanted from me, terrified that I wouldn’t be right so they would reject me, terrified that it would be my dad... my own father standing there protecting his own f****** fantasy about the perfect little girl! And so what it wasn’t sexual with him. He was such a f****** prude, he gave up his sexuality a million years ago it wasn’t about that it was just about his fantasy about me!!!! It was his fantasy about what he wanted his little girl to be like. And it was about the fact that if I stepped outside of his fantasy ... whack! I would f****** get it!!! F*** You! F*** You! F*** You! What were my options? What the f*** were my options dad? What the f*** were my options? What the f*** was I supposed to do? You bastard! You f****** had me helpless... f****** helpless... needy ... dependent... vulnerable... open...loving... receptive to your crap! You f****** had me at your bidding! You had me and you didn’t even have to try! I was born, geared up, wired to please you! Wired to manipulate you into loving me. Wired into manipulating you to get my needs met! Hoping that you would love me and take care of me. F***! Every f****** male that I have met has represented you! You prick! Unrequited love... unrequited f****** love!!!! I wonder why I’ve been obsessed by those stories of unrequited love... daddy!? I wanted your love!!!!!!!! I f****** WANTED YOU TO LOVE ME!!!! I NEVER GOT IT RIGHT!!!!!  You f****** prick! You f****** prick! You didn’t know the honor that you had! You didn’t know the honor of creating a new life! You didn’t know how to respect that!

C: (other side of the bat) I don’t want you. I’m going to put you out on the street... I don’t want you. You’re not my daughter... no daughter of mine would speak like that! No daughter of mine would talk back to her father!

C: (self side of the bat) I wasn’t your f****** daughter. I was never your daughter! I always wanted to be your daughter! I was never your daughter... not for one f****** day!!! You just saw me as a tool to get your needs met. To be your nursemaid, to be your f****** joker, to be what it was you wanted... your clown, your informant, your scholar, whatever the f*** it was that you wanted. That’s what you wanted for me. You never wanted me... me, dad! You never wanted me, your daughter... to you, she didn’t exist... I didn’t f****** exist. To you all you wanted was *my name*, the girl you made up, *my name*, the girl that you named, *my name* the girl that you named after some aunt that you loved... who you loved... who used to give you candy when you were a little boy... and you just wanted me to give you your goddamn candy! My life! My life! You expected me to give you my life! What kind of f****** father does that? What kind of f****** father demands that his daughter sacrifices her life for him???? It’s supposed to be the other way around, you prick! You’re supposed to sacrifice your life for your creation! When the f*** did you do that? I was not your f****** daughter. You never protected me. A father would protect his daughter! You never nurtured me! A father would nurture his daughter! You were never there for me, I could never count on you, I could never come to you with whatever problem I had because you would come up with some way to humiliate me or make me feel stupid. You would f****** silence me because problems were not in the equation of what you wanted!!! F*** YOU!!!!! You left me f****** empty, you left me not knowing myself so much that anybody... any f****** vagrant, any drug addict, any f****** whorish man could walk into my life and take what he wanted because there was no one here to stand up against him!!! You left me manipulating man after man after man right from the time I was fourteen!!!! Trying to get you to love me!!! Trying and it never f****** worked!!!! All I did was get hurt and those f******* days are gone you prick. You’re f*******dead and gone. Even though you lived on in me for far too long for my liking. You are dead! And I am not giving my body! I am not bending my f****** will for anyone anymore!!! So I may be standing there silenced temporarily but I’ll tell you this! I will come and work this f****** issue with my neighbor every f****** week until I can stand there and look him in the eye ... not look at my feet, not look at his belly, not look at the dog... I will look him in the f****** eye and I will tell him clean... “it is not o.k.!”

 T: good. Connections and commitment.

CONNECTIONS:

C: (self chair) the connection is that my father when I was a kid, he didn’t see me at all... he didn’t want to see me. He just wanted “me” dead so that he could replace me with his f****** weirdo fantasies about what he wanted his “daughter” to be and I was terrified because I was taught to be... you just didn’t go against my dad... I was terrified... paralyzed... he threatened to put me out on the street all the time... he threatened taking things away, my mother dying, selling me, to everything and I just learned how to keep my mouth shut and freeze while someone was playing out their fantasies on me.  I desperately needed him to love and accept me and I had to choose: have myself and be abandoned, or sell myself to try and win his love.  And that has played out through my whole life as man after man has put their fantasies on me. Half of it is me because I’ve been trying to manipulate men (my dad) to love me my whole life and even though I don’t think I have a sexual tone in it, that “I want you to want me” energy just brings out that sexual energy in men. With my neighbor, he’s just ... he’s not an aggressive abuser who would do it anyway, he’s just an older man wanting to toy with his fantasy but its’ not comfortable for me.

T: commitment?

COMMITMENT:

C: My commitment is that I will keep trying to say something to him and if I can’t do it then I’ll just keep bringing it ... this is the only thing I’m going to work until I can stand there and look him in the eye and say it is not o.k.

 

Joaquin F. Sousa-Poza, M.D., D.(M.)Sc, F.R.C.P.(C)

Ex-Professeur Agrégé de Psychiatrie, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke Québec, Canada. Currently practicing in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Reprints of the original background paper "Anaclitic Etiology and Treatment of Neurosis: An Information-Attachment Model" (Sousa-Poza, Eagle, Rohrberg & Steinberg, 1986) are available directly from me at the address listed below. The early groundwork for this research was supported by Grant MA-5661 from the Medical Research Council of Canada (currently the Canadian Institutes of Health Research).

Thank the following persons for their contributions: Daphne H. Fontaine, Suzanne Frenette,
Ali Hemani, Lisette D. Jolicoeur, and Kenneth Lilley.

Prior to them, during the truly pioneering times I was assisted by a few who with low pay, long hours but lots of generosity and courage blazed the way and cleared the bush -sometimes as human cobayas themselves -suffering but never complaining or giving up.
This work is as much mine as it is theirs.
Among them: Andre Mercure, Jean Meunier, Bob Rohrberg, Michel Bourque, Eric Marchand and above all Ms. Lisette D. Jolicoeur.

And last but by no means least, a special mention for a beautiful, intelligent, loving and generous human being of extraordinary patience and skills by the name of Doris Bilodeau.

God bless you all. You earned my love and gratitude. Your recompense is waiting much , much bigger than you ever could imagine because you all have scored innumerable "karmic points." And that is  the real "game" down here in Planet Earth.

Joaquin F. Sousa-Poza, M.D., D.(M.)Sc, F.R.C.P.(C)

 

 

Amongst the feedback to this page, some was good, some was non printable; I simply have chosen that of highest ranking professionals in the field that I have received.

Dear Joaquin

I have just finished the articles and I was overwhelmed . I think it is a tour de force- integrating many bodies of knowledege. Of course I will have to reread it many many times to digest its full value.I think it will make a considerable contribution to our knowledge base.

Congratulations my friend. May you be GRATIFIED

 

Dr Fern Cramer Azima, Ph.D.
World renown psychotherapist
McGill University, Montreal

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(Edited for brevity)

Dear Joaquin,

I am getting more substance about who I am without really searching for it but by observing myself in situations or in decision making. I think this time without therapy is good for me to integrate all what you have given me and all the work I did all those years. It is nice to feel solid and confident without being "somebody.''

I owe a lot to you, it is true you saved my life and for this I will ever be thankful, grateful and words are really limited here because when I see all those people, women for the most part in my group, I am amazed at the quality of human beings that have come out of one single human being non accepting the status quo and trusting himself through hell to heal himself and his fellow "patients". That is called courage; that is called integrity. You are our Nobel Prize. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MIND!

SX