Therapy Anyone??

I have been very lax at blogging and now I figured it was time to restart yet again. I had my counselor read my last post and talked about how amazed I was that people actually read it and the responses I was getting. Some of the responses were very humbling and others very encouraging. I want to start off by saying to all of you is  1. don't take anything I write personal. I type as my mind races.  2. Please don't be offended and if you do get offended PLEASE tell me. And 3. take and use what you wish of my journey and apply it to your own life or better yet share it with someone as I have found in my sessions I am a giver. That being said I want to write about the discussion we had.  Sorry if it is to long!!

We started talking about this a few months ago and this has been a great tool in unpacking the "BAGGAGE" of my life. By this I mean the pain, problems, hurt, and craziness I have packed away to protect myself.
Picture a perfect Heart. A perfect heart is full of the Basic Emotional Needs: Love, Safety/Security, Understanding, Significance, Purpose, and Belonging. These are our core needs, but we also have personality needs that complete the heart. Mine for example are Respect, Self Worth, Order and Sensitivity.

Now picture a heart that looks messed up and distorted. The distortion occurs when certain needs aren't met or abused in a sense. A good example of this is you have a friend who you think you can trust and find later that you are the butt (no pun intended) of their humor, in other word you are their comic relief ( this by no means is a part of my specific situation it is merely an example) and it turns up to be an unhealthy relationship that maybe you have put a lot of time and effort into but they haven't. Some people tend to move on and end the relationship while others might hold onto the feeling and start to build the "Pain Layer" of the heart. The pain builds and since you might remember that pain when you start to develop another friendship with someone new and you don't want to feel that pain again you might be a little less responsive to the new person which is the "Protective Layer". In the protective layer you can start to cut yourself off from others and therefore your needs aren't able to be met.  I would start to build a close relationship with someone and then I would find just cause to distance myself suddenly if I felt the person was starting to see the real me and then wouldn't want to be around me or found I really wasn't worthy. I felt as if I needed to keep people at arms length to protect myself. I might have let my guard down and didn't realize it so then I would distance myself by busying myself and not allowing myself to spend a significant amount of time with them. I was afraid of being "used". Stupid I know..

The "Provision Layer" is formed because you are to afraid of getting hurt again and therefore you are protecting yourself from the hurt and so you don't let anyone get close and therefore they can't meet your needs and so now you must find a safe way to meet those needs. My form of meeting my own needs I found in multiple sessions was: shopping, spending lots of time on the computer, eating a LOT ( which caused me to gain weight and made me more depressed),throw myself into working more so I didn't have time for anyone to prevent them from getting close, getting overly involved in things I really didn't enjoy to feel self worth and belonging and I am sure I am forgetting the others. I finally cracked because I was so involved I set myself up to be emotionally involved in the things I was doing and I was in overload and just suddenly dropped my involvement in everything i.e.  Church, my marriage, my relationship with family, work relationships, community involvement. The worst thing was I was being selfish in a sense and hurt myself more.

 As this Provision layer grew it led to a "Punishment Layer" in which I would either punish myself by not letting people get close to me or punishing others i.e. losing my temper at the smallest things and shutting those that love me the most ( my husband and my girls) out. I would come home from work in a bad mood more than not and I would yell a lot and nit pick every little thing i.e. house chores not done properly and so on.

In essence each "layer" is what distorts the heart making it rough and jagged and out of shape. Unfortunately I don't really know what is the exact cause of me building my layers but I am working on reshaping them so I have a prettier looking heart. I may never know what started all of this. It could be that I let myself be used by people because I wanted to belong, maybe I had this desire to have a purpose other than what God has planned for me. I know that I want to be liked and to "fit in" and so I tend to put myself out there to be hurt because I tend to try to hard and push a relationship into what it might not be meant to be. I don't know but I have found that I do have healthy relationships with a few people and I am trying real hard not to push them away but let them fulfill needs and I try to fulfill their needs as well. This is a work in progress that is what I know.. A little therapy goes a long way..

A New Year Hopefully A Skinnier Happier Me!!

It is officially 2012. 2011 was a very long and trying year for our family and at the same time a very adventurous one too. I am coming upon my 2 year anniversary working for the school. Our Great Nephew was born and is now a year old. My cousin and Aunt got married and another cousin and a good friend is going thru a divorce. I wanted to separate from my husband but we started counseling to avoid it. My sister hand mother have been in and out of the hospital. I about gave up on church. I secluded myself from those I love and walked away from those I thought cared. Dakota almost walked away from a life long dream. Ashley is suffering social acceptance from her piers. Terry had surgery and is still not back to work and is struggling with a decision of where he wants to be and what he wants to do. My best friend moved to Texas. I don't know where to go from here. On the positive side Terry and I are doing a lot better. We traveled to Michigan and spent almost a week with my Aunt. We traveled to New Mexico for a friend of mine's daughter's wedding. I have been enjoying scrap-booking more and have even finished a few good books. Dakota didn't walk away from her love of dance.

I am going to start this year by exercising and trying to eat right. I also have a goal of getting more organized and having money in savings. I want to be more thrifty and using my time for the important things such as family and real friends. I want to scrap-book more and read at least 1/2 of the books on the book shelf.

I am still in counseling and not doing to hot on the homework. In my last session I was given the task of evaluating my friendships and why I let certain people get close and keep others at a distance. I have come to the conclusion that if a person is easy to talk to I tend to trust very quickly and if it is harder to scratch the surface then I take my time to get to know the real person. In this I have found that the easier it is to talk to someone the further away I need to be and the ones it takes longer to get to know then that person is a genuine friend and trustworthy. I use to be an open book and over that past 5-7 years I have started to close and distance myself. It seemed the more I gave and the more above and beyond I went in a friendship the more I was taken advantage of. Don't get me wrong I am sure those people didn't mean any harm but I let it happen because I was trying to fulfill a void in myself by pursuing said friendship in the manner I was. I was trying to meet a need and although I didn't realize it at the time I was adding to the heartache by pursuing the relationship in the first place. I am talking about the people I tried to help when I couldn't even help myself. The people who's sad story made me want to make things better for them so I was quenching the I am needed thirst.They gave me purpose. They accepted me for my crazy unpopular self. I look back at the time I invested in these relationships I could have invested in my husband and children. I think of all the times I ran to be with someone abandoning my own family. It breaks my heart to see how I could have had what I needed at home but I wanted to be a part of something more. It was the longing of belonging to a crowd of people. To be socially accepted. I wasn't very well known in high school as being a part of the "in crowd" I wasn't really a part of any crowd. I had friends and I got along with everyone and I didn't feel as though as I was hated or not liked but at the same time I wasn't a part of anything. Even today as the girls, Terry and I watched old home videos I was sitting there trying to figure out how I could have done things differently and remembering the tough times we had but I was also remembering those that are still a part of our lives today. The one person who sticks out in my mind is a young ambitious woman we met 16 years ago, who spoke her mind and didn't care what people thought. She looked at the facts and for truth. She stuck by my family's side when we were going through the worst time in our life. She never judged us and she saw through the walls we built up. She was and is of GREAT support for us yet I have failed her as a friend by not being there when she is sure to need a good friend right now. I don't know what happened but I know I need to make amends. No we aren't fighting and there was never a disagreement we simply lost touch. Life goes by so fast that we easily lose touch with those we love the most. Kind of like taking our time with them for granted. I am forever saying I need to call so and so but I put it off thinking I have plenty of time to do it later but later never comes. You shouldn't put off till tomorrow what you need to do to day. I need to make notes of that everywhere I go to remind myself that I need to get off my butt and get things done. So I am going to end this entry on this note. Water and exercise is going to consume my lazy time which by the way means I need to go to bed and get up in the morning to workout. I am sticking to it !!! Happy New Year!!