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..