<p>Long and busy day. I am emotionally and physically drained. Told H to pick up pizza to bring home and I will open some wine but I really want a martini…no vodka in the house. 
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<p>D2 texted me at 3:30 to ask what exactly is semi-formal attire for a senior banquet in the alumni center. Good question. If it was for anywhere else I would wear a cocktail dress. Asked her when was the banquet…she answered 7:00 tonight. Guess she has to go with whatever she has at school! :rolleyes:</p>
<p>argh…I have now had two phone calls and one email where my lovely friend needs me to feel a certain way. I knew this part would be difficult as they cannot understand my family of origin’s uniqueness. Oddness. Not niceness.
So I am being told how to feel. I am so trying to comfort them
My natural expression right now would be to crack jokes, tell horrid stories, and be sarcastic.
This next week will be tough. I am just about writing a little script that helps them.
One friend, who is a nurse who works with HIV homeless, was just nice. Asked how I am feeling and left it up to that. She is the kindest and more spiritual person that I know and does not need me to be anything but me.
One old friend was so over the top–she was just about sobbing about my mother, who she has never met, blah blah. That is a burden.
I think, too, because I am a therapist I am suppose to exhibit certain prescribed behavior.
I have appreciated the genuine supportive feeling here.</p>
<p>have been tired, working, the marathon bombing. and a friend dying of lung cancer. I tend to withdraw when I am sad.
Oregon your mom sounds like my grandmother, she was never officially diagosed, but I am sure she had the same narcissistic dx. She was a horrible person. She made my mothers life hell, and gave up her own grandchild for adoption. I am sure the child was better off, but who could do that? It was sad , when she died no one was upset, only relieved. So I get it. What i dont understand is, why it is so important to others for you to feel anything different than what you feel? You reap what you sow, and many times I think they get more than they deserve. I have resentment toward my grandparents because they made my parents what they were, but my parents tried to rise above it, although marginally successful. I can be so damaging unless you’ ve done the work.
I just watched project runway, and am thinking last week at this point was watching the news in Watertown.<br>
D2 is out of school tomorrow that should be nice to have her home.</p>
<p>thank you dt–very comforting</p>
<p>mp–and others–I missed a few posts and reading back --THANKS! and good advice and yes, as soon as I know where the ring and so on lands I will post.
My Dear Brother (he is a guy guy and so am never sure how often we will communicate from event to event called just to tell me the events of the day.
So Nice and unexpected.</p>
<p>Arabrab, what a great list! DTE, sending you and your friend the light.
Oregon, totally cool that your brother is opening up.</p>
<p>And Shaw, re getting complete, I’ll try to explain what it means. It sounds basically similar to what Oregon has already done, but since I know you’re interested in transformative consciousness I’ll take a stab at illustrating the landmark tools.</p>
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<p>Shaw, in theory, “getting complete” doesn’t require anything on the part of the other person, so they can be clinically narcissistic all they want. And people don’t have to like each other or love each other, except possibly as fellow humans, when its done.</p>
<p>I’ll try to give an authentic example: my mother was not able to protect us as children from a violent alcoholic; she herself was victimized, but also pretty attached to her gilded cage, if you will, and too terrified or demoralized to make a new life for us. The night she left my father, it was because 8-year-old me had knocked him over the head, called the police, climbed out a second story window, inserted myself into the arriving police car, and attempted to convince the cop that my mother and sister would never be safe and that this time they really had to leave. The cop finally divined the magnitude of the problem, and talked her into leaving. My circumstances gave rise to and amplified my natural bossiness with both my sister and mother, who from an early age, I viewed to be mewling victim types.</p>
<p>Over the years, this was only reinforced by the vissitudes of single parenthood. The effect on my sister from my domineering behavior gave rise to her stuttering, among other issues. I also never gave my mother much of a chance to actually mother me, because I didn’t trust her competence.</p>
<p>Later, when she remarried and had two more children, I ensconced myself as nanny, housekeeper, and head disciplinarian - some might say it was warranted, others might view it to be a power-grab. I’d say it was both depending on the lense you’re wearing… When I went away to school, the youngest girls were devastated, and one (who has learning disabilities) was lost without structure or tutelage. Years later, she ran away, I intervened, and she lived with me.</p>
<p>Getting complete with my mother, years later, wasn’t about a laundry list of her failures to me or ammends for what i might have deemed to be an ineffective way of being – none of that mattered. It was about the ways I capitalized on those failures to continue running a game that might be called “power over” if you’re fond of Neitzche. My “story” inside my head - deep down below the surface – was that no one would look after me, no one had my
back. Getting complete meant simply recognizing that while she was running a victim/incompetence/fear game I was running a “power over” game that locked up the dynamic and affected our respective roles in my family. So I fired myself as the stand-in parent and gave her permission to be not only my mother, but the mother of the rest of the children. I expressed that I wanted an authentic relationship.</p>
<p>The miracle of this kind of work is that when you change your lense, what you call to yourself also shifts. While I am completely okay with my own tendency to “power over” I am now also free to “feel safe” without it. While giving my mother permission to mother me sounds silly, that one small utterance really did shift the dynamic and gave us enjoyment inside our relationship. More importantly, she really has taken on a different role with my sisters, now that there’s a little “room” to do so.</p>
<p>So, getting complete is sort of one part dual forgiveness (forgiving yourself without rationalizing it; forgiving the other person from a “universe is perfect” lense without being a historical revisionist…eg, it was what it was, void of dramatic energy) plus a teensy bit of transactional analysis plus a teensy bit of eastern philosophy in the “recognizing the illusory nature of the reality” we co-create in worldly situations, and just deciding who to be about it all. Freeing oneself from our own deteministic stories about ourselves and the whys and taking that power and energy and using it differently. Transforming our relationship to events that shaped us so that the latent story or racket doesn’t run the rest of our lives (unless we CHOOSE it ;))</p>
<p>The difference in the training (compared with therapy or Judeo-Christian forms of forgiveness and making amends) is that with lm, the other human has to hear you 
not necessarily understand you, just physically hear you.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I’ve done the topic any justice, but I find it an interesting subject.</p>
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<p>kmc, I would like a philosophy where I could simply decide to change my lens, without actually verbalizing what is happening. The verbalization part feels dangerous to me. Why is that part necessary, according to Landmark?</p>
<p>kmc, I’m going to have to go back and reaad your post a few more times to absorb it all. Fascinating. But I agree about the saying things out loud part.</p>
<p>kmc - what a powerful post. I will also be re-reading it.</p>
<p>Jerry Seinfeld on why coffee is so central to our culture:</p>
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<p>Love Jerry’s coffee analysis! And, kmc, there is so much wisdom in your post (above) as well as in so many others. I too have reread several times. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience.</p>
<p>Oregon101 - Thinking about you today. </p>
<p>Back a few pages people were talking about hair on men. I heard once that about the age it starts thinning out on their head, it sprouts out of other places - ears, nose, eyebrows, etc. I thought it was funny. Like the antenna brows - know what I mean?</p>
<p>I definitely want to keep this thread going. And I apologize for not adding much lately, when I am feeling “down” I hibernate - both in my real life and on-line. Looking back now with a clearer head, I probably should have been hospitalized this past spring, because I wanted to hurt myself. I have since talked to my doctor about it and have a plan in place for if I feel that way again.</p>
<p>Odessagirl is coming home for the weekend. She is starting to pack up her apartment and will bring a load home tonight. These four years have just flown by - faster than high school, even.</p>
<p>Sometimes I like my job, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I want to quit and go back to working with Visiting Angels. I don’t know what to do, so am just staying put for the time being.</p>
<p>BTW - The tumor on my dog’s spleen was benign. Thank God. I wasn’t ready to lose him yet, but I never will be ready for that. He is beside me all the time - on the loveseat, on the bed, etc. Just my little lap dog.</p>
<p>That’s a lot of insight, kmc. </p>
<p>And from Seinfeld too. (Though don’t you wonder if his wife secretly squirts broccoli juice or something into his coffee – wasn’t she the one with the cookbook about how to hide veggies in everything?)</p>
<p>eddie, Glad to hear you’re feeling better and that Georgie is okay!</p>
<p>Eddie, glad to hear you have a plan in place. Sendin’ ya the light.</p>
<p>TheAnalyst, I really resisted the verbalization part during the forum, (and still do) and was coached repeatedly that ideally, getting complete was a transformative experience BETWEEN humans, not in one’s head 
(regardless of outcome.) </p>
<p>Eg. What was the real value of my new insight into the “power over” racket I was running if I was not willing to authentically admit that aloud to my mother (and sister)? Where was the acknowledgement and acceptance, without drama, of my responsibility for my way of being? You see, this way, it was also freeing TO HER, which was a byproduct, but one that really did net transformation in our relationship. Saying it aloud to her, however, was doubly freeing TO ME.</p>
<p>I think it’s because you’re giving the insight the power of your word and confronting the humanity of the other person (by confronting, I don’t mean adversarially, because the one thing you’re NOT supposed to do is to in any way recite a “make wrong” list or rationalize your own behavior based on the other person’s actions or inactions – so kind of the OPPOSITE kind of conversation that most couples have when dissecting why someone’s ticked The focus is entirely your role, your racket, your freedom not to be run by it.</p>
<p>I think the idea is that “secret thoughts” take on a particular energy or power that countermands the process and has one begin to behave outwardly in a way that is inauthentic or inconsistent with one’s internal climate. And the training is that to be “present” inside your life is to have a degree of authenticity in your acts/deeds/engagements etc. Otherwise you are “operating over top of” the stuff you haven’t “cleared” or “gotten complete” about.</p>
<p>I know that’s a heap of lingo, but I hope that conveys the thinking, or at least my distant understanding of same. It’s been a long time since I’ve done the forum, but I have to say, in terms of tools that have stayed with me, it was one of the most effective and enjoyable forays into the human heart ;)</p>
<p>Very powerful posts!</p>
<p>eddieo…I think of you often…and miss you when you aren’t posting! 
Hoping your insight of having a plan in place for when you are low keeps thing on an even keel for you. Hoping the spring and summer refreshes you. Glad odessagirl is visiting and that your dog is feeling better! </p>
<p>missypie…yikes! I have never had coffee! Now I know what I am missing! ;)</p>
<p>NM,I don’t drink coffee either. Both my mother and father did but my sister and I don’t drink coffee at all. Husband does but I like a cup of tea now and again to get me going ( or wild cherry pepsi!).</p>
<p>Eddie – Glad you’re here…and glad you have a plan.</p>
<p>Thanks, kmc. Helpful and thought-provoking. Thanks.</p>
<p>I’m a coffee addict. I’ve bought espresso/cappuccino machines for home and office. In addition to the caffeine, which makes me very happy and wakes me up, having a cup of good coffee (I put my lattes in Contigo double wall aluminum cups so they stay warm) signals that it is time to work. Also, I collect articles on the great health benefits of drinking coffee. Did you know, for example, that coffee is the greatest source of anti-oxidants in the American diet?</p>
<p>For those of you who like coffee, we have great coffee in my house. And recall that I offered to put people up if we had our Class of 2013 shindig in Boston.</p>
<p>Love good coffee but just in the a.m.</p>
<p>eddie–we are always here for you.</p>
<p>kmc–very interesting. Will reread a few times.</p>
<p>It turned that only a few friends need me to feel the way they expect. Others have been lovely and made thoughtful comments. Death is one of those things that a person may think they will know how they will react but cannot really until the event. I am feeling relief and peace. I am glad that I was able to understand my mother and her illness a few years ago. That allowed me to step back and sort things out. The real grieving was years ago when I realized what I would never be able to have with her.<br>
But I do have that relationship with my D and my S called to see how I was doing immediately which was wonderful.
She also died on a beautiful day and I have been out walking yesterday and today.
Although when I saw smoke coming off H’s engine I had a fleeting thought that she had come to say goodby…</p>