Someone was wearing a CKone rip off at Tim Horton’s this morning and I smelled the distinct smell of an Avon perfume at Dr Murty’s office last week; I think it was Haiku. I wish I had enough confidence and outgoing-ness to approach these people and ask them if I’m right.
I’ve been reading Dr Phil’s book, Self Matters and I’m going really slowly because there’s things I haven’t heard yet. That’s special because I’ve been in therapy on and off (more on than off tho) since 1995.
I was 15 years old and one of my brothers had died 4 years earlier and my mom went nutty and left a year after that. My therapist was my mom’s therapist and she was cold and emotionless. I’d make jokes sometimes to lighten the mood and she would just look at me blankly and wait. I had no idea she sucked until three years later when I was in my senior year of high school and my friend, Alyssa, along with my art teacher, Mrs. Vail, told me you should love talking with your therapist and should have no problems talking honestly with them. Well, gee, I didn’t know that, and apparently neither did Dad. The psychiatrist that I saw at the same place who first diagnosed me with depression was a disrespectful jerk. Dr Oh had a nasty habit of scheduling patients every other hour, but we’d only see him for 5 minutes. We waited atleast that one hour to see him. I would tell him on a scale of 1-10 how depressed I was, he’d write it down, give me a refill script if I needed one, and send me on my way.
So on page 76/77 of said book, Dr Phil tells us that among the plethera of things that make us us, he said defining moments and critical choices had a major influence on who we are. So I closed my eyes and waited for a memory to pop in there. The first thing (and it startled me into tears) was my oldest brother, Thad’s angry red face screaming at me. I don’t remember any sound, just that scarey face of his. To this day, I’m scared shitless of angry people. I feel like they have to use every ounce of restraint to keep from hurting me. I’m ashamed to say that I yell and scream at my kids. I’m an empathetic person so when I’m out of that moment and am back in control again, my guilt takes over and I feel the utmost hatred and animosity towards myself. I always apologize, which is something that no one in my family ever did. I never heard my parents say, after Thad had torn the head off my cabbage patch kid, that he must apologize. Which really, when you think about it, I don’t believe that’s the way to do it.
I’ve been replaying the kids’ incidents to them so they can try to understand what they did and how the other person felt. Then I ask them if they want to apologize. Sometimes I whisper to them, “I think it would make him feel better if you said you’re sorry” or “I think you should say your sorry”. I try my best to leave it up to them. And of course, children learn by example.
Another broad memory was summing up some of my parents characteristics and they were awful conflicting sometimes, but Mom was way too passive to ever say anything against Dad’s parenting style.
One thing I loved about my mom is that she dreamed. She hoped, and wished and prayed.
Dad was a realist and I think he crushed Mom’s dreams a lot, because he did that with mine and I was just his daughter. So in my head, I never know when I should dream big and loose myself in fantasy or keep my feet on the ground and do what people tell me to. Since I didn’t know, I always looked to other people for answers, plus I was always blame free if I didn’t make the choices. I made a lot of bad ones so I was in no hurry to fuck up again.
In the last year, I’ve finally been able to stop blaming Thad for yelling at me and doing the things that he did to me. He was put in charge a lot because he was the oldest. He was a kid himself; only 7 years older than me! Mom and Dad put way too much on him. There were 5 kids total and I imagine that Thad got in shit if we got in shit. So it shouldn’t surprise me that he’d become resentful of us.
For some reason I can only picture myself being yelled at by Thad. He and Chaunce (Chaunce is a year and a half younger than me) became good buddies as Chaunce grew near adulthood. I think that my sister, Lish, just moved out of the line of fire; her instincts were better than mine. I must have just curled into a ball and cried cause that’s what I do now.
So now, what am I supposed to do with that? I guess just try to fight that instinctual anger that hits me without warning because its so not me.
luf
Becky
