notrydoyoda Posted January 2012
The Caregiver & Dysfunctional Families: How are you doing?
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Thanks!
I'd just add this. Dad's need to play with their children, boys and girls, from when they are very young on. In return, your adult children, will make time for you. This was my dad's philosophy and approach.
One doesn't always have to be doing the same game, but being there, showing interest, supporting them and afterwards take them out to eat and share a bit. And I might add, when a medical need comes up or even something as simple as discovering the need for eyeglasses at the Lion's Club bus, be the one who either takes care of it or takes the lead in making sure it is resolved.
I am an introvert. I used to use humor as my ice breaker. But since my mom died and all I went through with my family I find my humor has gone the way of the dodo bird. I just feel sad all the time lately. My mom has been gone 9 years and yet it still feels like yesterday.
Wanting to get out and be around people would help but when I'm in new situations I can't fit in with humor anymore so I end up just feeling awkward and misunderstood. Lately I've been feeling like my adolescent self. I wasn't a happy kid. Just awkward and self conscious. I managed to conquer this in my late twenties and right up to my fifties. Now in my sixties I'm back to feeling lost and alone. I'm not saying all introverts feel lonely but I bet a lot of them do.
I've tried counselling. It just doesn't work for me. Maybe I haven't found the right person. But I get what you say when you say this world is not your home. Not exactly how you expressed it but it's how I feel.
While their are some clergy who are awesome listeners, I've met non clergy who are as well with some of the best coming from the most horrid backgrounds that will surprise you, if they tell you which they don't often do for they have learned the hard way, that with many, it is not a safe thing to do.
Being a good listener is not the be all end all. It is a start, an important start where a sense of connection, trust and openness to the deeper more substitive issues are which do require questions.
As a dad, I have learned that each of my sons communicates very differently, but it is important for me to listen first to get a handle on where they are and what is going on. When we reach that point where they feel that I'm really hearing them, that is when progress begins. Up until then, particularly if I've heard this same kind of issue from others, I hold back.
The son who is an introvert requires a bit more time and patience for him to stop swallowing his feelings and clearing his throat to eliminate a first idea or sentence. I respect that he's an introvert and go from there. We have in better times discussed how his being an introvert impacts how he communicates and affirmed that is ok. He replied that I was correct about his swallowing and clearing his throat. Another thing that is true of many introverts, with my oldest son or my SIL, it is not wise to underestimate them. You will not when it happens because they will suddenly become very extroverted and just tell it all just the way reality is because they can't keep it inside anymore and wow can they give a speech. After one critical situation, he told me that he was about to say something when I just stopped the verbal abuser in their tracks. I've told him that I wish he would have delivered his speech at some point.
The extroverted son is very different. He is extroverted and like extroverts talking is his means of thinking. However, put on your Teflon suit because one must plunge below the extroverted pain words to what is really bothering him deep inside. Why have I learned this? Because a crisis in our lives as a family demanded this of me as a dad.
I will add this from my own life's experience as an extrovert, sometimes we change as my SIL pointed out over Christmas. We become less extroverted. Why? Well not for all, but for some of us, it is because the "safe people" we could talk to are starting to die out and thus we save our talking for the safe people who remain. It is possible, this part of my being an introvert is just me. Like, the elderly Luke skywalker in the movie, I'm exhausted but not depressed like he was. I live with a sense of detachment that more and more this world is not my home. My detachment is compassionate, but not driven to fix or heal everyone. BTW, only as an illustration do I dare compare myself to skywalker. I'm just saying don't be surprised when and if your extrovert suddenly becomes more of an introvert.
Was I able to maintain this amount of depth and intensity with my boys for very long? No. I was able to maintain it for almost 2 years before getting each of them plus myself to a therapist. Would I do or recommend doing this again? No, I would have gotten them and me to a therapist earlier. However, the reason why I didn't was that this emergency also required the utmost privacy possible.
I'll close with this about saints. They are found in unlikely places. They are often from extremely painful backgrounds and they don't talk about it much. They are like deep, slow-moving rivers, not like splashy streams rolling up and down over the rocks. They can stop and listen without the noise of their pain in the background leading them to one-upmanship another's pain. Sometimes, they have some education, but not always. These good souls are the salt of the earth.
ok, that's more than enough
I would say that's being a good "Priest", "Clergy", maybe even a good Saint.
(Bad job descriptions, all, imho)
But even my psychologist (the one who REALLY helped) said to me first session "You will not find me to sit by silently listening to the same story over and over again while my hand reaches for your cash. I WILL be a participant in our sessions".
And was she EVER.
She shook my world.
She picked me up and gave me a good shaking and set me back down to think about it for a week.
I got told "You have told me that story. I don't want to hear about R______, again. (My ex, who was the person I THOUGHT I was there about). I want to know what's your PLAN".
She confused me. She angered me.
SHE MADE ME THINK.
I honestly don't think that we do people any favor listening to the same stories over and over, giving validation (and for WHAT), giving our sympathy? They might as well be talking to the WALL. And I am often certain that they DO. They MARINATE in it, to use Dr. Laura's phrase--and lordy, I wouldn't tell that good woman not to be judgemental.
I am the mean girl here I guess. I honestly think the only way to make us THINK is to rattle us a bit, get us shaken out of the same old HABITS and paths that lead us inexorably to our doom over and over and over again. Notice some women choose the same abuser over and over and over again? Just in a different skin? There's a reason for that. And they get a payoff for it as well. They remain the victim. People don't request strength from them. They are sheltered and slathered with our sympathy. They have to take no risks. They decide on the punishment-reward quotients and make their choices.
WE ALL MAKE OUR CHOICES.
I am NOT nonjudgemental. In fact I judge EVERYTHING from what to wear as a sweater to when to cross the street to whether someone is a bad person, a good person, a needy person, a dangerous person. I use my judgement every single day in every single way.
Can I be wrong? Oh! You BETCHA. I can be real wrong. And when I realize I am I own it. And hopefully I learn from it. And when I don't recognize it, then I guess that's a shame. Life's full of tragedy. It isn't all about our happiness. Some of it is about how tough it can be.
Truth is I don't do the buzzword--to my mind-- of "don't be judgmental". I just heard two women walking together down Sanchez yesterday, one saying "Well..............we don't want to be judgeMENTal". What does that MEAN? A way of say "That's messed up but we shouldn't say so?".
I Just need an interpretation app on my phone anymore to try to figure out what anyone is trying to say about anything. Alas. Getting old. 81. As the old Irish nurse said "Things change one coffin at a time". Mine's popping up here anytime now.
Controlling behaviour, OCD, maybe gaslighting to keep others on shifting ground and undermine their confidence.
So in the context of that quote, are you saying to drill them on why they did not handle it differently?
Ever hear "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care"?
Anyhow, I wrote about listening to understand first, not what to do after listening. Most of us don't listen to understand, we listen to respond.
For another to do more than tolerate it. More that enable it.
To believe it. Then try to convince others too.
*Flying monkey* I suppose..?
Shared delusions??
“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
“Size isn’t everything. The whale is endangered, while the ant continues to do just fine.”
“Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead.”
"Whenever the brain and the heart fight, it's always the liver that suffers."
"I'm sorry if I behaved in a way that made you think I should apologize."
Love all those wisdom tidbits!
🙂🙂 "Calm
is just a chocolate bar away."
"Don't die before you're dead."
Seven needed dynamics to listen as one who understands instead of listens to respond.
1. Be healed enough from one's own past trauma that what you hear does not trigger you or cause you to react with anger if they don't share their story just the way you want them to say it. To do so is a major act of invalidation.
2. Suspend judgment so that the person feels that you are safe.
3. Even when their story is so foreign to your life experience that it is difficult to understand, be empathetic instead of drilling them on why not handle it differently.
Over time as more people share their story or the same person shares more of their story, you will come to understand what you didn't understand before.
Be patient and be willing to live with the complexity of not fully understanding a person's story. Empathy and validation are far more important to the person talking!
4. Consider what the person has shared with you a priceless gift for you to protect with the utmost privacy. Remember, you aren't them and you weren't there.
5. Don't fret over feeling overwhelmed or fearful in the moment for it's part of the experience when another person fully opens their soul to another. Some of that feeling will linger at times but that is normal.
6. Never, divulge what you are told to someone nor throw it back in the person's face.
7. Remain humble for you are not alone as a listener. There is always more room for growth.
For many, I'm preaching to the choir, but it bears repeating from time to time. We all, myself included, must continue to become good listeners.
imagine we all changed our screen names!
we’d be called
ihatecaregiving3
…4…5,008…19,765…
"Stop wishing. Start doing."
"Don't be afraid of death. Be afraid of an un-lived life."
I get your point, but I don't think that I'd ever say the abuser hurts worse than the victim. To me, that's almost a more covert way of saying what my abuser said to me, that their abuse which caused mine hurt them worse than my experience of their abuse of me which they excuse on their past, as heard in their saying that they could not help it, but they knew it would create a lifetime of pain for me.
We must each take responsibility for our own choices instead of living as an eternal victim which excuses us from personal accountability, keeps us glued to the past, and never allows us to be free in the present or the future.
Yes, abusive people hurt as do those they abuse. However, it is not up to the abused to heal the abusers. The abusers need to take responsibility for themselves and find healing for themselves.
Sorry about preaching to the choir, but I am on a roll tonight and will calm down.
I read that over a few times & feel it's wisdom.
I'm glad to have closure on a statement from a person who hurt me deeply a long, long time ago. No therapist has been able to decode this, but now I know. It never struck me as an ok statement; my reaction was shock and I shut down. Here's the clarifying closer via a retired pastor friend. "Their speech was a standard denial of responsibility often offered by abusers who have been abused."
I wish that were possible, but I don't remember back that far to before I was 10.
“Un-drama yourself. Be who you were before all that drama happened which distracted you from who you really are and what you really want for your life.”