Mindspace

Praying in Aramaic

Just found the most beautiful track of the Lord's prayer in Aramaic. This past weekend's up in San Rafael chanting got me really hooked onto praying in a different language. 
It's ironic because i have been only been praying in tongues since i was 13. A lot of Aramaic sounds like tongues actually, which really resonates considering it's the language that Jesus spoke. Something about hearing it in the familiar overtones of my homeland really warms my heart. I just was at Hildegard Van Bingen retreat a couple of months ago and Latin obviously does not do it for me. But something about Aramaic connects me back to Singapore and images of mosques and people in prayer. 
It brings up memories of watching Family Ties on the Malaysian channel and having it interrupted 6 times for Islamic prayer. i think about that Muslim girl at Santa Clara that would get up in the middle of class and go out and pray on a mat, it was just such a familiar and homecoming sight, it really triggered me to pray more ritualistically and more ceremoniously.
But this track is haunting. And i realize how much of home still resonates in me. Not just my faith but the faiths of all the community of other religions growing up.
Aidan and i talk all the time about the people who believe in elephants -- the Hindus. i love that i can talk about spirituality with my children with openness and confidence that the God of the universe who found me, will find them.

Santa Sabina

The kids are away this weekend, and for the first time i don't have to bend over backwards arranging babysitting for a retreat.  No screaming dramatic children running behind my car as i leave.
For a moment, i actually felt like one of my clients who said about her marriage " Now that i have all the reason to leave, i really wonder if i want to leave"
But i forced myself to "seize the day" and literally typed in this weekend's dates and the word "retreat " in Google and found a Lenten retreat in right in my backyard, San Rafael, Santa Sabina.
I had just visited here last year for a Hildegarde Von Bingen retreat and was really struck by the quietness of the place. It's in the Dominican Order and i have to say, i really feel a different energy from the Franciscan hospitality that has been my home retreat at San Damiano. They are cooler, more reserved. Very committed to silence -- the whole house is silent and it can come across aloof. 
I was laughing because they showed us a picture of St Dominic  and he had his hand to his mouth going " shhhhh". Me and Natalie, we are texting each other chomping down my meal silently in the dining hall going " shhhhhh i'm eating".
But i have to say, something about the whole house being committed to silence is relaxing.
Yesterday, the retreat leader talked about "giving each other the gift of silence" and being "connected by silence" and i am so aware of how i struggle with silence. Somewhere between my childhood friends giving me the "silent treatment", the idea of being "sent to my room", my teenage years when my mother and i barely spoke, i still feel so punished by silence. i remembered being so anxious with my last psychotherapist's silence i ended up in fetal position tied up in knots.
I think about how sad i was the first time enoch and i drove long distance and i realized, he was perfectly content to drive all 5 hours in silence. I remember how hurt i was on 20 hour flights when he would put in ear-plugs under the flight headsets so he could drown out the plane engines. Such precious times to communicate, and he would choose to be silent.
On very good days, God teases me that my marriage is one long silent retreat and if i can survive that, i can survive anything.
On better days, He challenges me with the thought that perhaps my husband is my spiritual challenge, my spiritual practice, that i have to face all the anxiety and panic, isolation and rejection when he chooses not to speak to me. Not because he is punitive or punishing ( mostly ) but because he is content with silence.
Someday, i am going to have to reconcile myself with being able to silent with others that i care about, instead of only with strangers
  

Coming into my Own

Beautiful week of clients God, i feel i am coming into my own as a therapist. 
My supervision team is looking up to me, Anne is turning towards me for advice, my clients are responding. i never want to lose that wide eyed awe of how amazing the healing process is, how privileged i am do this work, how nothing short of a miracle it is when a client chooses to trust you.
Humble me God, i want to stay close to you. i can feel a part of me stir with pride as i accept the compliments my clients give me:
" We feel like you know us"
" i feel you know what you're doing"
" You were sneaky today, you haven't been sneaky in a long time"
Lord these comments are so precious and i feel like i should write them down.
55 hours to the end Lord, i haven't felt like they were long at all. Felt like i was doing the work, and showing up and being faithful. You did the rest.
Thank you Lord, giving you the glory for a career that i kind of stumbled upon, that you envisioned for me, that you healed me and nurtured me through every step of the process. Alpha and Omega Lord, you who began a good thing, will be faithful to bring it to completion.

Reflections on the week

Day 4 of a week of no husband and no kids. i've always fantasized about this space. What is it like living in my own house, working my job without the kids.
Things i realized:
• i don't rush to go home from work.
Which is kind of nice, but kind of depressing. It's sad to be at the office past 5 and sit there doing notes realizing that there is no one home waiting for me. Last night for the first night i went home to an empty house early. Other nights i had gone out with girlfriends. i realized, wow, it is lonely being a single person at night.
• i love sleeping alone.
i love my bed, i love knowing i am the only one in it, i love turning on the light in the middle of the night to read, i love blasting music when i wake up. i love bumbling around.
• i am messy by myself.
i don't make my bed, i leave the dishes, i leave the mail out. It brings me back to my days as a freshman college student and how my room mate of 4 years used to tell me i am so messy. You would never believe it when you see me run our home with the family in it. The power of " a good example".
•My family is everything
I had a client yesterday sit in my office and ponder how precious his family and God was to him. At the end of the day, that is his most precious possession. And i thought, i run my life pretty efficiently with my job and my self-care. i can't think of anything better to do with a couple of extra hours a day than to care for my family.
It's neat to come back to that realization after fantasizing about painting and writing and retreating. At the end of the day, the care and feeding of children and a family is worth it's weight in gold.

Gratitude

It's been a lovely week of clients lord.
My practice is full. i know better now to assume it'll be full next week void of cancellations. But what is warming my heart to see and realize is that my client-ale is building. i may not have a full week, but the clients i do have, stay and they internalize me as a resource and they come back.
It's been a week of 3 "returning clients". It never fails to warm my heart. It lets me know that i have been successful with termination. That they have left with a secure connection knowing that i will be always be here for them and they can come back whenever they need.
To me, if there is only one thing i do right in therapy -- it's that. Given my own fears of abandonment and leaving.
But thank you Lord. i finish my hours this month. It's been such a poignant and meaningful journey. i feel so grateful to Christian Counseling Center -- for the opportunity to graduate with a full practice, to feel ownership and pride in working in the field.
This agency that i simply stumbled upon, simply ran into has now become such a core launching pad for my practice. Today as i am 55 hours to the end, i have 15 consistent clients, a referral pool and contacts in the San Jose area.
I remember as a contractor hating the marketing business development part of my own business. Thankful and grateful that getting clients as a therapist has come more naturally.

My Favorite Valentines

Enoch knows better than to pull "You're family needs you" guilt trips on me any more. Year 3 of working 4 days a week, it's been a huge process of processing the already existent maternal guilt of "breaking/ruining" your kids with now the fact that you have 10 more kids and 12 adults you listen to all day.
The kids are more cognizant, it feels like more needy. Aidan talks my ear off the minute i wake up and visit with him at 630 am. He is the early riser in the family as i am. Bing he wakes up ready to go, a story a million miles a minute. Nally is evolving, shifting, her little brain churning as her Sim in " Sim Life" gets married and has kids. i am navigating the sexual space carefully as we approach puberty and laying the groundwork for delicate questions.
On top of that is the inherited role, i got from my mother which is to be the only one who has structure, discipline or parenting skills in the house. As enoch steps up more picking them up and supervising Tuesday and Thursday, i've come so far in letting him figure out how homework works, what is the best place for them to work ( i've only trained them since 2 years old to work at Starbucks ), how many things can you jam into the 3 after-school hours, and the consequences of tired, strung out children. It feels like i am parenting 3 children. It feels like i am doing Love and Logic all the time crafting reality consequences, except now my children are at stake and i have to live with the guilt at 3 am in the morning.
But the most beautiful thing that my son gave me was this inscription he made on his autobiography book he presented yesterday. "This book is dedicated to Tania because she keeps the family on track" and the little picture of a train.
i felt like that was my bouquet from heaven confirming weeks of feeling so weary and tired of balancing out a hyper, adrenaline driven husband running 5-6 events on a Sunday. Parts of me wants to just detach and run away. It's too hard, i feel so unsupported. I am tired of being "bad guy".
But his note, out of the consciousness of a 7 year old's heart, a little boy pushing and testing boundaries everyday, he serves up belligerent  consequences for permissive parenting to his father like vegetables on a plate, he sucks up to me like a pro with opened doors, and getting me breakfast utensils.
Thank you Lord, i feel your reward, your consolation, your confirmation that i am not a bad mother.

Twice a week

It's official. i'm seeing my psychoanalytic therapist twice a week. i am officially in psychoanalysis. i am officially doing attachment work.
It's funny "coming out" with it. I've been seeing her for 7 months now. i think it had the same "denial" quality of going to an Al-anon group. Why am i here? Am i really that sick? i refused to be on the coach flat out. i refused to consider seeing her twice a week.
Seeing someone psychoanalytic was bad enough. It was the closest thing to going to see a psychic ( which i am almost more open to going ). In ten years of therapy,i had seen Humanistic, Rogerian, Solution focussed, Behavioral, Process therapist but the one psychoanalyst i had had me in a fetal position week after week knotted up with anxiety. i realize now she successfully triggered all my fears around a withholding parent. Her silence felt intolerable. Her blankness alienating. i couldn't stomach it. i opted for "warm fuzzes".
A decade later, i must have grown stronger because i can stomach the ambiguity of the space more. It's nothing like how i work. It's sparten and bare and sometimes clinical. It is minimalist and unconscious and stream of conscious. It brings up all my abandonment issues, and fear of silence and my need for contact and constant verbal repartee and reassurance -- all the things that torment me in my marriage.
I guess now i am willing to do the work.
Even before embarking. i feel myself such a different person since i started therapy. I have no more illusions that a therapist is suppose to be perfect, to hold me, to know exactly what to say. i don't expect her to be the be-all end-all.  i don't expect her to be my only resource. i have to say a decade of therapy has "grown me up". 
Yet ironically in psychoanalysis -- we "grow down", we get back in touch with the little girls parts of us, acknowledge the loss, grief and needs we didn't get met and learn to comfort, need and depend. All of which are not my greatest strengths.
So for the sake of my clients, because i am starting to have clients who see me twice a week; because all of my dependency triggers are going off like alarm clocks, i've decided to work on my attachment issues. 
I can see the fruits of it working. And just how after a decade of therapy, i am such a different client. i have less expectations of my therapist. i give her less credit for my success or failure. i move into the space with more trust, or more honesty about my mistrust. i own my own work more and how it's really about my stuff not hers. i can laugh about it. i can tell her that i don't want to work on it. There is just so much more honesty than the fantasy of the perfect caregiver.
If you had told me simply 6 months ago that i would finally see a therapist 2x a week. i would have cringed, told you you were crazy and that that therapist is trying to make a killing off you.
But i am really seeing the benefits of creating a conscious space for the very young, very raw parts of you. Especially for me, who has spent my whole life being super strong, super high functioning. 
Some of my colleagues who have done this work say " Do it, now is the time. Get it down and over with " and a part of me is thrilled at the finiteness of this period. i know that i have spent a decade of my life avoiding this space -- of dependency and need.
WIth my clients, i see the fruits just in weeks. This relaxedness, this settling, this drop in anxiety. It is the power of a secure base, of finally carving out a time for themselves. More than that, it is the acknowledgement of a part of themselves they denied their whole lives.
So yes, i am broken. i have problems attaching and needing and depending. It takes me a long time to trust you. i need you to be double consistent, doubly strong, double reassuring. In the light of that i'll still mistrust you anyway. But hopefully, in time i will learn to attach.

Ways i know therapy is working

Every now and then i have a client who come in and say " I know therapy is working. i feel better. i don't know how, but i am doing better". 
Month 7 of seeing a psychodynamic therapist, i have to say i see the fruits. It's so different from work i've done. It isn't results oriented, it isn't insight, it isn't  a new way of thinking. All the latter, i get from reading books, my girls group, my 12-step group, Father Tom's CDs. It's a different this time. Both of us, is acutely aware that we're doing core-attachment work. It's interpersonal. It's all in the room.
I'm not saying i am attaching. But it's there that we see the parts of me that resist. The parts of me that are so used to deprivation and resilience. i spent probably 4 months going in every week telling her that i don't need her and that i could do it really well on my own. Even yesterday when i relayed all the changes in my life that is happening. A part of me resisted giving her the credit.
But off the record, i do see the changes. And i realized how deep and core those changes are. They show up in the weirdest ways considering we never talk about iti in session.

1.My threshold for social activity is rising.
A core part of my anxiety is settling. This weekend it was the craziest event laden -- a 4 hour fund raiser, the decorating party prior after a full day's work, a dinner party at our house after the fund raiser, a trampoline party on Sunday and a Bible Study later. A part of me would have just flipped over with anxiety prior. A part of me would have just snapped in rage over the demands, guilt over not being able to rise to the occasion and then, shame about why this is so hard for me.
There is a part of me when i am unrested and tired, want to curl up on a ball and recoil. Noises are too loud, lights are too bright. I regard in horror my husband's plan for the day and say NO. i feel persecuted, cornered, intruded on.
But i was able to take a deep breath and hang in there. I was able to breathe and figure out what i needed to get through it. i took a 3 hour nap on Saturday and a 1.5 hour on Sunday and went and exercised. 
i am learning to less ashamed about my introversion and my needs and realize that no one is going to advocate for them but me. When i don't, life gets ugly, everyone suffers. Especially the children.

2. i am enjoying my Family Doctor
I've been in Palo Alto for a decade and have not seen my family doctor. Most of the time when things get bad, i rush in to see an urgent care doctor. But yesterday, my husband made an appointment for me to see my primary care for a physical. And it took me by surprised by how much the visit moved me. It was relaxed, intimate and casual. He told me i wasn't due for a pap-smear till next year, he would have filled it my prescription for oral contraceptives on the phone. He asked me about the kids. I talked to him about my anxiety. It was a really nurturing experience.
And i walked out going -- "Was he here the whole time?" He has been my doctor for 10 years and i never went to see him. Life has always been about urgency, and filling a prescription i thought i needed, not about connection and being taken care of.As i reflected on my need to change pediatricians 3 times, as i talked about my mistrust of physicians, i realized it paralleled the pattern of attachment i had with my therapists.
It's all there. The whole time :)

3. I'm breathing more
Taking deep breaths. Sitting in my skin and standing tall. The other day i caught myself as I gave the talk to the Preschool Coop my kids went to, and as i talked to a new client  coming in for affair recovery. i realize, wow, i am doing so much better in places of not-knowing; of ambiguity, of uncertainty.
I am relaxing in my skin, and i am trusting in the Universe, i am finally letting my guard down and trusting.

Preschool Family Talk

Thank you for being with me at the Preschool Family presentation God. i feel your growth, your presence, how i've changed. i feel myself standing taller, quieter, more comfortable in silence. i feel myself breathing just like how Father Tom used to do in the middle of a talk. 
And yesterday as i gave that talk in a roomful of really educated, intelligent parents stuck in-house for night meeting -- i really felt i could hold my ground, hold the room and the strength of your Being, of these past years of recovery just coming through.
It was such the most amazing feeling. And the cherry on top to hear one of the fathers say that they were going to spend the night reading manuals on the iphone tickled me pink. 
Thank you God

Feeling Loved

I just bought a Lululemon sweater. Not used, not off Ebay, not power sniped, not after having daily emails of advanced searches so i can buy one for the best price. It was on sale, but it was new.
It was the most luxurious, loving experience of feeling like after 8 months of working at Dailey Method, working up from once a week to now four times a week --i deserve it.
I do. It's a glorious shade of pink which you would not catch me wearing for a million years. i feel like it's such a sign of growth for me, that i am now willing to wear a feminine color. After decades of Art-school black, of "i'm afraid i am fat in any other color" black and grey, i am finally willing to embrace the needy, womanly side of myself. Granted it is still tie-dyed, not completely pink and is still dipped in purple from the bottom.
But i am feeling loved in it; especially since it is a special edition Stride Ride Jacket with the inscription " You are beautiful" in it.
I have been feeling beautiful. Especially since i've lost 1 dress size, 8 lbs and seem to have lost it in all the places i care about: my face, my calves and my waist.
i feel lean and i feel like my core is strengthening. i see this tiny little muscle in the between my armpit and my triceps emerge. i think it's hysterical. Who would know there would a muscle there?
It's lovely to go to class with all these Ballerina-esque types. I feel like it's the lost dance lessons i never had. Dailey Method is the perfect blend of ballet, barre exercise,  orthopedic exercises and stretching which i feel if i am going to spend the next 20 years of my life seated in a chair, i need a structured way of making sure my hamstrings don't turn cardboard on me.
Lately, it's been the one way i can concretely show myself that i care about me. On the weekends, it is the one oasis that i fight almost like war to get to amidst the weekend crazies. i drag myself out of bed and push myself to go.
This past weekend, amidst a 4 hour fund raiser, a 6 hour Bible Study/Superbowl party, a dinner party at our house and a trampoline birthday party -- i was so grateful to be go to the Sunday evening 4pm. Stepping out into the brisk evening -- i felt could i do to feel utterly loved and cared for.
The sweater, the feel in the store, the parking spot God gave me, the educational break on my Macbook air that just about covered the sweater was just perfect.
Thank you Lord.