Mindspace

Just listening

A client called today. She is a 50 some year old whom i saw in 2008. She was part of my Advanced Family Therapy Class and she was set up by Santa Clara University. A 50 some year old who had just lost her adult daughter in a car accident, i sat in all my newbie inexperience immersed in horror of her loss. i remember feeling -- what could i do in 4 sessions? How could i wrap my thirty-something brain around such pain. i simply sat and felt with her.
My favorite professor, Dave Larson at Santa Clara used to say the most important thing we do is "just listen". Then an active process therapist, giddy with interventions, i poo-pooed it. I am a Gestalt therapist, i am a multi-modal, art, psycho-drama, sand empty chair therapist, my recent new fad -- psych-biological therapist equipped with EMDR.
But it's calls like this that humble and tell me about the sacred miracle of of human connection when we just listen.
At 8.15am, she was the highlight of my day. When her number came on my phone, i was befuddled. i have had at least 50 clients since i've seen her. Yet she spoke to me with the familiarity of an old friend. i was a resource, and internalized presence, after all these years.
Today when i sit with my Axis 2 clients, the ones that i now know i'm working on a much deeper task of attachment, i know that i am not working with frontal lobes and insight. I know that they are the ones i know i have to earn every minute of my ability to speak at all. i've had enough of them now to have sat with them for 3 years, for them to wake up as if from a comatose and say " i haven't been showing up have i ? " and i can gently say " Yes, but i have. And i will be right here when you decide it's safe enough to come. "
i have seen it with men and women, when all i've done for years and years is "just listen" and then one day, they insist on my "opinion".
3 years later, on the brink of being licensed, i feel so blessed to hear from my very first client. She is my confirmation that i was "qualified" all along.
Keep me humble God, to keep coming back to "just listening".

So grateful God, to come back to a full week of clients -- intact after 10 days of vacation. There was a time, i was so nervous about my practice, about client loyalty and about alliance. i was afraid that a week away would cause the bottom to drop out of my practice.
Today, i never want take for granted the intact alliance that just picks up where we left off. Today, L and A went even deeper. It warms my heart to hear my clients say they missed me.
It warms my heart when a client that was suppose to transition from twice a week to once a week, reinstate her second session just for this week. God could we find a more gratifying profession ?
i feel different coming back this time somehow. Something about submitting my hours and leaving for vacation and coming back to a new practice.
I feel myself such a different person walking around CCC. Just as happy to be there, just as excited to see my colleagues but perhaps a lot less to prove.
I am grateful that on my first week, where i don't have to count my hours -- i have 14 clients. It's amazing to take clients simply on the basis of need not requirement.
Thank you for filling up my week. One week at time. Help me to surrender my work to you.

3000 Hours!

i finished my 3000 hours! These are the accumulated hours of what a marriage and family therapist's equivalent to "residency" hours after graduation. It's taken me from April 2009 to March 2012 -- almost 3 years to do it. 2 years out of graduation which is pretty fast as they go.
It's the most surreal feeling having them done. i am now closer to being licensed, the next step is the two liscensure exams and then i am officially a psychotherapist! 
It feels real, it feels more momentous than it was being a designer. With the other i don't think i ever felt i WAS officially the role. It was whatever my clients hired me to do.i was always wondering if i was a bona fide interaction designer or a real interface designer. i have always prided myself in being interdisciplinary yet at the same time never felt like i could move with full confidence. Every job was different, every client, and every new company a learning curve. i often described my work as an interaction designer to others as a test of how fast i learned, and got up to speed. Underlying it all, was this horrible feeling of not getting it fast enough, or always being a novice each time i started a new project.But looking through my early entries as a therapist, and my journals on each client, i see myself grow and change with each year i practice. i was just telling God never let me lose that wide eyed wonder of disbelief that this is my job.i have relished the process, loved watching myself evolve, loved sensing my own confidence and my own trust in my intuition. It has been beautiful watching my practice unfold and grow and develop. It's been so amazing to see. And it could take any less than 3000 hours.
The other day i came home on a high after seeing a bunch of clients and i told him for the first time in a while -- " I can't believe i do this for a living ". It's so amazing and such a privilege to be let into people's lives on such an intimate and crucial level. It's such a sacred space, such an incredible way to spend 8 hours of life.
One of the things my fellow 12-stepper used to tell me was "Life is what you do between meetings ". i feel like life is what happens outside of the rooms i work in, it's a breather, it's a break, it's relief and self-care.
I hug my kids closer, grateful for each breath of their healthy, attached, loving smiles. i thank God for the things my husband does give me after the bittersweet sessions with my couples.
3000 hours. For the first time, my mind does not race to 10 years from now, envisioning what it'll be like as a therapist in my 50s. All i know is that this feels sustainable. i can do now, as i age. I can do it when my bones break down, when i look older. i don't have to compete with the new young Stanford grads coming into the tech industry. Age is not a liability but an asset in this field. i will write my book, i can write off my retreats and therapy as a business expense. Heck i can write my Phd as a business expense.
Thank you God for the most precious gift at the end of this journey of motherhood. For all the years of staying at home, all the years that cornered me to reinvent myself. i felt like i had to let go of my dreams of Brown and RISD in order to be there for my family.
You know that i've often felt like i got the shorter end of the stick. That God you love my husband more -- his career, his interests and passions. That all my purpose was in life, was to support him.
Today, i feel the prophecy that Liang Sin prophesied over me in junior college come to past --

The LORD will guide you always; 
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land 
and will strengthen your frame. 
You will be like a well-watered garden, 
like a spring whose waters never fail. 
¹² Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins 
and will raise up the age-old foundations; 
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, 
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Repairer of Broken Walls have hit me differently through the years, and i am sure God will keep revealing more. But for this season, it just resonates with such truth and poignancy.

Teen Terminated

My 18 year teen client terminated. I've been seeing her for a year. It was a natural end of therapy. i feel like she is doing a lot better. They had financial constraints so i did a closing for our last session.
I am going miss her. She is this African American "chick" ( as she would call it ) and came in really defended and nervous. On our last session, i affirmed how much she's grown and changed, and grown more comfortable in her own skin.
I realize, i'm really fond of her. She gives me this glimpse into the world of cocaine, rave parties, pot and sneaking out at night. She doesn't give me a hard time that i have smoked a joint in my life. She highly recommends that i try some.
She told me during our first session " I don't think you're faking it, if you are you're doing a really good job! ". She told me " You're going to have some kick as bomb kids", she said " I have a mild case of the fuck its ".
She's awesome. i love her. And i'll miss her dearly.

Blogging in the dark

Blogging in the dark to  the tunes of Crickets Sound and Wind Bells for Deep Meditation on my new Macbook Air. It is the wildest experience. 
Recently, i had been incorporating more ambient nature meditations in my practice. I had a client close her eyes and listen to a track, and describe and draw what she saw. She ended up defining a scene in a cave, down to the very distance of how far the water droplets were falling. By the end of it, she said that she has been taking shallow breaths all week and this was the first time she was breathing better.
It's been lovely to incorporate more grounding experiential spaces in our work, since past weeks have been stressful. I am learning that as important as it is to walk our clients through spaces of trauma, it is also our gift to them to craft experiences of centering and relaxation. Their lives are so chaotic and crazed outside our rooms that it is a solace even for one hour a week, if we can create that place of rest.
I had an 8th grader come in that day and he was so worried he would miss his session. I asked why and he said he had a stressful weekend coming up. After we named all the reasons why he was anxious, all he wanted to do the rest of the time was run his fingers through the sandbox and piece together a 50 piece puzzle.
As i sat there, watching this anxious, misunderstood boy struggle to relax, i realize, who am i to make him "work" the whole session. He knew how to use the space. And he did.

Guilt

Today i will realize that i will always struggle with the guilt of being a bad mother. That i am struggling against generations of perfectionism and result-orientedness. That historically, we have only affirmed and recognized performance and results instead of beings and wisdom.
Because of that i will be gentle with myself during these times of guilt. i will not listen to the voice that says i am a bad mother. i will trust that has a path of success and reward that has some but not all to do with me. That if i instill character, i can guarentee times and life choices that happen in spaces and times i don't exist. If i instill results, i can only guarentee ( and not even ) only instances where i am present.

Preface

This book came about from my wrestlings as a born and bred Singaporean which makes for a bona fide Tiger Mom of the most potent breed because in a country with 2.5 billion people on _____ sq feet there is really only room for one animal. As a therapist, in my own therapy and people ask me about my dysfunctional family, i tell them it's more like i had a dysfunctional country.
i fled and found psychological asylum in the USA, said f-you to cambridge all my Oxford educated professors and proceeded to acquire like clockwork 2 BAs and 2 MAs before i finally landed in a calling quite by accident and purely again in the only way i get anything done -- in sheer drunken reactivity.
This book is written in the throes of mornings when i wake up with a full blown panic attack about worrying if i am ruining my children because i resigned being a TIger Mom. This verifies the fact that in spite of my yearly declawing and a repeated de-voicing and i am still every inch my country's daughter.
This book is a compilations of meditations that i had choked out of full blown panic attacks wondering for the 100th time what exactly are the navigational spaces i am raising my children.
i know what i don't want, but every inch of my body screams of the principles that chant in my head. Most days i struggle with shame and enormous amounts of guilt.
But i know being a psychotherapist now, what really matters and the consequences of being raised inside that cage.

Al- Anon gems

Al-Anon this morning was priceless.
i have been simmering all week. It started out Wednesday when i watched my husband consume 7 bottles of wine with 6 guests. Just the following Monday i was so proud of myself for not stressing out.
Then there were 2 more parties after and then this weekend in Monterey where i watched 1 bottle and 2 half bottles get consumed.
I know that when he stepped out to let a crab go and i wondered if he had stopped into another restaurant to get a beer, i am officially back to obsessing about my husband's drinking. Time for another meeting.
But this morning, we did the 4th Step -- what better distraction from my qualifier than to do a full blown inventory about myself. i've done so well for the month of November with my busy speaking engagement schedule. So busy i hadn't had any time to monitor my husband's drinking. When my meeting-mates ask me, i proudly declare " i am too busy living my life to notice ".
But now that the frenzy has simmered down and the holiday parties are up, i am back to noticing the empty bottles and the dishwasher full of wine glasses.
I notice myself crabbier, and more impatient. More prone to pushing him away. All in the same breath, grateful and thankful that if this is the most it is -- it is great.
But as i rushed in this morning to sit at a meeting, i know it's exactly what i needed to hear:

• One woman's definition of impatience as the inability to believe that we won't be here forever.
As i was taking my 4th step inventory in the meeting, i realize impatience was at the top of my list. i just apologized on text to my husband for being impatient over the weekend. i am trying to own my "defects of character" and "promptly admit it and make amends".
i am learning to trust that as my daughter systematically reads in fetal position and my son burps out loud proudly and they both have atrocious table manners that somehow this is temporary and they will learn in time.
i am trusting that this hard, lonely stage in our marriage is just momentarily, and the tomorrow or maybe in the next second, things may change.
i realize a part of me is so adverse to change, that i am willing to sit here, set up camp and make this god-awful miserable place home, because it's too much work to entertain being fluid and flexible -- even if it's in a good way.
Yet i've been praying for change forever.

• One woman talked about how her sponsor got her to imagine her ailing mother wrapped in a blanket of her own Higher Power.
The part that struck me was "HER OWN" higher power. The one hysterical thing about 12-step is that you don't have to share God. Everyone has their own Higher Power. They define it their own way, they have different relationships with Him/Her. We don't share.
Which a part of me just loves. Which a part of me feels is Christianity anyway -- we all forge our own relationship with God. But i think we often forget, we think our loved ones have OUR God, relate to God OUR way, should see God OUR way.
So this morning, i wrapped my husband in a blanket of his OWN Higher Power, trusting that God loves Him, is desperately worrying about him the same way i do. Ok i edited the last bit.

•One woman talked about how she was mad at herself for marrying her qualifier.
That one hit a chord. i was just trying to figure out this morning why i always hit this wall of fear and incredulity every time i find out my husband drinks. It would be as obvious as if i found out he was Chinese. But i reel. i lose it. i lose it to panic and fear and shame and betrayal.
And i realize as this lady shared, a part of me still can't forgive myself for marrying this part of him. Or marrying him.
It's god-awful to admit, given i am a classic, text-book co-addict. But listening to this lady share and how she married not one for 4 alcoholics/addicts. It is just heartbreaking.
And i am trying to focus on the fact that his drinking has more to say about me than him. That somehow i would be a person that would end up with someone like that.
As if i wasn't an addict myself, or couldn't be one. As if there is a part of me that blames myself for his drinking.
But this morning, i am struck by how i can imagine a part of my husband realizing this blame i feel towards myself and him. How it must be hurtful. How it must be horrifying.
To not be loved and celebrated unconditionally. The way i feel he loves me, when i am not busy reeling from being abandoned by his silence.

• One other lady shared about how abandoned she feels by her husband who found recovery and now instead leaves the family to go to AA meetings instead of drinking or drugging.
A part of me laughs. An addict is an addict, and when you get sober, you just graduate to more acceptable addictions -- like meetings.
A part of me resonates with him as she insists that he is losing his family while helping the world -- sponsoring other men. i know i feel the same way with my husband's trips to Haiti and dad's mission trips at a time when his grandchildren are growing up right before his eyes.
i am reminded of a scene from a movie when Jim a famous missionary leaves his family to go evangelize the aborigines who eventually killed him. i remembered the tears in his young son's eyes who begged him not to go.
This estrangement, this ambition, this purpose and calling God puts on men's hearts -- it's just heart breaking. Don't tell me it's good.
It's another addiction. i've reconciled myself with the idea that in order for men to feel purposeful in the world, they need the support of women, and then they leave.
We are suppose to find support elsewhere.

But i sat there, eyes closed listening to each share. Thankful for a mindful, cost-free space to reflect and hear myself. And to hear my Higher Power speak to me, and tell me serenity is possible; to say the serenity prayer with a group of other people. To hear others struggle with addicts in their lives with grace and dignity.
i love my Redwood City Homegroup. i feel so loved and seen by them. i am finally staying back and talking to them. i got a number from a friend today. Grateful. Thankful. Loved.

Grateful Mondays

Its a beautiful foggy Monday -- i am loving and relishing my precious day off. It starts the week off right, with the busy weekends we keep. i am getting my routine down and protecting it with my life. i typically, wake up, try not to stress the kids out  ( " Why are you so calm mommy ? Usually, you are all over the place. " My little mirror comments ) because they typically oversleep from the weekend activities. We grab a quick breakfast and i try to start their week calm and prayerful.
I run one errand before my 10am Al anon meeting, stroll casually to my 12.15 Dailey Method workout, lunch and possibly do one more errand before early pickup at 3.10pm.
On Mondays, i wake up and dress down the one day of the week besides Saturday. i wear my perfectly coordinated Lululemon workout clothes and meticulously wear a dress-down, non-made up "Nude look" and mess around in my Ugg clogs.
i relish the fact that my Al-anon group and the mom's group at school get to see me in my workout, stay-at-home mom outfit of the week. Every other day, i am dressed to the nine for work. Never thought i'd appreciate dressing down.
But Mondays i am typically overwhelmed with gratitude, grateful for the give. i am realizing that it is indispensable given now my schedule has me back to back for the next 4 days. Tuesday i am on from 9-5 back to back, with one hour to wolf down lunch.
i am so aware of other times in my life when the day ran into each other and i didn't feel the warm security of and a single finite day of hard earned rest. Of feeling the absence of guilt, and the pre-ache of a hard driving week ahead.
Everything is so much more precious in contrast.
Listening to K-love on a foggy day --- thank you Lord.

Loving my Kindle

So i finally broke down and bought a Kindle.
In the efforts of being more environmentally friendly. In the effort of having all my books "with me at all times". And i am blown away at how much i love it.
It suits me perfectly.
Suits the way my brain works with books, in that i sip them only in small increments. All of my poetry works just perfectly on a Kindle. They are slivers, and exist only in small bites on a page. I love that there is so much room around them, so much page. I love that i can bookmark them and find them immediately to read to my clients. i love that i have this bizarre feeling of having Hafiz, Mary Oliver, Rumi with me at all times.
i realize that there are some books i just want to be near. i want "with me", who's presence calms me. i realize books have been my soothing blanket as a child, during awkward moments at the table or socially anxious moments. i have a book. And now i have 20 books.
Slivers of them, the exact line, page and number all the touch of a screen.
It's lovely and i realize, it's not fiction i want with me. It's the wisdom of Pema Chodron or David Whyte, or David Richo.
i realize that just being in the library at home calms me down, or bookstores.
The kindle is the  closest most portable way to it.