Monthly Archive for September, 2010

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Write a blog, change your life

Published on September 17, 2010 in Meaning Making and Psychology. 130 Comments Tags: Award, Blog, Change, Friends, Igor, Psychology, therapist, Therapy, Writing.

Blogging has changed my life. It is right up there with getting married, going to college and starting therapy in terms of its profound life changing impact. Blogging has changed things about my character that I thought were unchangeable, permanent and irretractably set in stone. For a long time I have been ruminating on writing a blog post called “write a blog, change your life” and that is because I am constantly amazed how blogging has changed my life and changed me. The reason that I haven’t written this post before is that the longer I blog the more ways I experience the varied and surprising ways that blogging has changed my life and changed me and that the full impact of its effects can’t be known until I am done blogging and I am nowhere near done blogging. So that is why I am calling today Part I of what will clearly be a multi-episode series. For today I have decided to to document the four ways that blogging has changed my character.

Character Change Number One: Discipline

Three years ago no one was calling me disciplined. No one. Not even the people in my life who feel obligated to lie to me in order to buoy my spirits—the people who would tell me I was beautiful when I had a huge zit on my forehead and who would tell me I was smart when I had just made a really stupid mistake—and certainly not Kelly Valen who is the author of the soon to be released and must be read book, Twisted Sisterhood. I don’t mean to name drop here. I know it is unseemly. However I have to tell you what a BIG deal it was for me to wake one morning to see that Kelly, a person I don’t really know and who has no reason to say things to me that she doesn’t truly mean, had left a comment on my Facebook page in which she described me as “Disciplined and prolific”. Her kind compliment about my character as a writer motivated me to plug my lapbook into my printer and print her compliment about my character and once it was printed I then took a hard look at myself in the metaphorical mirror and I saw that I was no longer the undisciplined flibbertigibbet that I used to be. Okay, to be kind, that isn’t entirely true. I would and could and did get things done if an authority figure (teacher or boss) gave me a deadline but if I didn’t have an external deadline there was little chance I would get any writing done. Thanks to regular blogging I have developed discipline and that is a miracle. If only I could translate that discipline to my fitness regime.

Character Changer Number Two: Prolific

As I said above, I was lazy and undisciplined and that led to an embarrassingly low volume of creative output. In the course of a year I felt like I has really achieved something if I had managed to write a few short stories and an essay or two. However, thanks to the blog I have written over 700 posts (not all of them published) and most of those are on the long-winded side (thank you patient readers), two book proposals, essays and a short and shockingly bad stab at a novel. I am in fact a prolific writer. I don’t know how it happened or when it happened other than I started the blog and I stuck with it.

Character Change Number Three: Brave and/ or courageous

Before I started blogging I was a scaredy cat. I let fear stop me from taking all manner of risks. And truth be told I still have a good amount of fear. That said, if I had to tell you the characteristic mirrored most from those who read my blog is that I am brave and/ or courageous to write about what I do on my blog. Whenever I get this compliment (and o do get it a lot) I am always baffled by it. I really don’t get what is so brave about what I write. When people tell me I am brave I often say internally, “or I am stupid” as I just don’t get what I am doing that is so brave or courageous. However I have gotten this compliment at least 100 times so it must be true. I am here by owning that I am brave and courageous. I also own that I have no idea why I am.

Characteristic Change Number Four: Trust

I have trust issues that go waaaaay back. I had a therapist many years ago that told me that my issues go back to Trust vs. Mistrust. I so mistrusted her analysis that I got up out of my chair mid-session and left and never came back. So, yeah, I had some trust issues. But somehow blogging and having such wonderful readers has helped me with this core issue. I trust you even though I may have never met you in 3-D. I have shared some things with you that I wouldn’t share with my own family and friends. In sharing the really hard stuff with you I have had some big healing. One of the most healing days in my life, I credit to the blog and to my LOVELY readers, and it was in response to my post Cassandra Complex. Reading your comments was more healing for me than all my time in Al-anon and work with many therapists. Truly, I will never forget that day and reading those comments—it was a life changing experience. I will never be the person I was before that post and for that I thank you all.

Because of my trust issues I generally viewed the world as hostile and dangerous. This is no longer true. Now I tend to view the world, or at least the bloggy world, or more specifically the bloggy world that I am a part of as a very supportive, loving and encouraging place. I have made some true and life long friends through this blog. I have made the kind of friends that if I was ever in crisis, and Igor had left the country, I could turn to. I know if God forbid something happened to He-weasel or Lily that I could come to the blog and tell you what happened and I would get real, immediate and meaningful support. I know I could count on getting phone calls from bloggy friends around the world and that there are some of you I could even count on you to show up with a casserole and comfort even in the darkest and scariest nights of the soul and that is really saying something. You, my friends, have changed my belief that I am alone in the world—save my little circle of support—and for that I am eternally grateful. Just yesterday I got a handful of calls to check and see how yesterday went with Igor. Have I mentioned yet how much I love you all?

Well I do, even if this is your first time here. I love you for reading this far and giving a hoot what it is I might have to say. I have received so many unsolicited acts of kindness from my blogger friends that it truly helped change my sense of the world. Just today I was named the Blogger of Note (BON) over at Words of Wisdom thanks my dear bloggy friend Privilege who nominated me for this honour. Thank you, Privilege! Thanks, Words of Wisdom! And thanks to all of you who are here from Words of Wisdom. If this is the first time, for your benefit and , perhaps, reading pleasure, I am linking to three of my favorite( and perhaps life changing) posts as is part of the protocol of being a “Blogger of Note”.

Cassandra Complex

16 Things You Don’t Say To Someone Childless Not By Choice

My Lot in Life

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I would love to hear how blogging has changed your life. Come on, be brave and courageous and tell me your secrets. You can trust me and feel free to be prolific.

Make mine a double

Published on September 15, 2010 in Meaning Making, On Home and Psychology. 93 Comments Tags: Belette in Psychotherapy, Chicago, He-Weasel, Home, I hate L.A., Igor, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest.

I have never been big believer in double-sessions. I have never had one with Igor, even though there have been times that I was sure I couldn’t get out everything I needed to in an hour—I have never asked for more. As soon as the plane landed I emailed him and told him I needed a double on Thursday. I hadn’t written the entire time I was in Chicago, not even in my journal. But as soon as I got on the plane I started wrting and I didn’t stop until the flight attendent told me to put my chair and tray table in an upright position. I had, by the end of the flight, written 42 pages. And, I’ll have you know they were not the kind of ramblings one keeps in one’s hidden journal. All 42 pages were intended for you. That said, I realizes 42 pages of long hand prose might be a bit much for the blog.

But as I have much more in my to say about Chicago, at least 82 more pages, I knew that a 50-minute session would be completely inadequate for all I have to say. I need to tell him how good it was to be home and what a good time I had. I also need to tell him how much it hurt to be back home and how it felt like I had just walked back into my life and my impulse to go to my house and take out my keys and open the door and crawl into bed and go to sleep and wake up from the bad dream I have been living. I want to take him the bottle of Lake BLuff sand that I took from Sunset Beach and let him smell the soil that stirs my soul. I want to tell him about passing the first house we lived in Lake Bluff and how we went by so fast I wasn’t able to see if anyone was living there. And then I need to tell him how I couldn’t go past our house, I couldn’t even look in its general direction.

And then there is all I need to say about yesterday and how very different it felt when I was alone in Chicago and not with my lovely host. When I was alone it was really like I was back in my life and not just on vacation. When I took the train to Lake Forest all the feelings I had anticipated I would met as soon as I arrived in Chicago greeted me. He needs to hear that even as much as it hurt to be back *home* that he was wrong and I was wrong and that I can go home again and that all the baby shit didn’t hurt like I thought it would. The babies and kids don’t get to me the way they used to, at least most of the time.

Perhaps most importantly I want to tell him that I want to move back. No, really, I mean it. No more of this trying to make L.A. work, I want to go home. I want out of L.A. and I want out now. I was wrong, you can go home again and I am going to go. All of that came to me when I went to Walgreen’s in Lake Forest, not a place that one would imagine would create such strong feelings. I went there because my stomach hadn’t been quite right for days and being back in LF was doing nothing to settle my stomach. And so I went to Walgreen’s. I have actually been to the LF Walgreen’s many times in the last couple of years. I am sure I have told you already, sometimes when I am really homesick I walk the streets of Forest and Bluff in my mind. I walk down Scranton Avenue and try and remember all of the houses in the right order. I walk around the shops of Market Square and I try and remember the windows of the stores and the brick under my feet and the sounds of the fountain. And sometimes I walk the aisles of Walgreen’s. When one has undergone IVF for two years and has had a cat with cardiomyopathy and another with diabetes one spends a lot of time in Walgreen’s.

Yesterday when I went to Lake Forest I had planned on stopping at Talbots and Jcrew and Helanders, but I didn’t imagine I would go into Walgreens. However as soon as I was in the store I knew I had to go back to the pharmacy to see if my cats’ photo was hanging on the pharmacy wall. It was. Then the tears began. Then the feelings, that I am still not far enough away from to put into words, overtook me.

You may be asking yourself, “Self, why are there pictures of Belette’s cats hanging in the Walgreen’s pharmacy?” You see the pharmacist was a big animal lover and because of this she had done many special orders and special favors for my feline friends. One day after a particular act of kindness I decided to print a photo and have the cats *write* a thank you to the pharmacist. As soon as I gave the photo to the pharmacist she hung it on the wall. That photo has been there for almost four years. As soon as I saw the photo I lost it. I was flooded with feeling. This photo on the wall that has been there the whole time I have been in L.A. said to me louder than any person could say, “THIS IS YOUR HOME.” When I heard that message I began to decompensate. I wanted to call someone and tell them what had happened so they could come and pick me up and I could fall apart. Only there was no one to call. I called He-weasel and told him what had happened. I told him I needed his help. I needed him to help me stop crying. I couldn’t be crying on the streets of Lake Forest. I had to stop. He-weasel was confused. For the last 19 years we have been together, every time he has told me not to cry I would get angry with him and so when I called him and asked him to help me stop crying he said, “Go on and cry. It’s okay to cry.” “No”, I explained, “I have to stop. I can’t cry here, not on the street.”

Right as I quit crying I asked him to do something I haven’t asked in almost three years, I asked him to promise me something. I asked him to swear to me that we would get back here. “We’ll work something out.” His admirable statement was not what I was looking for. I was looking for a promise. I needed swearing. But the truth is that even if he did swear that I wouldn’t believe him. Years ago I had asked him to swear we would NEVER come back to L.A. and he, despite his best efforts, wasn’t able to make that happen.

So I want to go to Igor’s tomorrow for two hours and I want to tell him that I am done with L.A. I want to give him my metaphorical two-week notice on this place and tell him that this time I am really serious. I have had it with L.A. I want to go home and I want to go NOW. And then, in the safety of his office, I want to do all the crying that I couldn’t do on the streets of Lake Forest and I want to make him understand that he was wrong and that I was wrong and that I can and that I will go home again.

Home-a-phobic

Published on September 9, 2010 in Meaning Making, On Home, Psychology and Quotidien. 33 Comments Tags: Chicago, He-Weasel, Home, Igor, Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Laura Munson, Lily, On Home, Phobia.

No, that is not a misspelling of a very ugly word that inspires all kinds of bad behavior and ridiculous legislature. I am talking instead about a phobia that isn’t listed in the official list of phobias and yet I am sure that others, besides me, have. This non-official phobia has many manifestations. The types of Casa-tastrophies one might fear are many. There is the pediatric version of this disorder. I definitely had that one. No one wants to go to a place where one is likely to be met by drunk people who are mad at you for something. When that happens frequently enough you begin to fear going home. The adult version is more varied: There is the fear of buying or committing to a home because one feels trapped like an animal and one’s respiration level increases so severely just thinking about signing a contract to buy that a paper bag to the mouth is the only way to restore one’s breathing to normal. There is the fear that I don’t presently suffer from that one’s property value is going down-down-down and that they have more debt than equity. Then there is the terror that one’s house is a hungry and sadistic monster that conspires to eat one’s saving by continually needing unexpected repairs and maintenance and rewiring just out of spite. I imagine there are other home-a-phobic manifestations that I don’t have, maybe someone has a fear of having a house fall on them or maybe there are others who the word home is a kind of psychic black cat that they do their best to avoid.

Lately I have been feeling some serious home-a-phobia and that home-a-phobia has been constellated by my travel plans to Chicago (which by the way, as you read this I am on the plane to Chicago and so I will be scarce on the blogosphere for a while). I am talking about the fear of going home. It seems counter-intuitive for me to be somewhat apprehensive (and if I am being completely honest I am a closer to terrified) about returning to the place that I love. But I am. I am not afraid of going to Chicago ( no fear of flying here). I am not afraid of being in Chicago. What I am afraid of is being there and then having to come back here. It was so hard for me to leave Chicago when last we met that I haven’t gone back in over two years.

I knew that at the very worst of times when I was seriously HATING L.A. and in acute shock that we were actually living here again that if I went back I would have likely decompensated on the front yard of our old house. I would have been the crazy lady who tried to retake her old life and lost it when her key didn’t unlock the door. The very friendly Lake Forest Police Department would have been called to take me away and perhaps take me to Lake Forest Hospital for psychological assessment.

And even when I was starting to feel a little bit at home here in L.A.( just typing that sentence makes me feel more than uneasy) I had some serious apprehension about going back to Chicago and then having to come BACK to L.A. again. Here is how I thought it would go. “Hi, He-weasel. Uh, I know my flight is booked for 11 a.m. today, but I cannot get myself to go anywhere near O’hare. I am not coming back to L.A. I can’t. ” He-weasel would talk slowly and calmly the way you do when someone is having a panic attack, “Honey, you have to get on the plane. Your life is here. I am here. Lily is here. We miss you. You can do it”. When that wouldn’t work then he would go to phase two: “You don’t have a house there. Where are you going to stay?” When I tell him that I am going to go check into the Lake Forest Inn and await his arrival then he would begin to panic, “But I don’t have a job there. My job is here.” I would blithely ignore the practicalities of his perfectly rational statement and go back to the unalterable truth that I cannot get on the airplane or even get within a five-mile radius of the airport.

Soon I will be *home* again, only it isn’t really my home anymore. Ugh. Tears come just from typing that. I can’t imagine the tears that might come when I drive down Greenbay Road, the road that inspired me to say out loud each time I drove it, “I am so lucky to live here.” The thought that comes to mind when I imagine driving down it in the next few days is “I am so unlucky not to live here”. Must remember to pack Kleenex, Visine Eye Drops and Igor’s phone number.

After two years of Igor I don’t imagine that the Lake Forest Police Department will have to be called in or that I won’t be able to get on my return flight next Tuesday. That said, I can imagine that being in Chicago for five days in the Fall will be a total delight and that seeing all the places I love (Sheridan Road, The Art Institute, Portillo’s, Lake Michigan, JCrew in Lake Forest, etc.) and seeing my favorite non-Paris city in my favorite season will make L.A., by comparison, feel really unattractive.

Soon the trip will be over and I will be back home in L.A.. I will be back in the place that doesn’t feel like *home* and there will be feelings and grief and loss and I will spend my days comparing and contrasting Valencia to Chicago and I will be even more dissatisfied by the bland, treeless, and lackluster environment that is my current mailing address.I am dreading the post-Chicago grief that I will undoubtedly feel. I feel some anticipatory grief just thinking about it.

Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again. What he should have called his book was “You can go home again only when you do you won’t likely want to go back to you new home and when you do you are going to need an extra session with your therapist to process all the feelings that come up.”

*****

While I am gone I hope you will be so kind as to pop over to my pal Laura Munson’s blog. She kindly invited me to contribute a piece on phobias. It was so lovely to collaborate with my Lake Bluff friend that I met through her book, her love of the Lake Bluff Fourth of July parade, and a Post-it note.

Autumnal exhilaration

Published on September 7, 2010 in Quotidien. 53 Comments Tags: Belette in Psychotherapy, Enc, Exercise, He-Weasel, Igor, Jackie Cardigan, Jcrew, Music, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Shopping, Tennis, TV.

I am a Summer hater. The older I get the more I hate it. With extreme Celtic heritage and skin that requires 45 SPF sunblock for after-five events, the heat makes me incredibly cranky. Anything over 79 degrees and my inner mental state, no matter how cool or calm or adult-like I may be acting, is that of a terrible-two year old who falls to the floor and kicks and screams until the world aligns to his will. I also hate the clothes of Summer. I hate the weather demanding that I show my arms in all of their non-Michelle Obama squeedgyness. And, while I am whinging on, let me also tell you that I hate the sweating that melts away my well applied makeup and all the tourists that crowd Southern California’s freeways and all the kids out of school and how Summer reading and films are known for their fluffiness and lack of substance and I hate white wines that are supposed to be crisp and refreshing when they really just taste like an overpriced bottle of turpentine. I am much like Snow Miser, I hate all Summer time things, except the fresh produce. Peaches, corn, berries, and other summertime produce are the only Summer things I really like( while I feel sure that Snow Miser prefers to get his vegetable from the grocer’s freezer section). So the promise of fall has me giddy and smiling more broadly than your average Jack-o-lantern.

Autumn is my favorite season and ‘autumnal’ is one of my favorite words. It makes me think of sweaters, cider, cranberries and the scent of hopefully non-cloying scents of the season such as pumpkin pie, Carmel lattes or beef stew (no vanilla candles or lotion, if you please, as those scents turn me into a crotchety and unpleasant human being who will refuse to buy a couch from you. Yes, Stacy B., at the Pottery Barn, that is why I didn’t buy the sofa or the side-table from you. I could not stand the scent of you and your Bath and Body Works Vanilla Body Lotion. That lotion is my personal cryptonite. I hate-hate-HATE it. Okay, enough of my olfactory peculiarities, back to Fall….). Another reason I love the word ‘Autumnal’ is that it reminds me of an extremely overbearing supervisor I once had who had trichotillomania and a dog that she brought to the office who she, for reasons unclear to me, insisted on feeding large amounts of cruciferous vegetables to disastrous and odiferous effect. Well anyways, this supervisor once heard me use the word autumnal and her immediate response was, “You were an English major, weren’t you?”. If I hadn’t had so MANY challenges with this supervisor and her stinky dog, and when I say many I am saying that this woman was a cuckoobird who used to count how many envelopes I used and would get furious with me for sitting in her chair, I might not have found her major leap from a SAT word for Fall-like to be sort of odd but since she was not just a thorn in my side but an entire rose garden of thorns in areas well beyond my flanks, I found her leap to be completely ridiculous and proof that she was indeed a nincompoop.

Just being in the month of September has me happier than I have been in months( and the fact that the temperature has gone done from 106 to 79 in three days hasn’t hurt either). I have decided that today I will go through my closet and start making room for the fall clothes that have spent two unhappy seasons in storage. Also, I have decided that it is time to bring out the marroon, plum and red lispticks that are bold and opaque and the kind of shades that can hold their own against crusty breads, hearty stews and glasses of Bordeaux, these shades have been out of rotation since well before the Easter bunny brought me a big basket of Laura Mercier pale, beige and boring pink lip glosses and a Cadburry egg. Speaking of food, I am swapping my William-Sonoma salad cookbook for their more soul satisfying soup edition.

I, however, have reasons other than the Autumnal season to be happy about:

1. I got accepted into the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. In 24 short days I will, every Thursday, spend my afternoons learning about Bion, Klein, and all the other Post-Freudians. No longer will my post-Igor afternoons be spent lunching in Beverly Hills, instead there will be a menu of transference, counter-treansference, and attachment issues and for dessert schizoid and manic defenses which are much more satisfying and figure friendly than my far too frequent trips to Sprinkles for a cupcake. That said, there still me be an occasional trip to Sprinkles.

2. In two days I will be in Chicago. This is BIG for me—HUGE, even. I haven’t been back to Chicago for over two-years. This is such a loaded topic for me that this deserves a post of its own. But for sure having a trip planned to Chicago just as Fall arrives has me feeling very happy.

3. I am waiting to hear from someone and I have that ‘waiting for big news’ feeling. It is nerve wracking and yet highly enlivening.

4. My gorgeous friend, Enc at Observationmode, played stylist for me this weekend and she put together a gorgeous outfit for me from JCrew ( the cardigan and sparkling pencil skirt below). Something about shopping with Enc made me want to throw out everything in my closet and hire her to help me come up with a style that really suits me. Enc has much better taste than I do and I was amazed to see what a difference a great stylist can make. Now I just need a life so I have someplace to wear this gorgoues wardobe I feel sure she could create for me.

Note to Enc: What do you think of the skirt paired with opaque grey tights? I think I am loving them, but I would love it if you would green light them for me or not. If so I will stop at Wolford today and pick up a pair. Le sigh, just the thought of soon being able to don opaque tights has me in a near euphoric state.

5. I have created a playlist for my trip to Chicago. “Chicago” by Frank Sinatra; “Autumn in NY” by Billie Holiday; “October” by U2; “Pale September” by Fiona Apple; “The Last Day of September” by the Cure; ”September ” by Earth, Wind, & Fire; “September Song” by Frank Sinatra; “Things have changed” by Bob Dylan (this song makes me think of Wonderboys which always makes me think of Fall). So any ideas on the theme of the playlist? Come on, take a guess…don’t be shy.

6. I have the new Preppy Handbook, “True Prep” on its way to me and I cannot wait to read it. I just hope that the book doesn’t make me overly scentimental for the Sperry Topsiders, whale print turtlenecks, duck print cloth belts and madras bermuda shorts that I long ago gave to Goodwill.

7. Lots of good TV lately: The U.S. Open is still on (I am loving Monfils and Djokovic and, of course, Nadal). There was an Anthony Bourdain marathon last weekend that I have taped on my DVR so I can watch him over and over and over again. And there is MadMen and Weeds and other shows and books and films of gravitas that go well with a snort of Port and a nice chunk of cranberry chutney covered Camembert.

8. I can excercise more now that isn’t so G.D. hot. So that should up my mood too. I am happier when I exercise and happier still when there is some viable hope that I might actually lose some weight. Losing would weight would make me really happy and would perhaps necessitate me hiring Enc sooner rather than later.

9. He-weasel admitted that I was right about something that I have been trying to convince him that I have been right about for the last 18 years. I have been actively working on not being attached to being right and I have worked VERY hard to let him find his own way and to not be attached to him doing things my way. But now that he sees that I am right I find myself REALLY happy about that. I am working on being happy about this in a quiet way and not in my usual, “I TOLD YOU SO” way. To thank me for my lack of doing my traditional “I told you so” dance I was rewarded by someone cleaning the house, doing the laundry and making me poached eggs just the way I like them. There are benefits to biting one’s tongue.

10. I get to see Igor today. I haven’t seen him since before the big trip to Portland. I have a whole lot to tell him. And feeling like I have worked through a ton of stuff in the last two weeks and that I don’t NEED to see him today the way I thought I did last week.

Titles Matter/Names Don’t

Published on September 3, 2010 in Quotidien. 73 Comments Tags: Abigail Thomas, Belette in Psychotherapy, Books, Dave Eggers, Favorites, Laura Munson, Publishing, writers.

I am not a big believer in the maxim that you can’t tell a book by its cover. That idea is a kind of Cartesian split which says that the inner and outer are separate and distinct, but they aren’t. The cover is part of the book and it tells me something about the book, at least it better. I know that publishing houses have teams of experts who decide on the best colors, fonts, foregrounds and backgrounds that will sell the story inside. The graphics and the author’s photographs are all analyzed and scrutinized to create a book that is sellable and appealing and consistent with the message that lives inside the cover.

Titles are especially telling. As of late I have become a bit obsessed with book titles. It started with a fish out of water memoir that I am hesitant to name, not because I didn’t like the book—I did like the book. It is just that the title of the book was wrong and I feel disinclined to openly take the book to task for its bad name and it really is bad. Not that isn’t true, it is a fine title. It just shouldn’t be the title for this book. The problem with the title was that I believed the title and I believed that I was going to get a story that reflected what the title implied. Some may say, “it’s just a title. For goodness sakes, Belette, you said you enjoyed the book. Isn’t that enough? Why are you so hung up on the gosh darn title?” I’ll tell you why. If I go to the store and buy a jar of mayonnaise and bring it home to add a heaping tablespoon of it to my tuna salad and it turns out it was Cool Whip or horseradish I am not going to enjoy my tuna salad. Not that there is anything wrong with horseradish (I refuse to say nice things about Cool Whip) it just wasn’t what was on the label.

Whomever chose the title of the aforementioned book had wanted this book to attract women who like Audrey Hepburn and/or books with Prada in the title. I feel sure it wasn’t the author as the title wasn’t consistent with her voice. I hope that she made an impassioned argument against the title and that she ultimately relented out of promises that if she would agree to their suggested title that she would be the biggest thing since Elizabeth Gilbert, one is liable to make all kinds of concessions with such a promise.

I am not sure if you know this, I don’t think I have ever told you, but I love the title “Thursdays with Igor”. I am pretty attached to it. The title, for me, is part of what gives the book its spirit and its structure and I dread (and highly anticipate) someday find myself in a meeting with powerful people who have paid me money for my book telling me that they want me to call the book “Dr. Freud 90210″ or “The Prada Patient” or worse “Psychoanalysis in a little black dress”. I like to tell myself that this wouldn’t happen and if it did that I wouldn’t cave and yet if someone is telling me that such a title could persuade Sandra Bullock to buy the film rights, I cannot be sure of what I would do ( actually, I am pretty sure what I would do and yet I want to appear to you as if I would struggle with the decision). That said, I know that there is so much about the title that I love. “Thursdays” tells you that this is a ritual. “Thursdays” says that this is something that is scheduled for, planned for and anticipated. “With” tells you that Igor and I are in this together and he isn’t the expert—we both are. And “Igor”, to my mind, tells you a little about him being foreign and how every word he says to me has an accent.

Okay so back to the Prada/Audrey Hepburn inspired fish out of water memoir, the whole time I was reading this ill-named memoir I kept thinking “but where is the girl that they were talking about on the cover? That is not THIS girl.” What I am saying is that for me this title ruined my read. If the book had no title I would have enjoyed this book 100% more than I did.

In opposition to this unnamed/ill-named memoir there are two books whose titles got me through some really hard places in their prose. The first book is my friend’s, Laura Munson’s, This is Not the Story You Think It Is. This is one of my favorite titles ever, it is right up there next to Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (so many of my favorite titles come from authors in Lake Forest. Coincidence? I think not. ). What I LOVE about Laura’s title is that each and every time I made a decision about how her story was going to go or making any assumptions at all, her title would come to me and gently remind me “This is not the story you think it is.” This title changed the way I read her book and for that I am grateful to the title.

I just finished reading Abigail Thomas’ A Three Dog Life. Let me tell you that without the title and without the cover of Abigail sitting on a comfy couch, the kind you can imagine sitting on for hours and drinking tea and eating shortbread, with her three dogs, I could have not gotten past the second chapter and that isn’t because this isn’t a wonderful book—it is—it is just a hard place that Abigail finds herself. As I read Abigail’s painfully beautiful prose describing her life after her husband’s traumatic brain injury that required him to leave their home and live in an institution it was the dogs I would hold onto. Even when they weren’t there, in the early chapters, I would tell myself, “She’s not alone. The dogs are there. She has the dogs.” It took a while for the dogs to find their home in the memoir, Abigail had other stories to tell about her husband’s hallucinations, psychotic episodes and his highly poetic manor of speech. If by page 78 there had not been the dogs I wouldn’t have been able to go on—the pain would have been to much. As a reader I needed those dogs to sit by my feet as I read about the grief, the loss and despair that I felt as I imagined myself in her shoes. That said, I can imagine Abigail’s book without the dogs and I feel sure Abigail would have found a way to go on without Rosie, Harry and Carolina—but there would HAVE to have been another title. If there were just teases of dogs with that title and no real interactions with her pack, I, as a reader, couldn’t have taken it.

***

My father gave me a first name that he considered lacking in gravitas, he told me so. And when he would talk about this he would always remind me of his largess in giving me a middle name that he thought was more serious, “So just in case you ever do anything serious with your life you can go by your middle name.” I would bristle each time he would bring this up. I always hated my first name. In middle school I started threatening to change my name to Blaire-Hamilton. I wanted two first names, names that sounded like I might be the first female President of the United States. I didn’t want a name that made people think of cheerleaders or porn stars. It wasn’t until the summer of my freshmen year of high school when I saw a journalist with my exact name (different spelling) in Vogue magazine that I decided my father was wrong. I could do important things with the name he gave me, even though I would prefer to have a name that immediately makes one think of great literature and not of an archetypal cheerleader.

***

When and if I publish “Thursdays with Igor” I hope that the title will remain. And, I can tell you, that I will not be going by my middle name when and if I publish, so take that Daddy-O. I will be going by my first name that lacks gravitas and my married name that makes me sound like a Greek shipping heiress.

Projective Identification and Prince Charming the Conceptual Artist

Published on September 1, 2010 in Meaning Making and Psychology. 46 Comments Tags: Animus, Depth Psychology, dream analysis, Dreams, Jung, Projective Identification, Psychoanalysis, Psychology.

When as a MFT trainee I first started seeing clients I had normal bouts of self-doubt and fear that I wasn’t at all ready to be seeing them yet. Usually after a few minutes into the session I would remind myself just to be there with the client and listen and respond authentically and that all would be well and that was usually enough to make my self-doubts go away. However there was one client that I was seeing that whenever I would sit with him/her no amount of self-soothing or self-talk could make my self-doubt go away. And strangely, even if I had been feeling confident, competent or otherwise effective, as soon as he/she would walk into my office my positive feelings would be replaced with ones like, “You will never amount to anything” or “You are hopeless and you should just stop this now.” I tried to push these thoughts away and just be with the client—only these thoughts and feelings wouldn’t budge. By the time the session would end I would feel like a complete and total failure and an absolute fraud.

At the time I was lucky to have a WONDERFUL supervisor whom, upon hearing how I felt when in session with this client, introduced me to the concept of Projective Identitification. She explained to me that the client was unconsciously communicating to me about their subjective state via how I felt about myself in this client’s presence, i.e. the person was projecting their inner state onto me. The client said with his/her words that he/she was doing okay and all was well but via their unconscious they were communicating to me how he/she really felt about him/herself. As soon as I heard my supervisor’s interpretation it made sense to me. Once armed with this insight I was able to understand the subjective states as transference and what had once felt intolerable now felt like valuable clinical information. However, if I had not had the supervision I might not been able to differentiate my feelings from what was in fact a classic Projective Identification as this is a psychological state that can be difficult to differentiate without a skilled someone on the sidelines.

All of the above is just my attempt to introduce you to the concept, in case this is an idea you are not yet familiar with( and I am sure that many of you are and/or have at least experienced this dynamic in your life with other humans). So when I got back from my trip to Portland I was feeling extremely numb. I felt that I wasn’t able to love. I couldn’t feel my heart. I felt totally disconnected from myself. I had no idea how I was feeling and my thoughts felt strangely distant. My inner life felt foggy and far away and when I tried to access it I felt like I was trying to make out the words and melodies to a song playing on a far away radio. It took me almost four full days for me to figure out that what I was feeling was in fact a Projective Identification. It is not me who is numb and who can’t love or feel my heart or can’t access my thoughts or feelings. I am, for all of my many faults, a person who loves, feels, and is totally connected with my inner life. As soon as I recognized that I was in the midst of a P.I., and that I was feeling the feelings of another who shared my week long journey, I felt the way you do when you are dreaming and you know you are and you want to wake yourself up from it, but you can’t. Don’t get me wrong, knowing it is a Projective Identification makes the pain of being numb less painful—yet I don’t feel fully out of it.

Igor is away on vacation this week and so I don’t have him to help me process all the feelings I had during the trip nor to help me free myself from the Projective Identification that I presently find myself in. It helps to write about it. It helps to have to use my mind and words and notice how I feel as I write them, to do so feels a bit like how when your leg goes numb and you get up and try to shake out the numbness and tingling. Strangely exercise also has helped. Last night was the first time since I broke my toe that I was able to run and feeling my body and my breath and feeling myself move through space also seemed to bring me back to myself a bit. All that said, I still feel a little numb and a little distant and not 100% myself.

The good news is, that even though I have not woken from the Sleeping Beauty sleep of Projective Identification, I have been dreaming. I have been dreaming lovely dreams. Two nights ago I dreamt of being at a gorgeous Italian villa that belonged to a dear friend and I was very happy to be there. Last night I dreamt of an extremely positive Animus figure (i.e. a super hot guy who knew my soul) and we were very much in love. My Prince Charming was an artist who was working at Neiman Marcus doing art installations on all three levels of the store. All was well until we met my mother for lunch and then He left me. I chased after him in the parking lot and tried to get him back to me. I got him to come back into the store. When we went back into the store we saw this kind of sculptural office/playpen set up in which these two parents had created as a way to keep their kids close by as they worked. My Prince saw this and was upset that they had only one way to move and so he was going to create a swing (shaped like a tube) that would allow for more freedom of movement. Both seem like surprisingly positive dreams considering how I am feeling.

Neiman’s, I think, is symbolic of a commercial palace—the kind of palace that I can, on occasion, be imprisoned by. Also, as dreams love word play, it is interesting to note that Erich Neumann was a writer who wrote the definitive work on the Great Mother archeptype. My positive animus is played by a Post-modern Prince Charming( an artist/ a creative/ a guy who works with ideas as the source of his creation). I believe this Prince has been sent by my psyche to wake me from the sleep that the dark witch(played by my mother in the dream). Only the dark witch separates me from the Prince in my dream—it is when I try to get nurturing from the feminine (go to lunch with her) that I lose the relationship with my Animus.

I leave the palace (the mother) and go to the parking lot (where drive is stored) and we come back together through his seeing children merged to their parents. The dream concludes with the Animus attempting to create more movement for the children. My Animus, I believe, is telling me that the way to reconnect with my Self and to separate from the dark mother is through creativity. I think he is telling me that there is a way to be connected to family without being imprisoned by them. I wish that he would have just kissed me and woken me from this Projective Identification I find myself in and besides a kiss is much less work, and he was really hot.

Monthly Archive for September, 2010

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Write a blog, change your life

Make mine a double

Home-a-phobic

Autumnal exhilaration

Titles Matter/Names Don’t

Projective Identification and Prince Charming the Conceptual Artist

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