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Monthly Archive for March, 2011

Learning from loss

Published on March 24, 2011 in Quotidien. 60 Comments

1. Having GREAT friends makes everything better and easier and possible—things like standing, walking, moving and breathing. I knew it before, but now I KNOW it. Truly, if you are going to separate from your spouse, I highly recommend getting a Wendy, Bernadette and Kirie of your own. I don’t know how people do this without them. And I also recommend having a blog on which your readers leave you almost 100 comments in which they make you feel MUCH less alone and loved and cared about. I may be unlucky in love, but I am extremely lucky in the friends department. Thank you, lovely friends.

2. Writing lists helps a lot. Writing lists gives me hope that I will get through this. Lists are my life raft right now. I have lists going for everything, lists of: “How I will get a job?”; “Who I can turn to when darkness hits?”; “Evidence that I won’t be alone for the rest of my life”; “Great things about living alone”, “What I need to do between noon and five p.m.?”; “What one action can I take that might make me feel a little better when feeling better feels impossible?” and 100 others.
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Bonjour, Happiness!

Published on March 16, 2011 in Quotidien. 15 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

With all the birthday fete-ing I have received this week it has been a bit of challenge to find  time to be online . But I just had to take a moment to share the news of Jamie Cat Callan’s just released book, Bonjour Happiness.  Jamie is my friend, my teacher and the author of French Women Don’t Sleep Alone, and she kindly invited Lily, my dog-aughter, and I to be part of her latest book that offers the secret to French flavored happiness.  Jamie asked me to write on one of my favorite topics, my Lily love and how her love has brought me beacoup joy. I am so very excited and honoured to have had the opportunity to write about how much happiness Lily brings me and how loving her has changed my life. I hope you check out Jamie’s book which offers the “secrets to finding Joie de Vivre” and my little essay-lette in it.
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Craving ashes

Published on March 9, 2011 in Quotidien. 32 Comments

I am, as you likely know, not a religious gal. It is hard to be religious when you don’t believe in God. Don’t get me wrong I tried, but this is not a post about how hard I tried to have faith and all that I did in the name of trying to believe and how all of that never led to anything. No, this is another post. This is a post about ashes. When I titled this post I thought it might inadvertently attract people with Pica. So if you found yourself here looking to read about someone who wants eat a bowl of ashes, this is not a post about that kind of craving.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and I am going to church. How to reconcile this last piece of news with my aforementioned disbelief? It’s the ashes. I’m going for the ashes. See I looked on the calendar yesterday and I saw that it was Ash Wednesday and as soon as I saw it I knew that I wanted to go to a church and have a priest put a smudge of ashes on my forehead. I didn’t know why, I just knew that I wanted to and that I would.
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Naked Therapy

Published on March 7, 2011 in Meaning Making, Psychology and Psychology Today. 38 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The other morning I woke to find an email in my inbox from a reporter at Salon.com. This reporter had found me on Psychology Today. She had read my piece on Naked Therapy: Seeing Through the Sartorial Signifiers of Our Shrinks for Psychology Today and she wondered if I would take a look at an article on Sarah White, “the birthday suit therapist”. I quickly clicked over to read the article on the the 24-year-old-”therapist” whom has no degree, license or training as a therapist, save a few undergrad courses in psychology. This woman claims to use Skype, striptease and nakedness as her method of psychological change. White is quoted as saying, “Freud had dreams and I have nakedness.” For $25 more an hour than I charge( and I have a M.A. in counseling psychology, years of training, post-grad education, a license AND a wardrobe) this woman is doing what she considers to be real therapy with men and women( The New York State licencing board may have a different opinion on her practicing without a license).

I was sure I was dreaming, I was both flattered to be contacted as an expert on the importance of metaphorical nakedness and aghast that this woman was engaging in something closer to”sex-work” and yet calling it psychotherapy. After reading the article I sat down to figure out how exactly I felt about this( at the time I was wearing pajamas, a sweatshirt and a Brooks Brothers robe). I had some thoughts and some feelings about all this nakedness. The first thing I felt, after worrying about the extremely unethical action that this woman was engaging in,  and calling it therapy, and  about the mental health of her patients, was a certain amount of anger. If I had just not bother to get dressed, if I had  given up my wardrobe that I spend a lot of time, money and energy on, as well as my ethics and integrity, I too could have gotten major press( Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News, Salon.com, Fox News, etc), a full case load and $25 more an hour than I make.  However, I prefer having a small case load, my ethics and the ability to actually do good work rather than fame and fortune for questionable practices . Once I got my envy out of the way I got to really thinking about this “Naked Therapy” and I put on my professional hat, shirt and other apparel of licensed and degreed expert, having written my thesis on The Genesis of Shame: The Fig Leaf of Fashion and Its Place in Psychotherapy I had a lot to say on the subject.

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Résumés of deserving

Published on March 4, 2011 in Meaning Making, Psychology and Quotidien. 38 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

When I was in high school there was a boy  whom I dated who was absolutely gorgeous. I wouldn’t think so now, as my types have seriously changed since I was in junior English( he would now be way too pretty boy for my taste, but at the time I was crazy for blond  boys in Polo shirts). I think it was maybe our third time out and I felt what Molly Ringwald must have when in Sixteen Candles she got THE guy at the end.  You remember the scene when they were on the dining room table and there was a birthday cake and the kiss? It was astounding to me that dorky-old- me was dating a high school deity. I was dizzy from the altitude sickness and overwhelmed by the oxygen differential that occurs when a mortal dates a resident of Mt. Olympus.

The date progressed and we were doing lots of kissing. I think the term for it was “making out”. Yes, we were making out( Do they still call it that?). And this deity started getting pushy about moving things to the next level. I stood firm in my resistance. It was too early. I didn’t know him well enough. And I didn’t want him to think I was a slut. So I continued to say no and he continued to push for yes. He grew tired of my noes and so he, between passionate kisses( as passionate as a 17 year old boy could be) began a different tact. He gave me the highlights of his sexual CV. Seriously. He did this. He began to tell me all the gorgeous and popular girls in my high school that he had slept with. The terribly and surprising and horrifying thing is that his who’s-who of high school actually worked on me. I was impressed with his impressive list of girls. I wanted to be on that list (any wonder I have needed years of therapy?) and so I slept with him.

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The power of being noticed

Published on March 2, 2011 in Belette's Favorites and Quotidien. 57 Comments Tags: .

I have been going to Igor’s for a little over two years. Each time I walk from the parking garage to Igor’s office I pass a security officer who guards a chic and spendy Beverly Hills store. Each time I walk by him he greets me with a sincere ‘Have a nice day’. He doesn’t offer this warm greeting to everyone who walks by. He seem to save it for regulars and early on he decided that I was a regular.

“Have a nice day” is a difficult phrase to pull off. It can sound cliche, insincere and hackneyed. However each time this redwood  tree of a security guard says it to me I believe him to mean it. He really wants me to have a nice day. And it never feels like “Have a nice day” is an entree to ” can I have your phone number?” Each Thursday I thank him for his well wish and wish the same for him.

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About Me

My name is Tracey, aka La Belette Rouge. I am a psychotherapist and the author of Freudian Sip @ Psychology Today. I blog about psychology, my therapy, dreams, writing, meaning making, home, longing, loss, infertility and other things that delight or inspire me. I try to make deep and elusive psychodynamic concepts accessible and funny. For more information, click here .

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