swinging and bending, part 7: the Book.

Read the first part of this story, here.  
the second part, here.

the third part, here.

the fourth part, here.

and the fifth part, here.

and the sixth part, here.

THE ALL-GOOD CHILD:


"Perhaps the most devastating psychic conflict the all-good child experiences is inauthenticity--feeling as if those who perceive her as good or competent are mistaken.  

The all-good child is the parentified child--trained to parent the parent.  All-good children are typically obedient and loyal, and may function as little therapists in their families.  

All-good children repress awareness of their true feelings and, consequently, are likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. Because they are preoccupied with the emotional state of others, they have difficulty experiencing pleasure.  Although they are acutely perceptive, they lack insight into their own psyche, and may be unaware of subtle depression.  

They.....may feel undeserving of a good life.  They feel as though they have already been given too much, and do not feel entitled to having more.  They may compulsively provide for others what they need for themselves.

Consequently, the all-good child is susceptible to emotional depletion because of the compulsive approval-seeking behavior.  They can feel overwhelmed with responsibility for caring for others, yet not deserving of being cared for themselves.  They have difficulty articulating their feelings and needs, and are extremely uncomfortable with recognition and attention.

In adult relationships, they are often overcommitted and emotionally preoccupied because they fear disappointing others.  They simply cannot say no.  Minor mistakes can trigger a catastrophic plunge in self-esteem, and internalized anxiety prevents them from enjoying their accomplishments.  The emotional energy of the all-good child is heavily invested in avoiding mistakes that could shatter the foundation of the self.

If it were possible to x-ray the self of the all-good child, one might find a porcelain soul with tiny fractures.  Although outwardly appearing uninjured, a child with a fractured soul lives with an inner sense of fragility.  All-good children suffer silently, unable to articulate the source of their pain that is too deep and too old to identify.  Although a fractured soul cannot fully mend, the all-good child learns to protect it from further injury.  Defenses such as denial, repression, and sublimation keep awareness of their pain at bay.  

While all-good children need therapy as much as the no-good children, they are unlikely to seek treatment."

  




Late one night, in the summer of 2008, I shuddered as I read these words.

I knew this "All-Good Child" well.  She had blonde hair, blueish/green eyes and dimples.  She laughed easily and rarely cried.  She was there whenever anyone needed help, but could not ask for support because she could not even recognize her own needs.  She hated being on stage, or celebrating her birthday, or being the new girl, or announcing pregnancies--anything that put her in the center of attention.  Her emotions were based on the emotions of those around her--if they were content, so was she.  If they were sad, she was rushing to comfort, her heart breaking with theirs.  If they were angry, she was afraid, and tried to pacify them with either humor or kindness.  She did not know who she was as an individual, but I knew her.

She was who I looked at in the mirror every day.

I was staying at my dad and stepmom's home for a few weeks on our way from the group home in North Carolina to Arizona, where we would begin Ben's journey of doctoral school.  My brother Tyler had let me borrow the Book, one he'd been recommended by a therapist he'd been seeing for a couple of years.

"She said I might be able to find something that relates to my childhood, but I haven't read it yet.  See what you think and let me know," he said, as he brought it to me.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but started reading.  In less than 48 hours I finished the Book, underlining and highlighting entire sections of it.

I called my brother.  "Holy crap, Ty.  HOLY CRAP.  Have you even started this book?  I'm going to have to buy you another copy, I need to keep this one,"  I said over the phone.

I explained to him the Book had shaken me, in a most unexpected way.  I felt at times like the author had filmed scenes from my childhood and written about them.  In the Book, I read about my parents, about my siblings, about myself.  I read about my grandmother.  I read about who I had become as an adult, my weaknesses and strengths.  I read about my marriage.  I read what I would continue to struggle with as I aged, and I read that I would be the least likely of the entire group to seek therapy--because I viewed myself as a survivor of trauma and doing "just fine," instead of as someone who could not recognize my own needs and emotions due to stuffing them down for so long.

It was both validating and terrifying, to read the words of my life.  Validating to know someone out there really understood; terrifying to realize that now that I knew, I would need to do something about it.  I had never been to therapy before, and had attached the stigma I know so many attach to it:  therapy was for people with real problems, who are a mess, who can't cope, and the list goes on.  I wasn't fitting into any of those categories, yet I knew after reading this, therapy was something I needed to pursue.

This Book altered the course of my life, in many ways.  It continues to alter it, for the better.  Because of this Book, I was brought down a path of self-awareness that eventually helped me to find self-worth, learning to untangle my emotions and needs from those of others around me.  Eventually it is what led me to seek help when my lack of ability to believe I deserved good in my life created situations that threatened to take the things I loved most away.

And when my own self worth was finally planted and I could truly feel it, I finally had the ability to help others, with similar stories, find theirs too.

The Book started me on this journey, but it took years before I could reach the end of it, an ending that led me to much closer to Peace.  But there were much more difficult things I had to face first.....

swinging and bending, part 5: a friendship with fear.

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.” 

― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Read the first part of this story, here.  
 the second part, here.

 the third part, here.

and the fourth part, here.

after we moved from my parents' basement, ben and i settled into our quiet life in the apartment in spanish fork.  my anxiety as a mother to my son with special needs continued, and fear took on a new form:  isolation.  most of the time i kept to myself, taking long daily walks with caleb during good weather.  i convinced myself it was just my homebody tendencies, but deep down i knew it wasn't true.  this was more than just loving the comforts of my own home, this was creating a life of control, structure and order out of fear and survival.  ben and i went through the motions of church callings, accomplishing what was required, but didn't open up to anyone outside of family and close friends about caleb's struggles and continual demands.

the high maintenance of caleb's care kept me occupied, and when others volunteered to baby-sit for me--even family--i kindly refused.  truthfully, i still couldn't trust anyone except myself and ben to take care of him.  on the rare occasion i said yes, i didn't relax during my time away, tortured with the "what if" questions spinning in my head.  i was a classic "helicopter parent" before i even knew the definition of it.

fear continued to surround me in a storm, becoming my best friend.  it fell like raindrops in every facet of my life, helping me create obsessive control that built a false sense of security.  i didn't know that the frail bubble of fear i had formed to keep my son safe would soon pop, as they usually always do.

caleb had been having minor seizures starting at 10 days old, but when his 31 minute grand mal seizure happened when he was 18 mos old, i was traumatized.  i realize that most mothers would be traumatized, but because i had already been working so closely with fear, letting it trick me into believing i was the one keeping him safe and alive....well, in those terrifying days following the seizure when i was home alone with him, i had to sit in the knowledge that i actually had no control over the situation.  the trauma of having almost two years of built up fake-control and false-sense of security ripped away left me completely vulnerable and alone.  i knew then that my best friend was my worst enemy, and a liar.  the problem was, i didn't know yet how to fight back, combatting the lies with truth, or more importantly, how to leave the relationship with fear.  so, i coped.  i inched through each day, continuing to isolate, praying for God to help me to find a way out.  i see now how He was preparing me to find that way, guiding me to a path that would require extremely hard work.

we were in our apartment for a year when we came to the conclusion that ben was in a dead-end job, and decided to put our life in God's hands.  we prayed and made a list of what we could do to find a career path that would help us not only financially, but also emotionally.

ben knew he would never be satisfied in a cubicle.  more than anything he wanted to help others but was unsure of which path to take.  go back to school?  take another pay cut to start in a field that was severely overworked and underpaid?  so, we set a date, giving ourselves two months of searching every avenue.  we told God that after two months if we were still out of options, we were going pick up our belongings and move to texas, which was where ben's oldest brother and family were living.  we would risk it all for a fresh start.  we picked january 22, 2007 as the day we would make our decision, and got to work.

i began job hunting for ben during the day, sending in resumes everywhere i could.  he continued trying to transfer within his company, letting his boss and co-workers know he was looking for other options. they loved and valued him, but told him their hands were tied.  ben interviewed for several jobs, and looked into higher education, but was only met with dead ends.  as the date crept closer, we prepared ourselves for what seemed the inevitable--moving to texas. we began to get excited about a scary, but fresh start.

on the afternoon of january 22, i sat down to the computer one last time, searching for any other options.  i found an online local newspaper and clicked on the classified section.

and there it was.

goosebumps ran up my arms as i read the job posting for a married couple to become "Family Teachers" in north carolina, managing and running a home filled with teenagers who had been diagnosed with mental and behavioral problems.  tears filled my eyes--not because it was something i wanted to do.  in fact, i felt the opposite, with zero desire to take this position.  but when i read the words and researched the company, the tears filled my eyes because it was one of the very few and far-between moments in my life that i knew without a doubt, it was what we were supposed to do.

when ben arrived home that night, i showed him the job opening and he felt exactly the same way.  we sent in our application and put off the move to texas, knowing we had been led to this very moment in our lives.


it was during this same time that my parents decided to divorce.

swinging and bending, part 4: the breaking.

{image found here.}

Read the first part of this story, 
here.  

and the second part,
here.

and the third part,

here.

Round and around and around we go...

The reason I hold on

'Cause I need this hole gone.

Funny, you're the broken one,

But I'm the only one who needed

Saving.

--"Stay"

Rihanna

i was 24 years old when caleb was born.

we brought him home, and i remember immediately feeling protective.  at 4 lbs, 9 oz, he could only eat from a syringe with a small tube hanging from it, guided into his mouth by either mine or ben's pinky finger.  he struggled in almost every area--sleeping, eating, pooping, gaining weight, and mostly, in being content.

his screaming began at around 10 days old and was followed quickly by his seizures.  with his screaming, something inside of me broke--the dream of having the happy, fat, cooing child.  idealistic hope was gone and replaced with desperation.  i quickly turned into the mother i had previously judged and scorned; ignoring all of the books i had read, i resorted to doing whatever it took to silence his cries.

when the seizures were finally diagnosed at 2 1/2 months, another piece inside of me broke.  the piece that knew what faith meant.  i became a mother full of fear, and without knowing it, began to believe that i was singlehandedly keeping this tiny, sick boy alive.

ben was an amazing father and i knew he loved caleb deeply, but seemed to have a more casual attitude toward the instructions we were repeatedly given about his care by specialists.  his mantra of "oh, he'll be fine" terrified me, because it meant i was out in this scary world alone with a special-needs baby.  his actions deepened the fear.  we would talk about how we were going to handle big family situations with caleb, and i was in sync with what the doctors were telling us, to be extremely cautious.  ben would say he felt the same, then change his mind when we actually got in the situation.  i couldn't understand what was going on, and internalized it as somehow my fault.  that he thought i was too crazy, or overprotective, but didn't want to tell me.  so i tried to stuff down the confusion and distrust, not realizing it manifested itself as more fear.  even though there were others around supporting me...i felt i was the only one truly bearing this burden.  i became a control freak, fueled by anxiety and "what if's" that would run through my head all hours of the day and night.

ben and i have talked about this point in our lives many times, and how it was a crossroads for us.  up until then, we had been a strong team, weathering the outside storms between extended family together.  now the rain began to pour inside of our safe place, the winds carrying me to one side and ben to the opposite.

"i felt like i lost my wife,"  he has said.

"i felt like the carefree, worry-free, easily happy person i was--died.  and, i felt like i could no longer trust you to be honest with me, because you didn't want to hurt me,"  i have said.

so, there was that.

we had hoped that having caleb would help bring about a merger to the sides of family who were still contending, and maybe he did.  but it seemed like more of a cold war began, where no one really spoke to each other at family events, just passing icy smiles and nervous glances.  i was so focused on dealing with caleb, that i stopped noticing.

we lived in the basement apartment of my parents' home until caleb was 10 months old.  they had a marriage that had been full of ups and downs.  when things were good between them, they were great.  but during the time we were living there, signs pointed toward them taking a turn for the worse.

i had been witness to this for many years and had grown somewhat of a callous skin to it, but after living in a peaceful, virtually contention-free marriage for 2 years, the understanding of just how unhealthy things were became glaringly acute.  i grew up only knowing this as my only perspective on marriage, and thought it was normal.  i now knew it was not.

this was ben's first time to have a front row seat to some difficult moments.  because he loved them both, and he could not change or help their situation, this began to take its toll on him.  i could see him beginning to separate from them, requesting more space and a clarity on boundaries to define "our own family time." i could understand his desire, but because i had slipped back into my family role as buffer and peacemaker, i didn't see these new boundaries as necessary.  i felt needed, and worth more when i played this role.  boundaries and separation took that from me.  i wavered when it came to upholding them, continually giving excuses for this justification or that. but the truth is, i didn't know how to say no without feeling guilty, and i didn't know how to feel good about myself unless i was acting the part of the "good girl" that i had played for so long.

however, i did have my eyes opened as an adult viewing my parents as an adult.  even though i was still young in married life and motherhood, i began to see them as equals.

during the year we were there, i saw a cycle in their relationship that scared me, because it resonated inside as patterns of my own. enabling one's anger by allowing mistreatment, at the sake of "doing whatever it took" to make another happy.  then, because of fearing the anger or huge emotional reaction, becoming passive aggressive and covertive, using small twists of reality to portray a situation so it would be easier for another to accept.  using self-lies to justify these twists, that the intent behind doing it is to really "help another."  then the lies would be caught, and the reaction was so harsh and forceful that it caused it all to begin again.  i wasn't doing this in my own marriage, but could see glimpses of where i had done it in other relationships, past and present.

i distinctly remember having one specific conversation in that basement.

"why are you allowing this?"  i asked.

"because, when the time comes for me to die, i want to be able to look my Father in Heaven in the eyes and tell him i did everything i could.  that even if it meant taking the aftermath of the anger i didn't deserve, and staying and loving and trying, never giving up--no matter what--that He will tell me i did a good job."

"but," i replied, "i feel like you're just the pillow, catching another's fall.  which is great for the one falling, to have something soft to land on.  but what happens to the pillow?  it's flattened, with all of its feathers slammed out of it.  misshapen and crunched.  why would God want you to sacrifice yourself for another, at the risk of your own demise?  i understand selflessness in a relationship, but not to this extent.  why are they worth better treatment than you're worth?  that just doesn't sit right with me.  what is Jesus for, then?  what is His sacrifice for?  He took this, so that we wouldn't have to.  He is the pillow, not you.  He is the Savior, not you.  but if you continually put yourself in His place, then the one falling will never have to learn to rely on Him to catch their fall, if they can always rely on you.  meanwhile, you're breaking apart here.  i can see it.  i have seen it, for years.  and when you say 'no matter what,' do you really mean that? do you know what you're saying?  what if things get worse?  do you have any limits, any boundaries?  will there be anything that will cause you to say to yourself 'I deserve better' and demand for it to stop?"

that night, somewhere deep down, i was also speaking to myself.  

i could see the damage they had caused each other through the years.  i could also see myself in these things, through them.  the problems in my past relationships became obvious, recognizing the enabling and savior role i had accepted either to change the other or in an attempt to feel some sort of self worth.

in my marriage it was still difficult to detect because both of us had the same unhealthy piece of wanting to be the pleaser, instead of one extreme and another.  when we talk about it now, we can see it inside of the situations surrounding caleb.  neither ben nor myself had been completely honest, stuffing down uncomfortable emotions so we wouldn't have to have uncomfortable conversations.  our dishonesty, though small and unintentional,  caused a resentment to form that took years to understand and undo.

what was finally clear during that year in the basement apartment, was where i had learned and formed this unhealthy, codependent, enabling part.  i had been watching it unfold in front of me for my entire life.

luckily, ben and i still loved being together.  we both pushed our uncomfortable feelings aside, and tried our best to enjoy what we could of being a young family under stressful situations.  we celebrated the milestones caleb would make, breathed an enormous breath of fresh air as his continual crying finally began to cease when he was around 5 months old, and found our new normal creating happiness within the reality of life with our difficult, but miraculous baby.  in many ways, our love strengthened during that time.

ben was hired at a new job about 2 hours south, and we decided to take it.  by this point, we were waist-deep into appointments with specialists and physical therapists and developmental pediatricians for caleb.  my life was consumed with him.  and because of the fear that had taken on full force, i rarely trusted him with anyone besides myself and ben.  when i was around, sure.  but leaving him?  no way.  i had told myself i wouldn't be able to forgive myself if something happened to him, and since no one really knew how to take care of him the way i did, if something happened when i left him to--heaven forbid--go on a date with my husband, that would also be unforgivable.

as the breaking inside continued, i clung more tightly to the only thing that was becoming familiar to me:

fear.

swinging and bending, part 3: the carrying.

{can't find the link to this picture--found on google images}

Read the first part of this story, 
here.  

and the second part,
here.



as luck would have it, once ben finished school we found ourselves moving back to utah.  we were jobless, penniless, and insurance-less.  i was 5 months pregnant with our first child, a boy who was going to be called caleb.  we moved into the basement apartment of my parents' home, with ben's family home just a couple of streets away.

we decided to try our luck with a new path: finding a career.

placing all of our eggs into the basket of luck was tricky, and we returned back to the drawing board empty-handed time and again. ben was severely discouraged--this fresh college graduate, who had set out to change the world with his dreams, wound up working for $7.50 an hour taking care of adults with autism.  as hard as it was for him to feel like he was continually failing in the world's definition of "provider," he was surprisingly fulfilled in this job.  he knew when he clocked out at night that he had helped someone who was unable to help themselves, and this meant more to him than any amount of money deposited in our bank account on payday.  it's in the seed that was planted during this time that i can see God's plan for him, for us.  this was the beginning of his journey in the mental health field.

with a baby on the way and the intent to live in our own space, he moved on to a new job, working 2 days on, 1 day off at a lock down facility for troubled youth.  i spent most of my time at home, growing a baby, grateful for a break from being the full-time provider.

living in the basement with my parents was somewhat surreal, in the way that i vacillated between who i had been and who i was becoming.  i didn't know how to navigate the extraction from my previous family role while living in the environment that bred it, and found myself slipping easily back into who i had been before married life.  i took on the role of pleaser, buffer and rescuer without even realizing it.

the storms between our loved ones continued, and it became increasingly difficult to navigate between them.  we tried to declare our little space as neutral ground, offering peace and switzerland to whoever entered it.  but because of hard feelings between others, our neutral territory didn't last long and the boundaries we asked to be upheld were continually crossed. i was fearful of the possibility of contention to bring it up when it happened, so i stayed quiet and accepted what i believed i could not stop, instead going behind the scenes to do damage control.

i began again to carry what others gave me; their anger, their fear, their insecurities, their guilt, their shame.  i told myself i could take it, because i was the "good girl," the obedient one who would be there "no matter what."  subconsciously i stood with my arms outstretched, letting the toxicity of my loved ones pile on, until my back ached and my arms and legs began to bend under the weight of their load i accepted to bear.

ben sensed the change in me as i reverted, but didn't know enough yet to put his finger on it and say it out loud.  as grateful as he was for the comfortable surroundings we were quickly and graciously provided when we needed it, he told me he felt an urgency for us to move out--he was feeling suffocated.  i could see glimpses of the unhealthy dynamics going on, but only with the part he was playing in his family instead of my own.  it was easy for me to recognize his aching back, the arms and legs bending under the weight of his own role returning.

as turbulent as this time sounds, there were really a lot of good memories during the year we spent in the basement apartment.  but this was an integral point in our lives, where i can now see the carrying and bending that eventually led to the breaking years down the road.

while we were still living there, caleb was born.

swinging and bending, part 2: the gathering.

{image found here}

Complicate this world you wrapped for me 

I'm acquainted with your suffering 

All your weight it falls on me 

It brings me down 

All your weight it falls on me 

It falls on me 

--"heavy"
collective soul




Read the first part of this story, 
here.  

cumulonimbus.  cirrostratus.  cumulus.  nimbostratus.

the clouds gathered around ben and i as we lived in the sunshine of our newlywed bliss of the first two years of marriage.  we were happy, life was peaceful. we made friends in our married student ward in rexburg, idaho.  we held parties at the park across the street, inviting couples to join us as we laughed over barbecued chicken, spinach salads and homemade oreos.  we played cards late into the nights with our next door neighbors, and laughed through mcdonald's mcflurry runs with our friends down the road.

we both served in busy callings in church; ben was the sunday school president, i was the 2nd counselor in the relief society presidency.  most of our sundays were spent teaching, in meetings, or out visiting others. serving was not a hinderance in our minds--we both looked at it as opportunities to socialize and provide help where it was needed.  the ward we were in for our first 2 years was full of good-to-the-core people and still have a lot of them as friends in our lives today.

though married life was effortless inside the walls of our home, outside the storms were brewing.  they had been for months, from the time we had started dating each other seriously.

ben and i played similar roles in our immediate families--the buffer, the peacemaker, the comic relief, the pleaser.  it wasn't just that we were placed in this role, we also chose it.  without consciously realizing, we had built much of our identities on these roles.  i wrote that he and i shared similar strengths and weaknesses, and this became glaringly obvious as we began to attempt to extract ourselves from our family roles.

when a dynamic in a relationship changes, there is often resistance, especially if the dynamic has unhealthy pieces in it.  naturally when we were married and moved to idaho, our individual roles in our families shifted.  as we extracted ourselves, resistance did come, in the form of anger and hurt feelings, insecurity, jealousy and competitiveness.  the undercurrent of issues felt constant and though we lived over three hours away, we could hear the thunder of the continual storms rumbling toward us from across the miles.

ben and i couldn't understand what was happening or how we found ourselves perpetually in the middle of the storms of the people we loved.  we fervently tried to keep the peace, standing on the fence and seeing both sides, playing neutralizers and validators as we ran putting out one fire after another while trying to maintain the smiles on our faces.

yet the storms raged on, and we grew weary.  our best efforts could not force others to forgive each other, and deep wedges were formed.  soon we began to have our own intentions questioned by our loved ones.  we were seen with the cynical eyes of others who picked apart our motives piece by piece.  suddenly we were defending our own words and actions, desperately trying to prove the purity of our hearts.

if it sounds like i'm writing this from the "poor us" point of view, it's because that's exactly how we viewed the situation.  we felt victims of circumstances beyond our control.  instead of being able to see and own our pieces of this disturbing puzzle so we could find a way out of it, we continued to join it.

we know better now.

like lone trees standing meekly in a field, we reached for each other while the clouds burst and began pouring down.  as the winds broke our branches and ripped off our leaves, the heavy rain bent our trunks, loosening our freshly-planted newlywed roots.

in my garden.

{yes these are all weeds in our backyard.  isn't that awesome? yeah...not really.}

i have been pruned.

i have been pruned for 30 years, to feel guilty over things that are not mine.

taking them upon myself to keep me in unhealthy situations for too long.

i have been pruned for 30 years, to feel guilty over things that are mine.

letting them weigh down my branches so that i will not rise to my potential.

i have been pruned for 30 years, to deflect compliments 

as if to say to those delivering them, "you do not see who i really am."

i have been pruned for 30 years, to hide in shadows 

so that the sun can never quite fully reach all of me.

i have been pruned for 30 years, to worry about whether i am accepted

so that my boundaries are weakened,

and my stem bows under the weight of those who 

sense my worry,

and take advantage.

i have been pruned by an invisible darkness

that enters the garden late at night

with sharp shears that cut and tear at what is built during daylight,

unbeknownst even to me.

who slithers around me
whispering un-truths to my heart,
to try to blacken its edges
so that i will forget the truth.

until i look around

and all i can see are broken branches,

withered leaves,

and dead flowers

laying on the ground at my feet.

but,

i have a gardener. 

a healer, a planter, a rebuilder.

one who will not let me die, if i can choose to hold on.

who will un-wrap the weeds 

that have tangled around my self-image,

to let the blossoms grow.

who will water and nourish

my broken boundaries

until they are strong and able to stand on their own.

who will turn me to the sun so that i can feel its warmth,

and see myself the way that i was created to be

and feel grateful.

who will tell me truths
to mend my heart,
and remind me
of why i am here.

so,

today i am choosing,

to say good-bye to the pruner

and start helping

my gardener.