In a totally new place and need perspective? Cedar? Anyone?

[Copabanana]

Cedar, we need to learn how to print out threads so that one or more of us can have hard copy of the FOO threads.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar, I just sent a private message to you and Serenity.

I am able to quote now, Copa.

Cedar, SWOT was a poster on that thread, too. I just checked. She has not posted since yesterday. I am a bit concerned

This one came through, too.

Everything's okay, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

In the upper right hand corner of this screen will be (3) straight horizontal lines. That is the menu. To print, simply open the menu. "Print" will be one of the options listed.

The moderator should not have done that.

I meant not that the moderator had blocked one of us Copa, but that the moderator should not have composed a response that was offensive. That is not what we do to one another, here.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, I opened the three horizontal lines but I could not see print. Where is it?

the moderator should not have composed a response that was offensive.

I am sure it was not meant to be.

What I have gained is so great, this is like a tiny dot in a sea. I just want Serenity to show back up then this will all recede.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Print is right under New Window, Copa, and right beside History, and right above Find. Upper right corner of this page. There will be a star, then a box, then an arrow, then a bigger, download arrow, then a house, then a smiley face, then the three lines that indicate menu. That's the one.

See it, Copa?

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Im here...lol. I just worked today.

All is well. How kind of you for caring.

I did read these posts. I did not know how to answer them because my therapists were pretty nice. I sympathize...they were horrid to you...but I shun pschoanalytical therapists and default to those who prefer cbt or dbt. I dont get so attached that its a big deal if they leave. Many have moved or retired. I just adjust to the new one, but it has to be a female.
I am not a big fan of psychoanalysis. It is just one persons opinion. I really go for the common sense type. I save my analysis for this forum I have shared a lot in groups too.
I am sorry you both had to deal with those jerks but they sound pompous, arrogant and maube stuck in freuds era. You both were fine. It was them. They thoughtbthey knew more about u than YOU did.
I only use psychiatrists for medications, not therapy.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Im here...lol. I just worked today.

All is well.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, I do not even see NEW WINDOW. I see the three lines to the right of Members. But when I open the three lines up there is nothing that says print.

I am glad Serenity is back. HI.

 

[BusynMember]

What's going on? What did I miss?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I sent a PM, Serenity.

:O)

Cedar, I do not even see NEW WINDOW. I see the three lines to the right of Members. But when I open the three lines up there is nothing that says print

Oh, I'm sorry, Copa. On my computer, the tool bar is just above the conductdisorders page. That is what is happening. I have Firefox. The tool bar is right there above our page, on whatever page I am on.

Is your toolbar visible, Copa? That is where the menu icon will be. I hadn't thought about it, but each of us will have different servers. Unless you have Firefox like I do, yours will look different. A menu icon should be there on your toolbar though Copa, at the very top of the page. Above our page, I mean. In that strip of information that tells you the name of the site you are visiting.

That is why this isn't working for us.

Our pages are structured differently.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

No. I do not have tool bar. I need to get Firefox. I will.

I sent a PM, too.

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks for the PMs. I responded.

You are both so awesome. I think I'm stuck with that "awesome" word forever since I've had so many kids and now my grands!

 

[Copabanana]

Well, I have worn myself out today channeling Donald Trump with the moderators. I have become so empowered I do not even know myself anymore. That same thing that happened to you Cedar a few weeks ago, when your available energy increased is happening to me.

I wonder if it is the antidepressant but this type usually takes 3 weeks to take effect and it has been only 2 weeks.

It must have been good for me to fire the psychiatrist. I seem to be firing everybody now.

I think it must be at least partly the work we are doing here, have done here.

I am out of bed.

I have for the most part forgiven myself for the one mistake I made caring for my Mother.

I see her picture and she is so beautiful and I am filled with love and regret that I was not with her every second of our life together. But I forgive myself.

I look at myself in the mirror and I look younger. I look pretty again. I am having fun trying on my new clothes for M for him to help me with what to keep.

I went to the doctor this morning to get more antidepressants and I made a joke and was laughing. About dying, no less.

I feel like all of the weight that was on me is gone. I feel like I woke up from a dream of 2 years and I am myself again. Better than myself. On Sept 13 my mother will have been dead two years. She died Sept 13 2013. And I will be OK.

At midnight Friday morning we will travel 7 hours on the bus to see my mother's attorney and I will go back to the town where she lived. I know I will be OK.

I cannot wait to go cross country.I know that no matter how elegant and sophisticated are the ladies at Bridge Club or Mah Jongg or any other class in NYC, I will be gracious and warm. I am enough. I am my mother's daughter. And I am myself.

Cedar, please tell D H thank you for caring about me. That I am out of bed. I am smiling as I write this.

Thank you SWOT and Cedar. I will be forever grateful to you both.

COPA

 

[BusynMember]

I hope it lasts for you...lol. took me six weeks of my medication and I felt normal. Ask the doctor to do a level on your medication to make sure its not too high...that can cause hypomania that can evolve into mania. I used to always make sure to get my levels checked because I am so sensitive to medication.

Its so great to know, you are feeling like taking on life again. Hoping it co tinues forever snd a day.

 

[BusynMember]

Ok, so I was driving today, and for me when I drive, I also think. Do you think that's dangerous? Anyhow, I do it. And I was trying to figure out why I've been feeling so good lately. I came up with a list and wanted to share it just for the hello of it.

1. Total detachment from toxic people...no cheating.

2. Good relationships with all who matter to me.

3. Getting out a lot. Making new friends/support system and not just superficial friends. I don't like a bunch of acquaintances that one can not get close to and trust.

4. Cooler weather. (I am not made for Florida or any tropical temperature)


5. Having thiings to look forward to---peer to peer classes, my birthday and the fair that hubby will take me to for it, another visit to see Buddha Baby and Princess, the excitement of finding another job while still working at this program job, and remembering every day that "Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life."

Just sharing.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Well, I have worn myself out today channeling Donald Trump with the moderators. I have become so empowered I do not even know myself anymore. That same thing that happened to you Cedar a few weeks ago, when your available energy increased is happening to me.

Ha! Copa, good for you!



That is what I feel, Copa. I am thinking the difference is that I have a choice of response now, where before, only the shame response had validity.

Good and bad things happen to all of us. I seem able to have the option of choice now, in how that balances out. I don't get stuck in the abject shame of my own imperfection. I can be wrong, as I was in my thinking about my son, without getting stuck in how badly I feel about having been less than perfect.

It's as though I'm maturing into real from the role.

This feeling of maturation seems to be happening on so many levels.

I still feel that hovering sense of self accusatory condemnation that is the shame response, but I can name it now. I can know where it came from and not let it define me, now. I did not have that choice, before. I really did feel badly about so many things that were just the things that happen to all of us in our lives. There is no perfect response, not for anyone. It isn't that other people know something I don't know. We are all figuring everything out one small step at a time.

The difference between me and everyone else is that they are not telling themselves "That'll do, pig."

I find compassion for myself, there. That is such a sad thing for me to have come to believe.

I am grateful to have seen how I was seeing everything about me. Shame is so sad and troubling a thing, and so hurtful.

Serenity's point about new medications is valid too I think, Copa. When I have taken St John's Wort, I have stopped after a few days. It seems it would push me over some edge that was not where I wanted to be, either. So, I would stop for awhile. I found that breaking through another layer through the work we have been doing here left me ~ I don't know. It's like the anger...it's like I need time to assimilate the feelings into who I am, into the way I understand and into the way I choose to see. I have to assimilate anger into compassion, or into rage, even and then, go back for the healing of it again and again.

Always, it heals into compassion for myself.

Isn't that strange. I always thought it would heal into compassion for the behaviors of others toward me. Their behaviors hold no emotional charge for me, now. I feel compassion for my suffering because of their behaviors, but not compassion, or anything really, for them.

They are separate from me, now.

Their betrayals were not personal to me; their actions were personal to them and may not have been seen as betrayals by them. Before I began healing, I saw things in terms of betrayal and I think what I am coming to see is that the betrayal was happening between me and the way the toxically shamed core self justified things. I believed that if I'd been a better person, the other person would not have done whatever it was they did.

Now I get it that they do what they do because that is what they do. I seem able to see it without that shame response taking precedence. It is still there, but I can see it now, and choose not to believe in the finality of it.

That is the thing I can see, so far anyway, about how we heal.

I did not expect that.

It pleases me, though.

With the sense of having broken through each layer, there was a sense of wild, almost overwhelming ebullience, of freedom.

It was disorienting.

With every layer of healing, there have been attending feelings of exhilaration and wild freedom and disorientation and responsibility to self creation, as I come to rest in the larger, more generous self that I am, now.

Disorienting, as of course it would be. We have moved so quickly in our healing here that we have not acknowledged that there is a necessary time of assimilation accompanying our healing.

Then, I would go back to the shame response for a little while. It feels very much like balancing and over-balancing and finally, assimilating the new energies.

I would be afraid, sometimes, of who I was becoming; of who I would be, at the end of this process of healing I no longer seem able to control or even, direct. The strangest, most unexpected things come up ~ as they have just this week, in healing the shame piece in who I believed my son to be.

Oh, I am sad I felt that way about him. I am glad to have seen it, and addressed it with him. But what I am saying is that issues I was not aware of are popping up for healing and I am seeing them as such and healing myself into compassion for me. I feel badly for myself that I thought that way. I get it that son will function as himself however I see him? I think I was a good enough mom for that to be true?

But I feel really badly for me that I saw him that way instead of for the bravery in him.

That is the flavor of this healing, now. Barrier of shame to break through.

BOOM

Acceeptance (which feels really awful). But somehow, I come away from it now, stronger. I am just more present now. I tend not to panic and drop myself into beat myself up mode so much as I am able to take a breath and sure enough, feel and hold myself with ~ I don't know. Like, a sense of hovering compassion and healing and gratitude for it, for the difference between those feelings and the self condemnation with which I have treated myself, all of my beautiful life.

I appreciate myself, now.

Whatever you guys. I am totally off the subject here which was Copa's healing.

We are each ~ it feels so right, what we are accomplishing, here.

Thank you for staying with me through it.

And thank me too, of course.

We are doing this together, and each of us matters for all of us. And when others reading along post in to us, I feel like, a sense of blessing in that, too.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

remembering every day that "Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life."

I love that this is happening for you, Serenity.



This is a new way that I feel, too. That is what I was trying to say when I posted about this new way that it feels to interpret events in my life. It affects everything ~ just the way the core shame response that was my only reality for such a long time affected everything, too.

It has to do with time sense, too. Whatever I am doing, that is what I am doing. I realize I was even beating myself up because I was not accomplishing a thousand things. Whatever I accomplished was not enough, or was not done well enough, or had not been accomplished quickly enough.

"When chopping onions, just chop onions."

Tears are part of that.

Not because we are bad, and not because the onion has it in for us. Just because onions are onions and we have chosen to chop them and that is okay.

Did you know that the creation of the sulfur-based gas that causes our eyes to water when we chop onions is the onion's defense reaction? As the cell wall is cut into, a chemical reaction occurs, creating the sulfur. Inside itself, undamaged? The onion is sweet.

I learned that in Michael Pollan's Cooked.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It must have been good for me to fire the psychiatrist. I seem to be firing everybody now.

I think it must be at least partly the work we are doing here, have done here.

I am out of bed.

I have for the most part forgiven myself for the one mistake I made caring for my Mother.

I see her picture and she is so beautiful and I am filled with love and regret that I was not with her every second of our life together. But I forgive myself.

I look at myself in the mirror and I look younger. I look pretty again. I am having fun trying on my new clothes for M for him to help me with what to keep.

I went to the doctor this morning to get more antidepressants and I made a joke and was laughing. About dying, no less.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I feel like all of the weight that was on me is gone. I feel like I woke up from a dream of 2 years and I am myself again. Better than myself. On Sept 13 my mother will have been dead two years. She died Sept 13 2013. And I will be OK.

And we will be right here.

I am so pleased for you, and for M too, Copa.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Isn't that strange. I always thought it would heal into compassion for the behaviors of others toward me. Their behaviors hold no emotional charge for me, now. I feel compassion for my suffering because of their behaviors, but not compassion, or anything really, for them.

We have many choices as to how to feel about those who treated us badly. I am not one to forgive. I know it's supposed to be for us, but it seems to be for them. I don't believe it is possible to forgive somebody who doesn't want it or think they did anything wrong. I'd rather just neutralize it...zap it's importance in my life. Forgiveness would make me too vulnerable to allowing them back in if they came back and, in my case, their is a long history of coming back. I can't afford to forgive. I am too softhearted and that, to me, would be absolving the person of all blame. I don't absolve myself of blame...why absolve somebody else?

I think feeling apathetic is best, at least for me. That way I have no angry urges or loving ones. I wish them well, of course. I wish everyone well, so they are included in that. But I noticed that the degree of my contentment equals the degree of my detachment from those who have hurt me and would still do it. And of how much I let the love in from those who are willing and eager to give it. And of how much I give it back to them.

I thank you two for taking this journey with me. Honestly, it is more personal than any journey I have taken with any therapist. It is very warm and validating and kind and I feel safe with you two. Thank you both.