The Bridal Shower Or . . .

It's not as if I want to talk about sexual assault or sex all the time, or exploitation, or homophobia. The big joke in my family is that we couldn't have a meal, we couldn't sit down together, even if there was company, without something embarrassing coming up. From me. Somehow I brought it up.

This gets huge laughs now, now that the kids are adults, at my expense. It mortified them then, of course, and I couldn't promise, in all seriously, never to do it again. 

And it's taken years to stop altogether, to avoid initiating discussions like these.  Writing has helped, teaching, too, talking to people who are looking for practice wisdom or the fruits of higher education.  People who feel like they're having dinner at my table. 

The irony is that I'll want to write about something completely different, maybe even personal, like what it's like making a bridal shower with my mother as a co-hostess, only to get distracted with a Yahoo story about the arrest of a guy like John Hopkins.  And there goes the bridal shower.

If you've never heard of John Hopkins, more power to you, because the story is a confusing soup of cross accusations about sexual slavery and Craig's list solicitations. A veritable He said.  She said.

Quickly:

Mr. Hopkins, arrested last week for allegedly tying a woman to a radiator, supposedly raped her for a week, made her call him Master.  The unidentified victim claims she answered his ad offering free rent in exchange for housekeeping and cooking.   But he bought her a ticket, picked her up at the airport, and then supposedly tortured her in his home, told her she was now his sexual slave.

He tells us, however, his rebuttal is that theirs was a consensual dom/subdom relationship. She wanted to be tied up, handcuffed, beat-up, and raped. It was a part of their deal. She all but signed a consent form.  My spin accepts that that could very well be true, maybe not.  We don't know.

So the story on Mom and the shower, all the things leading up to it, what we talked about in the car, will have to wait.  I'm sorry, you have no idea.

therapydoc

Wanting to Kill Yourself, But Not Wanting to Kill Yourself

This is such a great topic and I've avoided it for too long. But a comment on an old post reminded me that you have to hear the other side of suicidal ideation. This is sanitized a bit. The bold font is mine.

I am a victim of a violent crime by a person in my family. Now I am planning on being a psychologist/counselor. I know that it will be difficult but I want to be there for those who have gone through this situation and I want to let them know that they don't have to let this ruin their lives. Depression is one out of many symptoms, I know, but is it normal to have the desire to kill yourself every time you remember your past? I have had trust issues because of this, so I sympathize with all the victims out there and only wish that I could bring forth justice in all their lives.

I'm not sure where, "Just shoot me," entered my particular vernacular. Some of us say this then put a cocked index finger to one ear, click, pretend to off ourselves, and everyone laughs.

Anyway, I've been saying it a lot when I hear about things in my personal life that leave me speechless, make me shake my head, as in, "What now? What next?" When I'm frustrated with people.

What's interesting about, "Just shoot me" is that the person who says it obviously doesn't mean it, is just signaling frustration with life's impossibilities. We can't control most of it, certainly not the behavior of other people. So we laugh it up, say, Shoot me.

I give up.

Which implies that someone else wins, but it's okay. We concede the victory with relief. Let it go.

I think this happens on a much deeper psychological level in trauma victims. If a person suffers a trauma, even secondary trauma (hears about someone's trauma and feels the pain), it can trigger suicidal wishes and fears.

Immediately after a trauma or during the trauma, the thought, I would be better off dead is seeded in some neuropathway. Then you get the emotion, the fear, the terror, or it's there first, doesn't matter. But the reasoning, the thought processing about the event becomes unconscious, and that happens rather quickly. All that remains for eternity is the conclusion, I want to die. Sort of stuck like a broken record. You can turn off the juice, but someone keeps turning it on when you least expect it.

And the fears remain, associated with the conclusion, better off dead. You never wanted to die, you never wanted to be raped, to use a common example, or sexually harassed, perhaps, but the thought and the fear originated at the same time, under heightened arousal, and became inextricably linked in the brain.

Our brains are simply out of control. You would think they would get a grip.

But no. Get a bad thought, link it with a negative event, and there's your negative thought, warmed over easy again and again with the thought of the event. And then, the evolved negative emotion, the depression that lingers beyond fear. Fear may have burnt itself out. Maybe not. Just shoot me.

If you grow up with someone who is suicidal you are literally fed this thought with every suicidal threat, wish. You could be a happy go lucky kid, someone with a fairly happy little neurotransmitter, and you listen to the gloym and doym and you think, Oh, for crying out loud. You don't get a corner on suicidal ideation, I have my own, damn it. And you do, not because you want it, because you breathed it.

Hard to be tough sometime, hard to have great boundaries, to know,in your heart,

This is not what I want, this is not who I am. This is merely something I thought once, under a great deal of stress.

Or

It's something someone else wanted, under stress. But it has nothing to do with reality, not mine. I really don't want to die, I certainly haven't the guts to kill myself even if I did.

But here are these stupid thoughts, coming home anyway.

So I wrote her back, said something like this:

Not to answer you personally, but hypothetically people do have what I call "normal" suicidal desires and fears, and these mean absolutely nothing, meaning, people who have these desires and fears would never in a million years kill themselves. You might be one of these people, probably are. That said, for sure, you gotta get therapy to work it out and you really can work it out. Reading about it on the Internet probably won't cut it.

So you want to know, don't you, what happens in a therapy that works it out?

You go over the trauma, for there usually is one, even if it is imagined. Some people have amazing imaginations and they make themselves upset with their own creativity. Doesn't matter if it's real or imagined, most of the time it's real. You go over it again and again, line by line, verse by verse, and examine your responses, how they were normal fear generated thoughts under stress and how wanting to kill yourself rather than face others in the shame of it all felt like a normal solution.

Then with your therapist you do a cognitive behavioral therapy. You challenge the date on the inserted thought.

Wait a minute. The date on that thought is August something, 2004! It's now November, 2009! That thought has expired!

And you let it expire, die a natural death.

You challenge your shame, you say,

And I did nothing to deserve this! Why should I kill myself over something that happened to me?

As my daughter is fond of saying, Most of the time things happen to us. And she's right. We can take responsibility, sure, and we should, and we should rectify whatever we can, make whatever amends are necessary, do whatever we can to right life, but owning things to the degree that they make us sick? Forget that.

Be charitable, pass them along.

therapydoc

Since U Been Gone

I'm in L.A.

Even though it seems like I'm always traveling, it isn't true.

Well, maybe it is. But this is a business trip.

You know I did a lot of my research in rape and pedophilia, that sort of wonderful stuff. Knowing how bad this is for children, rape and pedophilia, I'm compelled to do what anyone would do as a community activist, a person who believes that an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure. If I have to travel to educate communities and schools, to be sure that people are clear on the concept, so be it.

You just can't hide your head in the sand, is the truth, no matter where the sand might be.

But let's not talk about that, sexual abuse. Not now.

The Story:

The guys are up at six a.m. and have to be in the car at 7:15, and if you've ever tried to get little kids fed and dressed in 75 minutes, you know it's a challenge.

But they're good, and do you want to know why they're good? Because there's a carrot for every stick, is why. Every kid has his price. I do the unthinkable, introduce them to YouTube. It had to happen eventually.

There's no turning back. Getting ready, even if you are only four years old, is a snap because. . .No breakfast? No Kelly. Don't get dressed? Forget Estelle. How I ever let them watch Estelle, I'll never know. But things happen.

So they get dressed right after Since U Been Gone. And we're out the door. Bye bye, Mommy.

And this is grand, because here we have a 6 track CD changer, something I've always wanted. Yes, I'm behind. I know, I know.

Anyway, we're tooling around on the 101 in my kid's Honda (should have bought a Honda) searching for music with the amazing 6 CD Disk Changer. My daughter has quite a bit of music stored and ready at the push of a button if you happen to be in the front seat of the car.

And as the lucky elected driver for the week, I'm spending a lot of time in the front seat, driver's side. If you've ever lived in L.A., you know how lucky this is.

The guys are in the back seat arguing about what I should play. I hit or miss and something kind of slow and easy comes on, a keyboard guy hits the same chord about a thousand times. It's good. Chills me down from the morning rush to get ready.

The big guy says, "Leave this song! I like this! I like the sad songs."

The little guy says, "I hate this Bubbie. Turn on the Mika song. I want to hear the Lollypop song." He's kicking the seat.

I have now heard the Lollypop song about fifteen thousand times and know all the words, not that I ever needed to know all the words, or any of them for that matter. But he does. We can only hope he doesn't do a rendition at school.

His older brother shouts out, "You like the sad songs, right Bubbie?"

Uh, well. . .

The little guy argues authoritatively, "No she doesn't. She likes the happy songs, like the Lollypop song. Don't you Bubbie?"

You're both right.

In this situation it's best to turn off the radio and let them argue with each other and kick and scream for awhile, which is what I do to give myself time to think about tomorrow's presentation, how to present it, what to say.

At some point the kids have compromised on Since U Been Gone, Kelly. You probably know it.

Lyrics, Since You Been Gone

Here's the thing we started off friends
It was cool but it was all pretend
Yeah yeah
Since you've been gone

You dedicated you took the time
Wasn't long till I called you mine
Yeah Yeah
Since you've been gone

And all you'd ever hear me say
Is how I pictured me with you
That's all you'd ever hear me say

But since you've been gone
I can breathe for the first time
Im so movin on
Yeah yeah
Thanks to you
Now I get
What I want
Since you've been gone

How can I put it? you put me on
I even fell for that stupid love song
Yeah yeah
Since you've been gone

How come I never hear you say
I just wanna be with you
I guess you never felt that way

But since you've been gone
I can breathe for the first time
Im so movin on
Yeah yeah
Thanks to you
Now I get
I get what I want
Since you've been gone

You had your chance you blew it
Out of sight, out of mind
Shut your mouth I just can't take it
Again and again and again and again

Since you've been gone
I can breathe for the first time
Im so movin on
Yeah yeah
Thanks to you (thanks to you)
Now I get
I get what I want
I can breathe for the first time
Im so movin on
Yeah yeah
Thanks to you (thanks to you)
Now I get (I get)
You should know (you should know)
That I get
I get what I want
Since you've been gone
Since you've been gone
Since you've been gone

Not real deep. Suffice it to say that we had watched the video only minutes before and our girl, Kelly Clarkson, spurned, is furiously pitching everything her ex ever touched, ever breathed on. She's breaking picture frames and CD's, tossing the shampoo, his deodorant, his aftershave. The bedding, the pillows, feathers are flying, furniture crashing. She tackles the closet; his clothes are history. She's really angry.

The guys are watching, mesmerized. Here's an adult throwing an adult-sized tantrum, the likes of which they have never seen. And I'm thinking,

Is this permission? Are they learning that this is okay?

What have I done?

So in the car, after the song, I ask them if they get it. What happened to Kelly? Why is she so angry?

They're pretty sure it's about the guy, they tell me. He did something.

They're not sure exactly what. But it had to be bad.

therapydoc