Tag: therapy | The World According to MEH

Getting Off the Merry-Go-Round

Posted on June 27, 2010 by admin • 4 Comments

Things have been interesting in the Hong household lately. It started with that one little no to my mother–actually, it started with her letter to me before she came back, and it really started with my letter to her in return. Then, it continued with me insisting that we define our working relationship. If she wants me to do something by a certain time, she has to tell me and not make me guess.

Then, I said no to driving over to my brother’s, and that really loosened the flood-gates. A few days ago, he came over with the boys (my niece wanted to stay home with her mom, her mom’s friend, and her mom’s friend’s daughter, who is one of her (my niece’s) best friends), so that’s what they did.

The biggest difference, though, is that my mom and I are having honest conversations. I am losing my ability to dissimulate, and though I do mourn the loss, it is, overall, a good thing.

So. Last night she was telling me about two dreams she had. One had to do with me telling her I was getting married (go ahead and laugh. I did–inside) to someone who was introverted, scholarly, had a stable job, and was more conservative than am I (traditional, I think she meant, not politically conservative). She was relieved that I was marrying this guy, someone she thought of as a good man, because then I would have someone to take care of me. Now, my mom is a Jungian, which means she thinks that most of the people in one’s dream represents oneself. Or in the case of this dream, she thinks the marriage is actually an integration between my masculine and feminine side in search of a more perfect union.

The other dream was involved and complicated, but it had to do with her feeling there was a distance between us (true) and that my father was supporting me (false).

Then, she told me about another dream she had in which she lost the diamond to her twenty-year anniversary ring (from my father, naturally), and while she was looking for it, she found another diamond ring. The diamond was bigger and prettier, so she thought about keeping it. She didn’t, but she never found her diamond, either. She asked me what I thought of the dream, and I immediately said, “Divorce Dad and marry someone else.” We both laughed heartily, but she admitted that was her first interpretation as well.

T For Two

Posted on March 18, 2010 by admin • 9 Comments

I cannot wait to see the new AIW movie. I have heard great things about it, and Tim Burton better not fuck it up. Then, HP the Last, Part I and II. They better not fuck up the movies too badly. You know, I will watch any movie with Alan Rickman in it, and then there’s this video by Texas, called In Demand. The lead singer wanted Alan in it, and he said yes. I would give my eyeteeth (what the fuck are eyeteeth, anyway?) to trade places with her in this video, especially in the gas station scene (plus, I would love to have her body).

So, I had therapy today. My therapist was in Florida, so it’s been over two weeks since we’ve had a session. On Monday, I had a meditation session with Julie. Then, she made a fabulous baked tilapia in cornmeal crust with rice and red beans (and turkey bacon!). She even bought two bottles of Pepsi One for m because she’s thoughtful like that.

Yes, I have a point to my rambling, as usual. In the meditation session, more images were coming up. More flashbacks, but nothing new. Repeats, as it were. The difference is that the little Minna started fighting back more. No matter how much my father told her to be quiet, she struggled, fought, and shouted to him that he was not a part of her. That only caused him to ratchet up the violence. In the last scene, he tied her wrists with his belt, strung her up, and started whipping her across the face with his second belt.

Let me be clear. This never happened. My father never hit me–as least, not as far as I can remember. He used to beat my brother, though, but I only know that because my mom told me at a much later date. However, when I described this scene to my therapist, she said it might be a representation of the sexual violence he perpetuated upon me. This coincides with something Julie suggested to me about why I have never had difficulty enjoying sex. She posited that perhaps I categorized what happened to me as physical violence and not sex, therefore, I could enjoy sex without flashing back on the molestation. I have to think about it some more, but it sounds possible to me.

I Don’t Pay Her Enough

Posted on January 21, 2010 by admin • 6 Comments

I have been seeing my therapist for eleven-billionty years. For the first few years, I talked about mostly-superficial things. Let me back up. I started seeing my current therapist the last time I decided to lose weight as I was well-aware of how fucked-up I am about my body, food, and weight loss in general. I had been to a series of therapists over the past…twenty-four years, and they all sucked. Well, except one. But I had to stop seeing her in order to go back to college. The rest of them were not as intelligent as I was, and they too often took what I said at face-value. I began to see how I could manipulate them–which is not the way to do therapy, let me tell you. My first therapist was a Christian man at a local uber-Christian college (I was fourteen, and it was my mother’s choice). He was a nice man, but he didn’t do me any good. Plus, a male therapist, at that time, was not what I needed.

I also found out I had hyperthyroidism at the time. I had a shitty male doctor for that as well, which did not improve my outlook at all. Fucker never told me not to take the pills with food. I found that out from my current doctor–more than a decade after I started taking the thyroid meds daily.

Anyway, I had my appointment this morning. I started out with a general comment on the Mass. election. To my surprise, my therapist said, “Oh, Minna, I can’t talk about that yet.” She was half-kidding, but I like it when she adds a personal comment from time to time. I assured her I wasn’t going to talk about the election itself, but I needed to make a parallel to my life.

The Democrats have a majority in all branches of government right now. Obama was elected by a healthy margin, which, except according to our ‘liberal’ media (nobody calls it that any more. Funny, that) meant that he had a mandate to pass the core issues of the Democratic Party. We had 60 Dems in the Senate. 60! That was filibuster-proof. Or, would have been if the Blue Dogs (conservative Dems) hadn’t decided they were going to oppose every goddamn core issue of the Democratic Party and side with the Republicans.

Learning Some Hard Truths

Posted on December 9, 2009 by admin • 13 Comments

I had a really hard therapy session today. My therapist told me some things I didn’t want to hear, but in the end, they were exactly what I needed to hear.

To make a short story long, I have to give some background. Here it is. I am lazy. Ok, I hear people protesting. “Minna,” says you. “How can someone who writes eleven-billionty words for NaNoWriMo be lazy?” I’ve heard variants of this retort ever since I started trotting out the “I’m lazy” line. My therapist nailed it in one, though. She was telling me about research that has discovered that if kids are told they are smart, they tend to quit if they don’t get something right away. On the other hand, if a kid is told, “Wow, you really worked hard, and you made that happen,” they were more apt to persevere. When my therapist told me this, something clicked in my head. See, if there is one thing I’ve been told repeatedly in my life, it’s that I’m smart. Fucking smart, really. When all else falls by the wayside, I cling to that truth. That’s good in some ways, but when I run into something I suck at, say, badminton, I refuse to play because I think I look stupid doing so. My therapist pointed out that for many people, not knowing how to do something does not equate looking stupid. I told her I’d have to take her word for it because it meant the same thing to me.

In my entry yesterday, I wrote that the five-year-old in me was saying, “I don’t wanna!” when it came to dealing with my eating issues. This fits in with what my therapist had said. She said that many times when I come across a situation that is difficult, I don’t want to put in the effort necessary to deal with said situation. It was the same when I was a kid. I was good at several things–dancing, playing the cello, and softball, to name a few. However, I would reach that point where I would have to put in several hours a day to become truly excellent, and I would quit rather than put in the effort.

Tag Archives: therapy