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asplendidtime
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| Posted: June 17 2008 at 11:23am | IP Logged
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Lisbet wrote:
| Amy, I think you and I had the same childhood. I still worry about what my parents will think over every little thing. I wish I knew how to 'erase' it myself. |
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I thought it was just me. This has been a struggle for me our whole marriage, too many dc, too many weird/conservative ideas. And it sort of came to a head when I did the ultimate "bad thing" of moving the "far too many grandchildren" across country.
I thought I was finally getting over it until, I was talking to my sister on Sunday and she told me about their fears of my health for having too many dc, too closely spaced. She said that they are like parasites on the body, and that I needed to end this permanently, or the next baby could be nine and ten, and that could be too much for me(I am in good health and not overweight). Then I realized that I am just as much of a slave to expectations that I ever was.  I have been beating myself up over and over, worried that they could be right, frustrated that I am not respected, and miserable that I seem to need that respect from people who will never grant me that.
But in the past, I have gotten through this by focusing myself of Jesus, and realizing that I am His. And that is good enough, in fact that is great! When my perspective needs an overhaul, I get out the Bible and read and read the Gospels until the clouds part.
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hopalenik
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| Posted: June 17 2008 at 12:32pm | IP Logged
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I think sometimes that we don' realize what the actual beginning of the tape is and so we don't consciously hear the tape until it has been going for awhile and then it is harder to erase. When I read Feeling Good, I was actually able to pinpoint the points at which my negative tapes start and they would begin to start long before the "I'm so stupid and dH is going to be mad." The tapes would start at the beginning of the day with, why didn't I get out of bed earlier!" and go from there. Now obviously if you have done something wrong you need to acknowledge it but I was fixated on that first mistake instead of saying an act of contrition and noting it for confession and moving on. Now I have such a clear understanding of when my thoughts are moving towards a depressed, self pitying or anxiety direction that I can cut them off before they become overwhelming.
As for pyschologists, I just will have nothing to do with them. I had one destroy my fathers sanity with his Freudian fun. I tend to look at pyschologists in general as Montessori did-almost all of the big ones are based in Darwinism and therefore lacking in the authentic picture of humanity that Catholicism demands. The Montessori Method book that I have has a fabulous introduction just shearing through the fallacies inherent in most major psychological theories...I personally believe that a spiritual advisor is better for your sanity than any pyschologist. Between that and the fact that I just don't want any paper trail on my thought processes that could be used against me and my children, I won't go near them, unless a devout priest where to recommend one. At this time I don't need one, as I am no longer depressed or anxiety ridden.
The other thing that I have done is to place a large emotional barrier between myself and my parents. This barrier is protective, they can't criticize anymore because I just don't tell them anything that they could involve themselves in.
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Holly
Mom to dd 10, twins dd and ds (transplant as baby that failed 05/09, permanent dialysis patient) 8 , dd 5 and dd 3 1/2 and dd in Feb 2009. 2 I hope to meet in heaven.
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Helen
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| Posted: June 18 2008 at 6:30am | IP Logged
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hopalenik wrote:
| As for pyschologists, I just will have nothing to do with them. I had one destroy my fathers sanity with his Freudian fun. |
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Holly, I am so sorry that you've had such a bad experience with psychologists. It is so hard to see your loved ones hurt by people who are supposed to help.
hopalenik wrote:
| Now I have such a clear understanding of when my thoughts are moving towards a depressed, self pitying or anxiety direction that I can cut them off before they become overwhelming. |
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You are very blessed. Some people don't have such a clear understanding of the way their thoughts progress. Sometimes this is from mental illness but sometimes trauma can make controlling your thoughts very difficult and a psychologist can help.
My adoptive children have benefitted greatly by the different professionals we have brought them to. I don't think they would have come as far without them.
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Willa
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| Posted: June 18 2008 at 6:41am | IP Logged
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hopalenik wrote:
As for pyschologists, I just will have nothing to do with them. I had one destroy my fathers sanity with his Freudian fun. I tend to look at pyschologists in general as Montessori did-almost all of the big ones are based in Darwinism and therefore lacking in the authentic picture of humanity that Catholicism demands.
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I am sorry you had a bad experience with a psychologist. I saw a psychologist in high school who helped very little -- he was a nice man and tried to help, but he was a Rogerian type and did the "reflective listening" and I really probably needed something more like a toolbox of skills that I could have used in the stressful situation I was in.
My dear friend is a Catholic family therapist who practices in that mode.
It's interesting, because I know Freud and others were affected by Darwinism as you say -- but psychology itself as a field actually came out of a solid Catholic tradition. The word means "study of the operations of the soul". Some call St Ignatius of Loyola the first modern psychological theorist -- the forms he uses in his Spiritual Exercises are quite similar in some ways to some of the more successful practices of modern psychology.
The problem with some secular psychologists is that they try to treat the soul without even acknowledging that such a thing exists. They treat psychology as a materialistic science and try to exclude religion except as a phenomenon, but that really can't be done.
-- but the field of "psychology" itself, as opposed to the ideas of some of its thinkers, derives in several ways from traditional Catholic thinking. And I know lots of psychologists who are solidly Catholic in theory and practice, and think of their field as a complement to spiritual direction, not a substitute for it.
Hope this makes sense -- I've been reading a lot about it recently because I am studying Charlotte Mason's book and she was very interested in the possibilities and problems in 19th century psychology of her time. Aristotle was supposedly the first "psychologist" as he wrote a work called "On the soul" -- and ST Thomas Aquinas wrote an extensive commentary on this work.
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Willa
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Willa
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| Posted: June 18 2008 at 6:46am | IP Logged
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Angel wrote:
| And then it's also helped me to realize that some of it, for me, is probably mild OCD... or "hyperfocus" (discussed in Drive to Distraction, an excellent book about adult ADD)... |
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You have no idea how much this helped my thinking processes, Angela. Thanks so much. I have a tendency to hyperfocus, too, and it plays into the way I "script" in my head. Now that I understand that I can deal with it better. I see what you mean about "temptation" -- not necessarily a temptation to sin but rather to get bogged down in something that's just not helpful. St Francis de Sales wrote very perceptively about changing one's thoughts when they are leading in non-helpful directions. It's hard to do in the short run but in the long run it does seem to help.
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Willa
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asplendidtime
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| Posted: June 18 2008 at 8:53am | IP Logged
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Has anyone read Beyond the Kitchen Sink in it the author describes "Housewife Blur", not meant to be a put-down. What she means is that because staying home with the children where it is very praiseworthy, isn't always terribly intellectually stimulating. The "thought life" can become over-sized. We can over think and over stress on the smallest detail, "my thoughts are ever before me". 
OCD is a label. I am not sure it applies to this case necessarily, or to everyone who has posted here. I think housewife blur when it can clear from renewing the mind by activities outside the home, reading, prayer, having goals and a plan to realize those goals, etc... it is not a case of OCD.
2 cents from me.
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Angel
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8smallones wrote:
OCD is a label. I am not sure it applies to this case necessarily, or to everyone who has posted here. I think housewife blur when it can clear from renewing the mind by activities outside the home, reading, prayer, having goals and a plan to realize those goals, etc... it is not a case of OCD.
2 cents from me. |
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Oh, gosh! I didn't mean to imply that everyone in this discussion was obsessive-compulsive! What I get for for trying to write while very, very sleep-deprived...  (Also, the name of the book is *Driven* to Distraction, not *Drive* to Distraction, as I originally posted... this is also what I get for trying to type as fast as possible before the baby wakes up...)
Anyway -- the little boys are arguing over tractors, so I'm not going to be able to be coherent now either -- I guess what I meant was that I have been helped mainly not through focusing on myself (because in many cases I have big blind spots) but in seeking out information that will help me be a better parent. (I suppose in some sense that I am attempting also to re-parent myself, if that makes sense.) The reason I mentioned OCD was that my oldest has Tourette Syndrome. In the painful process of trying to discover the root of his special needs and behavioral problems, we did run across OCD. While my son does not fit the profile, I do in many cases. Learning this was like having a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I could then say, "Hey, wait, you're obsessing over your faults again. Take a deep breath and move on." The negativity suddenly seemed a lot less real. This was just how it worked for me, personally.
I guess the point is not that everyone who plays negative tapes has OCD or ADD, or should or should not see a psychologist, but that getting to know oneself in a non-judgemental way (as Amy was doing in the post that began this thread) is an important part of overcoming the constantly replayed negativity.
This at least has been my experience. 
--Angela
Three Plus Two
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hopalenik
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| Posted: June 18 2008 at 1:41pm | IP Logged
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Hello,
It has come to my attention that unintentionally have offended some people with my last post. For that I apologize. I have not read any of the posts in between my last one and Angels because I haven't been online. But I unfortunately have a long history with speaking to strongly and sweepingly and it is a problem that I need to pray more about.
Unfortunately, I forget at times that most of you do not know what is running through my mind while writing. So I will do my best to clarify. I did not mean to infer that all psychologists are bad. I do believe that there are good Catholic psychologists out there but in my humble experience they are the gems that are few and far between.
Recently, I was a faith formation meeting run by a priest who very clearly defined the evils of modern psychology that stem from the original major psychologists. I will have to look through Air Maria to see if he ever did a homily on this topic. But the main thrust of his statement is similar to the Introduction in the Montessori Method, that those major pyschologists-Freud, Jung,Wundt, etc. were Darwinistic in thought, in the sense that we are born in a certain manner with certain traits that can not be changed. I have personally experienced this mentality via past pyschological professionals. In short, I have been informed that I should never have had any children much less keep having children because they will all become mental defectives due to my defective genetics. And that the proof of my mental deficiencies lies in the fact that I am not sterilizing myself to prevent more mental defectives from being born. I am certainly ignorant enough not to go any further in this conversation about pyschological theories except to ask my priest to tape his discussion of the topic. I can however, probably come up with a truncated set of notes from the meeting if anyone is interested.
Secondly, after reading the Cloning of the American Mind (Beverly Eakman) and reading the School to Work Bill by Clinton, and the criticism of the recently passed Mental Health Screening Legislation, I would inherently be very wary of allowing the wrong type of pyschologist to keep records on myself or my children. These bills and the book seem to indicate a future path of record keeping where information about your mental health state could be used against your children one day. That is not the case now, but I would not be suprised if our healthcare system is socialized and under centralized governmental control that private information might not be used to deny services at a later date or possibly even used to prevent people with a history of mental illness in their families from reproducing. It has a rather conspiratorial ring to it but I have read enough online that I believe that this to shall come to pass at a future date. And personally, I have recently become aware via a slip from our son's doctor, that his past medical records that were transferred when we relocated across the country, included a pyschological profile of me, as I had to be a bit combative in the beginning of our sons life in order to get them to treat him at all. If a psychologist that I had never spoken to can see fit to evaluate me and send that evaluation to a doctor without my consent who is not even treating me, I have to wonder what other information is out there....
Third, I absolutely know that the first place one should go for pyschological troubles is to the confessional and a spiritual advisor. I know that the spiritual graces which I received from confession allowed me to be open to the truth in what Dr. Burns states in his book. I would not have be open prior to a full confession to hearing that I created my own depression and anxiety by the way I processed peoples reactions to me. G-d has given each one of us crosses and sometimes that cross my be our mental depression or anxiety, and while we have knowledge at our disposal to attempt to correct some of those problems, I often believe that it may be our personal-Dark Night of the Soul, used to help us overcome our own pride and come to him in complete humility.
And last, I have watched my entire life one particular psychologist destroy my father's mental stability with his Freudian theories. After a final mental breakdown, he is now in the care of another, and much better psychologist who is genuinely concerned for his well being. But the damage has been done and is probably permanent barring a supernatural act of healing. As a child I always knew when he had been to see the pyschologist. Emotionally overloaded he would come home and terrorize us all with how we had failed him and he was so distraught over our failure to meet his needs. He would then pop his new precription and go to sleep and we were left to pick up our own pieces from his deep seated need to vent. Even as a child I was able to see the pure illogic in those sessions, it should have been the other way. The child is scarred by the parents behaviour not the parent being scarred by a normal, relatively good child. I have had to work very hard to let go of my animosity towards this particular medical professional and I still have a way to go. But it made me so wary of the field that I never went to see one, when the secular world felt I should. That was nothing short of a grace from G-d because prior to my return to the church, I am sure that I would not have found one who could help me heal in a Catholic manner from my past. Although, somehow I seem to be always receiving unsolicited commentary from my dad's psychologist, as noted above.
Everyone has to make their own decision about how they will heal their past pain and mental scarring. And I pray that as each of us do, that we do it in a manner in conformance with God's will, not that I am indicating that anyone is or is not. My own past, just as most others is scarred and I have a long way to go in allowing Christ to heal me. But my healing process will be without direct pyschological intervention unless so ordered by a spiritual director.
Again I am sorry if anyone felt that I was offensive or dismissive of their or their husbands' career. It was not my intent and I will probably not be examining this thread any further. It is obviously best if I do not.
Sincerely,
Holly
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Holly
Mom to dd 10, twins dd and ds (transplant as baby that failed 05/09, permanent dialysis patient) 8 , dd 5 and dd 3 1/2 and dd in Feb 2009. 2 I hope to meet in heaven.
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juststartn
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| Posted: June 18 2008 at 4:20pm | IP Logged
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Holly--I don't think that there was anyone offended--really.
That being said, I know I am glad to know I am not the only one with these tapes. Shoot, I'm getting to the point where I realize that "*NO ONE* is perfect". I have tapes...the "I will never be good enough", the "Oh crud, look what I did now", the "how in the world am I going to explain THIS?", etc, etc. Even now, I deal with my mother and feelings like this....and I do end up seeing that those tapes are driving me into turning into her--much as I don't want to. Love her, don't want to be her. I try. I really really do. But sometimes, not hard enough (esp when I am:stressed, tired, hungry, frustrated, etc, etc ad infinitum...).
As far as erasing the tapes...hm. No real advice there. I've managed to work on a few of them--partly maturing partly realizing that my mother lives many states away and therefore will NOT be walking into my home (although I do find I am happier when chaos is kept at bay, and things are less visually chaotic).
Am I somewhat anal-retentive/OCD about certain things? Well, yes. Don't know WHY--just am. But cross that with my frustrated perfectionism, and you can imagine where that leads...ugh.
I'm interested in reading this topic--so please, more advice, please!!
Rachel
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juststartn
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| Posted: June 18 2008 at 4:30pm | IP Logged
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Oh, Lisa and Rebecca and Amy and and and--
I am so there with the comments made by family members...it doesn't even have to be a comment. Its just that "too long pause"...and that throat clearing...or the "Oh"...after something is said...very frustrating.
I'm growing in a different direction by far than my parents...I have felt like I was always trying to be something to make them happy...I mean, I actually married my dh before we conceived our first dc...I married before I finished college, so therefore I "failed"....I have been happily married for 13 yrs now, the only one of my siblings to not a)end up pregnant out of wedlock, B)not divorced, C) not shacked up before I was married, etc, etc...but I am apparently a failure because I am a) a convert to Catholicism, b)I homeschool my dc, c)I don't have them in every extracurricular activity on the planet, and don't intend to, d)I dress them modestly, may not be in the first stare of fashion, but I do my best to make sure that they are clean, neat, polite, respectful and generally good people.
But I dread telling my parents when/if the good Lord blesses us again. I dread hearing the comments, the insinuations that I am lacking in a brain, common sense, a grasp of reality/finances/concern for my dc ("how are you going to afford college for x many dc?!?")....
At the same time that I want to tell all of those people to "go hang themselves" (not literally, but you kwim), I also feel like going and crawling into bed, pulling the blankets over me, and not coming out until they have accepted that I have indeed spawned again, and have adjusted to another dgrandchild. There are some people who irritate me so much that I get snarky, and, dare I say it, "witchy" in response (one of my younger siblings). Not the best model of Catholic charity, but good golly, I have to say, I should have taken St Peter as a patron...I need all of the help I can get with this temper of mine...and its better than it used to be!!!
Sorry for the ramble....this is something that I have thought about alot off and on lately...esp since I saw the topic come up on the forum...
Rachel
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Angie Mc
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| Posted: June 18 2008 at 4:49pm | IP Logged
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Angie Mc wrote:
hopalenik wrote:
| according to psychologists (which I will never ever go near). |
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Holly, I'm so sorry for your hurtful experience with a psychologist/s. As the wife of a good one, I agree that we need to be as careful as we can and pray mightily to St. Michael and our guardian angels, as we seek professional care. My dh becomes so sad knowing that there are those in his profession who cause more harm than good  .
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hopalenik wrote:
Hello,
It has come to my attention that unintentionally have offended some people with my last post. For that I apologize...
I did not mean to infer that all psychologists are bad. I do believe that there are good Catholic psychologists out there but in my humble experience they are the gems that are few and far between...
Again I am sorry if anyone felt that I was offensive or dismissive of their or their husbands' career. It was not my intent
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Thank you for clarifying, Holly, and all who contributed to teasing out some of the concerns and benefits of psychological care. Clarity and charity on this topic mean a lot to me since I'm married to a gem  .
Willa wrote:
I saw a psychologist in high school who helped very little -- he was a nice man and tried to help, but he was a Rogerian type and did the "reflective listening" and I really probably needed something more like a toolbox of skills that I could have used in the stressful situation I was in.
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My dh is well versed in Rogerian theory and takes from it the respectful relational aspects. He's also well versed in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the basis of the Feeling Good book that Holly recommended and is more in line with a "toolbox of skills" and a good fit for the original post in this topic. Like most of my dh's experienced peers, he "takes the choicest part" of theories and methods much like we describe here.
Here are some helpful short answers to questions about psychology and the Catholic Church:
counseling and psychology
psychology and CBT
Psychology teachings and the church.
Here is a thoughtful and faithful article, Psychology That is True to Science, True to God.
Love,
__________________
Angie Mc
Maimeo to Henry! Dave's wife, mom to Mrs. Devin+Michael Pope, Aiden 20,Ian 17,John Paul 11,Catherine (heaven 6/07)
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Carole N.
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| Posted: June 19 2008 at 2:45am | IP Logged
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Angie, any chance your dh could make a house call to Wales?
We have had experience with good and bad psychologists. I am not well versed in the names of all the different psychologies that are used, but I do know when we have a good "fit" for our family. It is a continuing struggle for us.
One of the things that helps us is reading everything we can about our needs. In our case, it is reactive attachment disorder.
That being said, I can honestly say that what I did to help with the negative tapes was to stop sharing with my family. We are so very different. It is sad, but I feel that I have no family life with extended family although we do visit them and try to stay in touch. But the conversation generally seems to be about the weather.
I do so hope that this is not the case with my children and I work very hard to be the best mother that I can be. My dh helps so much in this area. He is a great father and I feel very blessed to be married to him. For the most part, we can usually get by, but there are times when we have to get advice especially dealing with our ds with RAD.
I don't want to add much more, but I do know that there are great psychologists out there. And since our problem is not necessarily the negative tapes (although those are probably always in the background), I won't say anymore.
Thanks Angie for the sites. You are a gem yourself!
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 Carole ... in Wales
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: Erasing the negative "tapes" in our heads
