Re: Re: Perspectives

May 6, 2006

Well, here we all are again! The dr has my daughter

going through all the hurtful things that happened to

her. It looks at me and asks me if I knew that. Yes,

I said, I've heard pretty much all of it... so I was

just wondering the same thing--did I fail to validate?

On the other hand, while the dr listens to all this,

he is also couching her on other fronts about " normal

responses. " So after reading Toni's, Jean's,

Blondie's messages, I'm thinking, no, maybe it's not

totally invalidating, and I did follow up where I

could with teachers, etc. and I tried to listen so

that she could get it out and work through it and move

on. When she couldn't move on, I tried diffeent

perspectives. But we are unable to get them to see

different perspectives. My dtr also talks about

friends who have done the same thing. They talk to

her about how they try to give themselves different

perspectives to work through difficult times, but that

makes her angry and feel " invalidated, " too.

So maybe it's another symptom. Getting stuck in a bad

place.

Whew! When the dr gets her to budge a little, it is

so-o-o-o refreshing.

Deborah

> While mine was grumbling about this one or that one

> being mean to her, or giving

> her dirty looks, or not being fair, etc. I was

> trying to help her give

> people the benefit of the doubt, and try to look at

> things from a positive

> perspective!

> Who knew, later that this would be considered

> invalidating behavior!

__________________________________________________

May 6, 2006

Well, it is true that when I did listen to B talk about things, she would go on

and on and on, and never seem to get over things that had happened long ago. So

perhaps in attempting to deal with symptoms of bp (that supposedly don't show up

until adulthood-nonsense!), we have inadvertantly added feul to the fire.

As often as I would get tired of listening to the recording of her woes, and

then lose patience and tell her to move on and get over it, THAT would backfire

and she'd get even more upset.Then she would bring up all the mistakes that we

have made. fun. . .

So, in retrospect I don't suppose there has been any way to deal with our bp

offspring because no matter what we would have tried, we would have lost the

battle.

I found that if you start to go with them through the hurtful things, the

litany is long, confused, and there is rarely anything to be gained. So after a

while I tend to get exasperated. Hence trying to teach before she gets a good

head of steam, therefore cutting her off and invalidating her. Da**** if you do

da*** if you don't.

Yeah, I tried to tell B that her responses were normal. So much for that, now

she doesn't feel like she's unique or special in any way, good or bad.

Like an emotional hamster wheel. Running on high and getting nowhere. We do

the best we can and get help when we find out we've muffed up. Trying to break

into her emotional fortress these days is like carving a hole in the Great Wall

of China with a wooden stick.

Sorry for all the metaphors.

Thanks for giving me some clearer perspective.

Toni

Deborah minamimuki2004@...> wrote: