I now understand, as a licensed and working psychotherapist, that beneath anger exists hurt. We grow angry and we hurt when someone or something transgresses our boundaries.
And while small amounts of frustration lead to growth and creativity, continual frustration indicates a seething bed of continual anger.
Astrologers warn
Of Anger, Frustration, and Uranus Aspecting the Moon and Saturn … Read More »
Something shifted inside me the day of the car accident, when the driver of the Jeep SUV slammed into the back of my SUV. Being hit from behind unearthed, exhumed all my fears of being caught off guard, being ambushed.
That’s what it felt like each time my mother criticized me and/or as a result of the anger and rage she experienced either in response to me and my actions of events out in the world, physically punished me.
As a child you believe that your
Of SUV’s, Omnipotence and Depression … Read More »
My mother was addicted to rage. I could not see that as a child. Only now at fifty-three, am I truly able to step back and grasp a sense of the fear that dwelled within her.
Nothing but intense, immutable and raw fear can provoke such undeniable and untenable rage as that which overtook my mother usurped any possibility of experiencing safety and grounding through life and in the world.
Too many times I saw that rage directed at me, felt the heat of its
Of Rage, Addiction and Fears Made Manifest … Read More »
My mother did not believe that children should be seen and not heard.
She believed that they should be seen, and heard, but in a way that shone brightly upon the parents. One time I was to play in a piano recital. We had fish for dinner that evening and unfortunately a fish bone became caught in my throat.
Frustrated and unable to remove the bone
Of The Bone of a Trout, Piano Recitals and Failure … Read More »
My earliest memory is of interacting with my mother. I was around three or four years old and presented my mother a flower that I had placed in a glass Log Cabin syrup bottle.
My mother had been standing to the kitchen sink. She was washing dishes.
I had spent the last half hour to forty-five minutes scraping
Of Earliest Memories, Log Cabin Syrup Bottles and Acceptance … Read More »
Some people become more like their aggressors and oppressors. We call this identification with the oppressor. It is easy to view oppressors and attackers as stronger and possessing more power than we, their victims.
Abused children are the victims of their parents’ anger and aggression.
And yet
Of Oppressors, Attackers and Questions … Read More »
A client once described herself as her mother’s Barbie doll. “Some days, Mom liked Barbie. Other days she hated me.”
I always took special care of my Barbie dolls, all the dolls I received for Christmas and other occasions. I also knew
Of Mothers, Dolls and Barbie’s … Read More »