Sandplay therapy #4

Today I went for another session of my weekly sandplay therapy. To be honest, whenever I entered the room and put the symbols, there are nothing I do other than putting the symbols of what I think inside vs what I think outside. I was particularly exhausted this week because I just did United Nations YPP Exam (Polnet) for about 4 hours, and the psychologist told me that I looked pale. No surprise there actually!

Today I put symbols of money, what I like to do in my internal world (with a laughing buddha). And outside, again, I put mother and father figure (my parents) with a skull behind them.

To be honest at this stage, nothing was exceptional until the psychologist asked me about my dysfunctional family problem. I told her that my father is there but I cannot feel anything to him because my mom called him useless all the time. Money has always been the root of my family problem. My father was actually doing ok, it’s just that he wasn’t as ambitious as my mom as a breadwinner because my mom has a high standard of lifestyle while my father has not really added his wardrobe collection in the past 10-20 years.

I have told her that my grandmother was my mother figure. And who was my father figure? I have always thought -none. I don’t have any.  At least I did, until today.

As I recalled my childhood memory, I told the psychologist how I was left behind in Makassar for few years until I was 3 years old. So I didn’t live with my nuclear family until my mother came and picked me again until 3.

During this period I lived in my paternal grandfather’s house, and I lived with my first cousins as well. I didn’t realize how close we were attached with as I called their mom and dad as “mom” and “dad” as well. I never called them by honorifics, but just “mom” and “dad” (+nick name).

To be honest, I don’t really remember about my uncle, except that he gave me a very odd nostalgic and familiar feeling. When I stay at my cousin’s home, I feel as I should have always been there and growing up with them instead with my current biological family. I just don’t have any emotional feeling with my current parents because they have always been absent in my life, and our relationship is dysfunctional to mediocre at best.

My uncle passed away in 2009. He was 51 years old back then. He had a leukemia, he was very thin and blind. I met him last time in 2005 and I wished that I could have taken a photo with him one last time, but his condition was so frail, and I don’t think I want to remember him as the frail, sick old man after he passed away. Most of my memories remember him when he was healthy.

I didn’t really give a thought when he passed away in 2009. I was in denial. Just like when my grandmother passed away, I didn’t cry until I saw her grave. Because I didn’t meet him often, I had a cognitive dissonance, and couldn’t accept the reality that he was no longer with me.

As long as it’s not confirmed, I will think he’s still alive and maybe we will meet again.

In 2015, I visited Makassar, my hometown and for the first time, I visited his grave, and that’s when reality slapped me. I cried uncontrollably. Thinking how sad it was that I would never meet him again. I didn’t really know why I was sad, because look, I didn’t grow up with him. He gave me a nostalgic feeling and comfort, but that’s it.

Back to the sandplay therapy room. When I told my psychologist about this, I cried again all of sudden. I was like, what the hell? Why I was crying? Was he that important to me?

My psychologist nodded, and she told me, my uncle was that influential in shaping my father’s figure. Since my biological father has failed his fatherhood function, it seems I grew attached to my childhood memory, being taken care by my cousin’s family, and had my uncle as the father figure.

The psychologist asked me again. What kind of man you want to be? And then, I told her my uncle’s characteristics, basically the anti-thesis of my biological father. A man must not be emotional (cool headed), responsible of what he’s doing, and not blaming the others for his misdeed. And when he has a family, he must do his function as a husband and as a father.

To a certain degree I want to absorb all these ideals, but at the same time I am wondering if I could really do that, since after all, he’s a heterosexual man. But I told to myself, even if I ended up in a marriage with a woman, perhaps I could become “a heterosexual man” again, and embrace all of those values?

 

Sandplay therapy #2

Today I finally began my sandplay therapy. I entered this small room and two boxes filled of sand. The psychologist instructed me to pick any symbols from the shelves, and put them into the sandbox. If I want, make a story, otherwise, don’t bother.

There are no specific requirements what kind of symbols you want to take, because this therapy is intended to make you tell about your psyche with symbols.

I didn’t take a picture of my end result, but this is the rough picture of it:

• on the center: a sleeping baby above a petal of lotus flower, above a coffin
• circling the center, with the symbols look inside: a heterosexual married couple, a homosexual married couple, a spoon, a wine, a treasure box
• circling above, with the symbols look outside: a head of buddha, a statue of ganesha, a scale, a grand piano, a shelf, a graduated guy, a bird in a cage, an hourglass
• outside the the circle:
  • top right corner: a married couple above a head of skeleton, a woman in wedding dress look at the center, a married man look outside the box, a tank,
  • Top left corner: a box with a cross, a giant spider
  • middle left side: an angel with smile holding love
  • middle bottom left side: a clock, and a train
  • left bottom corner: a black chair
• on the bottom right corner: an expansion of the circle, it contains a seed, a smiling dog, Budai, and a grandma sitting in a chair

The psychologist said I shouldn’t take a picture of my sandplay, I don’t need to remember everything. I don’t know whether it will work or not, but I am going to try.

 

 

Sand Play Therapy #1

After so many delays, I finally attended my first sand play therapy counseling session. I told the psychologist all my problems that I faced: emotional intimacy problem. I told her how these days, I am no longer unable to connect to anyone intimately. I asked her, in spite all my problems, I can function socially quite well. I achieve a lot of things and never want to lose control of my reality. But then I told her: do I miss something if I keep things this way? That’s why I want to be cured from my emotional shutdown. I can live alone in my emotional fortress, but is that really what I want?

I still remember when I was not afraid to connect with another human being – my grandmother. However when she passed away so suddenly in 2005 I felt like she carried my heart to her coffin too. My heart broke into thousand pieces because I was not ready to let her go. She was the only person in my life that ever gave me the unconditional love experience. It was beautiful and her memory has helped me to survive life. But how long a memory can help you?

During this first session I didn’t have any sand play therapy yet. I just had an assessment. The psychologist said, I have a very strong control of my life. Yes, I think, I feel nervous, I feel anxious all the time – beside thinking everyone is going to leave me, but I will not let what I have in mind disturb my everyday stability. Back then, I wrote novels, short stories to manifest my frustration, but now, it’s hard to do it due to circumstances.

The psychologist also said from now on, I should write my dream. Well I guess my hobby is useful to help me find myself.

These Words from a Dysfunctional Father are sharper than Swords

“You just graduated from overseas with a master’s degree, so what? You are so arrogant now!”

“You think you know everything huh!?”

“You said you will pay this, pay that, why do you act like you are so rich and have all money!?”

“When did I not trust you? I don’t care if you drive mom’s car and crash it!”

“When did I scold you?! If I scold you I will use loathing words! This is just my dialect! I cannot change it!”

I will stay at my aunty’s house for few days this week. Since I live with my father, I really cannot stand looking at him at the moment.

The Worst New Year Ever

Happy New Year 2016!

Probably my worst New Year, ever. Well it could have been another mediocre day where I don’t do anything, but my mood is ruined after my parents are shouting to each other. What happened, you ask? Broken fridge. My mom basically asked my father to help me to bring some of the stuffs inside the fridge to her sister’s house (which is just a 5 minutes walk). But my father, he was irritated, and he started to shout (which is part of his accent), and the seemingly normal night became unnecessary hell.

After a while I returned to my room. This was not the first time, I have lost the number of my mom and dad shouting to each others. Any situation could deteriorate really fast only because of simple matter. Most of the time, my mom asked my father to do something, my father didn’t want, and they started to shout to each other. This is also probably because my mother is the breadwinner and the source of family’s income. My father, he lost his job 15 years ago, and he hasn’t worked ever since. My mom always dubbed him ‘useless’ and ‘ungrateful’ to me whenever she’s depressed with the family’s income. The only thing she’s grateful for? That her husband never cheated her and never resorted to violence.

Even with the absence of violence, my family is quite dysfunctional. Ever since I was child, I never observed any sort of intimacy occurred with my mom and dad. When I knew about sex when I was teen, I was often wondering, did my mom and dad still have sex at all? Considering they are rarely intimate in public, how is it possible that they have sex? Well last year my sis told me they still have sex regularly, when I heard that I was astonished, seriously? They still have sex? Even with such a dysfunctional relationship? How can a married couple to be so contradictory?

I am not sure when I fear emotion and intimacy. My mom, despite her being a hardworker and the breadwinner of family, I just couldn’t feel any mother-son connection to him anymore. I still respect her as a mother, but not emotionally. But because that’s the right thing to do, it’s out of logic, not an emotion.

My father? He has a problematic relationship with his father, and ever since I was child he failed at fatherhood. He never gave me an example of how it is to be a man. If I remembered it right, I first attracted to guys as young as 10 years old. I had this badminton teacher whose affection I craved for. I also had a ‘small’ crush with my classmate. However I didn’t really follow up these feelings.

And then in 1998 I moved to a satellite city and started to live with my maternal grandmother. Because my mother worked, I spent most of my time with my oma.  She was the only source of affection and motherly love I had for 10 years, until she passed away in 2005. Whenever I remember her, I cannot help but to get teary eyes. It’s weird since it’s already 10 years, I thought I have said goodbye to her. I want to move on, become an adult. But somehow the tears keep coming back when I ran away from reality and revisiting these moments.

Her death was traumatizing enough, I guess. Because that was the first time I attended a funeral and knew what is death all about.

Whenever I am sad like now, my mind automatically remember the happiest moments in my life, the time when I was 15 and I was with oma. And then I would just cry because I realized these moments will never come back. Whenever my parents fight, they don’t realize that they hurt me in all possible way. When I was a child, it was painful. When I am an adult, it’s still painful, even worse.

I rarely talk about this with my friends, because I know, they won’t care. My two best friends know about my family problems, and I just don’t want to drag them further. Although they probably still listen, but they also have their own life.

I also don’t tell my cousins in Netherlands, regardless how close we are and how we really like each other. But they too, have problems worse than mine. And I simply couldn’t bother them with more problems.

This is the reason I have always felt alone in the world, and rationalize everything. While I am rarely emotional with any problems, but whenever it’s a fight between my mother and father, I will be emotionally vulnerable like now, and my logic, my rationality don’t help much.

Therefore, I will make a resolution to visit a psychologist this year.

Good night

Can a death of a loved one give you a PTSD?

Ever since I returned from my europe trip, I have been contemplating lately about my life, and to reflect what I thought, or used to think as ‘normal’: my association with INTJ MBTI personality.

When I first discovered this pseudoscience test, I got INTJ as my first result. Few years later, I did the same test, and I still scored the same test. Reading all the stereotypes of INTJ type, I passed all the checklists. At same point in my life, I enjoy it, since I am proud of being a rationale person, independent and surprise, high functioning (socially).

Believe it or not, most of people I  met in my life thought I was an extrovert. But they probably saw the nice side of me, because in most circumstances, I put a thick wall so people stay outside my personal space and we keep relations formal. I don’t like being informal. This is why I love english, there are no differences between informal and formal speech.

Anyway, ever since I was child, I have this habit that, if I don’t like someone, I erase them from my head, and try to forget whatever memories I have with them, and disassociate any emotions attached on that memories, to make them forgettable memories. I read that long time ago, if you want to learn something quickly, you must put some emotion on it. This is why when we were in schools, we quickly absorbed some lessons which were taught by good, interactive teachers, but couldn’t remember anything that were taught by boring teacher. Apparently that’s because our brain does the trick.

And that’s what I do to the people I don’t like: I erase them, and pretend they are strangers whom I am uninterested to know.

Back then when I was younger, I didn’t do that so often. But everything changed when my grandmother, whom I loved so much, passed away suddenly 6 days before my birthday. It was the saddest day of my whole life. When I went to the funeral, I kept thinking, it’s all lie, it’s all lie, it’s all a bad joke. Maybe my families just did early april fool to me. Denials. Denials. Denials.

My world was shattered when I reached the mortuary. There I realized, my grandmother was no longer with me. And I broke down. For first time in my life I was crying like 24 hours (well everyone did).

The next day, I tried not to cry, and just kept my headphone to my ears. Singing a song that I couldn’t remember. I really wanted to cry, but I told to myself. No I shouldn’t cry. A day was enough… I am not sure why I thought it wasn’t okay to cry. I thought it made me looked weak. When the coffin was put on the soil, my brain was rushing to a scene in Sybil (the girl with 16 personalities). I remember Sybil wanted to throw herself when her grandmother was buried. My imagination went wild, I thought, maybe I should have jumped too…? Couldn’t I go with her…? How would I survive alone without my grandmother’s love…?

Slowly and slowly, I forgot how to process emotions and affections with emotional side of brain.

In the past 10 years, whenever someone gave me affections, I would always be confused. How should I react? Do I need to give a reciprocal affections? (even if I don’t want to?). And the bigger questions, why do they give affections to me at the first place?

WHY?

In most situation, I could act as if I liked them. Whenever my friend offered me a hug, I hugged them back. When someone kissed me on cheek, I will smile and kiss them back. It is easy to act although I don’t like it, while in reality, I try to avoid them.

During my trip, for the first time ever, I met the daughter of my favorite Dutch cousin, a 6 years old adorable little girl whom I never met before. We quickly bonded and she gave me showers of affections. Playing together, holding hand together. Well, just what your uncle did to you when you were still child I guess.

The problem is, I realized I was still afraid to accept such innocent gesture and love. When I returned my niece’s affections. I did them because it was the right thing to do. It’s what the society do. It’s what an uncle should do. Not something I really want to do. Of course, I thought to myself. I shouldn’t act like a heartless uncle by ignoring her. But really, the problem is on me. I finally realize one thing: I built walls that guard my emotions so thick that I could no longer enter them.

My friend said, I should consult a psychologist. Perhaps, my grandmother’s sudden death traumatized me too much and put me into a very broken state. This is coupled with the fact that  I grew up with a dysfunctional family with total absence of fatherhood and non-traditional gender roles. My friend said.: You don’t want to experience up and down in life? Isn’t that just sad?

Sad? Really? I am not sure whether ‘sad’ is the right word. I have to be honest. Even if I lost my best friends whom I bonded since forever, I wouldn’t feel anything at all. I always think that people come and go, and we cannot be emotionally tied to them unless we want to be broken emotionally when they don’t meet our expectations. Thus, everyday, I am getting cynical and thinking, we were born alone, and will die alone. While we meet a lot of people in the journey, they will continue to their own path, and we will walk our road, alone. That, at least how I think about the people around me.

I am not sure whether my ‘problem’ is a problem at all. Maybe because I am an INTJ,  I have been reading too much theoretical stuffs, and see everything based on rationality, theories, and idealized conditions. Or maybe I do have psychological problems and this is my self-defense mechanism to deal with my oma’s death? But I told myself, it’s already 10 years ago! I should have moved on.

In the end I still know nothing of myself, and what caused my mental state.

If I am not ‘normal’ and I miss something important from life, I do want to find it and experience it.