Need to stop pushing

[asitis]

We did have a session for S9 lined up through the mediators. Guess what. WW has decided she's not going back. I crafted an email with the wonderful help from wonka to try and see if she will go back. At the moment that's a no but I will try once again.

Find a counselor for him on your own. She doesn't have to participate in the process. Find someone who specializes in family therapy (that doesn't mean the whole family has to participate, just that they have specialized training and experience dealing with people going through family difficulties. Consider someone who has training in play therapy, as while your S is getting old enough to begin to really verbalize his feelings, there are still things he will have difficulty expressing directly through talk therapy that play therapy can help bring out and address. It is the same reason I suggest you get into some father-son tussling play. It really does allow for a connection and safety level to build to a point where they can open up and express themselves. It also has to do with how the body and feelings are very interconnected (hence we use things like yoga for PTSD/abuse victims).

Your mediators may be able to refer you, and if you have a local university with a counseling, ed psych, or social work program look through the faculty roster for their person that teaches this and ask for a referral. They are in the helping business, and usually are very helpful. It is summer, so they may respond a bit slower than you like.

[Kembo05]

asitis, your post was pure gold. Definitely a good reminder for me as well...thanks for that.

[Wonka]

Yes, yes....YES....asitis's point about getting S9 to an IC.

[asitis]

Asitis,

You wrote:

On detachment. Don't see it as something that you do 100%. I don't think any of us can aspire to that. We still care.

This isn't what detachment is all about here.

Detachment is not having a person's actions impact you at all. You still can be loving and caring while being detached. For example, your then 2-year old threw a tantrum in the store because he was told "no, you cannot have that Darth Vader bobble head toy." Did you spin and go into naval gazing angst when he threw that tantrum? No. Of course not...that is what detachment is all about.

Detachment means your knickers do not get all twisted up when your W says or does something stupid. It is her circus, her monkeys. No effect on you emotionally. That's detachment.

See the difference between detachment and not caring?

I think we are parsing words a bit here. The way NDY was saying he needs to detach more was in an emotional way. He didn't react, but he was still feeling the impact. I get how you are using it, and I agree with most of it. However, detachment is also not about not feeling the emotions painful or pleasurable. This is connected to caring, but even when we detach, we often still feel the emotions. Emotional triggering happens at the pre-conscious level, so you cannot always stop it even with practices of detachment. What detaching allows is for those emotions that arise to not be powerful enough to trigger a reaction in word or deed. NDY was expressing that he was feeling a lot and therefore needed to detach more. I was trying to reassure him that detaching didn't mean we stopped feeling a lot of the difficult feelings, it just lost a lot of its power and didn't drive our actions.

I respect that the term has a particular usage that has developed here. Still, this isn't really the way our emotional responses work, and may set up false expectations of immunity from painful emotional responses to what our Ss do or say. You put that in terms of caring. Fine. I was putting it in terms of having emotional reactions many of which we can't really control (we can control how powerful they are and what we do in response to them, and maybe w/ a lot of therapy really reduce the triggering to insignificant) that come from caring and also from our decades of habituation.

[Wonka]

Asitis,

I sense that you are involved in some clinical program of some kind at your work by your choice of words and language here. Not sure if that is accurate or not.

You need to keep in mind that detachment is used in a different context when it comes to DBing. It also can be used in real life as well.

Let me ask you this:

I was trying to reassure him that detaching didn't mean we stopped feeling a lot of the difficult feelings, it just lost a lot of its power and didn't drive our actions.

Then what do you call that ^^?

If it isn't detachment, then I don't know what else to call it.

[NDY]

Ok folks. This is turning into an amazing discussion. First, on S9 and therapy. Yes, I have always pushed for this. We do have play therapy here in the UK and that is what we had lined up for him. But I need to look into it as an individual because she still gets a say on his welfare. The system set up is that the parents are in mediation while the child gets the play therapy. You need to attend TOGRTHER three times (we did) for him to be eligible and for the mediators to allow this to happen (they did). I need to go back and speak to them regarding how the situation is now. Either that or go behind her back and now that we are at L stage I'll need to consult my L first.

Asitis/wonka. I don't see a conflict in what you both are saying RE detachment. Perhaps a little semantics at play but for me at least I think you are both right. DB is a learning curve. It's not natural whereas asitis is talking in the context of normal human emotions (as far as I can tell anyway). I don't think the definitions are mutually exclusive, just that one leads to the other. Making sense?

[asitis]

Yes, I am going back to school in clinical mental health counseling.

Again, like I said, I think we are parsing words (i.e., splitting hairs) a bit.

You asked if it just lost a lot of its power and didn't drive our actions is detachment. If you look back at my posts, that is exactly how I defined it. What I didn't do is say that it was a lack of painful emotional response triggered by the S's words or actions. So, again I think we are splitting hairs here and are 99.99...% on the same page.

Years from now, most of these things will trigger little to no painful emotions (some things likely will still), but NDY is not years from now, and he shouldn't have unrealistic expectations that there won't be a good deal of painful emotions triggered by his W, nor be hard on himself for that, especially when he did a great job not letting it drive an unproductive reaction from him. I hope we can agree he did a great job, and while he has more work (don't we all), that his feeling a good deal of frustration and pain is really not a sign of failure at the early stage. No?

[asitis]

Ok folks. This is turning into an amazing discussion. First, on S9 and therapy. Yes, I have always pushed for this. We do have play therapy here in the UK and that is what we had lined up for him. But I need to look into it as an individual because she still gets a say on his welfare. The system set up is that the parents are in mediation while the child gets the play therapy. You need to attend TOGRTHER three times (we did) for him to be eligible and for the mediators to allow this to happen (they did). I need to go back and speak to them regarding how the situation is now. Either that or go behind her back and now that we are at L stage I'll need to consult my L first.

Of course, W should be involved in the decision on therapy for your S, and I wasn't aware of the potential bureaucratic pitfalls in your system. Here in the states many people don't get any help paying for it, so you avoid the bureaucratic hurdles by just deciding and footing the bill. Crazy either way, but I'll take hurdles to people unable to pay for necessary services.

I can't imagine your W will object if she was agreeable to it earlier, and there has to be some way to get your S therapy, even if it is outside the M negotiations. He is after all, suffering anxiety and likely depression, and any good therapist will know how to classify it to qualify as that. Don't know the ins & outs of your health insurance system, but if you don't get satisfaction from the mediators or your L, forget that it has anything to do w/ your M and just seek treatment for those issues under your health insurance if you can.

[NDY]

Ah, health insurance.

We have the NHS. Completely different animal from the U.S. Great institution but thick with red tape but we don't need insurance here.

Therapy of this kind is either private or charity (third sector) funded by the government and contributions from the people using the service.

WW said no going back to mediation. Mediation is the only way to get S9 into therapy without going L on WW. It's just one of those situations where she would without a doubt say yes to getting him help but no to mediation but that would be difficult I believe. Reason? She's still running.

Perhaps all I need to do is let her cool down a bit. After wonka's help with the email earlier she started to relax a bit. She's spitting now of course because of those bloody pictures (yes Mr Bond, I'm still thinking about what you said) but hopefully it won't last.

The next couple of days will be important. It's the anniversary of her Dad's passing away soon and we need to sort out a longer term schedule for S9 so there will be opportunities to discuss.

[asitis]

On the private/charity angle, do therapist there work on a sliding scale (charge by different rates by ability to pay)? If so, you might be able to get your S seen for not too much out of pocket.

If you can't get your S in through one of the programs that will foot the bill, and you can't afford it on your own, again look at a local university. See if there are any departments with masters in the relevant fields where they specifically train counselors to do children's therapy. Inquire if they know of any good programs that they can refer you to that you can afford. Often they have something set up to give their counseling students hands-on experience (at least this is how it is done here in the states), and as this is always done under direct supervision (usually for true beginners the supervisor/instructor is looking on in an adjacent room, & for more experienced students, they review the tapes and give feedback that helps with the next meeting), the quality is usually very good.