Friday, May 4, 2018

New appreciation

I have a new appreciation for my counselor.  He would give me reading assignments or movies to watch as I learned and grew.  Now I am on my own.  I am trying to find a good book about resilience.  So far I started 3 different ones.  I am frustrated because in there attempt to be clever, get the readers attention, or just the way they write the authors seem to be making things harder not easier to understand. 

One book claimed that you can raise a trauma free child, in the introduction they clarified that no one can avoid trauma.  It is difficult for me to keep reading when they start out misleading me by giving a title that isn't true.  The second challenge with the book is they assume the parents are emotionally healthy and know what resilience is.  The reason I am messed up is because of my parents.  Shaking my head over the double barrel gaffe before they get out of the introduction.  I'll use summer time to buckle down and read it. 

The next one starts out stating that you need to tell the truth and that will solve everything.  Great, rule #1 stop lying especially to yourself.  Then he goes on to explain how the brain rearranges information to make life more comfortable. Basically saying that the brain won't tell the truth if it had to.  It rearranges thing for our comfort.  Really....I am sorting out that the difference between lying and the what the brain does is that one is done intentionally with the intent of manipulating the other person.  The brain is trying to be kind and ease distress.  This book is a bit unsettling...another one for summer reading to mull over the points and figure out if it is worth  wading through the confusion the writer created. 

The third seems fairly reasonable, but after the first two I'm frustrated.  This is the best of the bunch so far.  I'll finish this one first then go back and tackle the other two.  Before, my counselor read the books then suggested the one that would be best, now I do the sorting, it takes time and effort.  Fortunately, my counselor trained me well and I know how to tell which is healthy and which doesn't help much.  That is a challenge for a person raised in an abusive environment.  Figuring out what healthy looks like, acts like, and feels like is a bit hard.  A little like trying to explain what salt tastes like without saying it is salty. 

Trying to figure out which is trash and needs to go here. 

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