Notes from the Chrysalis
M Gupta
~ Elizabeth Bourgeret"Love is not really a mystery.
It is a process like anything else.
A process that requires trust, effort,
focus and commitment by two willing partners"
Depth Couples Therapy:
"Intimacy is a Difficult Art." ~ Virginia Woolf
The Proud Peacock
"One of the most useful and life changing skills I have learned so far in couples therapy is how to communicate effectively by really listening, understanding my husband from his perspective, and empathizing with him. I used to be so anxious about being heard that I frequently interrupted and spoke over him or became immediately reactive toward what he was trying to explain to me.
It has been so helpful to learn about both my own as well as my husband's childhood traumas and how they have significantly affected our everyday adult life and our way of relating to one another. I am now able to recognize much more clearly when one of us or both is responding from an inner child wound rather than from a more mature adult self. Understanding our communication from a trauma perspective helps me not to personalize his triggers so much. I can step back more often and feel real compassion for his inner hurt little boy.
I am steadily healing my childhood trauma, and this is really helping me to feel less anxious, overwhelmed and defensive. I am becoming a much more emotionally stable person as well as a more present and empathic partner."
"Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other." ~ Unknown
The Corporate Caterpillar
"When I agreed to go for a 'few sessions' of couples therapy with my wife (who gave me a kind of ultimatum and hid my remote control), I had absolutely no idea about the strange new world I was about to enter. I thought 'ok, a couple of meetings and some educational tools and bang we will be back in the fast lane'...Man was I was deluded!
N Ditz
~ Marge Piercy"...I wade into you.
Oh how fat you are.
You want to eat me up...
I will secrete you daily
at length to hang spent
while you crawl from me,
the chrysalis the butterfly abandons.
What remains to me
but to become a caterpillar
yet again:
the best part of me
locked in those
strange paper boxes."
Several years later and still in therapy, I can tell you that this has been a most lucrative venture- lucrative emotionally, relationally, and on a deep personal gut level. When I started therapy, I thought of myself as a really together person: smart, successful, confident, the 'go to' man who could handle any problem at work, who could advise others sagely and keep the whole enterprise moving along solidly. At home, it was a different issue. I couldn't understand why my wife became so over the top emotional and upset about so many of my actions, choices and ways of relating to her. I really believed that she just expected too much and that she was impossible to please.
The excavation process of therapy has led me down into so many layers of myself and my relationship. I discovered that I contain a virtual corporation of different people inside of me: an always 'right' and in control Mr. 'I can fix anything with the right instruction manual', a sullen and very angry kid who can get furious at my wife for her nagging and neediness, a shy and ashamed kid who crashes into his 'mother's' (my wife's) disapproval, a resistant and passive-aggressive guy who would tune my wife out and sometimes blow up for seemingly no reason, a very logical guy who tries to figure everything out in my mind and reduce it to a mathematical formula, and several other wacky characters.
During the course of therapy, I have learned to run my own inner corporation more wisely and efficiently. I have also learned a great deal about my wife and am now better able to see past her sometimes irritating surface behaviors and into her hidden inner world, her pain, and her underlying vulnerabilities. Now, I am so much more capable at identifying and calling out what I am feeling in my underworld, not taking ownership for what are her wounds, and learning inch by inch to extend real empathy to her ( more of the time) without getting all embattled in my defenses or shutting down.
Nicole is a highly unusual person. She has been able consistently to see through my BS and smoke screens and silence. She is a force of nature, confrontational, yet very kind. There is no nonsense (although lots of meaningful jokes along the way), and no getting around her. I am used to talking my way around uncomfortable situations, appeasing and debating my way thru tight spaces. Although therapy has been extremely challenging, it has also been amongst the best and most profitable undertakings of my life."