Not pregnant yet? You bet!

“Kittens”15

I will take you to the North,

Sparkling snow back and forth

Gigantic stars – a wonder each.

And I will go to the beach.

Internet meme by Alex Dedyaev

When she came to women’s psychotherapy group, all the other participants had been in for several months and had established trustful relationships. Yana sat with a face of stone, she did not smile, did not laugh at jokes. Her voice did not match her appearance. Despite of the fact she looked her 38 years old, her voice was baby-doll-like with hurt intonations.

The group members were offered to do “advertisement” exercise as a warm-up – they should have taken several items from the box of small toys and come up with an advertisement. Yana chose for her advertisement three little kittens. There also was their mother-cat in the box, but Yana did not notice it. Then, according to instructions, they should have voiced the characters. Yana and the director had the following conversation:

– Now voice the characters in the first person.

– “We are pretty little kittens. Someone, please take us!”

– How does this reminds you of your life.

– I have no idea.

– Maybe it’s not all of your life, just a small aspect of it.

– I don’t know… are you saying that I’m like these kittens? Someone should adopt me? But no! I don’t see any connection.

– Now try to say the same, but using affirmative language form.

– I lose connection…

– The kittens also lost someone with whom they had a connection, whom they were connected to. Who was it?

– I don’t know.

– There is their mother-cat in the box, they were sold together as a set.

– I didn’t see it.

– Maybe they lost HER.

– I don’t know. I would like to finish this exercise.

The director did not insist that she continued, although it was obvious that this dialogue caused strong feelings in Yana, but she, as it was her habit, preferred suppressing them to remain calm at least on the outside. The director reminded her of free-will rule that applied to all group members. This meant, that the participant should decide for themselves whether to continue or not. But if she stopped an exercise, she took the responsibility for the consequences of her choice – i.e. possible psychosomatic issues like headache, for example.

Then it was time for sharing, during which Yana again began saying that it was difficult for her to communicate with others, as she did not understand what they wanted, she took it as an offence and closed up like a spoiled child. The director said to this:

– I would like to point that little girls do not give birth, only grown up women do.

After these words Yana stopped suppressing her feelings and started crying, and then said to the group that she had a dream that she had a baby, but it was strange, it was not clear whether this was a boy or a girl. She had mixed feelings about it: she both loved it and was disgusted with it.

The director told her that a dream is the royal road to the unconscious. She suggested using a method by Fritz Perls, founder of gestalt school, according to which all parts of a dream represent dispersed fragments of one’s personality, so each part of a dream is one aspect of the dreamer’s personality. To integrate each part and become whole it is suggested to voice it in the first person in present tense and end with: “And this is the essence of my existence”.

– Voice this baby from your dream.

– “I’m a newborn, I’m neither a girl or a boy. My mother both loves me and is disgusted by me”.

– How does this remind you of your situation?

Yana pondered for a bit and told that this reminded her of her childhood. Her single mother raised her and her brother all by herself. The brother died when he was young, mother began drinking after his death. Yana lived with her mother and when she was drunk, she was really embarrassed of her in front of her friends and boy-friends. According to her, it was her husband who “saved” her from this unbearable life. Yana talked about this very enthusiastically and underlined her great gratitude and love for her husband. But at the same time she called sex with him her conjugal duty, unpleasant, but mandatory. Going back to her point, Yana said:

– When my brother died, my mother told me at his funeral “I wish he was alive and you were dead instead!”

– So subconsciously you decided to become a boy to win the love of your mother? But boys cannot get pregnant either, only woman can.

Yana cried bitterly at those words out of self-pity:

– I wanted to be a girl and alive. I wanted my mother to love me…

– Imagine talking to your mother, tell her these words.

– Mother, I want you to love me, I want to live!

– What would you answer if you were her?

– “I love, but I’m angry at you at the same time!”

– Why are you angry?

– “You move so much, you bother me all the time, you are so restless!”

– Do you mean – alive?

– Yes! Alive! Dead daughter would have been more convenient.

This being said, Yana realized that her mother’s pattern of behavior towards her as a child did not let her to grow into an adult self-sufficient woman who would have her own children. Instead she encouraged her to “stop dead” to be convenient. And this is how she lived acting in her relationships with her husband as a convenient “dead” woman. And when she tried to get pregnant she did the same towards her future children.

In fine font

We have decided everything

No need to worry “bout a thing.

Just don’t read the bottom line

It’s in fine font and it’s fine.

Internet meme

You would think that after realizing this, the right and logical thing to do is to change your life strategy. However, our psyche has its own unfathomable logic. Clients do change their lives instantly, but only if they are ready for these changes or they have or acquired resources to do so. In Yana’s case her resource was her way of staying alive – stop dead and stand still, not to show her own feelings by any face movements. It was not until she had a different experience that resource would be the only one.

Despite the fact that Yana attended the women’s group for a year, and she understood the nature of her infertility there, she went through with IVF. Just before the procedure she called and asked if it was safe for her to go to the group, because it was not good to get nervous before IVF, otherwise it wouldn’t work. The director told her that it was up to her to decide. She did come. When she was talking about her purpose for this meeting she laughed a lot and told repeatedly that everything was fine. It looked more like hysteria, than like joy and happiness, so the director asked to sober her up:

– Yana, if everything is fine, why have you come, to ruin it?

Yana was still defensive and repeated that everything was fine. More than fine, “awfully wonderful”.

– What are you in awe of?

Confusing conversation, where the role of the director was to find out what feelings the client had and the client tried to put on a brave face, revealed that Yana had read the fine font at the bottom of the medical agreement. There was information about possible complications of IVF and it was said that in case of her death she wouldn’t be able to make any claims. And this happened, mind you, after many a discussion during the group about the harm of IVF.

– Well, yes, I told you several times that I had read about that on the internet, – the director reminded.

But Yana did not read any of this “for some reason”. She had to admit that the real reason for her “inattentiveness” was fear of IVF that was to happen in a week. And her goal was to work with the fear.

– But your fear is fairly logical, you can in fact die.

When said out loud, these words caused an outburst of Yana’s suppressed feelings. She once again remembered her mother’s words at her brother’s funeral, again she cried out of self-pity, and about the fact that she couldn’t say openly about her feelings. To whom? This time to her husband about the fact that she was scared to undergo a life-threatening procedure, and that she was afraid not to go, and felt guilty, because if her husband had spent a load of money for this, it was necessary to finish the deal.

– Who is it necessary for?

– For my husband.

– And what is necessary for you?

Yana did not give an answer. Then she disappeared after telling to the group beforehand that she probably won’t come to the meetings, because her husband was concerned about her getting nervous during psychotherapy sessions. This was an excuse that allowed her to pass the responsibility for her choice to the another person and not to get in touch with anxiety from deciding what to do and making her own choices.

Yana’s life has not changed. IVF has not brought the expected results, her plans have not not come to life, her story is not over.

“Kittens”: commentary

Take a pond of salt, pour it into you wound.

When you call me again, I feel nothing, but doomed

Internet meme

Yana’s story is a story of a codependent woman. To cure her of infertility is to cure her of codependence. There are many definitions of a codependent person. I like Marilyn Murrey’s, because it’s both short and simple. She says that a codependent person is a person who gives up his or her dignity, abiding to another person and taking responsibility for another person, thus encouraging his or her destructive behavior. A codependent person, as rule, is a product of the culture of restrictions and prohibitions, which preaches that to have one’s personal boundaries is egoistic and evil16.

Any woman who grew up in our fallocratic culture is damaged in a way, as she constantly suppresses her own needs. When growing up, each of us was told time and again that a woman should be obedient, sacrifice herself and care about others. For many it is as natural as breathing.

Fortunately, now there are books on codependency and love addiction which openly state that this is a disease and teach how to deal with them. The book by Robin Norwood Women Who Love Too Much is one of them. It’s not just a book, I don’t get tired of saying that it should be a guide for every Russian woman, despite the fact that it was written by an American. What is it about this book that makes me “prescribe” it to practically each of my clients? It’s about each one of us. In order not to make any allegations, here is a short fragment of the text17:

– We love too much if to love means to suffer.

– We love too much, if we justify his bad temper, insensitivity and rudeness by the fact that he had difficult childhood and try to take on a role of his therapist.

– We love too much if we don’t like a lot about his character, his values and deeds, but we make our peace with them and think: I should be more attractive and loving and he will change for me.

– We love too much, if love threatens our wellbeing and, possibly, even our health and security.

The feelings that many women fascinated by men mistake for love and passion are, if fact, fear. If love boarders on obsession, this means fear of either being alone, or being unloved, or being unworthy, or losing support (emotional, financial, etc.).

The “love too much” phenomenon (psychologists call it love addiction) is a peculiar combination of thoughts, feelings and behaviour that unconsciously recreate the atmosphere of the parents’ family. I insist on the word “unconsciously”, because many people tend to answer the question about how their childhood was by “happy”. People say this, because this is where their psychological defense mechanisms step in, their task being to guard us from traumatic memories, they are displacement, suppression, denial, etc. But if one goes emotionally to this child sate in the course of a psychotherapy sessions, one will discover logical recurrent dynamics which is called in psychology “Karpman-Burn’s drama triangle”:

The Victim – The Rescuer – The Persecutor

The essence of the model is in the following example: if one lives with a father who is an alcoholic, one regularly participates in a drama with three roles – the victim, the rescuer, the persecutor. The drunk father acts like a persecutor towards the mother, she starts acting like a victim, so, to survive the horror, humiliation, desperation, indignation, shame the child start rescuing the situation, the mother and himself/herself. Next morning, when the father is hung over and, thus, becomes a victim, the mother acts like a persecutor, and the child feels pity towards the father. The child constantly feels humiliated and ashamed of his parents’ unworthy behavior, so he/she starts rescuing his family’s reputation. He does not invite his/her friends to prevent them from seeing the ugly scenes. Over the years a girl gets used to putting a good face on, gets used to hiding their feelings both from other and from herself. This is why she is convinced she had a “happy” childhood.

How many times did we feel this way as children? How many times did we swear that it won’t be this way when it comes to us. We search for a partner who in no way reminds us of our aggressive and unjust father. We find a soft nice guy, even a bit silly, who needs just a little push in the right direction. Why, he does not drink! He is our hero! So we drag on this immature, dependent, but grown-up person, who is angry as we tell him how to live. He is not an alcoholic (although he can become one), it turns out it does not matter. He can have other both chemical and non-chemical addictions – drugs, work, risky sports, gambling, computers or credits, etc. But even that is not the sad part, the sad part is that you tied your life with an immature person who needs to be controlled and revolts against it.

And here we are, in our own family, running circles, “victim – rescuer – persecutor” triangles to be more precise. Undertaking the role of a rescuer gives a woman suffering of a victim she is used to, and superiority of a persecutor she needs. It is clear, that both need help, but it is so tempting to wait for a partner to make the first step!

The majority of my clients do not finish the book, saying it’s not about them. Those who do agree with their love addiction “diagnosis” lose interest in the book as they approach Chapter 10 which describes the way to healing, 10-steps program for helping oneself.

It’s easy for me to understand why my client drop this book before finishing it. Let’s compare this work of spirit and work of body: every one of us knows that to be in a good shape one needs to exercise every day. Does each of us really do it? This requires “investing” in one’s health that will pay off later. But we want to see the results immediately! The same happens with investing in one’s spiritual growth. This is hard work and you won’t see the results for a long time, if ever. Is it possible to see the connection between infertility and depending on your husband? The connection is metaphorical: if you don’t invest in your own productivity you become infertile.

What should women “who love too much” do? Essentially, stop saving their husbands and use the energy for being creative and productive. Here are the ten steps18:

– Ask for help.

– Make healing yourself your number one job.

– Find a supporting group of peers who understand you.

– Dedicate time to your spiritual growth on a daily basis.

– Stop controlling your partner and manipulating him.

– Learnt not to be involved in games.

– Boldly look at your problems and shortcomings.

– Develop the qualities you need.

– Become selfish in a healthy way.

– Share your story and your knowledge with others.

I would like to end this commentary with Marilyn Murray’s characteristic of a true marriage;. According to her, it is a partnership that gives both partners an opportunity to become what God intended them to be, not the kind where one “becomes” and the other rots19.

“Receive the package earlier”

The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.

Carl Young

A pretty woman of twenty-nine sighed after another participant’s session on the subject of IVF and told that she was no stranger to IVF. She had done it three times – still no results, i.e. she got pregnant twice, but the labor started as early as half term, even the ring did not prevent this from happening. Kseniya lost her baby twice at 20 week of pregnancy.

Kseniya had been married for ten years, and her husband wanted her to give birth as soon as possible. He said his mother needed a grandchild, so he hurried his wife to become a mother. I was not surprised that the interested person in the baby being born, the customer so to say, was the mother-in-law; I had already got used to such misperceptions in my customers. I was more surprised, however, that Kseniya got married so early. Why, nowadays young people are not in a hurry to tie themselves in marriage when they are twenty, they study, make careers, get experience. Kseniya explained that her father thought the only way to have sex was to married. Otherwise, others would have thought that his daughter was a tramp.

I was outraged by this answer. In my imagination I saw two puppet-masters ruling over the life of the young family. On the one hand, there was the mother-in-law trying to fill her own empty life using the young people, on the other hand, there was the father and his ambitions his daughter had to satisfy by giving up her own life experience.

The night before Kseniya saw a dream about two monkeys:

My husband and I are in an exotic country. He surprised me with renting to chimpanzees of the opposite sex.

He went away with the female, and I was alone in my room with the male who was making sexual advances towards me. I was shocked and disgusted at the monkey for sexual harassment, at my husband who rented the monkeys, at the tourists who use this kind of services, at animal trainers for teaching monkeys to do this. I was wondering if my husband knew what he bought into.

Besides being disgusted I was ashamed to be a part of this. Then my disgust gave way to acute pity towards the monkey. I understood that it is but a mindless victim who was taught to entertain tourists.

I was amazed by Kseniya’s dreams. The symbols were so clear that you couldn’t but envy the way her subconscious giving its messages to her in such a way. I asked Kseniya to voice the monkey in the first person to realize what aspect of her life was encoded in the image of the chimpanzee. Here is what she said: “I am a monkey, a mindless victim of people who taught me to satisfy their carnal needs. And this is how I live, and this is the essence of my existence”. When I asked what this was about, Kseniya honestly told that being a mother was not her choice, it was a wish of her family.

We met at a different workshop in two months. The night between the first day of the three-days workshop and the second one Kseniya dreamt another dream. She told about it in the group:

I’m queuing at the post office, everybody crowds and shoves their notices at the post-officer. And I need to pick up a package. At this point, the officer whispers quietly into my ear: “I’ll tell you a secret: you must have received this package earlier. But I was not the one to tell you this!” I stood there lost and surprised and thought: “So, what am I supposed to do? File a complaint?”

– Kseniya, how does this dream remind you of your life? Who lied to you and what this was about?

– I remembered my first man. I met him when I was seventeen, he was older than me. In a month he told me he was married and he had a child. He was just leaving his wife when he met me. My parents forbade me from seeing him, they told it would end badly. So it did in three months – we ran a woman down.

– You? Who was driving?

– He was. But I was sitting right next to him.

– So why did you say we instead of he.

– Because it sort of happened because of me.

– How was that?

– He was not himself. The day before he insisted I packed my stuff and moved out of my parents’. I got scared and came without my stuff. He got angry and said he would drive me back if I was not able decide; he got me into the car and drove. He was going over the speed limit and ran down a woman who was crossing the street.

Kseniya hid her face and cried.

– What is going on with you?

– It pains me! I didn’t know she was dead at first, I was hoping she was alive… That his wife taught me what I should say as a witness. I lied that I didn’t know him, because if I told I was his girlfriend, I wouldn’t be able to witness and it that case he wouldn’t have had any witnesses at all.

– What were you supposed to say?

– That the woman threw herself under the car! But that was not true, I saw her, I cried to him, but he drove so fast!

– So, you lied?

– Yes. And it haunts me. I remember his wife saying: “It’s a good thing she did not have kids!” Maybe my infertility is the way I pay for that lie?

– What are you most concerned with in this story?

– That this woman could have lived.

– What does this mean to you?

– That she could have had kids!

– Tell her about this.

Kseniya chooses one of the members of the group for the role of the woman who died, stands in front of her and says:

– I have wronged you. If it wasn’t for you, my man would have driven me to my parents’ and broke up with me “forever” yet another time. I was sitting in the car thinking about the pain I would feel as I go out, close the door and be alone. But this way he needed me, we communicated for six more months…

– And then?

– And then, when the case was closed, we still broke up. I got tired of him not being able to make a choice, got tired of being jealous, in pain and waiting for something. My father said: “I told you so!” So I married a different man, so that my father stopped bothering me with his reproaches.

– Exchange places with the dead woman and tell something to Kseniya on her behalf.

Kseniya, on behalf of the dead woman:

– I don’t care. This fuss has nothing to do with me anymore.

When Kseniya returned to her place, she confessed she felt better as she shared this secret.

– I couldn’t talk to anybody about this. My husband got mad when my previous relationship with a man came up. He hears only that I was not a virgin when he married me.

– Tell him about it.

Kseniya, talking to her “husband”:

– I’m angry at you pretending I didn’t have another man before you. I did, and he is a whole part of my life. Yes, I’m not a saint and I’m glad I’m not. I wish I dated me before getting married!

– Why didn’t you?

– Because of my father! I was fed up with his reproaches! He is the one to talk – he was a real dog when he was young, but I must be perfect so that he is able to say he is a good father.

– Tell him about it.

Kseniya tells all this to her “father”. When she exchanges places with him, she says on his behalf:

– I feel respect towards you for saying this.

“Receive the package earlier”: commentary

Oxana walks into a room escorted by police,

Un-plugged detector shows her conscience is in grease.

Internet meme by Karim-Abdul

At first glance, Kseniya’s question about conceiving, bearing a child and giving birth has nothing to do with the session she had. But this only seems so. The inability to become a mother shows that a woman has a problem in her relationships. In Kseniya’s case there were several problems, and during her session we solved them all one by one.

Firstly, from the very beginning it was clear that she is pressured by her husband, who, in his turn, was the prisoner of his mother’s influence. In Kseniya’s first dream such treatment on the young couple was metaphorically shown like two chimpanzees – male and female – being used to entertain tourists.

Then the story that haunted Kseniya for ten years came up. It was her first love that ended in her being used by her lover and his wife. One can only feel sympathy towards a seventeen year old girl who practically still was a child and who was involved in this ambiguous situation where she gained no support.