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Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Chloe's Thoughts / Letting Go

Letting Go

Written by Chloe on Friday, April 9, 2010

Certificate of Completion Presented to Chloe Clumblyloe For Completing a Total of 20 Hours of Personal and Family Development Workshop on April 1 - 2, 2010.

I’m proud of my certificate. I know it’s just a piece of paper, but it symbolises the amount of psychological effort and emotional vulnerability I put into this, as well as the personal growth resulting from it. This was by far the most emotionally intense psychotherapeutic experience I have ever had. I jump at the opportunity of doing more work on myself and improving my relationship skills.

I shall be deliberately obscure about some of the circumstances surrounding this seminar in order to protect the privacy of others. However, I will reveal that one of the people I met at the airport before the 300 mile drive was my 22 year old son.

This post is not going to be about the experience of taking a road trip with a wheelchair, but I can’t resist the temptation of throwing in a few random observations: I bought some chocolate to eat at the airport while I was waiting for the delayed flight, since I believe one should pay attention to getting proper nourishment from the essential food groups; such as chocolate, wine, and ice cream. The lady I bought the chocolate from had a very condescending attitude, and clearly thought that my being in a wheelchair must also mean that I’m a complete idiot. I apologise to anyone who finds the word "idiot" offensive. It has been on my mind since attending a meeting in the state capitol building recently. I was the intersex representative for the LGBTQI community, discussing issues with census bureau officials, legislators, and lawyers. One of the points which came up was how much the census questions have changed over the years. One of the questions used to be "How many idiots reside in your household?" Hmm…

It is amazing how many hooks in accessible restroom stalls are completely out of reach from a wheelchair. It is amazing that motel managers consider a room to be accessible even if it is not possible to get from the car to the room without assistance. Okay, enough of the arcane realities of using a wheelchair while functioning in society…

Day 1

There were fifteen participants in the seminar, and six psychotherapists on hand to facilitate. What was new to me was getting to places of deep vulnerability with complete strangers. The power of this was phenomenal. It is better if I withhold most of the details of the process, because it really works more effectively if you don’t know what is coming next. I think all of us participants were constantly surprised and unprepared for what took place. Everything was spontaneous from our point of view. Nevertheless I’ll talk about some of the things which seem relevant to myself in the context of how BIID may relate to other facets of my psychology. Clearly I’m not going to cover all that happened in 20 hours of intensive group therapy.

The second exercise was for each of us to verbalise our self-limiting beliefs to everyone. I’m not in doubt about this so I immediately put up my hand. I was thus the first participant to speak, the first exercise not having involved any talking. I said "I think I’m not good enough, not smart enough, not compassionate enough, not hard working enough." It is a beautiful feeling to make oneself vulnerable to strangers. One of the things I learnt from this workshop is that there are a lot of people who feel just as insecure about themselves as I do, though often in different ways.

Overall, the biggest chunks of time were spent with us divided into three groups of five, each group with a psychotherapist to facilitate. The other three psychotherapists wandered around, listening in. The same groups with the same psychotherapist were maintained over the two days.

The first exercise within the small group was to use one word to describe one’s self-image. My hand shot up again. "Vulnerable", I said, without giving it any thought. Then I thought about it. I wondered if my wheelchair and leg brace were external expressions of my inner vulnerability. I didn’t see the next question coming. "How do other people see you?"; one word again. This time I paused, thinking about what other people say about me. They are mostly good things. As Sophie has pointed out, it can be much harder publicly to admit the good things about oneself. "Compassionate", I said. The point of the exercise is to see the discrepancy and understand that other people often think better of us than we do of ourselves. I know that many of us, including myself, on ta.org have issues with self-esteem. I truly believe that all of you are wonderful human beings, whether you believe it of yourselves or not.

We had an exercise about trust, with all of us together. Each person had to approach every other person and say how much they trusted each other. The exercise was repeated four times, each time with reference to a different area of trust. Thus I had 48 different interactions with strangers during this exercise. Every one of my interactions involved expressions of complete mutual trust. Meanwhile, the six psychotherapists were mingling amongst us, listening in. At the end of the exercise they conferred, and told us what had most commonly happened. They said that most people had expressed distrust of most of the others. I was flabbergasted. How could my experience possibly have been so different from the norm? What surprised me was that everyone had trusted me on every issue, regardless of who spoke first. After returning home I discussed this one with Alicia. She said that she wasn’t at all surprised, and that anybody will know they can trust me just by looking at me. Wow! I didn’t know this about myself.

Another exercise; a crude personality analysis: My core traits are loving, caring, compassion, feeling. The downside is that I have massive conflict avoidance behaviours and I give in to others.

We were divided into two teams and separated in different rooms. We were to play a strategy game, the purpose being to win. The first rule was that we were to elect a captain. It turned out that I was very quickly acclaimed as captain of my team, and my son was acclaimed as captain of the other team. We had both jumped in to analyse the mathematics of the strategy. I am not comfortable with the role of leader. As soon as everybody said I should be captain, I said "Oops! I should have kept my mouth shut." I thought about why I am so uncomfortable about being a leader. It is because I am afraid of failing and being responsible for letting everyone else down. At least I had the advantage of figuring that my son would likely be the captain of the opposing team, and thus knowing exactly what strategy he would pursue.

Back to the small groups: question from the psychotherapist "Who is it that you don’t take risks with?" "I don’t take risks with myself", I said. "Why?", she asked. "Because I’m afraid to fail". The psychotherapist also participated in this exercise. Her answer was identical to mine.

The closing thought from the facilitator at the end of day one, aimed at those of us who have contemplated suicide, was "Do I really want to die when I have suicidal thoughts, or do I just want to walk away from my problems?" Perhaps some of us on ta.org might like to think about that. I think about it.

My son and I decided to head to a nearby state park and go for a hike to unwind before dinner. It was my first time off trail with KAFO and crutch. The terrain was rocky, uneven, and somewhat steep in places. It took a little practice but I soon got used to analysing the microterrain ahead to figure out which routes were possible with the limitation of a leg brace. It is a minor geometric puzzle in the logistics of small scale route finding, but definitely doable provided that the crutch is significantly weight bearing.

Day 2

Back in the small groups; we did a series of exercises designed to give us feedback from the rest of the group, and the psychotherapist, regarding what is not working for us. One of the questions was "What part of yourself are you afraid to show other people?" One might think it would primarily be BIID, but it really isn’t. I would have come right out with it in this situation had anybody ever asked about the wheelchair, which they didn’t. No, I have deeper fears. "I am afraid to show how insecure I am and what a failure I see myself to be; how unlovable I think I am." Each person answered each question. With every answer, the group, including the psychotherapist, gave their opinion as to what is not working for you. The psychotherapist’s feedback on my answer to this question stunned me. She said "You think that you deserve to be in pain and that you deserve to be punished." I still don’t know how she got to that feedback from my answer, but it was certainly accurate. Does this have anything to do with BIID? Possibly. I had several occasions to thank this particular psychotherapist for her insights, which I so did during breaks.

One of the interesting exercises with the whole group of fifteen was to finish the sentence "The reason I don’t want to show you who I really am is…" Each of us said this to everyone else in the group, with the answer tailored individually such that I always said something different to different people. There was no time to plan the answers; one just had to be spontaneous. The most interesting response I had was when I was in front of a particular woman. I said "The reason I don’t want to show you who I really am is that I like you. I’m afraid that you won’t like me if you know who I really am." What I had in mind was BIID. I liked her enough to really care what she thought about me. She replied that she felt exactly the same way about me. We became friends in that instant. It was surprising to me how my answers became deeper and deeper as I went around the group, and more about myself. My accompanying psychotherapist praised me for that exercise. She had seen how deep I was digging.

During a ten minute break we were instructed to remain silent in the corridor outside the meeting room. Then we were told to remove our glasses, if applicable, and hand them over to the staff. "Shit!" I thought, "I won’t be able to see a damn thing." No need to worry; the blindfolds came next. I was wheeled back into the room. I could tell that the lights had been dimmed. This was the exercise of letting go; letting go of all that emotional baggage, letting go of every time one has ever been hurt. I’m not going to say how this was accomplished, but for me the psychotherapeutic techniques used were astounding in their power. I was sobbing and shaking with emotion soon after we got into the tough stuff. One of the psychotherapists came over to me and asked if I was doing okay. "Yes", I said. I wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t intended to let things get to the extreme of emotional intensity. This was a fairly long exercise. By the time it was done my blindfold was absolutely soaked with tears. Psychotherapists handed me kleenex at regular intervals. They came to comfort me by stroking my hair, putting a hand on my shoulder, stroking my back. At the end, one had to be able to come up with an honest statement about oneself, to the satisfaction of a psychotherapist, before the blindfold came off. You put your hand up when you were ready. I put my hand up and said what I had to say to the psychotherapist. The blindfold came off. I was surprised to see that I was the first one without blindfold. I really got into the intensity of this exercise, and it made a huge difference. No psychotherapy has ever been more intense for me. No, I’m not going to say what I said that enabled the blindfold to come off. That’s just for me. I still feel quite different. I hope it lasts.

During the next ten minute break, none of us felt like saying anything. We were all a bit stunned at how intense it had been; lots of puffy eyes.

The next exercise was yet another surprise; we were going to be dancing. I was excited to hear this. I LOVE dancing in my wheelchair. After the first free form dance there were six or so specific dances. The facilitator for the dancing happened to be the psychotherapist who was in charge of my small group of five. She chose me as her partner to demonstrate each dance in front of the whole group. I wondered why she chose me. Did she like me? Had she perceived that I would not hesitate to do or say anything in front of the group? Had she seen the exuberance that I’d shown in the first dance?

Towards the end of the formal workshop we were back in the small groups for some exercises. Each person took a turn to be silent while the rest of the group, including the psychotherapist, gave us a one word adjective that described what characteristics they thought were working for us in our lives and relationships. The descriptors for me were "Courageous; Strong; Intelligent; Loving; Compassionate." I have no intent to brag about this. The point is that strangers were able to form definite positive opinions about each other in a short period of time. It is useful to know how one is perceived by others. The psychotherapist wanted to add that I am willing to assume a leadership role even when I find it uncomfortable. I thought about this in the context of BIID. No, I don’t have the slightest desire to play any kind of leadership role here. It would indeed make me very uncomfortable. Nevertheless, I have to concede the point that I would probably find it easier than many of you to go public about BIID; to do a television interview or whatever. I don’t want to do it, and it would not be easy. But I think I would be willing to do it anyway.

There was some time at the end for milling around and saying whatever we liked to anybody else. This was the only time anybody ever referred to my wheelchair, even obliquely. At no point throughout the workshop did I refer to it at all, and nobody ever asked any questions about it. I was glad of this. Clearly everyone was interacting with me as a person rather than as a disabled person. For me, the wheelchair has become so much a part of myself that I am hardly aware of it at a conscious level. It is becoming invisible. I wonder if it is also becoming invisible to others.

Day 3

The formal part of the workshop was over at this point. However, we were encouraged to socialise in any way we saw fit the next day. We had been given a lot of homework at the end of day one, and I wanted to follow up on one of these items with my son. This particular homework assignment involved a self assessment of dysfunctional techniques of social interaction. I desired to have feedback from my son on this too. I asked him to point out his perception of techniques that I use which I had not already referred to in my self assessment. He added four. I use sarcasm; I lecture; I criticize; I control. I am certainly aware of having used sarcasm in things I have written on this website. I have also lectured. I am asking all of you for your help with my personal growth, and request that you point out when I engage in any of these four behaviours.

I found my friend; the one to whom I had said "I like you". We talked. It can be intimidating for me to talk with people I take an instant liking to. What if they don’t like me? We exchanged phone numbers. We will be in contact. I expect she will ask about the wheelchair eventually. I will tell her about my BIID. I will also tell her that was in my mind when I had told her that I was afraid she might not like me.

I apologise for inflicting a long and self indulgent ramble on you all. As you may guess, I am still processing the psychological ramifications of participating in such an emotionally intense workshop. I learnt a lot, in both personal growth and relationship skills. It is too early to tell if this has been a permanent fix for some of my issues. However, at this point it really does feel like a huge amount of psychological baggage has dropped away. The corollary is that most of my issues with psychogenic origin appear to be gone. At least, I feel like I have a fresh start, a clean slate; It’s hard to describe. What has definitely NOT gone is my BIID, nor even diminished in the slightest. What this suggests to me is that my BIID is not of psychogenic origin, and probably does not have a significant psychogenic component.

Tags: Accessible, Baggage, BIID, Chocolate, Crutch, Dancing, Disability, Emotion, KAFO, Leg Brace, Personal Growth, Psychogenic, Psychotherapist, Suicide, Therapy, Trust, Vulnerable, Wheelchair

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