From Old Wounds We Are Not Healing

At 3 a.m., in a city bar, Lorena was drunk and starving for attention. It's hot, drippy, delicious, and she couldn't get enough of it from her flirting.

Her husband, himself a self-confessed drug addict, kept calling her. But she's already hooked with a stranger inside a steamy sidewalk motel. They cursed and yelled at each other over the phone.

When Lorena came home later in the day, her husband was waiting. After throwing things at him, she flirted with him and had hard sex. Even with stomach aches, Lorena's husband drugged himself to have sex with his wife.

That's one "sticky" relationship. Simply put, toxic. Unhealthy. Even deadly. It's the dysfunction. Two incomplete, wounded individuals fused by mutual codependency and enmeshment.

They think they're in love. Their sex produced a cocaine high and they mistake it for true love. But in reality, it's not. They're both just strongly addicted. So needy. Mentally and emotionally dysfunctional to the extreme.

Where does it come from?

It comes from all things we didn’t receive as a child. From the deprivation we feel inside ourselves. From the old wounds we are not healing. From what smells similar or familiar from ancient relationship patterns (often with parents).

From our addictions, fears, and insecurities. From a broken family system. From a giant cultural landscape we tend to embrace. From not doing the necessary work on ourselves.

I can go on and on here. But I’ve to stop here or this post will turn into a book!

Chances are, you can relate to one or a few of the things I’m saying here. It means you’re most likely experiencing what’s “sticky.” The high drama that hijacks your logic and emotions.

Time to get better. The rest of your life depends on it.

Secrets of Your Self:
.https://www.kobo.com/ph/en/ebook/secrets-of-your-self


from Dr. Angelo O. Subida, Psychotherapist http://www.drsubida.com/2019/04/from-old-wounds-we-are-not-healing.html

Searching for Living Hope

Hopelessness.

It’s a dangerous state.
 
Oftentimes, it feels so empty and dry. A lonely desert. It just seeps through our pores and numb our spirit.

Something within fogs our minds, stripping our lives of joy and leaves us vulnerable and exposed.

Where does it come from?

I don’t know all the origins of the state of hopelessness. I don’t even know most of the specifics of these origins or sources.

But I do know the ultimate and most essential origin or source of hopelessness: we don’t have a harbor. A place of security and refuge.

I have a counselee who found “living hope” during our sessions. Prior to his discovery and experience of it, he cursed loudly. Drank heavily, addicted to drugs, and chased women.

One day, he just wanted to die. Feeling so lonely and desperate. Hopeless. His bottom was dropping out of his life.

But God? He wasn’t in speaking terms with Him when he saw me.

Eventually, without preaching, I called his attention to the living hope where he finally found rest and repair.

This Holy Week, discover that Living Hope offered to all humankind this man discovered and made him well.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1: 3-5).

Secrets of Your Self:

https://www.kobo.com/ph/en/ebook/secrets-of-your-self

from Dr. Angelo O. Subida, Psychotherapist http://www.drsubida.com/2019/04/searching-for-living-hope.html

Bonding to Abuse

Psychotherapist Dr. Steven Farmer once spoke of a patient he called Frances. Frances talked about her  pattern in Dr. Farmer’s book, “Adult Children of Abusive Parents:”

“With every man I get involved with, I get out my microscope and look and look to find something wrong, some reason to reject him. Or I pick and pick until he gets angry, blows up, and ends in rejecting me. It’s like I can never leave it alone, I can never enjoy it or accept it.”

I can’t help but see some “similarity” of Frances to Rowena whom I saw for weeks in therapy. She too tended to re-enact negative scenes and mistreatments from childhood into adulthood.

Rowena admitted that she married her physically and emotionally abusive husband just to get away from her father, because he used to beat her up.

For both of these adult women, abuse appeared to be their only option for human contact as if abuse was a form of love.

They seemed to equate love and affection with abuse. It’s what’s familiar to them in close or intimate relationships.

There’s quite a lot of unconscious acting out here. Most of the times, because of the emotional abuse and deprivation in childhood, people have an insatiable need for intimacy.

And one way it’s chosen to be resolved is to “bond with abuse.” Being dangerously unaware of this repetitive cycle, some maintain their childhood victimization into adult relationships.

It’s psychological trauma. Webster defines trauma as “a painful emotional experience or shock, often producing a lasting psychic effect.”

Fortunately, trauma is treatable. Given a person’s commitment and right choices/actions to get better, trauma can be cured and transcended.

Secrets of Your Self:

https://www.kobo.com/ph/en/ebook/secrets-of-your-self

from Dr. Angelo O. Subida, Psychotherapist http://www.drsubida.com/2019/04/bonding-to-abuse.html

The Beauty of Falling Petals

A little long ago, I used to travel frequently to South Korea. It’s a beautiful country. I had moments of admiring and experiencing its beauty.

One of these moments was simply viewing flowers blooming in its cityscapes. I got to live in the moments watching in wonder the scene of petals showering me before they fall to the ground.

They seem to be found in varied places in Korean landscape. They frame whole blocks and filling some park corners. Their appearance was truly special.

Yet the beauty of falling petals is only for a brief, fleeting moment. Nothing can stay looking good or blooming. Everything is transient, even our own lives.

As a common saying puts it, “This too shall pass.”

While this could suggest grief or sorrow, we can realize a beautiful truth. That in a single moment in time and in space, we can choose to enjoy something beautiful that passes us by.

So, instead of counting the seconds or minutes, we “drink” the moment. We take in the moment in time and in space as a whole and completely savor it.

Let me ask you, “How many days, weeks, months or years more will you have in your life?”

Of course, you may never know. No one can know. But someday, there is going to be a specific number attached to each life as a fact of the matter.

But ... how many moments can you count in your lifetime?  That, my friend, is immeasurable.

To quote Rabindranath Tagore, “The butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough.”

I’d like to think that if we measure our lives in moments and beautiful appreciations, we never run out of time.

Secrets of Your Self:

https://www.kobo.com/ph/en/ebook/secrets-of-your-self

from Dr. Angelo O. Subida, Psychotherapist http://www.drsubida.com/2019/04/the-beauty-of-falling-petals.html

Are You a VIP?

Many individuals sell themselves short. So many say or think they’re worth little or nothing. They don’t feel they’re important.

“I’m useless. I can’t do anything right. I don’t possess anything,” said Mary, during a tearful therapy session. She thought and felt as a “poor me” or a second class for much of her life.

Mary had not been careful about how she thinks. Her thoughts shaped her life. Her greatest challenge was how she thinks about herself.

She thinks she’s not a VIP (very important person).

Not only is that not true. But such a way of thinking speaks very poorly of Mary’s grasp of the truth of her inherent value as a human being.

I submit to you that, regardless of any external performance, possession, or anything, you are a VIP. You’re very important to the One who matters the most.

You may ask, “A VIP to whom or in whose eyes?”  My spouse? My kids? My employees? My fans? What I do mean is more than them.

Important though these persons we mentioned may be, you’re a VIP in the eyes of the One Person who counts the most and ultimately - a VIP in God’s eyes.

“You are loved more than you will ever know by someone who died to know you ... Nothing can separate us from God’s love ... “ (Romans 1:8, 8:39).

“God loves you with a love that is increasing and overflowing” (1 Thessalonians 3:12,13).

God loves you.

No matter what you lost or experienced or what anybody else will say about you in this life, God said the final word on your VIP status.

As author Dr. Bob Smith put it, “You are you, and you need to understand and enjoy that sense of importance, that dignity of human personality which is the privilege of everyone of us who is indwelt by the Lord Jesus. What a joy ...”

from Dr. Angelo O. Subida, Psychotherapist http://www.drsubida.com/2019/04/are-you-vip.html

Lies

Almost every therapy session is filled with lies. It seems an ever-present “given” crying for repair.

Hurt or dysfunctional people usually have a hard time grasping what’s true.

They can lie to themselves. They can, to others. More so, to me as their therapist.

A distressed, separating couple - Kempee and Lisa - once saw me. Both were addicted to drugs, alcohol, and multiple-partner sex for many years.

After they got married, their life became a big mess of lies, violence, betrayal, and secret affairs. Individually, these co-addicts” were masters of deceit and playing games.

Exagerating. Bluffing. Falsifying. Hoodwinking. Minimizing. Blaming. Over-simplifying. Concealing. Disassembling.

Deeper probing yields two lives - personally and relationally - in desperate need for wholeness, truth, and happiness.

But how do they proceed when their foundations as well as their selves are continually sabotaged by lies they keep?

As author T. M. Logan asks in the title of one of his books, “What if your whole life was based on lies?”

There are “limitations” to navigate to disentangle lies that destroy whole lives.

Limitations, for instance, involving limits of language, lapses of memory, subjectivity of perceptions, and influences of culture.

Such is a constant battle in therapy. Things and persons are often not what they appear to be.

Secrets of Your Self:

https://www.kobo.com/ph/en/ebook/secrets-of-your-self

from Dr. Angelo O. Subida, Psychotherapist http://www.drsubida.com/2019/03/lies.html

One Moment in Psychotherapy Stands Out

One moment in psychotherapy stands out for me: when tears fall from the eyes of a wounded patient.

Picture this session. David's emergency appointment. Sublime silence between opening our session and the words that followed.

There he related his yearning for his wife whom he just brought into a drug rehab facility. Prior to that he caught him cheating and having sex with different men.

Surfaces: tattooed muscular body, over 6 footer, a successful millionaire engineer, very smart and intellectually objective middle-aged man.

That's what typically catches my attention so easily. Until the outer appearances begin to peel off.

David sobbed profusely. A deep grief and sadness penetrated. I'd learned to get past the surface.

He had a lot of energy. David gave it away in tears like vibrating waves passing from him to me.

David's tears gave me a headstart on knowing him well. And, the parts of his true self that were hidden.

Such few moments in psychotherapy often tell me much more about a patient than months of analysis.

Charles Dickens, once wrote in Great Expectations:

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before - more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”

from Dr. Angelo O. Subida, Psychotherapist http://www.drsubida.com/2019/03/one-moment-in-psychotherapy-stands-out.html