I constantly question whether or not I'm right about my past.
Maybe I'm the one who doesn't remember?
Maybe I'm wrong?
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These are reasons sent to me by my therapist as to why I should trust my own feelings about my parents:
Your children have trouble being around them.
Your husband sees their dysfunction.
Your siblings are not running to spend lots of time with them.......
And that is only as your parents are older and less capable of creating harm.
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This drawing is meant to represent the boundary between me and my father. The little child is the wounded part of me that doesn't feel safe around him. In the center are my DNMS Resources - the adult parts of me. There is also a "me" watching from the side, to make sure everything is going okay. She is the one that will determine if something is not the way it should be and take action. The child can trust her to set a boundary when she begins to feel overwhelmed and reactive.
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Your artwork is amazing. I can really relate to the boundaries issue. I've had trouble setting them throughout my life and am just starting to work on that now.
ReplyDeleteThanks Anonymous, I really appreciate the compliment on my artwork. Every piece has great meaning for me.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the setting boundaries. It's not easy, but it sure seems to be worth it, to me.
your artwork is wonderful. i like the holistic, energizing, protective feelings in these images too. and your description of the final image. it feels comforting to empathize with that child self and knowing all those other parts are watching out for it. :)
ReplyDeletei know boundary setting can be so anxiety provoking. sometimes very guilt inducing, especially when encountering the resistance and lack of understanding that the people we set boundaries with express. people can really fight against our setting boundaries. acting like we're crazy. or codependently acting very pitiful wanting us to rescue them.
anyway, it's so wonderful that you do your artwork, and write journals, blogs, emails to express all the things you feel, make sense of your experiences, connect to your different parts of yourself and your memories.
ty mountainmama :-)
ReplyDeleteIt feels comforting to me, as well. Seeing the image of the child safely away, protected, or held, those are the images that seem to help the most.
You are so right about both sides of the coin - when you set a boundary, people either go the pity route or the guilt route. Either way it's extremely uncomfortable... until you do it for a while and see that it really works.
Shen, Your art really is quite remarkable. It speaks to your reality in such a vivid way. I applaud you for that and am inspired by it. I largely don't talk about boundaries. I just learned what triggers really meant a year or so ago, even though I used and heard the word for many years before that. Boundaries is another one of those words that I use a lot but am not really understanding of what it is. I try to have strong boundaries around my children (who are a lot younger than yours), but I am realizing that this is hard for me too.
ReplyDeleteYour ability to continually represent what you are feeling in drawings is a key strength you have. I hope you appreciate that. This should be a help to you, all of you.
Paul
Thank you, Paul. I am and will be eternally grateful for my ability to express my feelings through art. There are so many concepts that I just don't get from reading or hearing about them, but if I take what I hear and do a drawing about it, I seem to get it in a way that I can hang on to.
ReplyDeleteBoundaries seems to be a concept a lot of people struggle with. Even as I think I understand the idea of setting boundaries, I still struggle with actually setting them and with the guilt that sometimes comes along with it.
People like you and me are working too hard at this to not have it work out. I think we'll get there.