Daily Examples of People Frozen in Time

DAILY EXAMPLE OF FROZEN IN TIME

SAMPLES

11-24-00 A woman tries to be perfect at work . She is devastated when she is not appreciated for her effort. She reacts by feeling she might as well quit her job. In other words she is using her job situation as a substitute home where she is working to gain her alcoholic fathers approval. Thinking of quitting when she is disappointed shows that its an all or nothing, do or die experience instead of just another day at work. She complains how she sacrifices herself at work, and over extends herself. When she goes home she wants no contact with anyone. Its her way of saying she does not want to be burdened with her alcoholic father. She spoke of a man she is planning to get together with but he has a cold this week. She describes this man as physically out of shape. This scares her. She is scared because she is seeing her alcoholic father in this man and she does not want to be burdened with her father again. She sees her parent in every relationship.

12-19-00 A woman is furious at her husband who leaves things out of place around the house. She feels responsible to keep everything perfectly in place. Her childhood home was chaotic, abusive, and her needs were often neglected. What she is saying in her pressure to keep everything perfectly in place is that she is unconsciously insisting she is a child frozen in time and she is going to make sure her home is normal, in order, and under control. She sees this as her second chance to fix her childhood. Any small thing out of place like a pencil on the floor is equated with her chaotic home. Her husband is a little on the sloppy side. Her extreme reaction to him suggests that she is experiencing him more as her alcoholic father. She sees her husbands laziness as if it were her fathers incompetence, neglect, and abuse. This woman also feels that somehow all people , even strangers, know they can mistreat her. This is her way of saying that everyone she meets she experiences as if they were her family, her parents. To her, unconsciously, everywhere is home.

12-27-00 A woman thought about calling her old boyfriend to ask him why he left and did not give the relationship a chance. What she is really asking for is for him to tell her she is valuable. After he left her she became so depressed that she could not get out of bed. In other words she was experiencing him more as a parent with an umbilical cord connected to her. He was her psychological oxygen supply. When he left her, she felt immobilized. She also reacted in a similar way with friends. When they were not in tune with her every emotional need, she was furious. She is saying, unconsciously, that each action by her friends is so crucial, so important. In each situation with her friends she is trying to fix her childhood home and have parents that were more giving than what she actually had. When I stated to her that she was very busy in all this she laughed and changed from feeling anxious to feeling curious. She commented that she did not realize that she had the same problem with other people beside her boyfriend. Her unconscious agenda to fix her childhood home through all of her current adult relationships shows her insisting, unconsciously, that everywhere is home. She stated that if she could start to see her behavior with friends as her plan to fix her childhood, she can stop behaving as a child with them because she can see her reactions as a choice.

01-05-01 A person who was neglectful toward her daughter in the past has gotten healthier and now maintains a more normal mother-daughter relationship. However, she continues to get stuck and preoccupied with guilt and self-blame over her shortcomings in the past. This kind of preoccupation is not really an attempt to understand and learn from her mistakes. It appears to be more of an attempt to negate her growth and keep her in that past, closer to her childhood home. Experiencing herself as healthier would feel like she has grown up and is no longer at home as a child. Unconsciously, she is not ready to leave her childhood home yet.

01-07-01 Mr. X talked of his childhood, how his father was never around. His mother was closer to his brother. He always felt he was by himself. All of the women he has had relationships with have told him he is angry. He flew into rages with the smallest incidents. His pattern with women was to push away when they got too close and to run after them when they left him. He stated that he is always angry at his father as a way to punish him. He panics in his current relationship when his girlfriend chooses not to be with him on a particular weekend. His previous therapist told him that he is this way because his parents programmed him that way. He also viewed himself as stuck because of what his parents did to him as a child. His parents never gave him any positive encouragement, only criticism. This view of himself emphasizes what was done to him and how he is passive and helpless. He views his current problems as a sign of how he was damaged by his parents and still cant recover from the wounds. Showing him the frozen in time point of view, he can begin to see that he is living as though he were still at home right now as that child feeling abandoned. His feeling that he does not deserve better is his way of making sure he keeps all of the conditions of his childhood home alive. His pattern of pushing women away as they get closer is not just a sign of low self-esteem and feeling he does not deserve a relationship. Instead his action represents his attempt to keep everything as it was at home. And by not getting close to any woman he wont have to recognize who that woman really is. He can continue to pretend, unconsciously, that it is his rejecting mother who is in front of him instead of an another woman. His getting angry at every little thing his his way of saying that each of these incidents is not just a minor annoyance. He experiences every little disappointment as the same disappointment he suffered with his parents. Its not that these people in your current life are touching an old wound from childhood. You experience it more as if it is actually your parent doing that to you. His interpretation that he continues to be angry at his father as a way to punish him is just part of the story. On a deeper level his staying angry at his father serves to keep his father around him. His anger keeps it all fresh as though he were back at home as a child with his father right now. His panicking when he is home alone is his saying that he is that child now and he cant survive alone. He did not know how to break out of this cycle. He reminded me that his previous therapist told him his parents programmed him that way and so there is nothing he can do to change it. When he asked how he could stop living as though he were still a child at home, I suggested that he live as though he is an adult in the current year. Instead of panicking and leaving the house to find someone so as not to be alone, prove that it is the year 2000 and nothing will happen if you just stay home. You wont die. You wont be abandoned. Challenge the situation and ask what is it that is so horrible if you stay home alone. Take a chance and find out nothing will happen. It will be just another day, maybe a little boring, but that is all. Sit still in a chair and see that your heart still beats, the blood in your veins still flows, and nothing has changed. He tried this and found that nothing happened. He was able to start testing this out in more situations. He was feeling less that he is stuck and that his parents programmed him to be this way. He was beginning to see that he was active in keeping himself stuck and could change that. He could see that his problems were not being done to him. He was making all of this happen on his own.

01-13-01 Mr. X was an actor who never followed through on auditions because he was devastated when he was turned down for a part. Even though he had gotten work in the past, each audition felt to him like the moment of truth, a pass or fail test of his worth. His mother never picked him up when he was a baby. Each audition where he is turned down he experiences it as that same devastating rejection by his mother. He is not using the auditions as part of the learning involved when you are developing a career. To him these auditions represented his childhood home and his expecting his mother to push him away. He had a fantasy that he would leave the city, move to a small town and do menial work in a small store and live on top of the store in a room. This is his unconscious wish to be picked up and be carried by a giving mother (the store). He was encouraged to take chances and use the auditions as practice and new information. If he felt devastated if he was turned down, I encouraged him to challenge his perception of what was so horrible that just happened in the audition that he should feel so rejected not just as an actor but also as a person. He had his feeling that the people he was auditioning for somehow new him and were waiting for him so they could reject him. When it was pointed out to him that this was his way to view everyone as if they were his mother so he could stay frozen in time, he began to take more chances. He began to experience turn downs for work as just that, and he started asking them for feedback on his performance. He was no longer seeing them as his mother.

01-19-01 Mr. X spoke of feeling frustrated when he goes home to his wife. According to him she demands too much of his time, is clingy, and he feels that it is his responsibility to make her happy. When she frowns he feels bad, as if it must have something to do with him (like a kid). He feels like her reactions to him somehow decide how he feels about himself. I asked him why he does not have his own opinion. He grew up with a mother who only valued him when he could do something for her. Even now as an adult, when he visits his mother she asks him to do something for her. It is never just a visit. He is frozen in time and sees his mother in his wife. Every frown on his wifes' face means she is rejecting him. Just as a child does, he gives up his own opinion and just reacts to others actions. He asked how he could stop this. I suggested that he allow his wife to be in a bad mood and not jump to her rescue. Just live with it and find out that nothing horrible will happen. It will just be another day. His constantly trying to please represents his wish to finally feel that he is acceptable to his mother. He is psychologically still at home with his mother. He came back the following week and said he tried to not rescue his wife. He stated it was hard for him, especially when she seemed to become even more "moody" as he did not respond. The next day his wife told him that she was just in a bad mood and it had nothing to do with him.

01-22-01 A person complains that she gets bored quickly after starting a new job. As a result, she has a history of changing jobs often. She depends on her bosses and coworkers for continuous praise and reassurance. She feels the same way about other areas of her life. Her value is based on others reactions to her. Perhaps her parents were never supportive. She is trying to correct that and so experiences everyone around her as parental. Their judgment of her is more legitimate than her own judgment. This is another way of saying that she experiences herself as a child and the adults around her always know better. She sees herself as stuck in this dependence on others opinions and does not know how to get out of it, as if it is a bad habit that she does not know how to break. What she does not realize is that she is not trapped. She is unconsciously insisting that she is a child with no opinion of her own. This stance allows her to be in the position of waiting for an approving reaction from people around her that she experiences as parental. This person might also complain that she cannot change this pattern of depending on others to make her feel worthwhile because she has low self esteem and questions her own worth regardless of any positive statements she might receive from others. This to her demonstrates that she is damaged and cannot be repaired. A better way to look at this statement is to see her felt low self esteem as representing her unconscious attempt to stay loyal to her parents negative view of her. Just as a child feels, this negative view of you by your parent must be true because parents know better. In other words, you have not examined these negative statements by parents from an adult point of view to see if it really applies to you. If a friend or anyone else told you of their negative feeling about themselves you would have no problem using your adult judgment to show them that they are being irrationally harsh on themselves. But you do not apply that adult judgment to yourself because you are insisting you are a child waiting for a parent to tell you about your value because you do not know any better. If you examine the specific negative views of yourself now from adult point of view to see if they actually apply to you, you can begin to see that they are not true.

02-12-01 A man gets furious at his parents when they are manipulative and pressure him to do what they want. He feels harassed by them and insists that his parents must see his point of view. He imagines moving to another continent to get away from his family. He spends so much time preoccupied with rage about them despite claiming he wants to have nothing to do with them. So why is he spending so much time and emotional energy surrounding himself with thoughts about his parents. Though he complains that he wants to get as far away as possible from them, he could not be any closer emotionally. He surrounds himself with feelings about them like a warm blanket. He is doing this because he is unconsciously keeping himself home with his parents waiting for them to become normal. Why would he be so upset by his parents unless he must still be looking for their approval to feel legitimate. If he was more of an adult who did not depend on his parents approval, then he would just experience their inappropriate behavior as just annoying, and not as a threat.You often hear about people in recovery meetings who endlessly go on expressing rage at their parents. They are not trying to work through their conflicts and move on. Their endless complaints about their parents serves to keep them close to those parents and keep that unhappy childhood home alive.

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