Dear calisister:

This rotation starting Monday, what does it involve you doing Monday, and every day for how long? Can you specify the difficulties you fear experiencing?

Regarding your video chat with your parents yesterday:

1. Communication with your father: he talks to you about car financial stuff. You told him about a dog you met in your puppy’s day care, a dog traumatized by being thrown out of a running car. His response: “so is the new day care good and everything? How many other dogs?”-

He had an opportunity yesterday, one of many thousands that he had since you were a child, to attend to what you expressed to him about your feelings, but he quickly changed the subject away from you. Basically he is okay with talking about money, not okay talking about calisister.

2. Communication with your mother: she said something about your puppy looking sad, “Look how sad he looks in the back”-

-How many times did she not see how sad you looked, how sad your sister looked since the two of you were young children? When your sister shared with her about the mental breakdown she experienced during medical school, as an adult, your mother did not respond empathetically, did she, instead she blamed your sister for crying as a baby and still crying as an adult.

Your mother said “Do you want to see the clothes I am wearing today to the movie?” like a child, you wrote, and showed you the outfit. You wrote about your mother in the back and the background of the video, until she showed you her outfit, correct? In the background you heard “her horrible baby voice that my sister and I now find creepy or scary” –

Creepy because she is … supposed to be a mature woman, not a child. She never took on the task of growing up and acting responsibly. It was always me-me-me, the world revolves around me. In her eyes, all she sees is herself. There is nothing else, not even that puppy, other than a passing thought. The extent of her self-fixation is extreme.

Regarding why you often feel numb toward your puppy and to your previous dog, why you feel surprised and relieved at moments when you do feel love for your puppy is, according to my understanding, because your mother had and has absolutely no space in her mind and life for how you feel and your father avoids  how you feel like one avoids the plague.

anita

Dear calisister:

I don’t understand your goal then, as far as this rotation is concerned: do you want to get sort of, a passing grade on this rotation so to complete this post graduate program successfully (instead of excelling in it)?

Or are you okay failing it, the rotation phase?

Is not doing the rotation at all a consideration?

anita

Dear calisister:

I think I understand now and I do remember very well your difficulty reading a text, what you referred to as ADD, which is indeed a deficit in the ability to attend to a text as it goes on and on as well as to the numbers  on a chart and so on.

And you do intend to go through it. Question is how to make it easier for you for the next couple of months. Only one way: relax. What disrupts your attention is anxiety, the chemicals released when anxious. When you calm yourself, you change your chemistry. It is a skill and a practice that you can built.  It is doable.

Arrange your life in such a way as to minimize anxiety (avoiding experiences and people that distress you, for one)- that is the outside strategy, and practice calming yourself- that is the inside strategy.

anita