Although people play a very important part in my life, I had learned early in life to keep most of my deepest thoughts and feelings private. Now I was remembering the many times people who have crossed my path had made comments on how “private” I was in sharing personal thoughts and feelings. Stuttering was a way to keep people I loved in my life but at a safe distance. I was happy to take care of them emotionally but I could never allow them to take care of me emotionally. This, I suppose, was a behavior that I learned early in my childhood. As I reflected back on this I could plainly see how it was a protection mechanism. When friends and family would start asking questions that I perceived as threatening I immediately would begin to block and stutter. This was a way to let them know that I was not willing to go there with them and it worked quite nicely. Nobody wanted to watch me struggle when I spoke so they usually dropped the subject. So there it was … the primary benefit I was receiving by stuttering. [There is further discussion on this in chapter 3.e) Overcoming Resistance – Accepting the Notion of Loss (Secondary Gain)]
From there I was able to go back and evaluate the reason why I felt I needed to maintain so much privacy and also if it was something that was still a valid behavior to keep today. My conclusion was that as an adult I do not need to have the stuttering protect me any longer. I also have the ability to evaluate on a different basis what should be shared and what should be kept private. The rules of my childhood are no longer valid.
The last session
Now on to the final session. During this session, Bob and I directly dealt with that intense hatred. The session was the most difficult of the three. Bob had me go back and visit the little girl at age seven. He asked me to bring her up to God (See “How to Take a Hurt [Bitter Root] to Jesus” – www.neurosemantics.com/Christian/BitterRoot.htm) but initially I was unable to do so because I felt she did not deserve to be with him. In fact, I felt that God himself would not want her there with him. I knew in my head how ridiculous my thoughts were but my emotions were filled with dislike and contempt for the little girl. Eventually Bob was able to find a way to get me to bring the little girl to God but it remained unnatural and I despised her invading my relationship with God. Then we shifted gears. Now the focus was on how the little seven-year-old girl felt. My comment to Bob was that she was “madder than spit fire”. When Bob asked what or whom she was mad at, the events of the past were certainly mentioned, but the real anger she was feeling was at the grown up me. Her anger was that I was blaming her and that I refused to get on with my life. She wanted me to quit placing so much emphasis on the events of the past and to simply start being the adult. Wow.
After 30 minutes Bob cut off the session to allow me time to process what had just occurred. That certainly was a major turning point. The next day I sent Bob the following email message:
“… After we hung up I went in to work out (great time for thinking and processing information) I had a lot of thoughts running through my mind. Let me bore you with some of them.”
I was thinking of my seven-year-old niece (good age, huh?). From the day she was born she owned my heart. I desperately loved her and silently vowed to do everything in my power to ensure that she would never experience a traumatic childhood. Then I came to realize that I did not have the power to completely protect her. Even my sister and brother-in-law did not have full power to protect their own daughter. Then I came to realize that God did not give me the power to completely protect her. He did not even give my sister and brother-in-law full power to protect their own daughter. So I determined to do what He did give me the power to do … to unconditionally love her no matter what happened, to be her advocate throughout life, to encourage, and to help teach her how to love God and other people. So then I began to wonder why I am able to love my niece so deeply regardless of what happens to her. If anything ever happened to her I would just want to hold her tight until the pain went away. Seems to me there should be no difference between my seven-year-old niece and myself at age seven.
So then I see myself looking back 31 years at a seven-year-old girl and I am shouting, “Pack your bags and get out of my life!” The seven-year-old girl is looking forward 31
