{"id":989,"date":"2011-01-05T11:53:53","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T16:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=989"},"modified":"2013-09-14T14:44:04","modified_gmt":"2013-09-14T18:44:04","slug":"book-about-katie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=989","title":{"rendered":"Book About “Katie”"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Written in August 2009)
\nI started reading a book Lynelle got on interlibrary loan: Daniel Hughes \u201cBuilding the Bonds of Attachment<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s a fictional account of \u201cKatie\u201d who was abused and neglected in her family of origin, and was so angry and manipulative that three sets of foster parents sent her back because she was impossible to live with. Finally she gets connected with a therapist and foster mother who\u2019ve done some special training in a kind of \u201ctough love\u201d. They restrain Katie, and insist that she accept the consequences of her actions, but it\u2019s done with real understanding and love. They also reflect back to her \u201cYou are really MAD because I wouldn\u2019t give you a cookie,\u201d and articulate her underlying feelings and sadness. I had a lot of feelings come up and trouble identifying them. I also was reading compulsively. I finally went to say something to Lynelle, knowing she had to leave soon. To her I managed to say I\u2019m really jealous of how much effort the two adults make to try to understand Katie. \u201cI was so GOOD! and nobody ever rescued me. Or made the effort to find out and validate what I was feeling inside.\u201d Lynelle recommended I stop reading and she was right \u2014 it really was upsetting me. It reminds me of Agatha Christie\u2019s story of her mother understanding her upset and inability to talk about it because of conflicting feelings. It also reminded me of the Montessori teacher and how she worked with children who were disruptive and destructive. At some point a therapist asked me if I could be the Montessori teacher to myself, and I knew just what to say to the destructive part of me \u201cYou don\u2019t want to hurt other kids, you just want to be allowed to make a mess!\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing this, I\u2019m feeling better. I\u2019m aware of Little Jenny who is angry \u201cYou\u2019ve been ignoring me!\u201d and I say I\u2019m so sorry, Sweetie, and she comes for a hug. Now I feel all warm inside.<\/p>\n

I also feel as though I don\u2019t have any connection to my adult self or to my wider life. I was thinking about the amount of pain Katie was in when she had only partly got that Jackie was a good mom \u2014 it was OK when she was in her presence, but she hadn\u2019t internalized her yet. I feel a little like that. Just talked to Lynelle who said that book would bring up lots of feelings, and the weekend would be difficult anyway, I will be expected to be an adult and socialize\u2014<\/p>\n

When I got to Karen I cried, angry helpless crying. She gave me the boffer and I hit the chair opposite, saying things like \u201cYou wrecked my life!\u201d But it didn\u2019t feel very satisfying and I got tired and stopped. I felt the impulse to hurt myself. I told her about the story of Katie, and how self-abuse happened when she began to attach to Jackie, and she could self-regulate while in Jackie\u2019s presence but not when she wasn\u2019t there. I told her how it made me furious that Katie had two people willing to work hard to help her, and I had been so GOOD and nobody did that for me. I said I didn\u2019t feel safe anywhere. Karen made the nest with pillows, she sat behind me and held me. That helped, I was able to relax. She said she thought I had been retraumatized by the book about Katie. I think it\u2019s quite possible. When we had been in the nest for a while, she began making motions like time was up, and I said \u201cWhat if I refuse to move? What if I\u2019m bad like Katie?\u201d and I wiggled around so I was solidly on her lap. She said \u201cI\u2019d love you\u201d and I burst into tears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Written in August 2009) I started reading a book Lynelle got on interlibrary loan: Daniel Hughes \u201cBuilding the Bonds of Attachment.\u201d It\u2019s a fictional account of \u201cKatie\u201d who was abused and neglected in her family of origin, and was so … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,19,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-interesting-link","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}