#terry real

[randomfoggytiger]

DD: "My mother died three years ago, almost three years ago now. And she suffered from dementia for six, seven, eight years before that; and we had to have a lot of caretakers for her. And one of them ended up stealing from us. So, there was missing money; and now there was getting the police involved.

DD: "I went to my mother's apartment in New York where she was living-- not alone, she had help. And I.... And she was always desperately concerned with money. Y'know, she was a child of the Depression: it was always, 'You're going to wind up in the gutter'-- that was always the phrase in my house-- 'You're going to wind up in the gutter.' Eating brussel sprouts 34 cents a pound, everything. I knew the price of everything going into my mouth per bite. Stuff like that. And again: this is not to say this is a bad person, this is just to understand where she's coming from.

DD: "And one of the brilliant things the caregiver who did rip us off did was she purchased, like, five thousand dollars worth of counterfeit bills. And when my mother used to sundown-- which is what elderly people do, they get anxious late-afternoon-- she would dump this fake money in my mom's lap; and it would soothe her. Y'know, it was like a brilliant move. I think it might work with me.

DD: "But anyways. I had to somehow tell my mother, who had pretty severe dementia at this point, that the police were going to be looking at her bank account. And I had to make clear to her that there was nothing that they-- y'know, she was not in trouble. And if she was healthy, my mother would have been really upset if there was any kind of activity in her bank account; but she didn't seem to care. She just, she thought, 'Oh, okay, so the police will get here.'

DD: "So, we're waiting for the cops to come and interview her. And... I'm afraid to tell you this story.

DD: "And, and, uh. She goes, 'You're not going to get married, are you?' And I was like, 'Um....' She, for the past four or five years, she was like, 'You're not going to get married, are you?' And I would always say, 'No, no, I don't have any plans to get married. I'm, I'm divorced....' And I was like... we had this time together, now in this apartment; and it's quiet. And I'm like, 'What-- this is a weird question to be asking me', y'know?

DD: "And so I said, 'No, I don't have any plans to get married. But what would be so bad if I did get married? And why don't you want-- don't you want me to have companionship, or a relationship?' And she said, 'No!' And I said, 'Why not?' And she said, 'Cuz then you couldn't marry me.'"

Terry Real: "Aww."

DD: "And.... I believe even if she didn't know what she was saying-- anyway, she was giving me some kind of a truth. And I just remember, like, time stopped. And I saw the dust motes kind of suspended in air, in sunlight. Small apartment. And I thought, 'Oh. You just kind of liberated me. You just kind of... gave me the truth; and now I can just let it go.'

DD: "There was no sense in her that she had said anything weird, or, y'know. She was just in that place where everything-- boundaries, like you talk about, are no longer real to her. It was just all this... stuff."

Terry Real: "She showed you the truth of what it's always been. 'You're mine. You're here to service me.'"

DD: "Yeah. Yeah. So." [Chuckles.]

Terry Real: "Tell me what it triggered in you. I mean, you can pass--"

DD: "Well, because I've always felt that that was the truth. Y'know? And now I'm hearing it from the source, y'know? Even though she's not in her right mind, et cetera, and all that things; and she's not a bad person, and she's not an incestuous person, and she's not these things that you could make up from somebody saying something like that. She merely needed me like that. And that was a problem, for me. Y'know, that became a problem for me. So, that's why I say it was liberating, in that way."

[dd-is-my-guiltypleasure]

I can't help myself and watch today's episode again and again. It was so emotionally charged, it's beautiful to watch David so open and vulnerable.

[odettecarotte]

[stevebunge]

"Traditional gender socialization in our culture asks both boys and girls to "halve themselves." Girls are allowed to maintain emotional expressiveness and cultivate connection. But they are systematically discouraged from fully developing and exercising their public, assertive selves - their "voice" as it is often called. Boys, by contrast, are greatly encouraged to develop their public, assertive selves, but they are systematically pushed away from the full exercise of emotional expressiveness and the skill for making and appreciating deep connection.

Terry Real, I Don't Want to Talk About It (with acknowledgement of Dana Crowley Jack's Silencing the Self)

[stevebunge]

Why Boys and Men Are Floundering, According to the Relationship Therapist Terry Real

And what can be done to help them.

I know, I know...

There's a lot to not like about the NYTimes. And many of you would rather go to Hag Island and just not deal with men at all rather than continue to try to find a fix...

...But it was an important read for me. And I think he's right (and particularly grandiosity masking shame). I think it's incredibly hard work. And I think that we have to find a way to break the cycle of "fathers acting shitty leads to sons acting shitty" (or however we want to define the impact of the generational trauma of the patriarchy). And move away from the trap of individualism.

As a step-parent of young adult sons (25, 22, 19), two of whom are, sadly, influenced by the manosphere, and as a cis, married, white man trying to move into a more conscious life, this stuff keeps me up at night.

[hypomanicpanic]

Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods taking down everything in its path until ine person, in one generation, has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to his ancestors and spares the children that follow.

Terry Real

[whosebob]

How Boundaries and Self-Esteem Affect Your Relationships

Do you often find that your relationships are affected by poor boundaries and low self-esteem? Or do you possibly have too many boundaries and too much self-esteem?

The Relationship Grid™ by Terry Real finally gave me concepts and context for something I think about all the time. I have three friends I love so much, but they seem to have never truly experienced shame or humiliation. It’s such a constant wonder for me.

Yesterday, I fell down a rabbit hole listening to Terry Real’s talk, fierce intimacy, and it clicked. He explains that working on grandiosity is so much harder than working on shame. Most self-help books? They’re all about shame. But grandiosity? That’s different—because it feels good. There’s so little incentive to work on it when you’re sitting comfortably in the “one-up” space.

[whosebob]

(via How I Learned That the Problem in My Marriage Was Me - The New York Times)

“It’s like using her warm regard as a self-esteem dialysis machine,” Real says. “When the warm regard is flowing, you feel pumped up and all’s well with the world. When it’s not flowing, you get scared and lonely. I’ve been there. I call it a self-esteem well-being crash. Empty, dark, jagged, cold, sharp, agitated.”

When you casually click on an article and suddenly feel profoundly compelled to look up every book mentioned. It was easy to find fierce intimacy by Terry Real on Hoopla for free—turns out it’s a lecture, not a book. But I’ll definitely read his books at some point. He talks a lot about self-esteem, which I’m always harping on about being strangely under-discussed in the self-help world. I really like what he has to say about it—right up there with Gloria Steinem and Tracy McMillan for me.