Zoralei came home last night! My husband and her friends arrived to pick her up during a nursing shift change, so it took a while to get out of there, but they did finally. She was so excited to sleep in her own bed she said. Definitely, in good spirits.
She actually went to bed relatively early for her on a Friday night. She was tired, worn down emotionally as well as physically. I think earlier bedtimes at the hospital contributed to that as well. I think it was the first Friday night in years where she was not asking me to bring friends home just before midnight.
This morning Zoralei was a bit weighed down. Some of the other residents she met at the hospital were posting missing her comments on facebook and that she was missing her friends, especially one who felt really alone having been left behind by her three friends who were released.
She was a bit grumpy with me as I talked about my emotions regarding parenting her other siblings. Too emotional for her, so we had a talk about having compassion for others' struggles that are different than hers and recognizing that though she may be wired a certain way, others may not respond to life as she does and she has to strive not to become the dismissive voice that she had undergone for years with her pain issues. She expressed her frustration with me that I experience life through my emotions. Simply put, when I am stressed, she feels stressed and wants to avoid that stress especially since stress aggravates the RND. This will be difficult because the older I get, the more I have learned how important it is to express my emotions and Zoralei finds that outside her comfort zone because she cannot control emotions. I told her I can try not to be emotional when expressing my emotions, but the fact is that it is okay if I am not a carbon copy of her and her dad who are not emotionally based. A good relationship with me will let me express things that I need too and that she would have to learn to allow me to be myself without reacting to my feelings about things that have nothing to do with her. Just as I have to listen to long discussions of what boys in class did or such teenage things that are not interesting to me personally, it is the nature of being in a relationship and accepting the person for who they are. One thing I noticed during the past couple years of pain, is that the worst the pain became and the longer it went on, the more Zoralei became less compassionate towards other's struggles, almost seeming to treat them as if nothing could possibly compare to hers. She treated their concerns, especially if they just seemed to be emotionally based as trivial in nature. Considering what she went through, I certainly understand that hers in many ways was the more obvious and debiliating struggle, yet it became extreme too, resulting in her not wanting to deal with any other's struggle unless it was over with quickly.
I wonder if the whole stereotypical mother/daughter teenage relationship contributes to issues of RND. After all, that can be a rocky period. Logically, it all makes sense. If she is not an emotional person and I am, that can be a huge challenge for the relationship. It will be interesting if this will prove to be a problem for her RND or if she will use RND to try to avoid emotional discussions with me. I will have to figure out how to make accommodations beyond what I have already have, without sacrificing who I am either since my emotional awareness is a strength in my ability to parent and to serve others.
Zoralei also expressed she had a rough night sleeping, that she missed her friends and was worried about trying to find her groove at home, especially one that included her home exercise equipment. This probably too personal thing to talk about or even too philosophical, but Zoralei's avoidance of emotions and other's emotions is a huge issue in our relationships with her and how she de-stresses. Emotions stress her out and she does not know how to keep them from taking them on. They are out of her control and the fact that I see the world through people's emotional reactions causes her to get easily frustrated with me and hence results in me questioning her response to me and then we go in this cycle that is stressful. It is important that Zoralei can learn to see emotions as non-threatening.
One thing that was interesting and exciting was the fact she is considering being a physical therapist. She loves creating exercise programs and was told she was very good at it. We have figured with all the pain issues that a medical profession probably made sense as she has more experience than most and hopefully could appreciate the need to look outside of the box and to listen to the patient to truly understand what was going on. It sounds like she found a direction while in the RND program. I was excited about it because it will help her to continue to push herself physically in order to eventually become pain free, to help her to remain healthy and strong and avoid new episodes of RND.
She received a basket of goodies yesterday. Some contained little party favors. One small toy car became the perfect desensitization tool. She spent quite a while running the car across her arm to desensitize it. I also suggested she might find the foam roller a good tool for desensitization as well. It is interesting to realize it is a matter of thinking differently, of seeing things for potential uses they did not have before.
I mentioned paint balling for fun and she got very excited. I am sure she wants to paint ball as a fun connection to friends, but immediately she was talking about how it would be a good desensitization activity. This is a definite change. She would not have been insisting we go do that activity asap before she went in to the hospital. It will be interesting to see what other changes are coming.
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