I set my bowl down for 2 seconds to grab the parmesan and find this murder scene when I turned back around. Ignoring her lunch fruits in favor of Our Lunch (pasta).
Clara trusts me enough to show me different parts of her body like her belly. show me her mouth and allow me to touch all of those teeth. —right? can you turn and show them all of your teeth? good job!— So we work really hard on being able to look over their entire bodies, and progress those behaviors to things like voluntary blood draws, ultrasounds, teeth brushing, and radiographing. —right? yeah!— But the biggest thing is we find what they find reenforcing and they show us that. and that includes hugs. —right?— And Clara has shown us that she really seems to enjoy tactile, so I give her this hand signal and she will show me what part of her body she wants rubbed. So, right now she wants a big noogie —right? good.— and sometimes what I will do is I’ll make her head a little pancake. or then I’ll rub her side and then she snuggles right in. —huh? huh! good girl thats very nice, good.— And then like I said, she would climb right on my lap and allow me to continue giving her tactile.
I remember years ago when I was still in therapy I told my therapist that I felt bad asking my friends for help because a lot of them were also going through some bad stuff and she told me
“You know, sometimes people in crisis will enjoy helping. It can be a distraction from their own problems.”
And then the next week I reached out to a friend who was in the middle of going through something about what I was going through and my therapist was right. That friend jumped at the opportunity to help.
And I’ve realized since then that my own problems rarely have anything to do with my ability to help others with theirs unless I am literally having an attack of some kind at that moment. In fact, it is actually refreshing to work on other peoples problems with them sometimes. Listening to problems you’re not soaking in constantly and helping your friend is often something you just want to do because you care about them. And you don’t stop caring about people because you’re having a hard time right now.
So I guess sometimes inviting someone into your sinking ship does work actually.