WHAT FOCUS HAS TO OFFER
My wife Buffie and I have a daughter who is at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. When we started this journey we thought it was about our daughter and her problems. Since that time we have found that it is not just about her; but an opportunity for us to understand the relationship our upbringing and beliefs has with the way we work with our daughter and pursue our everyday lives. Discovery was excellent in helping us explore ourselves as people; however, it really only scratched the surface. We had a feeling of going into Focus we would be challenged even more in these areas. No matter who you are it can be intimidating to really look inside yourself and what made you the person you are today. So going into Focus we were apprehensive, but with the feeling that Discovery left us with, we knew that outcome would be worth anything we went through.
The experience my wife and I had in Focus was one of challenge and victory. The idea of Focus is to challenge who you are as a person now and what kind of person exists inside of you. You see all of us start out as youngsters full of life and energy to explore and take in all the world has to offer. Then as we start to grow up our parents’ beliefs and society pass on ideas about life that cause us to come up with ideas about who we are and what we are. This can be a positive but also a negative as these ideas sometimes limit our beliefs in who we really are and what we are. This can be a positive but also a negative as these ideas sometimes limit our beliefs in who we are and what we can really accomplish. Over time as we are growing up, we go through tragedy and negative experiences in our lives. How we deal with these experiences affects how we move through life and can overshadow our ability to hold onto the child we have inside and the person we started out as looking at life in an open and excited way. In simple terms, life bogs down who and what you started out as a person.
While I was going through Focus, the first day I experienced anger. The anger was caused by me being challenged as if something I h ad done was wrong based on what I thought I heard. Anger is not a normal trait of mine but it reared it’s ugly head during this situation. In all honesty what came out was a deep seeded hurt that had been in my heart for years. It had nothing to do with the situation, but how I reacted had to do with what I was holding inside. On the first day, Buffie was scared and decided to try to stay under the radar of the facilitator, but in reality it was just w way of avoiding all the things she did not want to deal with regarding herself. This also was a trait that showed up during this process. Now when looking back we see, both of us had issues that were affecting us, limiting us. and stopping us from being who we really are inside.
The accountability part of the process made us both look at the choices we have made and how these choices were not truly working choices for our hearts or our lives. During our time in Focus it became clear we each had chosen defense mechanisms to deal with different situations that had occurred in our lives. Buffies was self esteem and mine was the ability to deal with the pain of losing people to death. You see Buffie has always had to deal with weight issues and my career as a firefighter I always had to deal with death and tragedy. These two issues caused us both to develop defense mechanisms that affected not only these areas bu affected other parts of our lives as well. In Buffie’s case she developed the ability of avoidance as she did not want to deal with how she felt about herself, it was easier to put her energy into work and things she could find positive reinforcement in. This was a cover up to those deep feelings of not being pretty, beautiful, or worthy. In my case I held back all the pain from the death and destruction I saw. I had a built in switch that controlled my ability to feel pain and hurt. Both of our mechanisms we developed hurt our relationships and our lives. You see when we had issues as a couple and I would confront Buffie she would avoid the issues through finding other things to talk about. In my case, as this hurt me I would throw the old it does not hurt switch. Both of us used our defense mechanisms against each other, which hurt our relationship and our ability to communicate and feel as individuals and a couple. Focus assisted in showing how these attitudes did not only affect our relationship but they also bled over to the way we handled our daughter and other things that came along in our life. I go back to what I said earlier, we let stuff get in the way of who we were and the real us. I see where I showed love and cared, but never really let myself feel love and caring. Buffie sees where she has learned to avoid and it has made her relationships somewhat false since she is not free to be real.
My advice to anyone going into Focus is trust the process. You will be challenged to your very being. I urge everyone to close your mind and open your heart to what Focus has to offer. I can say without a doubt it opened me back up to the young, fun loving, feeling man I was as a youngster and teenager. I can feel the pain of loss and still go on living life and not just live in numbness, but happiness and wonder of all life has to offer. Buffie now sees clearer that not being real with her own heart and other caused her just to deal and not feel. Buffie’s heart is now open to see she is a beautiful, courageous, committed woman who can grow by taking chances. Focus was a life changing experience not just for us but the world because of what we have to offer to it as the real people we were and now have rediscovered. The wish from Buffie and I to all going through, or thinking of going through, Focus is to rediscover who you really are and learn to live life to the most open and fullest place your heart has to offer.
J.C. & BUFFIE H.
DAUGHTER SUSAN H.
CURRENTLY ENROLLED
SPRING CREEK LODGE
Posted on December 26th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: Parents
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