Starting Over 3, 02-13-06 – Stepping Out of the Comfort Zoneby LauraBelle
The focus most of this week will be on stretching out of the comfort zone and making just one change, any change, to improve the quality of life. Rhonda starts it all off on Monday in a way that is disturbing to some. She has a basket of food delivered to the house, saying they should used these ingredients to make breakfast. The problem is, it contains things like elk sausage and ostrich meat. No one cares for any of it at all, although it appears like everyone tries it.
In Group, Rhonda talks about the different breakfast, and relates it back to them stepping out of their comfort zones. She shows them a picture that looks like a bulls eye. The center is comfort, and moving to the outside are rings for "stretch", "risk" and "die." No one thought they would die if they ate this stuff, but it was at least a stretch, if not a risk for everyone.
Rhonda brings up the relationships between the women at the house, and asks each housemate who they have a "die" relationship with. Jodi names Kim, and Jill names Christie, which is odd, as I would have thought it would be Kim. Kelly names Christie based on the fact Christie said on Kelly's first day that she was afraid of her. Lisa names Kim, Christie repays Jill naming her, and Kim says it used to be Jill, but is now Jodi. I wonder if that's how she truly feels, or if she is just basing it on what others said about her.
Talking about how they all feel being named someone else's die relationship, Kim is a bit offended that Lisa named her, but seems to have felt this way since Lisa called her out on her mothering. Rhonda tells them throughout the day to work on these "die" relationships. And to keep stepping out of their comfort zone, tonight all the women are going to go two-stepping.
Rhonda talks with Christie in a one-on-one about her poor body image. Christie names off several things she thinks would be perfect in her life if she would just have that body, such as being more intimate and attracting a different class of men. Rhonda knows that Christie is secretly desiring to have more plastic surgery, and wants her to see that it has to come from the inside, not outside.
To show Christie that she would have these issues no matter what she looked liked, Rhonda sends her to meet with a professional model, Paige Adams-Geller. She shows Christie pictures of her modeling days from when she was a teenager and in her early twenties. She says she was starving herself to look that thin. She felt very lonely all those years, and felt it was all people saw when they looked at her, just her looks. Paige also says she didn't feel a lot of intimacy then, and didn't have many men interested in her. Christie starts to see that the feelings one the inside don't have as much to do with the outside.
Dr. Stan sits down to talk with Jodi about her issues with her father. Going over the thing she remembers about him from her childhood, Jodie doesn't seem to remember a whole lot. Her parents divorced when she was six, and she knows she only got to see her dad on weekends. Clouding up her memories are things her mother has told her, such as that her dad would stand them up often, not showing up on the weekends when he was supposed to. Jodi moved in with her dad for awhile, and remembers having a good time with him. She didn't feel he cared for her, though, as he wasn't financially supportive when he should have been. And, of course, it was her mother that told her that, as her mother was working two jobs to support them. Dr. Stan says parents shouldn't be sharing that type of information with kids.
Jodi explains more about her mother, talking about the years she was addicted to pain killers. She remembers one day coming home from school to find the shower running, and her mom laying on the floor bleeding from her head after an apparent fall. Jodie doesn't remember if her father ever helped during any of this time, as she has blocked much of it out. Dr. Stan thinks Jodi has a distorted view of what really happened in her life with her dad. He asks her to write down words that describe her dad onto a transparency image of a father figure. Maybe it's just me, but I keep remembering how she found out that her dad didn't want to work on the "Starting Over process" with her. Her mom told her, and had prefaced it with, "Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this, but ..." I think her mom's thoughts have had way too much influence on Jodi's feelings for her dad. Her mom seems to be orchestrating it somewhat.
After writing down five adjectives that she feels best describe her dad, Jodi gets stuck. She finds Jill and seeks out her help. I'm sure Jodi's mom could have come up with several. Jodi tells Jill about a time when she was in school and got drunk at a party. She ended up in the hospital getting her stomach pumped, and has been upset since then that her dad never came to visit her. Again, maybe it's just me, but I would have to ask if anyone even bothered to tell him about it. And if so, that responsibility would have fallen to Jodi's mom. Okay, it's not just me. Jill tells Jodi the same thing.
Dr. Stan meets up with Jodi again to see what she has written down about her father. She tells him it was difficult to come up with things past the first handful. He believes that she is looking at him through a very narrow hole, and says it's typical of children of divorce to create their own histories. He believes she took on her mother's history, as that was all she knew. Jodi concedes that she has never really taken the time to get to know her father better. Thank you Jill and Dr. Stan for furthering my point.
Rhonda meets with Kelly to figure out why it is that she doesn't like to get close to people. Rhonda pretends to be different people in her life such as stranger, mother, father, sons, etc., to see how close Kelly will let herself get to the them. She places markers on the ground for each one of them. Interestingly enough, the people that have to keep the greatest distance with Kelly is her parents. Kelly is still angry at her mom for being admitted to the hospital when Kelly was a teenager, and feels no matter how bad it got, she would never do that to her own kids. Her father is the furthest back in distance because she is still waiting for an apology from him.
Rhonda reminds Kelly of the story we hear when we're young about goblins waiting to get you if you walk over the bridge. She tells Kelly she has to walk over that bridge and not worry about the goblins to find answers. Kelly does this and finds a card with the word "fear." Kelly says her fears that if she lets people get close enough to her, they will find out they really don't love her. Rhonda instructs her to write down the things that could happen if Kelly allows people to get too close. Before she leaves, Rhonda expects a hug, and does receive one, as awkward as it may be.
After Kelly finishes writing down her fears with each different person in her life, Rhonda has her walk towards the tape on the ground that was representing each person's allowed distance. As she walks closer, with every step, Rhonda has Kelly read off the fears she has. Once done Rhonda admits taking away the distance for real, is going to be much more difficult.
At the end of the day, all the women go out for the lesson in two-step. It's difficult for many of them women for different reasons. For Jill and Jodi it's being close to men. For Kelly, it's being close to anybody. For Christie it's doing a social activity like this without drinking. All of the women agree they had a lot of fun doing it. This is what happens when you step outside that comfort zone and reach for the stretch, the risk or the die. You have fun where you never would have expected to.
You can email me at LauraBelle@realityshack.com
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