Will I ever be on the other side of this? I am so afraid of the physical reactions in my body that come with memories. Now that I’m finally exploring my past through therapy, I can see better why my brain has allowed me to be numb all of these years. I usually dance close to the memories…just enough for my hands to start shaking and my heart to begin racing…and then I run as far from the past as I can, leaving almost everything unspoken.
a temporary break from therapy thanks to COVID19
I can hardly believe we have been quarantined since March 12. My husband insists we be extreme in this quarantine. He is beyond paranoid of anything happening to me because I have multiple autoimmune disorders. As the quarantine weeks have gone by, I’ve been somewhat up and down. I mean, it is a pandemic! For once my crazy head seems aligned with everyone else’s!
I had to also cancel all of my therapy sessions and at first I felt panicked. Since I began trauma therapy in January…or really since I first opened up to a friend last November…the floodgates were truly wide open on my past for the very first time.
The memories of domestic violence and the anxieties became constant and magnified. The dwelling on my thoughts – obsessive. It did become more manageable after about 5 therapy sessions but my mind was still bombarded most days.
hey! I’ve got this!
Now in quarantine…with no therapy… I noticed that I was becoming calmer again. Without memories arising via therapy, I stopped dwelling on the painful thoughts. It was the numb kind of calm I’ve had all these past years. I started thinking, maybe I don’t need more therapy! I’m totally handling this life like a rockstar now!!!
I was like — damn girl! You are seriously impressive with your ability to fix the past 25 years in only 2 solid months of therapy!
Then a few days ago, a thought-provoking podcast ruined all my badass confidence! The podcast talked about chasing pleasure and avoiding pain. My first thought was – thank God that’s no longer me!
Thank God I don’t do all the awful shit I used to do. Sure, the shame is still there, but I felt just a little proud of how far I had come from that whirlwind period of my life post Ex Husband…pre Current-Husband.
Yet those words kept eating away at me, replaying in my head all day long like an annoying song (think: B52s…love shack baby).
calm and numb are not the same thing
After I put the kids to bed, I showered and sat down on my own bed with a book, yet I could not stop thinking of those damn words. Chasing pleasure, avoiding pain. In the quiet, I started to question myself. Was my perceived calm and confidence in this quarantine really just numbing the pain again because I was no longer dealing with it in therapy? Was I really as resilient as I had decided I was? Had I worked myself through the pain sufficiently or am I numbing it all again?
My therapist says I use dissociation to stay as far from the memories as possible.
I thought of something that would tell me if I can be done with therapy. I stood up to look for my box of old photo albums. The box that moved from house to house with me, but the tape never comes off because of the memories they contain.
The ones my oldest daughter from that marriage often mentioned wishing we could find so she could see her childhood memories. The photos that my younger kids often asked about because they wanted to know about their big sister when she was young. I simply wanted to know if I could look.
the body’s pain
As soon as I walked toward the box the huge lump came in my chest making it hard to breathe. My body’s reaction to what I was moving toward was truly awful. My heart raced. My ears hurt. I pulled out one album. I didn’t know which one, but I was determined to look at one. As I opened it my vision started going dark. It was all the same familiar physical responses that come with my memories. The physical responses that classified me as having PTSD.
I had to sit as my legs got tingly and numb and felt like they wouldn’t support me. I opened to the page of my wedding in Rhode Island. I couldn’t look at that. I had not realized I am still too ashamed of those days to even talk about them in therapy! I mentally tallied one more event to the list of things I tiptoe near in therapy but manage to keep my distance.
I flipped to the middle…to my wedding party near his home in Tunisia. There were some happier memories in this foreign place and I was able to look at those photos. It was such a different world for me. The culture, the religion, the people, the sounds and smells and tastes, all of it exciting and distracting. He was proud of his country.
Although he left me home with his mother most of the time, there were excursions in which he proudly showed me the beauty of where he grew up. I relished the attention I so desperately craved. Most of all, my Ex was always kinder to me when his family was around watching, especially his mother. I had grown to love his mom and his sisters and felt protected by simply having them nearby.
I fear the triggers might never go away
That 60 seconds or so was all I could do. I could not look beyond those few photos. I could not breathe and my body was shaking badly, it had still responded intensely and that makes me sad. I couldn’t sleep most of the night. My heart raced and the flashbacks have been endless all over again.
It has been several days and I’m still struggling and angry with myself for looking. Damn! I really believed I could be done. How does my head switch between such different places so swiftly? But I guess I needed to know that my work is not over like I had hoped. I know I have a long road yet ahead. I also know my triggers might never go away. They are part of me.
does looking into the past help or hinder my healing?
What I do not know is will the physical responses ever diminish? I do not know that it will ever benefit me to look at those photos. Perhaps it will always make my mind and body feel worse. The Body Keeps the Score is such a disturbing concept. The book by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., says trauma that involves being held down, blocking the normal response to move and fight, will make the brain secrete stress chemicals and fire electrical circuits continuously for years. What has this done to my body because I let it happen for 10 years?
Will I ever be able to talk to my daughter about her memories and show her photos of her childhood? She is wonderful and deserves happy reminiscing.
Or should I just know that I cannot? Should I give her the photo albums and let it be her own memories that I don’t have to own? Those are the things I still do not know.
I don’t have the answers. I have spent decades trying not to feel my feelings. I guess I am still avoiding pain after all and in need of therapy. I will admit that I am scared.
What if I spend all the money and effort and pain to work through therapy and it is not enough? My therapist says PTSD is not a life sentence and I may not have it forever.
God does not take away our suffering
I am trying to give myself permission to be exactly where I am. There is nothing noble about numbing pain. Denying my feelings helps no one. It is not helping me. It is not helping my family. It does not allow me to do anything great in life.
God does not take away our suffering, but He does enter into it with us. Deciding I am done with therapy merely because I want to be done is me trying to be in control when I am not in control. Again and again, I must surrender to this journey. Sometimes that means learning to be grateful for the pain and discomfort for it reveals the work that still needs to be done.
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