The Meadow

I’ve been meaning to type this up since Sunday, but, I guess I was still processing. Plus I’ve been busy the last couple of days- I’ll address that in a different post.

Sunday I saw M again, and we did some EMDR work. She brought in the tappers this time, which was much more familiar and comfortable. She let me set the speed and the intensity. We were working on the ‘inner child’ stuff again. (Sigh. And I still can’t refer to that without sounding condescending/disgusted… M mentioned she noticed that and it made her sad…)

We were focusing on how I think she’s weak, and because she’s weak then something is wrong with me. (Something being the PTSD, but I didn’t say that…) M asked me to focus on the image of her, and I was. Then M said to notice how small she is, and that triggered some stuff off. I saw her more clearly. I saw a scared, sad, vulnerable little girl. It somehow led to the fact that I push her away, don’t want anything to do with her. I hate seeing her. I hate it. I don’t want to look. I want her to go away. I think I told M that it’s too much. On top of everything else I deal with- while still having to hold myself together and present a ‘normal’ appearence- it’s too much and I can’t handle it. M asked me what ‘it’ is, and I didn’t know.

M asked me to go into that ‘room’ and ask her what ‘it’ is, ask her what she’s trying to put on me. M then turned the tappers back on.

Then something scary happened.

I had a hard time describing it to M, in the moment. It’s like something flipped a switch. I lost the little girl. She wasn’t as clear to me. I lost the feelings. I felt like a glass wall had gone up between this, and I could somewhat see her through it but not clearly, and I couldn’t get to her.

I had this overwhelming feeling that something didn’t want me to know.

This was really scary because it didn’t, at all, feel like something I consciously did. It felt like something else did it. It scared me, and I keep thinking about what I know about dissociative disorders. Which is probably blowing this way out of proportion.

After that, M decided to do something else. She slowed the tappers down a lot, and said we were going to put some separation there and put the little girl somewhere safe. She wanted me to imagine somewhere in my head that felt safe, that the little girl could stay. It took a long time for this image of a meadow to come to mind. M asked me to describe it, so that it became more real. Then she asked me to take the little girl and lead her into the meadow, and tell her it’s hers and she’ll be safe here.

This was hard and rather emotional. Because before when I ‘saw’ her, it was always in this pitch black dark space.

M led me through it some more, helping me leave her there and close up the glass box the meadow was in and put it away on a shelf that I can come back to later. We wrapped up our session after that.

Sometimes, writing this out, this whole thing sounds so bizarre and hokey. It’s like I can’t put into words how real the experience is. But whatever.

I’m still freaked out by what happened before the meadow. It makes the ‘something is wrong with me’ feel even stronger.

EMDR with M

So, Sunday I did EMDR with my new therapist, M.

I was super anxious and nervous because I knew it was going to be different. M started to suggest that maybe we wait a few weeks, and I thought about it but really didn’t want to. I knew I’d be fine once we did it. It was just the anxiety over something a little new and a little different, but I’ve DONE this before and I know it helps and I was ready to just jump head first into it. Putting it off would just make the anxiety bigger.

M usually does EMDR by holding up her fingers and moving them side to side. This was a bit strange for me, and I found her going a bit too fast at times and it made me dizzy. She slowed down a bit when I mentioned I was dizzy.

After the fact I mentioned it was a bit odd at first because I’m used to the tappers, and I found out that she had forgotten that, and she made a big note in my file so that she would remember for next time. Since apparently she DOES have the tappers, she just doesn’t use them much. I assumed she didn’t have them. That’s nice though. After experiencing it differently, I much prefer the tappers.

But anyway, I was anxious and nervous, wondering if it would still work without the tappers. Well. It did. It really really did. It was a very intense session, and some heavy stuff came up.

It brought back the image of the little girl… my “inner child” or whatever. And I have a really hard time facing her. I tend to reject her, and try to turn away from her. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to comfort her. I just want her to go away.

M noted that I’m angry at her, and I guess I am. I said I blame her. I said what she did do to try to protect herself, it wasn’t enough because here I am still fucked up and crazy.

After my session, I was thinking about it some more. I realized the first word that comes to mind when I think of the image of my younger self… is ‘weak’. She’s weak.

I know it wasn’t her fault. I know she did the best she could. I know it’s my mom’s fault. I know it’s my dad’s fault for not protecting me. I was just a kid.

But I still feel like she was weak. I still blame her for the fact I have these PTSD symptoms now.

I’m supposed to care. I’m supposed to love her and comfort her, because no one else did.

But I can’t.

I don’t want to.

I don’t want to see her. I just want her to go away.

Therapy, Scary Bus Rides and… Tea.

Had therapy today. It was hard.

Last night I e-mailed J about some things, that I’m having a really really hard time with. It’s a tricky triggering subject of attachment issues and all this stuff tangled up with my mom’s bpd and the way she thinks and the things she raised me to believe. And… I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m not going into detail, but it’s a BIG ISSUE and it terrifies me.

J encouraged me to talk to M about it, because it’s something that needs to be addressed with EMDR.

It was really really hard to pluck up the courage to talk to M about it. I struggled with the words. J had advised me to just share the e-mail with M, because then I don’t have to talk. But I had no way of printing out the e-mail, so… thankfully I remembered what I wrote and the insight I had, but it was still hard to get those words out. So, so, so hard.

The tricky thing is, that this is something that will probably only be fully resolved by talking it out. But it’s a conversation that absolutely terrifies me and I don’t think I can ever really have. I don’t WANT to have it.

But yeah, I explained things and then M said next Sunday we can do EMDR work to process this and work through it. I’m relief and nervous at the same time.

 

After therapy, I took the bus home. I was not prepared for it to be so scary and uncomfortable.  There was this boy on the bus, who was clearly mentally handicapped in some way. I could tell by the way he talked and acted. He also had the special bus pass and ID that you can get if you have a physical or psychological disability that allows you to pay a discounted fare to ride. (I have the same pass for my PTSD.) You have to have a doctors note and stuff to get the ID.

He immediately started talking to me. I couldn’t really understand him, partly because his words kind of slurred together, but mostly because the bus is loud and I have a difficult time hearing people. My brain is overwhelmed by all the talking, the loud noises the bus makes, the sound of the road. So I do what I always do when I can’t really make out/understand what someone is saying- I smile and nod. This boy gave me his phone number. I was nervous because I don’t like talking to people. I just wanted to be left alone. Then at some point he moved to sit right next to me, and I started to panic. I was blocked in, trapped against the window. He made me text him so that he would have my number. I was frozen with panic and fear, and he was right up next to me and in my space, and wouldn’t leave me alone, so I did it. He kept leaning into me, and touching me. I have no idea what he was saying, because I was trying to breathe and was dissociating, floating outside of myself and panicking. I vaguely remember he was saying something about how I need to come over to his house and we can hang out.

I was scared.

I don’t know what he meant or what he was implying or… I mean, maybe it was innocent and child-like thinking on his part, but I obviously took it in a way that he wanted to hook up or something. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know I was scared and he kept touching my arm and my hair and I wanted him to stop. I don’t like to be touched, unless I really trust you. I don’t like people sitting right next to me. I don’t like people being within my ‘space’, which is within arms length of me. It’s my space. My little bubble of personal space. I don’t like it when people invade my bubble, and this was… beyond invading it.

Eventually I yanked on the cord to stop the bus and got off. I wanted to run away, get the hell away from there as fast as I could. So I finally did. I escaped into a big store nearby and walked around in a frazzled daze, it was busy and crowded in the grocery section which didn’t help at all. But I wandered around and ended up in the homegoods/furniture section which was a lot quieter. Eventually I just sat down and started tapping on my knees and trying to ground myself. I think I was in there for nearly an hour.

Eventually I felt grounded enough to manage walking around a bit.

And I decided to pick up some tea.

My therapist loves tea. Last week, when I was still getting over that nasty cold, she offered me some peppermint tea. I love peppermint. For me it’s very calming and grounding. So I said yes and I took some. I liked it well enough. I’m not sure of the taste, because… they all just taste like tea, to me. But it was warm and smelled like peppermint and I love that smell. Today I tried chamomile.  It was okay, too.

So, I wondered throught the tea isle, and decided… what the hell. There was a box that had different flavors, like mint, and chamomile, and lemon, and other blends. So I grabbed it and bought it, and when I got home I made myself some with the peppermint/spearmint blend. It helped ground me some more. Plus, I find the warmth helps soothe my throat which is still achy and scratchy.

I’m still not a tea person. I know nothing about tea. But this stuff was nice.

Ugh, it’s been a long day.

Therapy with a furry friend

So I had a phone session with my old therapist today, J. I miss her so much.

We talked about a lot. We spent some time talking about my new therapist, M. Mostly what I like about her, and how she’s different. She’s a lot more structured. J is very different when it comes to EMDR; she was trained back in 2000, and they made some changes to how they do it now, it’s a lot more step-by-step and M seems to be sticking really close to that. J was different, she wasn’t so strict about following it step-by-step, she’s always been much much more flexible about how she does therapy. Neither J nor M are doing it wrong, J just follows a bit of an older method. J was also explaining that she’s found some steps a little unnessecary and that they weren’t very client-focused and that in her experience they were a bit more stressful and overwhelming to the clients (like… making lists of your triggers and your trauma…). I can totally understand, because I think if I hadn’t been in therapy for a year already and familiar with EMDR, this homework I was given would be much much harder. I have a really hard time putting things into words, and hell, when I started therapy I didn’t even understand that my childhood WAS traumatic and abusive. To me, it was ‘normal’ because I didn’t know that that’s not how healthy families interact. I had no other frame of reference.

It’s different and it’ll take some getting used to. But I don’t think it’s bad. If it helps build my relationship with M, so we can get comfortable enough to do the hard work, more quickly… I think that’s a good thing.

It was weeks, maybe even a couple months before I started doing EMDR work with J. We had to build up a trust, and also I had to come to terms with what happened. I had to tell my story, and it’s a long, long story. But I don’t really want to rehash it all, because I don’t feel like I need to. So, sticking to the more structured step-by-step EMDR method, I think, will make it easier for me to summarize things.

  While I was on the phone with J, I was sitting outside, on the front steps of an empty house down the block. Out of nowhere this cat came around and decided to hang out with me.

She came up to me, wanting cuddles and head scratches and to play. She was SO sweet. I sat and cuddled with her while I was talking to J. It was especially nice, since we’d moved on to some tricky topics that I have a hard time with.

Even after I got off the phone, I stuck around for a few minutes to pet her some more. Then I got up and got my things so I could leave. I needed to run to the store. This sweet little kitty followed me for almost two blocks.

Oh I wanted to take her home and keep her so bad. She was precious. I want to believe she has a family though, she looked well taken care of and she wasn’t afraid of people obviously.

I want a kitty of my own so bad. I can’t have one though. Financially, it’s not a good idea. Plus, I’d rather get an adult cat since then you know how big they are, and what their tempermeant will be like, but that’s absolutely out of the question. My friends dogs would never accept her. I could still get a kitten, the dogs will have an easier time accepting a kitten, but still, financially it’s just not a good time.

Oh, but I want a kitty so bad. My very own kitty.

 

Therapy Homework

M gave me “homework”. She wanted me to work on a list of my triggers, and a timeline of the events that happened in my life.

Easier said than done.

There’s only a few significant events, a few things that stand out in my mind. Then there’s vague snatches of memory of other things. For the most part though… I don’t remember 95% of my childhood. It’s hard when I sit here, staring, and there’s only a few things on my timeline. So much of it is blank. It makes the old tracks in my head start playing, “See, it wasn’t that bad. You’re being overdramatic. It was only a few things, and most of them weren’t that bad. At least you weren’t beaten (outside of a handful of instances) or sexually abused. You don’t have it as bad as everyone else. Look how much worse everyone else who blogs had it, look how much worse it was for everyone else in the support group forums.”

Ugh.

Honesty

Found on a note left in the laundry room: (Defy), thanks for putting the money up here. –(Housemate)

-blinks-

I was doing laundry earlier. Someone else had been doing it just before me and their stuff was still in the dryer. As I took out their things and set them aside I found a $5 bill in the dryer. I set it on top of the dryer, put my clothes in, started the dryer and left.

I didn’t think twice about.

I could have taken the money I suppose, but it didn’t even occur to me.

I’m just an honest person, I guess.

I was a little surprised by the note. I wasn’t expecting it. I guess since it didn’t occur to me, I didn’t realize the housemate would appreciate that I didn’t just take the money. It’s not a big deal, but I’m blogging about it because it’s silly little things like this that I need to remember when the negative self-beliefs are playing in my head. I’m honest. That’s a good thing. I DO have good qualities.

Is my PTSD not as bad as I think it is?

This has been something that’s kind of bugged me since I met with my new therapist, M.

At one point she asked me if there’s different degrees/levels to my dissociation and I said yes, and she asked me to explain them. I started off by explaining the more “mild” episodes, where I zone out, my mind goes blank. I’m sort of aware of where I am, but, my mind is just blank. It’s like I’m on autopilot. Then there’s episodes where I feel extremely detached, sometimes to the point of feeling outside myself. Then there’s the times where I shut down emotionally.

M said that the ‘mild’ stuff is fairly normal. That it’s more like what a lot of regular people experience, and not necessarily trauma related.

M said something along the lines of, “I don’t think you’re as sick as you think you are.”

She said it in a very gentle way I should note. It wasn’t condescending or anything, it had more of this feeling like she thought it would make me feel better or relieved even.

I’m not sure how I really feel about it though. I think at first maybe I was relieved, but now I’m… I don’t have a word for it.

I think it’s something I want to talk to her about again. Maybe I didn’t explain it right. It doesn’t FEEL normal. It only happens when I’m upset or uncomfortable. That can’t be normal right? I don’t know. I’m confused.

Edited to add: As I’ve been thinking about the “mild” zoning out, generally tends to lead to a “mild” detached feeling… that can grow stronger and stronger the longer I’m in that state. I think this is more the way my mind copes with day-to-day stressors. With the “smaller” things. Where as the out-of-body, and the emotional shut down… they tend to happen a lot more suddenly and with BIG triggers. In fact, the emotional shut down I’ve kind of only experience when I’m dealing with someone talking about wanting to self-harm or commit suicide.

My Mind Is Spinning

There’s a lot going on right now. My mind keeps reeling.

Well, yesterday I had therapy again with my new therapist. I updated her on what’s happened the last two weeks- realizing work is triggering me, and then getting fired. We talked about a few other things. We started setting the ground work for doing EMDR. She had me establish a safe place and name it, and visualize it while my eyes followed her fingers back and forth. First thing about this that makes it… odd. I’m used to using these tappers that vibrate in my hands, and doing the eye movements by looking at each hand following the tappers. It’s the same idea, it’s just a different method- following a T’s fingers as they move back and forth is the more “typical” way of doing EMDR. It’s just… odd for me cause it’s different.

It’s also different because it’s a lot more structured. Even my old T, when I talked about it a little in an e-mail, said that yes my new t is definitely taking things slow with me and sticking to more structured EMDR therapy, which is another way that people can feel safe.

Now that I think about it, when I was seeing my old T, who was a lot more flexible and unstructured, it was several weeks of talk therapy before we started trying out EMDR together. I guess maybe because I was so hesitant in the beginning and didn’t understand it. So we just focused on talk therapy for a while, and I built up a trust with her.

I guess it makes sense now that I’m with someone new, who doesn’t know my whole story, who I think I trust but… not entirely because it’s so new, it makes sense for her to be taking things slow and keeping things more structured so that we can build a feeling of trust and safety.

But yeah, so, back to the safeplace activity. My new T (who I’m going to refer to as M) after establish my safe place, asked me to think of something I struggle with but something that’s “smaller”. Not the “big stuff”. Something that’s easier to handle- more of an annoyance, really. It took me a few minutes. Sometimes it’s hard for me to come up with stuff on the spot, and well, my mind always goes straight to the “big” things first and it’s hard to look past that, hard to untangle that whole mess and pick out something more manageable. We did this twice, bringing that to mind, then doing a set where I visualize my safe place, one time with her fingers guiding my eyes, and another where I had to do it on my own.

I’m not sure if it worked the way it’s supposed to, or if I was maybe I wasn’t being true to what I was/wasn’t experiencing because I wanted to please her.

It’s new and different, and maybe I shouldn’t try to rush things.

Does this happen to anyone else?

When I experience a pretty significant trigger, and start to have that detached dissociative feeling… I feel like there’s this sudden pressure from inside my head. It’s all over, but mostly I feel it pressing against my forehead and that spot between my eyebrows. It’s this very very strong pressure that feels like it’s coming from inside. It doesn’t hurt. It just feels like someone is pushing against the inside of my head. It makes me feel like I want to shut my eyes and disappear.

It gets really hard to keep my vision focused.

Does anyone else experience anything like this?

Herp derp

I’m tech savvy, I swear I am!

But I only just figured out why I’m not getting e-mail updates when people post. Ha.

Also, I can never remember how to find who’s following me. I know there’s a list somewhere here on WordPress, but I always forget where it is. (ETA: I FOUND IT. Duh. I feel dumb.)

I’m trying to start reading more blogs. I feel bad sometimes that I don’t read more, especially when I have a surprising amount of followers. Like, really surprising. When I started this, it was mostly for myself. I wasn’t expecting anyone to actually read it! But, thank you for reading and for wanting to continue reading! It’s awesome to know people understand and even care. It’s not something I’m used to.

-Defy