Posted by antigua on February 6, 2004, at 10:02:16
In reply to The last few days (long), posted by DaisyM on February 5, 2004, at 19:36:15
I wasn't online last night because I WAS MAKING COOKIES!! I needed to distract myself. But no one but me seems to be eating them!
Your post went straight to my heart, Daisy. I don’t have flashbacks like that, or they don’t hit me as hard. It’s more like they seep into my consciousness, as if they’ve always been there and I just become aware of them. I have moments of great fear of what I’m about to remember, but I haven’t remembered what goes with that fear yet. I have some very strong memories that refuse to surface, no matter how hard I try, even though I know what they are. I’m still very disconnected from it all. I do have several actual memories, but I’m just not connected enough to them for me to feel terrified. EMDR has helped me to begin to connect to those feelings, though. As painful as the flashback is, at least you felt it, and that’s really progress, Daisy. It sounds like you were able to hold on and integrate the experience, which is really great (although I bet it sure doesn’t feel like it!).
For years I focused on false memories and “if I can’t remember it exactly, it didn’t happen, etc.” I would read and research incessantly to deny that my father, who I truly loved, had hurt me so badly. I finally had to give up the denial and accept it. Once I did that (and I still harbor some resistance) things started to loosen up a bit.
I also understand your feelings about the look on your T’s face when you tell him these things. Sometimes the look on mine is so tragic and heartbreaking, almost horror actually, that I feel so bad. I think it’s part of the burden thing I was talking about in my other post. I feel like I’m burdening her, imprinting these horrible events into her mind. My T says these things aren’t too horrible for her, they just make her feel bad for me, but to me, they make me feel ashamed because they are normal to me. Isn’t that sick? These experiences are normal to me. I can’t see that they are horrible to me, but I see it in her face. I don’t think I’m ready to accept how horrible it was and what it has done to me because then I would really have to deal w/what it has done to my life.
Good luck with the writing exercises and let me know how it goes, if it helps. I refuse to do that for therapy, but my T accepts it. I am a writer/editor in my “functioning” life and I can’t write about this in that way. It’s too painful. I have written about it on several occasions to specific people, but I don’t journal (except for here). It’s too tied up w/my sense or vision of myself as a writer. I can’t explain this correctly. Writing only helps me at certain times; otherwise, my writing becomes diluted and loses its intensity. Maybe I just mean that I can’t write about it very easily and to me it really matters what ends up on the page, and to discuss this issue it would have to be perfectly explained. (I give up, I’ll have to really think about why I refuse to write about it, except for here.)
I’m sorry it’s so tough right now, but hang in there. Lean on your T; that’s what he’s there for. He won’t leave you, and there’s nothing so horrible that you can tell him to make him turn away from you. We are also here to listen to you and to help.
antigua
poster:antigua
thread:309943
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040206/msgs/310124.html