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Re: It was freaky - trigger » PhytoEstrogen

Posted by madeline on April 14, 2007, at 6:31:30

In reply to It was freaky, posted by PhytoEstrogen on April 13, 2007, at 22:41:11

I'm sure that it was freaky that your husband was in therapy with you. I simply cannot imagine someone else being in the therapy room with me.

However, I don't think you have parts or have dissociated and I don't think that you are basically a toddler. I simply think that you are an adult that is using coping skills that you picked up as a child. While these coping skills may have kept you alive and sane THEN, they often fail in an adult world.

It's almost as though you may have physically left the house, but you are still very much there emotionally.

I remember when I finally "left the house". I was in a parking garage and I walked past this family sitting in a car. The dad was just yelling and yelling, the mom was crying and all the kids were too. I was very triggering for me and brought back all the fear I felt as a child. It also ignited a strong desire to intervene in that family (I didn't).By the time I made it to my car, I was shaking and crying.

But then I realized that I was in MY car. I wasn't sitting in that car awaiting the inevitable. I was in MY car and I could go home to MY house, where there was no badness waiting - just my cats and guinea pigs and a dog that would need to be walked.

I realized that I was in MY life - which somehow I had managed to carve out for myself that was safe and homey.

Now that's not to say that my childhood doesn't reach back out and grab me occasionally and I find myself falling back into old familiar (and destructive) behavior patterns.

But I can get usually get myself out of it by reminding myself where I am - a sort of self imposed reality check.

What helped a lot is that I have a friend that experiences things very similarly to me and we will go through a "badness" check.

My therapist also never failed to remind me that I am no longer a child and that I have active agency in my life.

It helps.

Love and peace to you (and your new kitty).

Julie


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