This last week has been really tough. \u00a0On Tuesday I had the hardest, most painful therapy session that I\u2019ve ever experienced. \u00a0Before I drove down I wrote:<\/p>\n
Damn!\u00a0 I\u2019m starting to feel scared.\u00a0 Part of it may be that there\u2019s still so much practical stuff I haven\u2019t dealt with.\u00a0 I worry that I will get in trouble.
\nO gosh I\u2019m almost blind and my heart hurts.\u00a0 I wish I could trust that God\/Universe\/Divine Process cares about my welfare.\u00a0 Well, what\u2019s the worst that could happen?\u00a0 Before I made the call to the hairdresser to change my appointment, I suddenly saw that it wasn\u2019t a big deal.\u00a0 I think the infant\u2019s terror must be triggered, the fear that I might anger someone.<\/p>\nDriving down I continued to feel the triggered terror.\u00a0 Just like what Belleruth Naparstek<\/a> says: \u201cAt the time of the actual event, it\u2019s defining nature is an instantaneous and automatic takeover of intense feelings of helplessness, terror, and loss of control, and the perception of impending annihilation by overwhelming force.\u201d\u00a0 p30<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The next day I wrote:<\/p>\n
The session with Erica was very hard and very painful.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t write about it afterward, I haven\u2019t even wanted to think about it for fear I would get sucked back there.\u00a0 I was right in the center of abandonment.\u00a0 I felt unbelievably lost, totally disconnected from any kind of warmth or meaning.\u00a0 At one point Erica started talking to me as though she were an alcoholic mother, explaining that she left me on Wednesday nights to go to a meeting…\u00a0 She told me it wasn\u2019t my fault, and not about me.\u00a0 By that time I had started to cry and hide my face.\u00a0 I can\u2019t imagine my mother EVER apologizing, or acknowledging she was an alcoholic…\u00a0 Erica went on to say \u201cRemember when we made cookies last week?\u201d and somehow I thought that was reality and started groping after the memory.\u00a0 Erica stopped her\u00a0role play and talked about when someone was anorexic, she had to be given food in very small quantities.\u00a0 In the same way I could only take in small amounts of nourishing love.\u00a0 She asked where she was and I said behind a glass wall.\u00a0 I saw a sphere of glass around me and the Wicked Witch looking at Dorothy in her glass ball, and how scared I was of that scene in the movie.\u00a0 I can feel, as I write this, how easy it would be to get sucked back into that place.<\/p>\n
I have to stop trying to write about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s too scary.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When I got home I was so tired I just lay down on my bed with Mocha.\u00a0 I think I actually slept a little.<\/p>\n
All of Wednesday morning I held onto the present fiercely so I wouldn\u2019t fall into that state.\u00a0 I put my arms around the terrified baby.\u00a0 I tell her what happened was real, but it won\u2019t happen again.\u00a0 Mother is dead, and I am here and committed to being here for you.\u00a0 You survived and I\u2019m here and I love you just the way you are.\u00a0 Being present for you is the most important thing in my life right now.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, when I reminded me that I had<\/span> survived, I had a very odd feeling.\u00a0 It might have been surprise and getting that it was true, I had survived, but I\u2019m not sure. \u00a0The feeling of suddenly really getting it that you have survived a traumatic event is something that shows up frequently in stories from Somatic Experiencing.<\/p>\n
After lunch I went to Carrie for a haircut. \u00a0Went to Co-op & Rite Aid after, came straight home.\u00a0 I think doing ordinary things brought me back into the present.<\/p>\n
I realize that I haven\u2019t really felt depressed since that experience with Erica.\u00a0 I have felt scared and lost and confused.\u00a0 I also see how it\u2019s a big deal to have been wounded like that.\u00a0 It was almost intolerable feeling it in Erica\u2019s office, of course at the beginning of my life it would have been overwhelming and traumatizing.\u00a0 The life-stopping quality of it resulted in me holding on tightly to anything that would keep me from being dragged back there.\u00a0 That makes it much easier to forgive myself for \u201cnot being able to do anything,\u201d and more important for me to take care of myself.<\/p>\n
A friend\u00a0asked me if I had ever felt that way before. \u00a0At first I thought I hadn’t, but then I remembered my journal from the years in Portland, some of which is in a recent post<\/a>. \u00a0When I’ve tried to go back and read these old journals, I have that same sense that something is pulling me into a state I don’t want to be in, and I stop. \u00a0I see by how intolerable it is to feel those feelings why the traumatic process cuts them off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This last week has been really tough. \u00a0On Tuesday I had the hardest, most painful therapy session that I\u2019ve ever experienced. \u00a0Before I drove down I wrote: Damn!\u00a0 I\u2019m starting to feel scared.\u00a0 Part of it may be that there\u2019s … Continue reading