I’ve been in therapy for four years now, three years with my current and amazing trauma-informed therapist.
I have made great strides. We’ve spent three years building up my resources and my sense of adult self. Being a verbal processor and someone who needs to come at something from seventeen different angles before I accept the truth — a by-product of my parents, especially my mother, abusing me and gaslighting me — were to the point where I’m ready to really do the hard work of EMDR. There are some memories that I’ll only be able to work on the big D, Desensitizing, because my dissociated memories of some incidents are so fragmented there’s not a lot to big R, Reprocess.
But in a summer limbo of no therapy because of schedules and surgeries, I’ve found that I’m … okay. I’m … strong. I’m … an adult.
And this realization that I’m not constantly in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn … is weird. And strange. And uncomfortable.
Today, I almost had a panic attack while talking to my wife about this for the second time in Ass many days. I like where I am, but I’m so primed and conditioned after a lifetime of being treated as inferior and abused that being kind of “normal” is scary.
I was able to work through the emotions, mostly, but still did need a Xanax to bring me back and help me focus on the tasks at hand. I’m not ashamed of using an aid — that’s what it’s there for.
Bit it’s so weird being kind of normal, living a normal life, reacting to most situations in a normal way, able to go back and repair to the best of my ability when I need to, understanding when someone else should repair with me instead of always feeling less than.
It’s so weird and foreign. But everything is a stage and everything is an opportunity, so I will work through this as I have countless things that have come before.
If you have felt or are feeling the same way, my heart goes out to you as we transition from caterpillars to butterflies. As we grow even if some around us aren’t growing at the same rate it don’t recognize the changes in us. It’s not for them to notice. It’s these moments for us to live and thrive in.
#emdr #Childhoodtrauma #Trauma #Anxiety #PanicDisorder #CheerMeOn #CPTSD