emdr

I’ve spent four years preparing for this. I built up my resources. I’ve learned about my parts of self. I’ve learned how to stay my most adult part of self most of the time. I can speak up for myself now. I know I can be uncomfortable and still be okay. I know that it’s okay if I sometimes need to take medication for my anxiety. I can recognize when I’ve been triggered most of the time. I have cleansed my house of most things that remind me of the dark times of my childhood. I know when I need to take my shoes off and go stand outside to ground myself. I’ve identified lots of memories to reprocess with #emdr .

Over the past month, I’ve had two intense EMDR sessions — what I’ve been working toward — and they have been successes. One was a recent trigger, one was a dark childhood recollection. Both times were intense, uncomfortable, and full of tears. Sadness. Grief for what should have been.

But oh my goodness, the end result was such a place of calm. In one instance, healing pain from the previous week. In another, healing pain from decades ago. Both times, I rescued my younger self. He was so afraid, so scared, so terrified, with no one looking out for him. But I am now. I’m strong enough now to relieve him of his fears, his pain, his trauma.

I still have work to do, but oh my god, how freeing it is to save yourself, to love yourself.

If I hadn’t journaled the experiences afterward to have the evidence, I wouldn’t believe it, wouldn’t remember the work and the lightness in my soul afterward.

If you’re struggling, if you’re finding it difficult to wrestle with your past or your present … it’s okay. It might not be immediate, but just keep on showing up for yourself. Even if you have others you need to show up for: don’t forget to be there for yourself, too. It might take a week, a month, a year, or half a decade. But it’s worth it.

YOU’RE worth it.

Keep on showing up for yourself, even for 5 minutes a day. Let yourself know that you’re in your own corner. That you’ve got this. That it might be tough and feel insurmountable. But it’s not. You’ve got this. Keep going.

#CPTSD #emdr #ChildhoodTraumaSurvivors #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #Anxiety #PanicDisorder #CheerMeOn

I feel frustrated because by the time I think I've started to get my insomnia under control, suddenly it slips out and I'm back to sleeping less and less. My meds are finally working after roughly 20 years of this, but my PTSD keeps making it hard to fall asleep or relax. I finally started EMDR, but I feel like I'm regressing in so many ways. I'm just feeling awful and not getting enough sleep is making everything so unnecessarily harder! Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, since my family doesn't care to belive or validate me. Its so nice to have a space with others who get the struggle.
#Insomnia #PTSD #emdr

So after assuming my PCOS was better after significant weight loss I quit my birth control pills… and finding I was wrong I tried to go back on them. But my body wouldn’t let me get on them. I kept getting a period every other week. So I never got through a pack. So I called my doctor for a new birth control prescription. She took forever and kept asking, “why don’t you see your gyno?”
Ummm… yea about that…

My gyno diagnosed me with hypothyroidism when it turns out I had thyroiditis from COVID. It went away. But when she diagnosed me she refused to let me see an endocrinologist claiming falsely that the endo would only see me if I had an autoimmune disease and the she was not going to check for me. Yea it was bull. The endo saw me. But after prescribing hormone treatment my thyroid fixed itself (before taking the meds) and has not malfunctioned since.

So FINALLY after 2 weeks of talking this out my doctor prescribed me a different birth control. I also start EMDR therapy for my CPTSD 2 sessions from now. And have finally scheduled surgery for my ripped stretched ear. Yep I had 1 inch stretched ears. But one of my earlobes was always oddly shaped. The fat was on the sides and not so much the bottom. The 1 inch truly was glass and too heavy for the misshapen ear to hold so it spontaneously just tore. Not in half mind you but the scar make it appear torn in half. It was close. My other ear had no problems but what you do to one you must do to the other. So I’m having them both fixed. I’ve excepted my dream of big stretched is over and I’ve accepted that. It is what it is. I gave it my best shot. If I could have “normal” sized pierced ears at this point I’d be happy. Which I can do after healing from surgery.

#earloberepair #CPTSD #PTSD #Trauma #Abuse #PolycysticOvarySyndrome #Doctors #emdr

So bought some new clothes today and got my eye brows waxed. Also I guy checked me out. :)

Also saw my psychiatrist who interrogated me due to my past with anorexia. After anorexia I had binge eating disorder and became 280 pounds. Now I’m skinny mini. Wasn’t fun though. Was irritating. Told her I was going back to therapy. The therapist does EMDR and since 15 years of therapy have failed me she’s hoping EMDR will help.

To be fair 15 years of therapy I didn’t know I had CPTSD so… perhaps we weren’t working on the right things. Also therapist vary WIDELY in value. You know what I mean.

#PTSD #CPTSD #Trauma #Abuse #AnorexiaNervosa #BingeEatingDisorder #emdr

I’m at work, trying to make it through another day. I work in a retail grocery store pharmacy. I’m tired of pissy, entitled people. My #Depression has been banging at my door for 7 days. Nothing is helping. I want to be alone in a dark room and cry for awhile. I’ve tried #Meditation , my husband bought me some flowers, I’ve talked to my #emdr therapist. Am I alone or is anyone else going through something similar?

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