Its never easy seeing a new therapist and I am grateful that Kat left me with a back up because I really have struggled over the past week with my PTSD and intense anxiety. When I got there today Marion got me to slow down and focus on the feelings in my body, I felt like my gut was being twisted inside out as I told her of the injuries I sustained. I often think people will think I am making too much of it but I had a second accident in 2005 which was a repetition of the first, and since then accumulated trauma to my jaw and teeth has mean several extractions and I now wear a denture that makes my teeth and jaw ache at times with the pain. I often take it out and put it on the side of my during therapy because in therapy my body pain becomes more intense because the therapist is able to acknowledge it, I noticed it becomes extra intense in session then the symptoms die down after I leave and I have a lot more energy and feel far happier on the drive home.
Today we focused on how scared I feel of getting close to others and how much distance I often put between myself and Scott. It’s looking like Scott will be off his deployment within the next few weeks and I am apprehensive but also excited. I feel after 17 months of texting at least 20 or more times and week and all we have gone through over the money situation that we know each other’s hearts pretty well. We know how we both react under pressure.
It came up today in session how many struggles I had with past therapists and Marion made sense of why I would have been triggered the times I was. In one somatic session when the therapist got too close I felt overpowered and I screamed and called her a name, she told me I could leave the therapy session and was not able to contain me. I had this happen a couple of other times with two other therapists. Marion said its only natural I would react that way with the level of trauma I have endured.
I am better able now to share my anxieties and express how I am feeling. I know I never learned emotional regulation in my home and that Mum was highly reactive, scary and abusive at times, Dad never stepped up to protect me and so I don’t know how to protect myself at times. I also struggle to know how to nurture myself and de-escalate and deal with feelings of powerlessness when others are passive aggressively abusive.
I shared today that I felt angry at Kat leaving me for a whole month around the anniversary of my accident, but at the same time I told Marion I know the anger is at my family for not being there especially when I had the second accident and was all alone on the other side of the world. My sister blamed me for going away and bringing it on myself when it was on the back of her asking my Mum to choose between the two of us who was her favourite, and some other things. I was always made to feel I was bad if I tried to express genuine feelings of protest.
Anyway I have to let it go now, I was listening to more of Stan Grant’s writing on CD today about how keeping up bitterness and seeking retribution only carries wounds onwards, what is needed to heal is recognition that we truly did get a raw deal through no fault of our own (even though abusers try to make it feel we brought it on ourselves) and then vowing not to accept such unkind treatment without a healthy clean protest. That can take some time to come because when we first let our repressed anger out it is very intense and explosive. Victims end up looking like perpetrators when they may react to things that are triggers and some empathy needs to be shown, even though for the victims amongst us we need to learn ways to react over time in healthier ways to triggers. As my therapist always says anger is a cry of the true self.
That said we live in an imperfect world and not everyone will get the depth of our suffering or understand how we react. But to heal we do need validation because in the early stages unleashing repressed anger brings with it great feelings of panic and anxiety. I will link to my post in which James Masterton talks of why this is so when dealing with abandonment depression in a little while but I want to post this now just to get it ‘off my chest’.
Emerging From The Dark Night 