My Person

This is a long one, hang in there.

In response to my abreactive work on Thursday I had not only a cathartic release of a traumatic event but I also gained something so huge I may have difficulty trying to explain it. So I ask for some patience as I try to work this out through my blog.

I feel as though my entire life I have been searching for that one person to love me in a way that I haven’t ever been loved. I have been looking for a parent fill-in or something and it led me to way too many relationships with older females that ended in abandonment or boundary violations. When I was a child this was acted out usually with teachers. I would attach to one in a very desperate way and my entire little life would revolve around their every movement in my life. I would study their physical characteristics and body movements and try to emulate them. I would change everything possible about me to become like them so that they would want me. This ended in so many abandonment’s and scars that still hurt me today. As I got older I found that real people in my life would continue this pattern and I latched on to unreal people like TV stars or musicians. I would imagine that they would one-day rescue me or that one of their songs was meant for me. I gave my love to them psychically and received nothing in return but it was safe for me.

Once I was a teenager I needed more, and I turned my attachments back to teachers and then therapists which each time ended in them feeling smothered. None of them were healthy enough or educated enough to understand what was going on with me. They grew to resent my nurturance seeking and inevitably referred me or dismissed me elsewhere.  I have always felt that if I could find just one person that could love me the way I needed that I would survive and this was my survival strategy. Unfortunately my idea of getting people to love me was very distorted and extremely hurtful to me. I had no idea what it meant to be myself and I thought I had to be in crisis to receive attention and love. I imagined that if I was sick or small or hurt that I would be vulnerable enough for someone to care. People perceived this as manipulation and they became angry and resentful of me. Honestly, from my experience how could one expect much else from my interpretation of how relationships work? People ‘cared’ for me when I was sick or hurt like in hospitals or Drs offices. I had received more nurturance and care the month or two I was in children’s hospital more than anywhere else. Something had to be wrong to be loved.

I hit a turning point when I was 17 years old. I had been working with a therapist for about four years when she determined that I was too sick for anyone to care for. She said my diagnosis was incurable and she couldn’t work with me anymore. I fell to pieces and raged for a long time. I believed that my ‘illness’ meant no one could love me and that was the problem from the beginning. I resolved to stop trying, to stop looking for anyone to nurture me and I turned to punishing myself in ways that are unimaginable to me now. I lost my mind in some ways, living without a purpose or without care. Time began to turn into a long and knotted string with nothing of importance really existing. I threw myself into dangerous situations to try and trigger emotion only to find I was terribly numb, but I thought it meant I wasn’t human.

After a strange turn of random events I found myself sitting in a therapists office. She was young, had a lot of energy and took a strong and strange liking to me. I despised her for it and internally my world collapsed, in turn the mess my life had become had turned to ruins. She admitted me to a psych hospital, which is where I met Therapist. The admitting therapist terminated with me when she was accepted into the FBI. Here I was, a frayed blonde girl that acted half the time like I got it, and the next like a spoiled and defiant child. I had no clue what was going on around me and all I could do was try to keep just my nose above water. I think at this point I was so depressed that I given up on the idea that I as loveable and had deduced that I was at best, tolerable. I don’t remember a lot from the earlier years of my therapy with Therapist. What I remember is the fighting that we did on a weekly basis, the nights I spent feeling tortured on whether or not to call her because I was on a ledge and my general ambivalence about the relationship.

I’m not sure how Therapist saw me when we began and even for a year or two into the relationship. I should ask her. When we began our work together I was only willing to admit to any provider that I was working with that my father had abused me and my cousins had too. I refused to admit the horrors that I was experiencing still with my mother because it was so dangerous to my psyche to disrupt my dissociation. Therapist stayed with me, plugging away with a lot of defiance from me and she went above and beyond to find words that I would connect to. Eventually I found safety in her presence and I opened up enough to tell her about my mom. I don’t remember that day at all and I wish that I did. I doubt it was me that confided in her but all the same…it was a huge step. Our relationship progressed after that slowly and I think when I moved down here to Georgia it reached a point in which we established a rhythm and I began to really internalize her caring.

So when Therapist did the abreactive work with that young part the other day I realized I found ‘my person’. The person I have been searching for my entire life, the person I so desperately needed to help me heal and the ‘parent’ I have wanted so badly. I was relaxed from the amount of emotion spewed forth from the work Chase (the part of me talking in therapy) had done, but when I came forward Therapist was close to me and still holding my hand. I should have freaked out but instead I just felt loved and cared for. I saw her eyes for real for the first time and I didn’t realize they were that brown. I actually saw her whole face and while it seemed foreign it was still safely familiar to me. Maybe it wasn’t that I just saw her, I think I not only saw her but I was connected to what that meant. I have no idea what her reaction really was and I hope it was positive and that it did not freak her out too much. I sat there and tolerated it while at the same time experiencing the sadness that I will be leaving her soon.

I will have to say that this is the most sadness I have ever felt and I am HAPPY to be feeling it. I am so glad I am connected to the grief that I am choosing to lose a person that I passionately care for. The realness lets me know I am alive, that I am human and I am so glad to be a part of her life and to have her a part of mine. I am overjoyed that I found ‘my person’ and even though this is ending she will always be ‘my person’ and there will not be a true end to our connection.

Abreaction

(written Friday)

“Abreaction therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which abreaction is used to assist a patient suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder by re-living the experience in a controlled environment.”

And oh my gosh is it ever cathartic! Yesterday I did my first ever abreaction work and honestly I can say that I have never experienced something quite so intense but beautiful in it’s ability to heal. Afterwards I felt a sense of relief that I don’t think I have ever felt, my arms and legs felt loose and my mind was in a state of calm and comfort. Therapist was more amazing than I could have imagined, she was right there with me and held my hand.

Did you hear that ladies and gentlemen? Therapist held my hand!!!!! She held it and it was ok and I am ok. This was a HUGE thing as Therapist and I have the smallest amount of physical contact I can imagine. The most has only ever been a finger touch. (except for when she has gone hands on but it’s not like I really remember that) She held it and rub my hand with her thumb and gently spoke to me and I felt so safe and rescued. Not rescued in a pathological way but for once I felt her there in the depths with me, holding me in my fear and hurt and loved me while I struggled.

I am so thankful that I was able to do my first piece with her. She earned that space in my life and it will always be hers. It is tough experiencing something so healing and knowing that I will be leaving her soon. At the same time, she holds and will always hold the most important part of my journey. More on that another time.

I don’t know what I wanted to accomplish with this post except to encourage everyone. This work can hurt like hell but the moment I had yesterday proved it is ALL worth it.

Journal Blurb

Taken from my hospital journal:

As I sit in the mental hospital proudly wearing the colorful beaded bracelets during Occupational Therapy, I know I’ve hit a new low. All these adult women are perfectly capable of detailed painting, decorating and craft making yet we are detained in the bead-making world. Hundreds of pieces of annoyingness chained to our wrists, knocking around the tables and they expect we are doing well as they peer at this scene. The beading adults must be doing well. Fuck. They’ve made more than one bead bracelet, this must be indicative of discharge.

Stuck

“That is the problem of silence:
one cannot test one’s ideas.
Because they are not ideas, they are the truth.”
Louise Gluck, The Seven Ages

That is the whole reason aspects of myself do not appreciate therapy, going to therapy or participate in therapy. As long as they do not speak, then their truth exists because it cannot be challenged. If mouths stay shut then they can continue to believe in the ideas my mother has fed me and for them, those ideas are reality…they are truth. So, I stay stuck.

Body Memories - Separate Entity

I have the blog “Discussing Dissociation” by Kathy Broady in my Google Reader, which I regularly check out. And let me just put it out there how I have struggled with this blog. The information on the site can be very helpful and thought provoking and I applaud her for putting so much time and effort into the forums and consultant services on other websites. If more people in the trauma therapy field contributed even a quarter of what she does the therapeutic community would be so much better off. That being said it also gives me a funny feeling that is most likely due to the many boundary violations I have gone through with therapists before Therapist. I often wonder why someone that spends their career on this issue continues to talk and write about it so much outside of work…on a regular basis. I wonder what it would feel like if Therapist had a blog out there talking to tons of people about these kinds of issues. I also wonder how dangerous some of the topics could be for those out there not in therapy and going through PTSD and DID. Some of the content is extremely overwhelming and even though the topics are extremely relevant to my own therapy I can’t step into it yet. Even with the disclaimers and such, I am sure there are people that stumble on to the blog and use it as therapy replacement.

I mean no disrespect for Kathy Broady, she has done and continues to do amazing things for survivors. She has a voice that most of us do not often use and the amount of education she gives to under-trained trauma therapists is invaluable. For me, I take what I find I can handle and tolerate and the rest I leave for a later time.

I totally digressed from the main point of this entry. (not unusual right?) In her most recent post, Ms. Broady talks about body memories and how cells store this traumatic material and as a part of decreasing dissociation, our bodies remember things. Some people argue the existence of cell memory and such; I will bow out of that discussion and simply say that regardless of the scientific validity of cell memory, I experience body memories and they are very difficult to handle and it can all be chalked up to the BASK model as well. Ms. Broady poses the following questions which I am choosing to explore here on my blog because unfortunately, Therapist and I have some serious conversations coming up this week and they don’t really allow for us to explore this topic.


"What is your body saying to you?

What does your body remember that your mind refuses to think about?

What does your body remember that you don’t want to hear?

What will it take for you to listen to your body?  Your body was there for the abuse too.  Maybe it knows more than you think it does."

It seems like all my body ever does is tell me things I don’t really want to think about, listen to or explore. Every time it expresses a need, impulse, feeling or even just me being aware of it feels like a traumatic offense. I am well aware that the ignorance I have of my body is a direct re-enactment of my childhood and that dealing with it can be a double-edged sword.

It all boils down to the relationship that I have with my body. As a child, because of the abuse that I was going through I had separated my body from me and categorized it as something that betrayed me. It seemed like it’s own entity, much like my mother. I felt as though my body was cooperating with her instead of me and I grew to hate it. I wanted to kill it when I felt hunger pains and demolish it when I needed to use the bathroom. It continued to express needs that would force me into submission with my mother. When my body reacted to my mothers touch I wanted to torture it because HOW could it do that to me? It was allowing my mother to win!

Nothing makes me more hostile than battling with my body. As a child this was much more complicated, but now as an adult this battle continues with my eating disorder. I want to control it the way I needed to as a child. I become livid at times when my body is hungry and fight with it constantly. Sometimes I punish my body with too much food or alcohol to make it suffer, and other times I will use diuretics and diet pills to force it to cooperate. My weight swings wildly up and down the scale depending on which battle I am going through. And honestly, nothing feels more victorious than winning one of those battles. As I have gone through treatment with my eating disorder the thoughts I have about acting out become confused and unsettled. I can go for longer periods of ED abstinence because I know the science behind the treatment. It is logical. However, this creates a great deal of shame and embarrassment for me because I am not really going through an ED, it’s not about the food and controlling my external world. It’s not about perfection or loosing weight.

So what is it about?  It’s about my mother and the control she had over my body. It’s about having needs and wanting to deny them. It’s about being human and desperately not wanting to be human. It’s about being small and vulnerable so I can force myself into a harmful situation to get what I deserve. It’s about not looking the way my mother enjoys me looking. And in the end, it’s about denying my existence the same way my mother did.

When my body tells me I am hungry it is telling me that I am alive and I need something to stay alive. Last time I checked, I was not the biggest fan of surviving and this is a painful reminder my body is still there. It’s humiliating! My body will remember what it felt like to starve and be desperate for any sustenance, forcing me to do crazy things to get a small portion of something, which is degrading. My mother has turned every single part of being a human being into something perverse. Needing to use the bathroom required some sort of sexual favor, sweating meant I was turned on, being hungry meant I needed something from her, being thirsty made her angry because I must be screwing someone else, sleeping made me vulnerable, being happy was a threat to her. Just existing made me her slave. My mother even took away my inhalers as a child because when I would struggle to breathe it made me too weak to fight her and I would allow anything to breathe again.

My body remembers all of this stuff. As an adult each time my body expresses something I feel anxiety, some times worse than other times but each time there is a small reminder. I suppress this stuff on a regular basis and refuse to cope with it. I don’t want to talk about it or remember it. So some times it seems that my body becomes mission oriented and overflows with memories. The body aches or awkward feelings become persistent until I have a full fledged flashback and do everything in my power to suppress it even more. In my head I try to rationalize this cycle, I tell myself that obviously it was so horrific then that I didn’t want to deal with it which is why I have DID. Since I have DID then I don’t need to deal with it now. It seems my body has a different opinion, one in which I am very resistant to.

I should probably feel some sort of compassion for my body but at this point I cannot because it is still separate from me. It still exists in my mind on my mothers team and not my own.