Today’s session went much better. Not because I’m feeling better, but because the therapist and I were able to connect better. I had several things I wanted to try to bring into the session and I was (somehow) able to get to almost all of them.
The first thing was that I wanted to touch on how awful I’d been feeling. I get the impression that she thinks this is a state I’m familiar with. It’s not. Yes, as a collective self, we have spent most of our life in some form of crisis. But as me, Andi, I have not really been in crisis much at all. Most of the challenging experiences I’ve had have stemmed from crises happening internally that I did not even have much access to. It has only been recently that I’ve been able to understand what was happening at all. And then most recently, things have shifted (yet again) so that now I DO feel the emotions that come with having the kind of traumatic history we have.
I explained to her that my memories have always either just appeared in my brain or have been “shown” to me in a way similar to watching a television program. I am able to know what is happening because I can see it or because I am given factual information. But I don’t feel the memory anymore than I would watching a TV screen.
Until lately, when my memories began revealing themselves in a new, terrifying way. Now, rather than just watching as a third party observer, I experience the memories as though they happened to me. A true flashback.
She said, “So that is probably retraumatizing to you.”
Yes. But no. It IS retraumatizing…except, I wasn’t (consciously) around for the original trauma. So in a me-as-Andi way, it is simply traumatizing. It is an original trauma being revealed to me, as happening to me, for the first time ever. And that fucking sucks.
Things I Learned In Therapy 