I have been sick the last few weeks.  Finally went to the doctor a few days ago and got on an antibiotic, and feel much MUCH better now.  Boo and I are on spring break right now and have a plan to do a little girls’ getaway over the next few days.  I’m very much looking forward to it.  Sadly, Husband is not on break.

I want to try to write about progress in therapy, but it’s so hard to articulate.  I can feel that I am becoming a different person (in a good sense).  I am WAY less reactive.  I am more trusting.  I think I am learning a lot about how to not do this thing I do where I “mind read,” except I am wrong!  I tend to think I know what another person is thinking, or what their motivations are for saying something, when actually, I might be wrong!  Imagine that!  I’m getting MUCH better at recognizing when I do that, and accepting that, hey, I might be misreading this situation entirely.  My default stance, I’m discovering, has been one of defensiveness and not a small amount of paranoia.  Which makes sense in the context of the past, but not so much in the present, when I am for the most part surrounded by people who care about me and mean well.

My world is changing.  It is slow in many ways, but wow, if I look back just a year, I am pretty overwhelmed at how much easier it is, in general, to be inside my head.  Well, “easier” might be the wrong word, because sometimes it feels harder, but it sure is a lot more stable and manageable.  Even when I feel supremely rotten, I have an awareness of the temporary nature of that feeling, and being able to trust that it will pass is helping me stay with it and process it instead of bailing out automatically into numbness or white brain.

And harder to describe is this experience of attachment with my therapist.  I have secure and strong attachments in my life–my husband, close friends–but there are definitely parts of me that have not had that but are sort of slowly, cautiously venturing into that territory with my therapist.  It’s powerful, and scary.  It’s very much a two steps forward, one step back kind of process, and oh my, it is SLOW, but it is happening.

So, what to do?  I do think I want to respond in a polite, mild way.  Thank her for the card, express my hope that she is doing well, say that we are all doing well, and sign off.

Any thoughts on this plan?

I’m not sure she has any agenda beyond letting me know she loves me and thinks about me.  I am content to receive that greeting and toss back a similar one, and hope that it pretty much dies there.

I feel like I should be freaking out about this, but I’m not at all.  I was kind of surprised to see the card, but not shocked.  I figured something would come at some point.  I was mostly surprised by how I didn’t react.  I mean, I didn’t go numb.  I just didn’t experience it as as big of a deal as I expected to experience it as.  I don’t think there’s a flip-out hiding under the surface, either.

Right now I’m super tired and I can barely even see this screen.  I’m getting a cold or something.

The only other thing I want to post is that my therapist is the best in the world, and I have lots more to say about that in another post, I’m sure.  She’s beyond great.

This cannot be my response to overwhelm.  This cannot be my response to being triggered.  Ugh.  I feel like a failure at life.  I have done what I needed to do parenting-wise, but little else, including missing two days of work.  Which is idiotic.  I didn’t have anything really important going on at work–didn’t even have any classes coming–but it’s idiotic to miss work for reasons I don’t even want to go into here.

The trigger for this little meltdown was partly the book I read (Denial by Jessica Stern), partly my therapy session.  As ridiculous as I know this is in my intellectual mind, I am having major issues with the moment when T leaned forward.  I’m not having issues with that actual moment as itself, but about what got triggered by it (i.e., I have no concern about T attacking me or doing anything inappropriate, but whatever my brain got reminded of is really wreaking havoc).  I’m too mortified to write what my brain got reminded of.  Sorry.

Mostly when I shut down, I sleep.  I sleep loads.  If I even think about getting up and doing something, I am overwhelmed with sleepiness.  I bathe, I eat, I might read a little bit or surf the web a little bit, but mostly, I crash out.  If I’m awake, I’m anxious and trying to wipe my brain clear of icky thoughts.  If I’m asleep, I get a break from all of that.

Today I have managed to stay awake most of the day.  Went to the grocery store with Boo and watched a few shows with her.  But I’m not feeling like myself yet.

In sum, this whole thing sucks, and I need to do a better job of managing my life when I feel lousy because this is Not Working.

T said “Wow” three separate times in response to willingness/ability on my part to answer questions without going straight to White Brain mode.  I didn’t notice the difference, but apparently, T did.  It was interesting.  T says that things have changed somewhat significantly recently.  I sort of understand what she means–I can feel that I am more comfortable and calm and trusting–but it’s weird to have her seeing something that I am not completely solid on myself.

At one point, we were starting to stray into some rough territory, and I could feel myself about to freak out, so I said, “We need to stop talking about this now.”  (“We” meaning me and T, not me and some other parts of myself.  I never think of myself as “we.”)  T said, “Wow.”  I asked her via email this morning why she said “wow” to that, and she said it was because I actually acknowledged that I was uncomfortable instead of just switching to “I have no clue what we’re even talking about!” like I guess I usually do.  I didn’t freak out, but my legs froze up for a few minutes and I couldn’t come up with any words, but I wasn’t really freaking.  Just a minor panic.  At that point, T sat forward in her chair, which she does sometimes, and oh boy, that did NOT go over well, so I managed to say, “I need you to not sit forward like that,” which I guess was also a step forward for me.  And then after a few minutes, I could move my legs, and I felt okay.

It’s kind of odd to try to write about this kind of thing.  It’s a basic freeze response, but it’s hard to describe.  And I can’t remember even what exactly we were talking about–I have a general idea, but not anything specific.  I know we were talking about the book I wrote about in my last post, and about why parts of it ended up being triggering (the parts about sexual abuse in the family), but I don’t know what specifically set me off.  I know some people record their therapy sessions, and I’m sure my therapist would be open to this, but the thought terrifies me.  I guess I kind of value the protection that the “fog” of not remembering what freaked me out provides.

I just read a book that is very much about trauma and dissociation:  Denial by Jessica Stern.  The background story is that the author and her sister were raped as teenagers by a home intruder.  The case wasn’t solved at the time.  Twenty-plus years later, the author requested the case file, and this led to a re-opening of the case.  The man (now deceased) who raped her and her sister was likely involved in over 40 other rapes, all with the same MO.  The book is about the author’s journey through learning about the rapist and the case; dealing with some of the aftereffects in her life (dissociation and ptsd); and other family dynamics at play in what happened before and after the rape.

First, I loved the book.  Her descriptions of dissociation were so perfectly aligned with my experiences–she has a White Brain, although she doesn’t call it that.  She feels lost and floaty and nauseous when triggered, and I can totally relate to that.  Anyone who has wondered about my reactions to United States of Tara can read this book and have a much better understanding of what dissociation feels like and looks like for me.  She doesn’t talk about “parts” or DID as such, but she does talk about very different sides that she has.  At one point, a friend talks to her about how different she can be in different situations, and I would definitely use the language of “parts” to describe this, although I could be off base and don’t want to be presumptuous.  I also think there is still a lot in her past that she has yet to tackle, but again, I don’t want to be presumptuous.  The book is an incredibly brave act, and it was a gift to me to read it.  She has some conversations with her father in the book that are absolutely breathtaking in terms of the honesty and vulnerability on both of their parts.  It’s not sappy; it’s real.

Last night, Husband came in when I was in the midst of reading, and I described some of the book to him.  “It makes me heartsick,” he said.  He asked if it was hard for me to read.  “No, it’s not hard at all.  And the author would totally understand why it isn’t hard.”  So much of the book is about the author’s ability to not feel.  She says again and again, “I will feel about that later.”  I don’t intentionally shut off my emotions, but in reading a story like hers, that must be hitting very close to home on some level, I become more of a curious scientist than anything.  I’m relieved to read of someone having a similar reaction to similar experiences.  I’m not reacting to the content of what happened to her (yet) or what happened to me (yet).  I will feel about that later, I guess.

Interestingly, I’m not sure when or if I do feel about things, though, when I do that same thing of shoving something aside in order to be able to process and cope.  I don’t think I, as Myself, ever really do.  Some part of me must, but I don’t know that “I” do.

That’s mostly my response to the book.  There is a whole other level of response going on beneath the surface that I don’t have a complete grip on yet, though.  There are a few details of things she didn’t really explore that keep popping into my head, presumably because they are triggering something in me.  I feel sort of like the objective observer at this point–like, “oh, hmm, part of my brain seems to want to freak out about that,” but I am not really tapped into that emotionally.  Yet.  I have some anxiety about it, I guess.

I might post more about this book, but for now, I guess that’s all I can articulate.

Oh yeah, one other thing that she talks about is feeling like it’s not real, or feeling like she might be making things up.  And she has a police report right there!  She talks about how, if everyone around you denies the reality of something, you first blame yourself for it, and then when that blame become intolerable, start to figure it’s all a lie.  WOW.  That really helped me to read that.  I have read that before, but it just really struck me reading it from someone who has experienced it.

BUT. . . on the bright side. . .

I know that when T (therapist) is talking, I am hearing and absorbing on some level.  And I can feel under the surface now that I mulling over some of what she said.  She also had written me a short email earlier today, in response to something I had written and basically just saying she was looking forward to seeing me and talking about it, and I think that helped me to be receptive, and I will confess that I have read it about 5 times since I got home.  She also had printed out what I had written, and of course I was not in that same space at all and failed miserably at talking about it, but the nice thing about when she does that is that I do get to hear her response, even if I am not absorbing it fully right that minute.  She is fine with me writing her as much as I want, but she is not keen on responding in writing typically because of course she wants therapy to occur in therapy.  I’m pretty content with this set up.

Anyway, I could feel that I was maybe a bit less blank than usual, but it was still very frustrating to be sitting there, knowing that there are things I want to talk about but not having access to them in any real way.  We’ll get there, though.  I really do believe that.

We talked a bit at the end of the session about how I feel about therapy in general, and I said I feel like I trust her more and more as time goes on, and that I feel a lot more stable and comfortable in my own skin.  She said she has noticed a difference, particularly in the last few months, in how comfortable I seem and how willing I am to talk about certain things and how I can stick with certain subjects for longer periods.  She said I’m less wily and slippery (and she was not using either of those terms in a derogatory way; I know what she means, and it’s accurate language for it).  So I guess I’m making progress, even though I feel a bit stuck with this whole White Brain business.

It goes like this:  I have therapy on Tuesdays.  Thanks to my awesome therapist, I can write to her during the week, and this is pretty much what allows me to communicate most meaningfully because when I am actually in the therapy room, I often struggle very hard with White Brain.  Not all the time–some days I can talk like mad and follow the conversation perfectly.  But a lot of the time, it’s like the second I am in that room, my mind goes blank.  I’m not holding back; there is nothing there to talk about.  My therapist will sometimes bring what I’ve written, and that is very helpful because otherwise I would seriously have no clue what I had been thinking about that week or what issues might be pressing.  Once I see what I wrote, I’m all, “Oh yeah!  I forgot about that!”

White Brain can also cause me to feel lost and confused even when I know what we are talking about.  It isn’t unusual for me to suddenly say, “I don’t know what on earth we are talking about.  I mean, I know we are talking about X, but I don’t understand what we’re talking about.”  It’s like I still understand the words, but the meaning gets jumbled in my mind.  It is VERY odd.  I don’t think this ever happens to me in regular life.  I guess I’m not ever at risk of thinking or talking about my trauma in regular life, and it seems clear that White Brain is a protective mechanism to keep me from delving into that stuff.

White Brain rarely messes with what I am writing, though.  For whatever reason, writing is removed enough to be safe.  I am afraid to even look back at all I have written to my therapist–sometimes while I am writing I really shift much more strongly than I ever do in regular life and I get very sad and blurt out information.  More and more, I am able to bring things up in person as well, and to answer questions about what I’ve written and expand on it.  But that safety net of being able to write first is hugely helpful.  I know there are mixed opinions about the appropriateness of writing in therapy, but for someone like me, it has been a giant aid.

Tomorrow is therapy day, and I fully expect to do battle with White Brain.  But maybe I will win a round.  I’m due to win a round, and I have things I would like to talk about.

It was interesting.  I can’t really say I relate much to the character of Tara.  Her parts (“alters”) are very distinct; her switches are somewhat dramatic; she loses time regularly.  None of that really strikes a chord for me.  But there was one scene, where she is riding in a car with her sister and makes a comment about not knowing what is buried under the surface, that did ring true for me and relates to where I am lately in therapy.  So I guess I will try to write a bit about that.

I haven’t read back to the earlier posts in this blog, so I don’t exactly know what I wrote about parts and how I defined them at that time.  I am certain all of that has changed somewhat–it’s a fluid process of discovering who I am.  I don’t think I will ever experience parts as sharply distinct entities, at least not in the way that someone like Tara does.  I know that with my old therapist, there was a push on her part to give them some sort of names to identify them, but ultimately, I have really resisted that.  I will refer to the “sad one” or the “angry one” (which, to clarify, is different from when I feel sad or angry as myself–it’s a different thing, which I am going to possibly attempt to explain here).  But I don’t like using names.  It just strikes me as silly or something because I never have used names.  Although it does make it easier to converse about them, I suppose, it really doesn’t make any difference for me internally.

That said, there are distinct parts (or states of being, if you want to use that phrase instead) that is a very different experience from what I consider “myself.”  And it is starting to really freak me out.  I think that, to some extent, I have really dug my heels in for a long time in terms of denying the reality of whatever happened to me to make me the way I am.  Even though I know deep down that it is real, it is also somewhat incomprehensible.

So, in therapy last week, for example, at one point I (or my mouth!) made a very confident statement about my mother having been abusive.  There was no doubt, and if anything, there was irritation at the very idea of there being any doubt.  Sort of a “how obvious can it be??” type of tone.  And I was aware of the statement being made, of course, and it was my mouth making it, but holy crap, it was not “me” saying that.  I don’t have that level of confidence about it!  I don’t even really know what the hell is going on!  My therapist says that this is DID–that it’s not as extreme for me as a person losing time, but that it’s the same essential thing.  Another part is making the statement, and has the knowledge to back it up (????) and of course it doesn’t feel “true” to me in the same way because that knowledge isn’t mine.  And I have to supposedly ask the part to give me the knowledge.  Which sounds incredibly hokey to me!  And scary as well.

I do know these things:

-I am not psychotic or prone to delusions.

-I am not consciously making stuff up or acting.  When stuff like that comes flying out of my mouth, it just comes out, and I sure as hell am not crafting it or anticipating it.

-I can sometimes feel a shift or switch.  I can’t make it happen (or stop it from happening, I guess).

-I am terrified of what is in my brain that I do not know is there.  I am terrified of whatever has made me this way.

It’s not that I am completely in the dark, and I am not expecting some giant flood of repressed memories to come welling up.  I have memories of things.  But, and I’m not sure how to articulate this, those memories don’t really belong to Me, and they sort of exist for me only peripherally and without any emotion around them.  Except when I switch to a part, at which point I definitely feel sad or angry or whatever, but that is something I am writing about now with the same sort of feeling I would have if writing about a stranger’s emotions.  It’s frustrating and kind of frightening.  My grasp is slippery at best.

Times like these, I wish Husband were the kind of reader I am (get it, read it fast).  He likes to read, but it takes him ages to read a book.  I wish I could get him to read it in a few days because I want so desperately to talk to him about this book!  About how it made me reflect on marriage in general, and ours specifically.  How it made me grateful to him for all he has done for me, particularly his patience over the last several years as I unpack and deal with my psychological baggage.  It hasn’t been easy for him, I know, and he has really been a rock through it all.

When I started this space, I was in something of a crisis, and the space gave me a place to vent and pour out all my angst.

I am in a very different space now.  I have an amazing therapist, and I suspect that’s a big part of it.  I would say it’s extremely rare for me to go more than a day or two feeling overwhelmed or anxious.  I have bad days, of course, and I have moments where I feel like, “oh god, I’m drowning again,” but the moment passes, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I’m not drowning.  It’s almost like going through the motions of an activity that no longer feels as meaningful, if that makes sense.   I don’t have any real inclination or urges to self-injure, and haven’t for so long, I honestly think that particular beast has been beaten.  The thought may cross my mind, but not in any serious way.  Interestingly, the solution to that seems to have been a contract with my therapist–not to not do it, but to talk to her first.  And I have never wanted to break that agreement, because promises matter to me, and also haven’t ever called to talk to her.  Sometimes I might feel briefly pissed off about having made that agreement, but of course I recognize that really, the agreement is with myself.  At this point, it isn’t about the contract with her; it’s about being more patient with myself and also about not trying to escape in an unhealthy way.

I still have a long way to go in terms of getting to a place where I can speak about my past (I still avoid almost any discussion of actual events like the plague, even in therapy), but from what I’ve read about trauma processing, the first step is to get good and stable and learn ways to cope with strong emotions.  I suppose I’ve been slow getting here, but I think I finally have a grip on what that means and how it works.  Maybe there is more drama in my future (who am I kidding? of course there is!), but I really believe I will never return to the place of desperation I was in a few years ago.

This summer, I started doing reading and research on brain stuff, particularly related to trauma, and that was fascinating.  I still have a lot of things in my “to read” pile related to that topic.  I might possibly use this space to sort out some of that information.

One thing that I see being increasingly complicated is watching my daughter grow up.  She is morphing from a kid to an pre-adolescent, and it’s beautiful and sometimes frightening.  She is attractive, very at home in her body, and apparently a bit of a flirt with her classmates.  She walks with this confident air about her.  She’s interested in fashion; spends increasing amounts of time in front of the mirror every morning, combing hair and choosing jewelry and whatnot.  It’s so alien to me!  But one fun aspect of this is that she is influencing me in a positive way.  This summer, she begged me to buy a “girl shirt” (I was living in khaki pants and t-shirts pretty much all the time).  It ended up turning into me buying a fair amount of clothing that is more feminine than anything I’ve ever worn, and I actually LIKE it.  It’s like I am growing up as well in that sense.  Not that femininity is equal to adulthood, but just that it’s progress for me to feel comfortable wearing something that is feminine and that I consider “pretty.”  Linking myself to anything “pretty” required a bit of a leap of faith.  I felt like I would look like an idiot.  (I hope I am making sense and not being offensive or shallow here.  When you spend your whole life trying to NOT look like a girl, it can be fun to finally feel safe about being a tiny little bit girly.)

Boo growing up also means a lot of talks about sexuality, but so far, that hasn’t been triggering at all.  She is very curious and full of questions, and she seems to have a healthy attitude about the whole thing.  She did drill me repeatedly about why we don’t have contact with my mother and stepfather, and my therapist ended up advising me to give her a basic answer (that there was sexual abuse, but no details, obviously).  It was an intense conversation, and she cried and had some hard questions, but I think it was the right thing.  She has brought it up randomly here and there since then (this was a few months ago), and she is clearly still processing it, but I think not knowing anything was causing her imagination to run wild and her anxiety to be higher than it needed to be.  She already knew about the concept of sexual abuse, but was stunned that people could do that to their own kids.

It was oddly comforting when a day or two later, she still referred to me as the Meanest Mom in the Entire World.  (Sometimes I’m the Best Mom in the Entire World, thankfully.)  One of my greatest concerns was that knowing would possibly make her feel like she needed to protect me or tiptoe around me.  Clearly not!  (She is a sweet and empathetic girl, I should say, and she has said a number of times that it must have been scary and lonely for me, so don’t think she’s insensitive on the whole.)

Am going to close now because Husband is home and I’d like to chat with him before I crash!