the way EMDR works is you pick a memory or incident to focus on and choose two phrases to go along with it. one phrase is what you feel when you think about the memory and the second phrase is what you would like to think about that memory. then, and this part can vary depending on who is administering it, you listen to alternating tones via headphones and hold pulsing mechanisms in each hand. the alternating tones and pulses draw your focus to the feelings and every few minutes the therapist brings you back by turning off the tones and pulses...it isn't hypnosis, but it is a way of reorganizing thoughts and feelings.
since my time inpatient, meaning, since i actively sought recovery for my eating disorder, i have examined the possibility that i might have been abused in some way as a child. specifically some sort of sexual abuse, it was brought to my attention early on in treatment that people with eating disorders tend to have sexual trauma in their pasts, so i didn't cross it out as a possibility. but through family therapy and deep exploration i had felt quite certain that i had not suffered from such a trauma. beginning this EMDR treatment reopened the possibility that i might come across a trauma in my past and i thought i had prepared for that...but my preparation was more of an expectation, i realize now that i was waiting for this big awful event to pop up throughout these sessions. what i did see was something different. not a sexual or even physical trauma, but rather a realization of myself via my emotions.
i was raised with love and anger being opposites and imposable to hold at the same time. i was raised by an amazing woman, my mother, whom in all of her faults raised a daughter who appreciates and takes much pride in being her daughter. these faults however, included using me as an instant teddybear, meaning, i was there to take away her pain by being her baby, her baby who loves her most. i did not really have a lot of experience feeling things on my own, i would do something, something natural and good something all kids do at some point in their childhood and feel such extreme guilt for it, that i would hold the secret for weeks only to explode later on in tears...my mom being there to wipe my tears away, there to fix me, there to make me feel better and in turn make her feel needed and loved. this later turned into my being the "identified patient" in the family. i was the baby who was always sick in some way, the school nurse knew my phone number by heart, i would just make things up and convince myself to feel sick so that i would be sent home and taken care of by my mom. i knew that she loved me no matter what, but also knew that i felt most safe when i was being taken care of by my mother.
the memory i have been focusing on these past three weeks is or i should say, was, a disturbing one for me to hold. when i first recalled the memory i remembered being about 8 years old and having watched part of a movie where a woman was pregnant and self-induced an abortion when she was like 8 months along because she was supposed to give birth to evil...she beat her stomach with a baseball bat until black specs of evil poured out of her sex...watching this at that age would be disturbing enough, however, i then continued to go into my room, close the door, stick a black baloon under my shirt and reenact the scene...
***can you imagine an 8 year old girl acting out something so violent? this is why i was so disturbed, especially because in my memory, no one else saw me, therefore no one asked me if i was ok***
over the past three weeks i have gone back to that day, and each time saw a little bit more of the picture as well as different portrayls of it. the last being of me actually as a 12 year old, tears streaming down my face, my pain being so visible from the outside, my emotions completely out there for everyone to see, reenacting this violent scene.
my first phrase was "i am bad" this is what i thought when i went back to that memory, that i am a bad person who doesn't deserve love. my second phrase was "i am good" and that is what i wanted to think about myself.
it is my belief that whether this occurred when i was 8 or when i was 12 years old...that i didn't cry, that i wasn't visibly angry or upset, but that i was just acting out yet another dramatic scene that involved a difficult birth (yes, "yet another" implying that as a little girl when i played house, i was always mommy to very sick or premature babies...i had to be there to take care of them). the memory i saw, the one of me being so upset, crying and yelling, feeling alone and hurting, was what i wish i had been able to feel throughout my childhood. all of these backed up emotions...the ones that i later literally attempted to vomit out...appeared via this one memory. and when my last session was all over,i felt a great sense of relief.
in three weeks, i haven't been able to write, and now, i have sat down to process what i have just experienced. i am anxious about how all of this will affect me as a parent. when i was little i always pretended that my dolls were seriously ill, and i would take care of them...while i was growing up, although i knew my mom loved me no matter what...i was always sick in some way...ultimately making myself so ill that i was placed in a hospital, and my mom was there to take care of me. does this mean that i will somehow convince my future kids that they need to be sick to be taken care of? i am so afraid of that. i always thought of myself as a person who was born to be a mother, and now, i worry that i thought that because i am so good at taking care of others...that i saw being a mother as taking care of and fixing another person. i want to be a mom so badly...not right now...but someday in the relatively near future and when i reread this post it makes me hesitant because the last thing i would ever want to do is raise a child not to feel and to only exist to fuel my own needs to take care of another. does my stating this fear out loud negate the possibility of this happening? i am aware of the fear, of my own experiences, of my own feelings...i hope it does negate it...because i will be a good mom.
micah started taking testosterone this past friday, i helped him prepare for his first self-injection (first dose period) and as per his wishes left the room while he administered the shot. i held him afterward, he held me, i told him my fears and he chased them away with his reassuring words.
i had prepared myself to be the one to give him the injection, and my gut reaction to his wanting to give it to himself was jealousy...as strange as that might sound, my fear for the past couple of months and continuing 'til that night was that he would care more about the t than me, that his focus was on his transition (as it should be) and that there would be no room for me. when i spoke these words he held me closer and said that i was his biggest support, that he would never stop wanting me, and that there would always be room for me in his life...all these things i already knew.
so in thinking back on that night, and the words exchanged between the sheets and with the lights off, i wonder if what i was really jealous of was his ability to put himself first rather than of the t...and then again whether i was jealous or envious...i think the former in the first one and the later in the second.
5 years ago i entered a treatment facility for people with eating disorders. it was my choice, my on decision and the first step i had taken in putting myself and my health before anything else. for the next few months and then years i took that day in my life as a jumping off point to living a healthier and more present life. and somewhere between then and about 2 years ago that all disappeared. my life, my health was no longer at the front, other people had filled that space and the growth i had gained since entering treatment waned. as expressed in past entries, this idea of taking care of myself before others is one i have always struggled with, and one i have always wanted to understand better. being in the next room while the love of my life was truly taking steps towards putting his own wellbeing, his own health, before the other things out in the atmosphere, i found myself struggling with being proud of him and envious of his ability to do just that. but then again, why does there have to be a conflict between the two? i am envious of his ability to take his life into his own hands and was the proudest of him that i think i have ever been as i waited to be called in from the next room.
micah, i am so proud of you, and learn from you on a daily basis.
i feel relatively stunted on prozac, numb, and have a much harder time crying than i do when i am not taking it, and as much as i feel like a wreck when i find myself crying non-stop, it is really nice to be able to cry. i have been taking anti-depressants since the age of 14, all of my adult life and the majority of my teenage years, i think part of me wants to know who i am without the meds, and another part of me sees medicine as a clear indication that there is something wrong with me...and i don't like to think that there is, i have been on this "i am healthy" kick since i went into treatment for my eating disorder, and prozac and my therapist are the only things that remain from those darker days.
i want a clean break, i want to be completely healthy--but i am beginning to realize that in order to keep my health, anti-depressants are key, i am truly uncontrollably sad when i am not taking them, and that isn't fair to me, and is not fair to the people in my life. i shouldn't put the people i love in the position of cleaning up after my spontaneous decisions.
i have a handful of memories in my possession, meaning i can barely remember a thing before my freshmen year of high school. and the other members of my group found this striking. i am reconsidering trying EMDR to try and reach some of those things that i have conveniently (or rather inconveniently) hidden away in my psyche. but the idea of remembering things that may or may not be traumatic is scary, and although i feel like i am ready to take this step, i also feel like it might be too much to handle.
i am also concerned because in my life i have almost always been one in some sort of codependent relationship. the first, and longest lasting, being with my mom and the later relationships being with various ex boy/girlfriends. the thing about codependency is although it is really unhealthy, they become a pattern for a reason--i have found a lot easier to take care of other people's problems than to take care of myself, and was nice in a way to know that i was being taken care of by another person. this time around, my relationship with micah, is not codependent, it is the healthiest relationship i have ever had, and it is the one that i see lasting and never ending--but it also means that while he is there to support me, and help me to process things, that the full load of taking care of me is left up to me. funny how that scares me, actually having to take care of myself, but alas...it does. and i am grateful to have him there to cheer me one, or lay silently next to me listen to my garbled words expressed through tears of emotions i have never actually allowed myself to feel for 23 years.
i used to go months and months and months without crying, and recently, within the past month or two, i feel like all i have been doing is crying...and not necessarily in bad or hurtful situations, the tears sometimes just come for seemingly no reason at all. for six years i spent my life eating my emotions and then forcing myself to throw them back up, it was the only way i knew to release those emotions...and now 4 years after giving that life up, i am faced with actually feeling...
i am freaked out by my credit card bill, and about having to take out loans from my parents, and about how i still do not know how much the government will provide me with for financial aid this fall--basically i am freaked out about money and how it is that i am going to support myself.
sometimes i wish i could just fall back into the daily routines of childhood--although, recently i have tried to reevaluate my childhood to really see if my idealistic visions of what it means to be a child, actually hold up...and so far my own childhood has come up short.
in all actuality, my childhood was not all flowers and magic, but rather flowers and magic mixed with a whole lot of codependency issues and emotional baggage. to grow up in the wake of an overachieving older sister, an absent though loving alcoholic father, and a codependent mother who associated anger with not loving, allowed for my growing up with distorted ideas about love, family, and normalcy...ideas i continue to reevaluate and pick apart.
and so now, i find myself wanting to be a little kid, completely protected from the world and completely taken care of--though these were not necessarily my own childhood experiences.
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