coastaldefeat

I’ve been in a full-time group trauma recovery program for about 9 weeks now. My thinking feels different than it did when I started the program. Unfortunately, the spot that I’m in is a messy one. Old patterns are fighting new patterns, different parts of myself are emerging and retreating, and I can’t tell which way is up inside of my head.

This is still a big improvement for me. As I see it now, I basically created a copy of my abusive mom inside of my mind during childhood, and I’ve allowed that copy to quietly continue the abuse against me for many years. It sounds silly to me when I write it out. There are fancier words for this phenomenon from different psychology traditions. Mirroring. Managers. Schemas. Sometimes, learning those words ties my experiences into a nice bow. Other times, they just add a new ribbon for me to figure out what to do with. In any case, this new chaotic nonsense in my mind is still better than the soul-sucking rigidity that was in there before.

I’m leaving the trauma program soon to return to work. I didn’t get as much out of the program as I hoped I would, but I got more out of it than I expected to. I’m feeling really disappointed that this program is so limited in its tools, but I want to take some time to remember the unexpected gains I’ve made over the past weeks:

• I realized that most of the therapists that I’ve had have been deeply ineffective. Probably because they were overworked university therapists. But also because none of them specialized in trauma, especially not complex trauma from emotional abuse. But they should have been able to recognize that I needed a specialist and recommended that I get one later in life.
• I remembered that my mom kicked down my bedroom door one time. I don’t think I’ve thought about that memory since high school. I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve been remembering.
• I’ve finally started reading books about abuse. I used to feel like reading those books would mean that I was slandering my parents, labeling them as abusers. I thought that those books would make me egotistical and selfish and give me a “victim mentality.” Those books have probably been the most helpful resources to me over the past few weeks.
• I finally realized that I was having a difficult time at work because I was experiencing flashbacks. My job duties right now feel similar to my duties in the most traumatic period of my life. I have tried to understand those difficulties as ADHD, as anxiety, as procrastination, and mostly as just being a bad person. None of those explanations helped me.
• Along with that, I got the courage to request to switch roles at my job. My new role would be less similar to my traumatic experiences and allow me to develop new skillsets that I’m more interested in.
• I’ve been bike commuting to my program. It’s about 6 miles each way. I haven’t biked in over 10 years, so the first few weeks were tough. I’ve never had quads this big in my whole life! My partner and I share one car, so being able to bike places has also made things logistically easier.
• I haven’t had nightmares in weeks, which has been huge. I’ve been able to stop taking one of my sleep medications and I might be able to start tapering off my other sleep medication sometime.
• I don’t think I’m evil. I used to feel evil all the time. It was one of my “core beliefs” as a therapist would call it. Now I feel more like a flawed person than a demon.

It feels so self-indulgent to post about my trauma recovery. I guess it is, but making a blog post on my own blog is probably an acceptable way to indulge. Thanks for reading this 🙂