Healing From Torture

[PTSD sufferer]

Ended up talking more about specific memories in T this week. Hard and seem to be disappearing a lot more since. My T wants me to do more writing of the memories that are re-surfacing after our chat. He is being very supportive and I feel more comfortable to talk about specifics now, although not easy, and I am hiding my note book from my hubby as some things he really doesn't need to know. Feeling a bit like I am back in fragmented clips mode and stagnation around them...just want it all out or nothing out really. But know that's nit how thus works.

Really hope you are making some progress with your T Hashi? Thinking of you xxoo

 

[Hashi]

I just wanted to thank everyone for your kind thoughts. I wanted to respond sooner but I've been overwhelmed by my reactions to this.

Because I do so much on safety and coping, both me and my T have been taken aback by how destabilising it's been. Suddenly, this seems to be at a level where the things I do are no longer anything like enough. Neither of us dealt very well with the fallout at first, but we've worked on it and learnt from it and have more of a plan now. Part of that is to take some time out from working on the trauma, to focus on resources and also on coping with practical life. I've just been given notice of redundancy and my job will finish in a couple of months, which I'm anxious, angry and upset about.

I've been having a raw time with my beliefs. These aren't religious, or even spiritual really, but metaphysical - that there are natural laws which include our ability to heal. I still don't doubt this, but haven't been able to stop questioning why it has to happen at all. Of course I get no answer, and my rage at the way things are has been destroying what fragile equilibrium I had.

Having been working on what actually happened, the reactions have been intense. I'm still getting the feeling of my mind being reordered. Often I wake up feeling that my brain has been in the middle of a battle. I've been choking and coughing, and immediately before one T session my mouth went completely numb (talk about symbolic). I've been getting all sorts of pain, body memories and energetic reactions. I've just had a week off work and spent most of it in bed, crying and relieved that I didn't have to try to move.

My poor T! She's walking a tightrope between validating my feelings and still having hope for me. At first this went a bit awry, but now I'm feeling grateful that she's still holding me in a place of being healed. Right now, I really need that. I'm feeling a bit selfish and guilty because she's obviously spending so much time outside our sessions, thinking and working on this herself, but I can't say I wish she wouldn't. I need her to be prepared so she can help me.

 

[Hashi]

Feeling a bit like I am back in fragmented clips mode and stagnation around them...just want it all out or nothing out really. But know that's nit how thus works.

I feel this a lot, even though you're right and it's not how it works I keep wanting to walk into T and say everything in one go as if I could suddenly resolve it into a whole and it will all be done with. Obviously not a good idea, but I wish it was possible.

Hope you're doing OK.

 

[Hashi]

I held onto my grounding rock and I once threw it against a tree after T. Then went and picked it up and brushed it off, whilst sobbing. Sad, but very therapeutic and a little symbolic of what I needed to do - launch it out there, then pick myself up.

I like that you have a grounding rock, and that you did this.

 

[Hashi]

For whatever reason, I am one who seems to struggle with the body memories and physical symptoms a little less in therapy than in the real world. Maybe there is something in the sense of basic actual-time security that I feel in the thereapeutic context, which counteracts some of those symptoms

Actually, this is true of me as well. That's partly why I feel so concerned about being sick during a session, I usually hold on better while actually with my T.

For me, it's definitely about the additional security and calm that I feel when I'm with her. It's also to do with the value I put on that time, only 50 minutes in the whole week, so I do summon up what effort I can to stay present and focussed during it.

Maddog, it sounds like you're another one of us here going through a lot with this right now. Thank you for your understanding and support, although I'm very sorry that you do understand and are feeling so much. It sounds extremely intense, difficult and distressing. I'm wondering how you're doing now and hope you're OK.

As others say, talking about this is how we heal. Getting the pace right - that's so difficult.

Sending you, and everyone, good thoughts.

 

[maddog]

Thanks for thinking of me Hashi, I too have been meaning to come back and update this thread for a while, and have been too "down and out" and too exhausted and overwhelmed to do it .

I am sorry for the endless struggle, sorry for how it manages to leak out through every element of your existence, including the physical, and so sorry too for the additional life stressors that have come along at the worst possible time. For what it's worth, I struggle also with attempting to confront the past trauma, whilst trying to manage emerging crises. Selfishly, or perhaps just desperately, I would like to be allocated separate and additional T sessions to deal with both, because letting go of the momentum associated with either aspect seems to be cattapaulting me into dark places lately.

I also share your guilt for the additional miles your T is going. Mine is doing likewise, and like you, while the guilt ebbs and flows (usually flowing, often in torrents) my desperation and level of need is also great - greater than the guilt, though only just.

I've discovered something significant and very troubling about my past trauma/torture processing, something that I probably can't do justice to in writing yet, as it's really only processing through my mind now. I had a horror reaction this week to an EMDR session that was, for a variety of random and unavoidable reasons, cancelled twice on consecutive days. We had intended to EMDR a particularly difficult torture-related memory, and somehow, in my desperation to prepare adequately and to fend off growing overwhelm with numbing and detachment, I overengaged with the memory beforehand, wound myself to a state of virtual reliving and then, when the session did not proceed, fell into one of the deepest most flashback-ridden, self destructive and vividly physical personal crises I have had in a long long time.

The message is... something, something to do with facing my trauma head on and alone (outside of T) without selling my soul to it and losing myself in it. The message is something about ownership of my past without being possessed by it. The lesson is something to do with an existential fragility that I can't really understand yet. The lesson is something I'm unsuccessfully trying to explain here, but it's terrifying, something which for now has almost driven me to a fear of confronting those memories that feels too great.

I thought I could go there, thought I was ready, and now I have lost that conviction in the most brutal way.

It's a long road, and right now, it has become a very confusing and blurry one.

Thanks for making me think honestly and consciously about this and take the first steps to trying to put words around it. If the above made no sense, perhaps I'll do better when the thoughts find their way out of the dissociated pain a little more.

MD

 

[Traumagirl]

I have not experienced the torture in decades, but those memories are as vivid as if they happened yesterday. I look forward to a time in which those memories are distant.

 

[Hashi]

...those memories are as vivid as if they happened yesterday. I look forward to a time in which those memories are distant.

Yes. I can't wait to start a "Healed from Torture" thread. I hope that time comes soon for you, Traumagirl.

I had a horror reaction this week to an EMDR session that was, for a variety of random and unavoidable reasons, cancelled twice on consecutive days... I overengaged with the memory beforehand, wound myself to a state of virtual reliving and then, when the session did not proceed, fell into one of the deepest most flashback-ridden, self destructive and vividly physical personal crises I have had in a long long time.

The message is... something, something to do with facing my trauma head on and alone (outside of T) without selling my soul to it and losing myself in it. The message is something about ownership of my past without being possessed by it. The lesson is something to do with an existential fragility that I can't really understand yet...

MD, it's a little while since you posted this and I hope you're feeling more stable now.

What you're talking about - if I've understood it correctly - is similar to what I'm trying to work on right now in T, but I'm taking a break from direct work on the trauma/torture to work out how. I have to find more safety, more resources and more ways of containing it, before I can go back to that.

I'm so very sorry you had that experience. I think it's always really difficult preparing at that level to discuss/think about something in therapy, even if the session goes ahead. I've never had the experience of doing that then the session having to be postponed twice. I can't imagine it.

I'm feeling like the trauma is much more powerful than me at the moment, and I'm struggling to see a way through that. I'm so terrified of it, of what happened then and what will happen to me now if I go there. The feelings of helplessness are being reflected in the type of body and auditory memories that I've been experiencing recently. It's sickening and makes me feel defenceless again.

It's a huge relief at the moment to be taking a break to focus on resources. I'm very aware, though, that this is only a pause and I have to go back to that work before too long. I'm trying to trust that my T and I will work out ways I can do it without splintering into another crisis.

I so desperately want to be on the other side of doing the work, and not on this side.

Good thoughts to everyone.

Hashi
x

 

[Hashi]

I wanted to come back to this old thread, because it feels like a safe place for me to talk about what I'm going through at the moment.

In case anyone has not read the first post - this is not about definitions, and please - NO specific details here about things that happened. This thread is only about healing, and any successes and struggles with that.

I am struggling. After talking about something in therapy last week, I felt fine for that evening. I'd been present and in my body the whole time, and I stayed that way the rest of the evening, and I woke up the next morning and... I was gone. I've done all the right things, all my coping and grounding strategies, all day every day... but I haven't been present for days. When I went to the gym and felt nothing, felt I wasn't so much there as watching myself there, that worried me a lot. The gym is my ultimate grounding tool.

I feel like a ghost, and that is an old, familar feeling that I hate. I have been thinking about it a lot today. I think it's something specific to torture, and not to violence, rape, threat to life, or anything else. It's to do with the way that torture made myself, my own body, my enemy. To the point where I had more sympathy with my attackers than with myself. All I wanted was to be away from my body, to no longer be connected to it because I saw it as the source of everything that was unendurable.

Today, I was trying to understand the different parts of me that were there. The part that was angry with my own self, I can understand all too well. React quicker, respond better, you are stupid and are bringing more on yourself.... The part that had given up, also I understand. You no longer own yourself, they own you, accept it... The part that simply left. There's another part that I can't grasp. Something that was still me, surely... ?

I don't want to be a ghost any more. I want to be here.

 

[Abstract]

Hashi,

I have not experienced what I believe you are describing and I am very sorry that you have experienced it. I can totally understand what you are saying about experiencing your body as the enemy and needing to get away from it. It seems the most sensible thing in the world considering the circumstances.

I hope its Ok to say and does not make you feel worse but what occurred to me on reading your post is that you are reacting in a totally human way. That whatever your bodies reactions are in general are what bodies are made to do to protect us. And that goes for your mind as well. So really both mind and body then and now are doing what is normal considering the circumstances and in a respect never betrayed you. Your body is a precious and important part of you.


Your body was never the problem and the problem lay entirely with your attackers. They hold the full weight of the responsibility and shame and everything connected. It is amazing how we always seem to want to lay the blame on out bodies when they are the innocent party. We do that in all sorts of creative ways.

It is so logical that you have left your body now as you go over what happened as I am assumed you did so back then. Maybe its Ok that you cannot fully ground at present and maybe it is again your body and mind taking care of you in the way they know how.

I am very familiar with the ghostly feeling and the distance and detest it too. Like you I don't want to be a ghost any more. Its painful in unfathomable ways somehow.

You sound like you are starting to build awareness of the different parts of yourself that were there. So maybe in certain respects you are much more connected than you think you. Maybe it is Ok to be a little distanced whilst you learn to accept these things just a little.

I hope you find your feet soon.

 

[Hashi]

Thank you Abstract. You're right, it's a way to cope and probably the best way at the moment. It's making me worry about handling life and things I need to do, though. Yesterday, the idea of making the journey to therapy felt incredibly difficult, barely possible. I need to do a lot more than that, but can't see how.

I hope you find your feet soon.

That's very apt. My therapist got me to stamp my feet at the end of our last session, and it was really hard to do, and felt wrong.

 

[safenow]

I've been thinking for a while how much I want a sort of "antidote to torture" and what that would be. As if I could inject a serum and the effects would be neutralised. Over and over, I've thought - the antidote is beauty. When I think about that, I realise that I dont mean natural beauty but the sublime beauty that's created in music, art, poems, writing.

I thank you so much for this thread.

I agree with you in that music has been my escape from the terror that comes to my mind when I fear things will happen again. Before I got so physically ill a number of years ago, I had a piano to be able to express my feelings every day of my life. Then, I had to sell my piano to pay medical bills. Soon, I will be able to get a key board so I can create music again.

Listening to music helps some, but for me, creating it has an entire, deeper meaning. I hope that makes sense.

It is hard to think of those who did such evil to me. Especially the ones from my early childhood. The ones from my adulthood, in my mind, while evil in what they did, at least didn't do it to a small child. Not sure that makes sense. Both were wrong, but to my mind, the one is worse than wrong. sigh