Far Away Pain

[Meadowsweet]

I started therapy again on Monday, and I told the therapist about the childhood stuff. It is something that I've wanted to tell since my old therapist said not to go there.

I was quite dissociated when telling this, and my therapist pointed out that it was clear that I was still experiencing the memory as the child. But I went home feeling not much effect.

I had a couple of days when I had a drink. But yesterday and today, I am just feeling like a very far away pain. I know it's very painful, but I don't feel completely attached to it.

I can only describe it as being like hearing a loud noise from a long way off.

I don't know if or how to bring it up. I just don't really know what to do about it.
So any ideas would be helpful,

 

[franciemarnie]

I like how you put it - hearing a loud noise from a long way off. For a long time, if I talked about what happened, it felt like it happened to someone else or in a dream or I would have an inappropriate response - like laughing at a horrible thing that happened to me. Once someone said, oh that is so sad and I didn't get it because I just didn't have a sad feeling about it. I felt nothing or it was funny to me or there was a block there and I instinctively wouldn't go near it because I didn't want to know.

I remember when I was 39, I had this bizarre consciousness going on. It was 1998, but I was "certain" from a visceral reality stand point that if I left wherever I was - work or home- and took the expressway north and drove to our old house, that I would find myself and my family there in 1974. I knew it was impossible intellectually, but I was positive on another level that there was a parallel universe happening. I think that was something like hearing a loud noise a long way off. That reality from back then was happening in a far off part of my brain.

For me, the feelings came when my psyche was ready. I couldn't force it. There was a certain violence growing up and I couldn't do that violence to myself. I think I tried it long ago, like in my 20's to sort of force vomit the bad things and get rid of them but it just didn't work.

When the stuff did feel close and clear, it happened in its own time organically. That's not to say they were smooth placid experiences! Far from it, but it was natural.

That's some of what happened for me, but what works for one isn't necessarily what works for another. You and your therapist will figure out what to try. Sometimes it's hit or miss. We're not prescient. But we will heal as long as we don't give up.

 

[Abstract]

I think its very wise to say to let it feel close and clear ,organically, and in its own time. Or to at least accept that there is good reason for you to experience it that way.

I hope you can explain it to your therapist just like you did to us.

I started off and it was like a shopping list. No more intense than reading one. At this point I was totally adamant things had not affected me and no wonder why. Its only now I can see that it wasn't quite as simple as it seemed. And then various things changed after that over the years.

How do you feel about how you experienced it?

 

[Meadowsweet]

if I talked about what happened, it felt like it happened to someone else or in a dream or I would have an inappropriate response - like laughing at a horrible thing that happened to me.

It's funny you should say that, I laughed in this session. It wasn't that I wasn't feeling, it is just a nervous laugh. But my therapist did make a point by saying that she knew I didn't really find it funny, because what happened isn't funny. I know this of course, but it does seem to have an impact when someone says so.

When the stuff did feel close and clear, it happened in its own time organically. That's not to say they were smooth placid experiences! Far from it, but it was natural.

In my late teens I had dreams of fragments of childhood abuse, and I believed I had been abused. But I was in an abusive relationship and was taking drugs. So when I left I went through years of numbness and believing everything to be in my head because I'd taken drugs. And though I didn't deny the adult abuse, I believed that that too was understandable because I'd taken drugs.

Then I got into a situation where I was abused and nearly killed and I hadn't been near drugs for years. I went for 18 months still facing him online and trying to make it no big deal, something I could handle. And then I broke down. The childhood memories came back as a flashback of one first, and gradually I get more bits. So I think you're right that it comes when my mind is ready to accept a bit more.

I hope you can explain it to your therapist just like you did to us.

Thank you, that's always the difficult part - I hope I can too :)

How do you feel about how you experienced it?

I don't know. I'm getting there, but I find it difficult to accept that reality sometimes. I go out to work and am very professional and when I'm with my family, I'm like professional playing the role that is appropriate. Then there's this person who shakes all over and becomes childish and unable to cope.

In therapy, I felt myself go out of it, but I can't see how I'm coming across. She asked me if she was talking to the child or the adult and I couldn't tell her. After I'd finished telling her about that, and was calmer, she said that she could see the child as i told the memory, she also said that it didn't matter if what I said didn't always make sense. I don't know what she meant by that. It concerns me a little bit that I might be that way in fron of people if I had friends. But I figure if I need to be like that in front of a therapist, then she should be trained to deal with it.