I had another wave of emotional flashback tonight. Came out of nowhere, without giving me time to catch my breath as they normally come, and just slammed down. My head starts hurting from how fast it came. There's still this massive disconnect between what I'm feeling and what I'm knowing. Does that make sense?
I know what this flashback was. I have had it for years and years, dreamed it and thought about it and got to the point where I could talk about it in therapy or with a person off the street (not that I would, but I could have). All along it was still like I was watching it happen to somebody else who was me. Which was bad enough.
It got to the point where I didn't think about it much, even. It was done.
So fast foward to when I had my last big flare up of ptsd symptoms and messiness, and I came to grips with one of the most life-changing traumas I'd ever faced, and that was the first time I ever had real emotional flashbacks. Just these overwhelming massive floods of rawness. I want to say that it felt more real than it had in the actual moment. Or maybe that's because I know now what I didn't know then, because when it happened I was so numbed to the reality of the life I was in that the trauma itself didn't really register all the way.
Now that I'm older and far away from it, I can see how it had a major long term effect. There's a Before and an After, and once you get to After everything at your core changes in some undefinable way. I don't know how to explain that any better. And maybe what I went through then had such an impact and came up because I was safe enough for the first time in my life to face it.
Which is probably what is happening now with this new thing. The Thing That I Cannot Name. I wrote this to my therapist earlier. .It's frustrating. Again, I have worked through this before, on many levels, and it didn't hurt anymore and I could just say it. Now, suddenly, I can't. I can't bring myself to say the words that lay out the nature of what was done. I can't talk about it. I can't type it. I can't reenact it with puppets (which I say for the humor. I haven't tried that one. Wouldn't that be wild, though?) What I can do is try, and curl up in a tight knot as my words go away. I can talk around it and hint at it, and it doesn't seem to make a difference at all. I get slammed with these raw emotions, and it's not like I'm watching that kid anymore. I AM that kid.
And like I've posted here elsewhere, while my grownup self knows and has dealt with it, that little kid hasn't. All I know is that she's scared and she's needing something I can't give her. I'm working on how. I'm working on that slowly because I don't want to screw it up rushing into something. But how do I deal with the meantime?
This is part of what set me off on Monday. This is part of why I drifted into my therapist's office on autopilot and sat shaking in a chair for close on two hours until I came back to reality and into my own skin again.
minor note- he wasn't in the office at all, turns out. I half-referenced it when I got to session yesterday, figuring that he must have heard about it, but he hadn't. So, good? I figured it was. He was glad I could do that, could come there, though, which made me glad. I told him that I didn't want to go into it. My social services interview, which set off massive triggers and pushed me into a very bleak place, coupled with the emotional wave of terror and just... blind panic. That's what I can say that comes closest to it. Blind panic. My body flips to autopilot and seeks out a default hiding place to regroup. My normal one wasn't convenient. I ended up there.
It's been a lot of years since I ended up in my therapist's waiting room feeling not at all real.
Why do I post insanely long things? Why do I have these waves, and why am I suddenly feeling that I'm that tiny girl? Shouldn't the feelings come first and the knowledge come later? If I already have the knowledge and processed it, and had all those years of peace and resolution over it, why is it back?
I know what this flashback was. I have had it for years and years, dreamed it and thought about it and got to the point where I could talk about it in therapy or with a person off the street (not that I would, but I could have). All along it was still like I was watching it happen to somebody else who was me. Which was bad enough.
It got to the point where I didn't think about it much, even. It was done.
So fast foward to when I had my last big flare up of ptsd symptoms and messiness, and I came to grips with one of the most life-changing traumas I'd ever faced, and that was the first time I ever had real emotional flashbacks. Just these overwhelming massive floods of rawness. I want to say that it felt more real than it had in the actual moment. Or maybe that's because I know now what I didn't know then, because when it happened I was so numbed to the reality of the life I was in that the trauma itself didn't really register all the way.
Now that I'm older and far away from it, I can see how it had a major long term effect. There's a Before and an After, and once you get to After everything at your core changes in some undefinable way. I don't know how to explain that any better. And maybe what I went through then had such an impact and came up because I was safe enough for the first time in my life to face it.
Which is probably what is happening now with this new thing. The Thing That I Cannot Name. I wrote this to my therapist earlier. .It's frustrating. Again, I have worked through this before, on many levels, and it didn't hurt anymore and I could just say it. Now, suddenly, I can't. I can't bring myself to say the words that lay out the nature of what was done. I can't talk about it. I can't type it. I can't reenact it with puppets (which I say for the humor. I haven't tried that one. Wouldn't that be wild, though?) What I can do is try, and curl up in a tight knot as my words go away. I can talk around it and hint at it, and it doesn't seem to make a difference at all. I get slammed with these raw emotions, and it's not like I'm watching that kid anymore. I AM that kid.
And like I've posted here elsewhere, while my grownup self knows and has dealt with it, that little kid hasn't. All I know is that she's scared and she's needing something I can't give her. I'm working on how. I'm working on that slowly because I don't want to screw it up rushing into something. But how do I deal with the meantime?
This is part of what set me off on Monday. This is part of why I drifted into my therapist's office on autopilot and sat shaking in a chair for close on two hours until I came back to reality and into my own skin again.
minor note- he wasn't in the office at all, turns out. I half-referenced it when I got to session yesterday, figuring that he must have heard about it, but he hadn't. So, good? I figured it was. He was glad I could do that, could come there, though, which made me glad. I told him that I didn't want to go into it. My social services interview, which set off massive triggers and pushed me into a very bleak place, coupled with the emotional wave of terror and just... blind panic. That's what I can say that comes closest to it. Blind panic. My body flips to autopilot and seeks out a default hiding place to regroup. My normal one wasn't convenient. I ended up there.
It's been a lot of years since I ended up in my therapist's waiting room feeling not at all real.
Why do I post insanely long things? Why do I have these waves, and why am I suddenly feeling that I'm that tiny girl? Shouldn't the feelings come first and the knowledge come later? If I already have the knowledge and processed it, and had all those years of peace and resolution over it, why is it back?
