Thank you, Maddog. I appreciate your understanding, and other people's, so much.
I relate very much to what you wrote.
even the language of describing torture processing is even more foreign and scary to me than the language of trauma processing in general.
I find this too. In therapy, I struggle to find words for this much more than with other things. Partly because it's trying to describe the indescribable. But also because I have to take myself through it so very, very carefully.
I know this fragmentation of memory is normal, yet somehow particularly pronounced for the torture memories, and particularly walled away by a terror that, as you said Hashi, is as-yet-unexperienced fear, and so is as-yet-unprocessed fear from the torture...
I am terrified of my unprocessed torture terror, utterly terrified.
I am too.
There's something which I'm experiencing which I've been thinking about a lot. I've always been aware that, unless I'm very careful with grounding, safety and psychic protection, I could easily be overcome by the fear and... well, go insane, basically. Recently I've been feeling that there's a sort of version of me that has felt that fear and has gone insane, that has started screaming and it won't ever be able to stop. I feels like this version of myself is right next to me all the time.
At first, I saw it as a risk, that I was in danger of "stepping across" and becoming that person. Now, I'm starting to feel that it's a parallel process to my more conscious one. As if some part of me does need to allow the insanity, and my subconscious is doing it in this way.
I have to believe that I can process the fear without fully feeling it, at least consciously. That a certain amount of processing is enough, and that amount of processing does not need to be anything like equal to the literal level or amount of the fear.
I'm not sure I'm resilient enough... the damage and terror associated with processing through even the superficial aspects (if such a word can be used in relation to torture) has destabilised me significantly...Thankfully I have a great and experienced therapist - the best I could hope for - but I'm not sure it's enough.
I feel the same. I often wonder if it's even possible to find this balance between processing and staying stable enough. If I go forward the right amount I become more resilient, if I misjudge it by a fraction I might break.
as part of the imagery he is trying to introduce about "growing me up" in the images and making me bigger and stronger. It's very hard - again almost impossible - something in the force and assertiveness of those actions cowers me in terror and makes me want to collapse into his lap instead of feeling bigger and stronger.
I think it's hard for me to bring a more powerful self to the situation because at the time it would have been so dangerous to be powerful. Force and assertiveness would have brought results that I can't even think about. It's very hard to override that even from this distance.
The only safe thing at the time was dissociation, which was too risky most of the time, or transcendence of some kind. My therapist validates that, but for obvious reasons is trying to get me to respond differently now, from a point of strength and safety. I know that stamping my feet was to ground me, but it also felt like leaving the "safety" of not being fully present and real.
Going back to processing, my therapist has offered, if I want to do it, breath and sound therapy as a way of releasing long-held emotions. (She's a transpersonal psychotherapist, and this is part of what they do - she's qualified, experienced and knows what she's doing.) I don't know whether to do it. I'm worried that, in real life, I would start screaming and never stop. I don't know if I would actually scream, but whatever noise I made, it would just be in the usual building where you can hear people talking in the corridors outside the therapy room. Everyone would hear me. She says it doesn't matter, because it's a centre for transpersonal therapy and everyone is used to it. I'm not sure the other clients are used to it, though.
Despite all my concerns, I can feel how much my body wants to do it. My mind is putting up a lot of arguments against it, but my body is longing to do it as something that would be healing. Maybe a smaller, symbolic release of breath could connect to the bigger, subconscious processing and bring me a release in that way. I feel I should trust my body, with such a positive feeling towards something, over my mind... but it's hard to trust that.
