May I ask, does he ever encourage you to tap into this energy as a 'safe place' to be? You have answered that, in a way, but I am specifically thinking of 'going to your True Self' using visualization.....
We've mostly had to focus on just trying to
identify it. There's so much disorganization in my inner world, and parts that seem to take over my consciousness (not really DID, but still pretty extreme dissociation) to where I have a hard time even admitting that the other parts exist. So we've had several conversations lately of trying to distinguish which part is the True Self. He says that the curiosity trait is a huge identifier for the True Self, so that when I'm feeling curious about what's going on inside of me or outside...that's a good sign I'm honing in on the real Self.
I haven't really found a "safe place" yet, either internally or externally. Feeling safe is just a foreign concept to me. He
has talked about trying to navigate my movement a little more consciously. So...like if a memory or other experience starts to get overwhelming, he's talked about visualizing myself kayaking down a river that is about to get turbulent beyond my skill level, and choosing to pull off on a safe shore before reaching those rapids. Sometimes that works, other times I miss that "exit", so to speak, and then it's too late...just have to ride out the rapids.
Another visualization that has been helpful to me, which I came across in my reading and not from my T, is titration. In chemistry, the concept of titration refers to adding a small amount of a triggering chemical at a time so as to manage the chemical reaction better. If you dump a whole bottle of an acid or whatever into a beaker of another chemical, you could create an explosion. But if you drip a tiny drop of the acid into the beaker at a time, the reaction still occurs and you can complete the full chemical reaction, but it's done in very small, controllable increments. So the idea of
feeling the feelings of these memories...trying to visualize feeling a
little bit of them at a time, and then a little more, and a little more, until I neutralize and drain the whole pocket of built-up emotional pressure, but it's done
without the explosive release that would come if I just opened the floodgates. Again...sometimes I catch it in time for this to help, and sometimes not.
And then another concept that my equine T has mentioned...pendulation, I think is what she called it. Where you move into the emotional experience, and then back out again, and then in, and then back out, like a pendulum swinging on a string...just back and forth, in and out, until the emotions in that space are experienced and processed.
