My T Wants Me To Write About My Friend's Death, No Really

[Britt.f7]

Okay, after clarifying that detachment/emotional numbing is a part of dissociation, I decided to post this thread here.

My T happens to believe that the death of my friends has effected my whole life and continues to do so. She isn't the first one to point this out to me. I had a therapist tell me something similar 20 years ago. They feel I'm holding on to survivors guilt. She asked if I have ever wrote about it and I said yes, as a story. She said, no, really wrote about it, with feelings and the whole deal.

Now this is hard to do. As much as I like to write, and I do, it is hard to put an emotion to any of it. I think, mostly, I do not think it is traumatic to anyone else. I've been told it is, but, see, there is that detachment. I remember when my sons were the age I was at the time of loss, I looked at them and tried to see that was me. I tried to look through their eyes, not a grown ups eyes. I couldn't imagine asking them the same things as I was asked to do.

So, here is my question, how do I open that up? How do I get to the heart of it and not remain emotionally detached? I'm really at a loss. Any help would be welcomed.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I have been doing emdr, and it has helped me to get in touch with my emotions. I am wondering if this would help you too? Just a thought.

 

[Britt.f7]

We have talked about it. I first heard of EMDR when I was inpatient earlier this year. Trouble is, no one who practices it appears to be close by. Part of me is afraid to open those doors. Another part believes it is best to get things out. I'm really torn.

I think she wants me to do this by next week, but I could be wrong. Right now, I feel like I need to throw up...is it the coffee or the thought of doing this?

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I wish you the best on writing it out. I think it would be very hard to do that. It makes it so real. Mabe this is how you will get in touch with your feelings. I am sorry you are sick. You still have time to work on it. Baby steps one at a time. Mabe you could dose yourself on the writing a little bit at a time. :hug:

 

[Britt.f7]

Yes, I think that is a good idea. Baby steps. :hug:

 

[HëllaBubz]

is it the coffee or the thought of doing this?

Maccas coffee?:p

Perhaps you could write it as part of a private diary here on the website, that way you can write small chunks and take breaks when you need to.

That's what I did, and even though I've had to take a break for a while, it has helped me IMMENSELY to the point where I'm confident enough to go back to work!

I do get how stressful it is though, but the annoying thing about baggage is that you can't stick cute travelling stickers on it unless you acknowledge its there!

 

[Britt.f7]

Very true Bubzilla. That stuff goes with me wherever I go.

 

[Tanishq]

Britt, I think you have detached yourself from it. Only some parts of that grief and you have picked something else which has made things more complicated for you. Perhaps you tried to detach youself from your grief in a way to move on from it. But you completely shut off your emotions and this is why you are having difficulty. Is this the case, do you shut off yourself when you write down?

Writing down is one of most powerful thing to do. If you practice on it, I think after some months you will begin to feel it all.

Have good day there! :hug:

 

[Whitneys story]

Hi Britt, I have read alot of your posts about this time in your life. For a young person to process all the horror is difficult. I hear your defense mechanism when you do discuss. JMHO! Throw it to the trash.

I understand that your T wants you to work through it. Do you feel she is trying to invalidate your feelings? You have lived through, and they did not. Have you ever grieved the loss? The affects from adults being overprotective do not always come through correctly to a childs mind!

I can remember as a child hearing the adults when a child fell thru our lake, they should know better. How would a child acquire the information unless a parent instructed them of safety issues.

The loss will not be forgotten, I am sorry you have had to suffer for so long. Hugs, Whitney

 

[Britt.f7]

Jaret, with almost all of my other writings, not pertaining to the loss of my friends or the times I was attacked, I can write about with emotion. I did write about their deaths once and had my mom read it. It seemed to touch her, but I still have difficulty relating or feeling. I think you are correct in saying it will take months, well, at least, longer then a week of which I had originally given myself. I don't think she will be upset if I don't go in tomorrow with it. Thank you for your help.

Hi Whitney, I don't think that she is trying to invalidate my feelings. I think she is trying to get me to grieve for the child I was at the time. I don't remember really being able to grieve the loss. I remember crying hysterically the morning we awoke and found out they died. I remember mom giving me a pill that I thought was baby aspirin, but who knows what it was. Because, really, why would she give me baby aspirin?

I always tell people be careful what you say around kids, no matter what age they are, because they hear more then you realize. Kids don't always know how to process what they hear.

I still feel guilt, even though I know it wasn't my fault. At least logically. I know it doesn't feel like the adults protected me. If anything they expected me to handle it in a more adult like way.

Thank you for your support. I'm getting older and I know there will only be more deaths of loved ones. I think I need to get through this if I plan to handle their deaths better then the ones I've recently had to get through.

 

[DharmaGirl]

I also was detached and had no feelings about horrible things. My T wanted me to write them down. I literally started with one word. I wrote it down, then burned the paper. I was able to write more as the week went on, burning the paper every time. I didn't write at all this week because I want to deal with what has come up alrealy.

It is the hardest thing I've had to do. I did it though, and I feel better now. It is not an easy process. Hang on, it gets a tad easier.

 

[p-no]

Britt, What helped me -- the only thing that really helped -- was having a t for a long time and learning to trust a little bit (and from my perspective now it was just a tiny bit, really) and then, one day, knowing it's time and crash consciously, at my t's. By "consciously crash" I mean to let it all out, whatever is there at the time emotions-wise. There was one second where I wasn't quite there, where I would swear I wasn't alive, I simply wasn't, and then it all came out completely knocking me over the edge.

The only thing that worked was that woman letting me be me for all the time I needed and giving me space to crash, letting me crash fully and just be.

I have a hard time explaining this. There is a German poem that says it, but unfortunately I'll have to translate. I hope it won't lose in translation: "Keep me together but also let go of me again." That is what my t did. That day I got down to the incredible grief of me as the child I was back then, she managed to do what only afterwards turned out to have been the exact right things. Let me go down badly, let me hit rock bottom and be there like a light and walk with me towards the exit when I was ready to.

There is that one movie I like, and for a loss of words, I hope I may give you that image: Beyond The Horzion (starring Robin Williams). He loves his wife, his wife dies and goes to hell, I think he dies too but goes to heaven. Hell for her is a place without light, without love, without warmth. He loves her so much that he goes there and to see her home to heaven. The end of the movie is not important, it is what he wants to do for her, go all the way into darkness so that she would have someone by her side on her way out. That is what I feel my t did for me that day (although not so Hollywood-like dramatic).

I think that in order to get that far, to get to that point where I could place that little bit of trust in her (and back then it was a lot of trust), it was important that I wanted to trust her. I wanted to realize that she is on my side, no matter how it feels sometimes. I wanted to do what I could to know her better and share more. Awareness of what she was for me was key. And all that you can only do if you do it. Like a child that learns to walk; and I think children can be quite scared of making that first step away from their mother or father, without clutching to anything. But they want to so eventually they will.

What I am saying is that maybe, if that is the case for you, I would tell my t that I need space and time and that at this moment writing it all down is not an option. I would "offer" something in turn, acknowledging that I do find it important and I don't want to avoid per se, and would share what I really feel (dead frightened, I imagine) about writing it down. I might choose a part of the whole story, just a scene from a movie, figuratively speaking and share that with her, in any way, be it written (with access to your emotions or not) or spoken (same). It could help you (it has helped me) to put your own hand flat onto your chest while you talk, or even beforehand, while you think about what part of the story to tell her. You could use massaging a meridian that is good for you. By massaging any/some meridians, you can gain access softly to your emotions. And remember that since you haven't felt your emotions for a long, long time that your friend's death has caused you back then to feel, any emotion that may come up may feel incredibly huge, overwhelming, too much, etc. For me, it has been true often that I thought the feelings I had were really over-sized, too much, monstrous, but in reality it was just that I had not felt them for such a long time that when I did, they felt that way, but they were just the feelings from back then coming up today.

You could also do the chair thing. See:

Post

What could also help could be telling yourself about what happened over and over. I mean, tell yourself e.g. today for a few minutes, then again, or another part of the story two days later. Get in touch with yourself, literally.

Just some thoughts.

I can assure you that my crash at my t's was nothing close to what I had feared beforehand. It was a first access to all the grief, and it found it's natural end (the grieving that day) within the regular time at my t's. It was a visit back there and then, and it was important to come back "home" (into the now) after.