Hi
@Hashi, thanks for sharing your ideas.
Do you have an image that represents the inner demons? That has always been my best starting point for creating visualisations.
I guess "inner demons" was a bit strong, although they do feel that way sometimes. Basically they are frightening and very toxic/destructive energies that flood me at times. They can get activated by things outside of me, or by certain patterns of my thinking or behavior, or they can just come up seemingly out of nowhere. They are always there...but are sometimes muted.
Do you have an image that represents the inner demons?
Some things have no natural image for me, like negative beliefs.
Yes, lots of them. This is part of the therapy I am doing. However, I'm still just starting to distinguish separate bits from an overwhelming amalgamation of...well...overwhelm.
Some of the energies are memories of past traumatic experiences; the ones that are linked to specific whole memories I can visualize as pictures. Other energies are just tactile, visual, or auditory fragments that make no sense and create no narrative, but are quite frightening nonetheless.
Some of the energies are somatic ones. Massive chronic pain in sacrum and legs that prevents me from doing much at all, and various other physical sensations and movements that are not attached to anything at all in terms of memory or emotion. Just pure dissociations at this point. I have no visuals for these.
Some of the energies that get toxic are "belief" energies, or what are called "protectors" in Internal Family Systems therapy. They are not demons really, although they get so extreme in their attempts to protect me from overwhelm that they feel like demons (e.g., the belief that I am not real, or that I have no right to be alive are just two of the really extreme ones). These are the ones to which I've been able to attach visual images.
I'm not sure what you mean by triggered. People use it in so many different ways. For example, having a flashback, intrusive memories, intrusive thoughts, dissociating, highly stressed, difficulty coping emotionally, difficulty coping practically, or angered.
Maybe if you could give an actual example? Even a made up one, or a sort of composite of things you typically would experience.
For me, "triggered" means that negative energies get activated enough that I lose some sense of myself. I might depersonalize, dissociate (lose track of where I'm going, or how much time has passed, or the thread of a conversation), or have actual physical reactions (shaking, chills, dizziness, excruciating pain, more intense involuntary body movements or speech sounds). All sorts of things can trigger me--for example, a common external one is witnessing or being forced to engage in interaction with someone who is angry, or being with someone who is intoxicated or stoned, or feeling trapped somewhere, or being with my mother. The externals are easier to manage than the internals. The internal "triggers" are far less identifiable and harder to manage--that's why I was trying to figure out safe spaces to go in my mind that would help me "come down" from these. Problem is, once one of the energies gets going--e.g., say I made a mistake or forgot something--it's like a tsunami can build very fast.
Here's an example. This morning I was aware that I was feeling some negative energy and I worked on trying to get grounded, doing positive visualization, etc. I was pretty shaky as I got in the car to drive to work. Feeling frightened, having intrusive and overwhelming memory fragments, pain zinging around my body...I was starting to dissociate but noticed it and pulled myself out of it. Over the course of about 30 minutes, I was completely flooded by physical and emotional pain, and a barrage of memory bits. I had to sit in my car in the parking lot at work for almost an hour before I felt I could go to my office. During this time, I pulled out my journal and tried to write what was happening (writing is very helpful for me)--I could not grasp my pen well--my grip was like that of a young child's, and my handwriting also looked like a young child's (messy, all over the page) even though the content was my conscious adult thoughts. It is like dual consciousness.
It does pass eventually, but I would like to be able to manage it better, especially when I have some warning that it's coming on as I did this morning.
The problem I have is managing to hold on to AND feel safe in the "safe" space in my mind. I have great visualization. I just can't seem to get myself to the space...can go there in my intellectual/visual self, but the emotional and physical selves do not feel safe there.
It's all very strange, really. And I'll stop talking about it after this post because I'm not sure I'm articulating the experience or the problem in a way that makes sense to anyone else.
