I was held against my will for 5 hours with a stranger. There was never a moment where I had any rational thoughts about what I would do next. I just surrendered to what was going on and coped with about each ten seconds as they occurred. There was no predictability that would have allowed me to somehow understand what to do.
I'm sorry that was done to you. And don't worry; I'm not particularly triggered by anything that comes from text - but I deeply appreciate your consideration of my situation. I think, for me, probably because of my age there are sections where I was just buffeted about and had very little processing of what was going on - and then there are sections where I really thought that I had choices. I understand now that I did not, but when I was told "do this or that will happen", even when both were bad things, I believed that I was actually choosing. More than anything else, that's probably how the naivete of my age shows itself. I also had no way to imagine being rescued or let go, just because I'd never encountered a story like what was happening to me.
I guess I must have had instinct, but I would never use that word. I need to come to an understanding of how that might have been working. I followed instructions, "made" choices, was totally dominated by the violence of it, or (a few times) felt like my mind broke and completely lost control of myself. Never did anything seem like instinct.
There aren't many people who can truly know what it is like to be in your shoes but we can be a dependable sounding board for you, with open hearts and genuine care.
I appreciate this very, very deeply, and am so thankful for the thought.
Maybe his calm and centered response doesn't reflect his feelings about your trauma at all. Maybe it reflects his confidence that the 2 of you can deal with the results of your trauma. (Maybe it's something else all together. I'm a horrible mind reader!)
You know, I think you're a good mind reader. This is a really important point you've made. Much of my feeling around these events centers on despair. He would never feel despair for my situation, because he absolutely believes we can get through it. One of the things I find reassuring about him is his confidence. I have to remember that.
So why, I wonder, would I want to see him at a loss for his confident words?
Because, just like you said, he knows how I feel but I have no idea what's going on on his side. And I get the impression he totally doesn't get how that could be uncomfortable.
Yes, yes, yes, I know exactly what you mean. We have that happen with emails also. At least with those, I pretty early on was able to tell him that I wanted the emails addressed in session, and so now if I send him one we kind of go through it together.
So, we had a session today. It was rather influenced by a very long email I sent him, in which I still wasn't able to lay everything on the table because I still think my wants and feelings are wrong somehow, and I don't understand them, and I don't want to be less in control of this topic than I already am. But I was able to write to him about how shut down I was feeling, that I was questioning whether or not to keep going, and how much I'm struggling with understanding how to feel about all these events.
Things I did manage to say in session:
I perceive a power imbalance when he knows everything I'm thinking and I know nothing at all of what he thinks. He said I was always free to ask; I said not only did I not know that, I don't know how in the moment to always be that on-top of it. As the conversation went on, he started offering his feelings on things without prompting.
I don't know how to understand what happened to me, and I perceive his neutrality as information; so if he has a non-reaction, I question my own reaction as being out of scale. He responded with his own, very strong belief that a person in crisis is more damaged by the observer also slipping into crisis of their own. That his job is to be steady and practical in the face of whatever he hears from me, because that is the best way to help me. BUT: he also started validating more throughout the session, taking the time to just let me sit with the feeling as opposed to trying to knock it out right away with a different thought.
We both came to the conclusion that the piece I'm missing is simply being able to talk about what happened, not during a processing session or in the context of laying out the narrative - but just talking, freely, in whatever random order my mind is taking things. Now that I'm past the point where everything will set me off into some sort of amygdala response, there are things that I need to wrestle with that aren't about doing the trauma work, they are about facing the size of it and having a way to think about it. (Because, if you haven't noticed, I like to think about things, and reasoning is one of my actual skills: having something so big in my life that I cannot reason my way through causes great discomfort for me. I need space to talk about that. Its technically a bit more Jungian, I suppose. Whatever - just a space to talk.)
And I voiced some of my bigger anxieties: that I was too dependent, that we would never ever finish (or that I'll die before it happens, thereby disappointing him), and that he would come to resent me for basically serving as my personal crisis line.
He assured me that I err on the side of too independent, and that learning to ask for help is something I need to do; that he could be disappointed
for me but never
in me - and that it's more reasonable to try and work through something than give up - and that if I ever doubted that he cared, I should just remember that he is glad to be on call for me. He thinks its productive and part of the work, to sometimes process things right when they are happening.
What I learned is that I still need to be braver about asking for what I need. And I think he learned he needs to be more attuned to when I start withdrawing, and to slow down and just talk when that happens.
He told me in all sorts of ways that he is sorry for me and that the stories are horrible; but I didn't know how to believe him. That's on me. I don't understand it. And, as I asked above - I don't know why I seem to want him to demonstrate a loss of control, when a huge part of what I value in his skill set is how calm he stays in crisis. He's an excellent grounder.
What do you all think?
