What Does "processing Trauma" Really Mean?

[therapybankrupt]

Since we were on the subject of the chakra healing I wanted to share a very interesting experience I had during EMDR trauma processing. Please try not to judge. I really was miffed by the whole experience. I initially said we probably should never repeat this story to anyone LOL! My therapist was so thrilled she said she can not wait to share with her colleges. She said I did an amazing job!

Here goes. My last session my brain used a chakra to move and release a stuck trauma body emotion from my 23 year abusive marriage. I was having trouble breathing and swallowing during the processing of the person I was married to. I felt like something heavy and large was stuck in my heart area causing a blockage. I was in real distress. I was having trouble breathing and swallowing.

My therapist is so good she asked me not to be afraid and just go with it. She was with me. I trust her. When I have body emotions from trauma the T tells me to go back and see the size shape and color of the distress while doing processing. This time I imagined the emotion as a heavy, grey anvil. Next the t asked me to try to remove or imagine healing it.

I thought I would imagine sending it through the top of my head. But it was impossible it was to big and heavy it was stuck. My physical distress continued and I was starting to get discouraged. I was getting exhausted from the severe distress. My wonderful t is so observant and asked me to try not to give up. She suggested I ask the anvil what I need to do ! This time I imagined I needed to move it down from my heart.

I imagined using the process of moving a baby down the birth canal during delivery. It took some time and hard pushing to get it down. I did the breathing! Once the anvil broke loose it went falling down, it gently landed and teetered between my pelvic area and where I imagine the root chakra to be.

Eventually I imagined the anvil braking down into a fine sand. Next I imagined the sand funneling out through my root chakra that had grown roots and attached to the ground. The sand traveled back into the earth and as soon as the sand was all gone. I imagined the roots retracting.

I then checked the area and everything was gone and my root chakra was glowing bright red and spinning slowly clockwise. At that very moment I felt what I think eternal bliss would feel like. It was the most wonderful feeling. I asked my therapist to let me go back to the bliss and she continued processing another pass so I could enjoy it a little longer. She always lets me go back when there is a good feeling to enjoy it longer.

Next to safe place and off I went to pick up some stamps and head home.

I have relief from the trauma we processed. I do not trigger like I did before when dealing with the person who caused it. Imagine that!

tb

 

[franciemarnie]

Wow tb! What an amazing healing experience! I want some of those! When I get my next therapist, I'd love one like yours.

Do you literally see the colors of your chakras? I haven't so far, though I can see aura colors. I want to get into chakras more. I never believed in all that until the day I started seeing auras. Then the reality of our energy fields etc. came home to me.

I do the breathing exercises you mention. I hold sadness in my feet, particularly my left foot and left calve. I hold anger in my head and jaw. I started reading about energy healing last summer and was amazed how I could sometimes move out the pain with breathing and visualization of light moving through. Also, as mentioned earlier, crying releases a lot for me too.

Love to hear how we all release the pain, the emotion and energy since I had it all buried for decades.

 

[maddog]

Wow TB, what a truly amazing experience, I am in awe! I haven't really done any work of this nature, nor do I pretend to know much about it, but I have heard enough people report success that I am in no doubt that it can be very powerful. What I do know is that trauma is most definitely stored, and released, through the body and in very different, sometimes frightening, ways. I get very very cold too when processing trauma, and the cold is definitely on the inside.

Maddog

 

[therapybankrupt]

Do you literally see the colors of your chakras?

Franciemarnie yes I do see the chakra and its color. I did not know this was anything special! I am now hoping to see and aura! You have a special talent. How and when did it first appear to you? If you feel we are going to much of topic you can inbox me! ;)

tb

 

[therapybankrupt]

Maddog I was in awe too! This is all new to me. I kinda stumbled onto it when looking for meditations for the happiness challenge. I find it all of this fascinating. Now it is integrating into the EMDR and is quite amazing in helping me with the trauma processing. I continue to research and learn on my own. The internet is so enlightening!

tb

 

[franciemarnie]

Tb, I got to figure out how to inbox you. I never have. I for sure think it is a special talent you can see your chakras!! I have read about them incidentally in books about primarily shamanism or energy healing but they weren't the focus. I want to see them and work with them.

After I went through the most intensely nearly unbearable experience of physical pain which no doctor could figure out - and this was before my diagnosis of PTSD - I developed a few abilities I didn't know how to make sense of and seeing auras was one of them.

I sheepishly admit I was one of those people who had "contempt prior to investigation" re: anything that was considered New Age, paranormal, etc. I certainly changed my tune!

Re: auras, you know how you sort of trance out sometimes when you are talking to someone and you lose focus and your eyes - though they are still looking at the person - aren't focusing like when you were actively listening? Well, my eyes kind of go relaxed like that and then the aura will appear around them. It can't be too bright in the room though I have seen them in daylight a couple times. Supposedly everyone can learn how. I first read about how to see them in Michael Crighton's (sp?) memoir Travels. I will figure out how to inbox you.

 

[Abrasky]

Maddog's quote

This is a really interesting flipside to the whole issue of expectation and emotional need. While often those of us who have experienced considerable emotional abuse and neglect, expect and accept not enough from others, I think there is also the potential to fall to the other extreme of the spectrum, and to idealise certain people, or to have difficulty "regulating down" the need and expectation once those instincts have been awakened in us. Getting that balance right is something that is beyond me at the moment, and I know at times that I feel intense, almost frantic, and most definitely childlike disappointment in people, often then snapping back to the other extreme and then expecting and accepting nothing from them.

Wow that explains some things. Thanks for sharing that mad-dog.

I have in 13 years had integrated many emotions (probably 1000). But when it came to processing the 'closer to people/ closer to supervisor emotion', which took 3 years to process, unlike the 1000 others which took 1 month, that was a bit like falling into the other side of the spectrum.

Close to people feels like to me such a big emotion, because being close to people feels like it is connected to everything else in my trauma. I am still learning to regulate that emotion. I haven't felt anything so powerfully intense in all my life, and I doubt I ever will again, frantic, stepping back to not expecting anything from people to idolising. Yep Just how I felt when I processed this emotion, nice to have something to relate to.

Try keeping in the middle when the person you are idolising with this close emotion that has just re-awakened is looking at your lips and telling you to stay back for coffee after you had a disagreement with him. Oh my, so wish I was not so strong sometimes. And then I am glad I am. Emotions aren't real when they are polarised like that and you have to wait until they get balanced again.

 

[therapybankrupt]

ooking at your lips and telling you to stay back for coffee after you had a disagreement with him.

Wow Maze ! Good for you for seeing this in maddog's post. Actually the post sparked my awareness of this issue but I still did not totally get it. I think about all the times I had this happen to me with friends and family members. I just had my ah-ha moment this week while I watched my Mom model this after two people in her family ambushed and verbally attacked her at a lunch meet up. One of them asked for a ride home and invited Mom into her house.

Mom gave her a ride and spent the day with her and her family and friends. Mom even paid for dinner for everyone at her house that day. Sad right? She is 75 and called me to tell me about her awful day. She was so upset. At that moment I said to myself. I am felling this pain. It was all to familiar.

I thought this is where I learned this. No matter how awful people treat you. You somehow mange to dissociate and pretend they did not hurt you. Just carry on. Try to be the better person. That old tape was playing. I have to keep this relationship in tact no matter what! Bull!!!!! No more!!!!! Today I choose to see the truth. I am going to have boundaries! Not walls. Not a fence that a toy dog could knock over. A solid fence to protect myself.

I said to Mom" how dare her ask you for a ride". My Mom had an ah-ha moment too. We talked about it. If my Mom had boundaries she would have reacted much differently. Like, no I will not give you a ride after you hurt me. Until I was reminded of the pain from similar issues I experienced and reacted the same way. I could not see my own boundary issues. I am thankful for this awakening now. I can change things.

Tb

 

[ms spock]

Maddog's quote

I have in 13 years had integrated many emotions (probably 1000). But when it came to processing the 'closer to people/ closer to supervisor emotion', which took 3 years to process, unlike the 1000 others which took 1 month, that was a bit like falling into the other side of the spectrum.

How do you integrate emotions Maze? I don't know what you mean by the above.

 

[Abrasky]

How do you integrate emotions Maze? I don't know what you mean by the above.

This is where an emotion from the 'cupboard' comes falling out from a repressed state. When we are in a trauma, memories and the emotions felt at the time do not get properly stored and written in the long term memory. The emotions and memories clog our 'still to process' part of the brain leading to flashbacks and anxiety. They can't be stored, and PTSD stops them being stored so they keep coming up over and over again. Which is why one with PTSD can not stop thinking about a trauma after it has happened.

When I integrate emotions, I go through a grief process which lasts for a bit, and then identify the emotion. The emotion is attached to a repressed memory which also comes out. And then the emotion and associated memory for me is integrated.

I was not able to integrate emotions myself for the first 13 years of therapy. I had to get help from a psychologist to 'link' the emotion to the unconscious state involved. The link then brings the memory and emotion back from the unconscious side before I realised it. I'd have a cry and go away for 4 weeks.

I was once told by a psychologist who would not do this 'memory stuff' with me I would never get better and work again. Well who has worked for a year and a half and earned a proper wage and I have been off antideppressants for 6 years. I did not have mild PTSD, it was so severe, I was agoraphobic at the start, on a high dose of antideppressants) and could not look up from the ground in public places. You do what works for you and you don't let anyone tell you that it won't work.

 

[therapybankrupt]

When I integrate emotions, I go through a grief process which lasts for a bit, and then identify the emotion. The emotion is attached to a repressed memory which also comes out. And then the emotion and associated memory for me is integrated.

Wow Maze I am impressed with your skills to heal yourself now. So great to hear you have been able to return to a proper paying job of all medications. This is my dream. Congratulation to you for your hard work has paid off!
tb

 

[Abrasky]

thanks therapybankrupt. :) I didn't really do it, My psychologists did.