EMDR -damaged without hope - Choose again

Today I decided to use the EMDR sound plus music therapy that is used to address trauma. I thought 15 minutes as part of meditation would be a good idea.  Just like all my meditations my mind was all over the place until I arrived in my childhood home.

I was in our den with the braided oval rug and I can see my mother now laying on the teal couch that Lurlene from our church had just recovered for us.  My mama spent most of her days sick on her favorite couch. She never had chemo therapy just radiation but food was the enemy for her and when she was sick this is where she stayed..

In the meditation she could see me as I am now and she called me over and took my hands.  I told her I didn't know she was going to leave us and she said that she was sorry for not telling me the truth. She took my hands in hers and said "look we have the same hands". She said that I have always been a part of her and that she was proud of who I have become. She offered to let me lay on the couch with her but since I am not a child I am too big. I laid my head on her chest and she stroked me.  I cried the whole time and I am still crying just writing about it.

All my life my memory of my mother has be from a distance.  I could see her and remembered things she did but I never remembered what she said or recognized her as a flesh and blood person. I thought it was because I had forgotten and not because I was blocking the feeling of loss. I have never let myself feel that loss. I have felt it through other losses in my life but the one true loss I had I never really acknowledged. I was a child and I didn't know how to deal with it so I put it away forever.

I always thought I was a burden to my mother when she was sick.  I was strong willed and tried to be good but I never was sure what I was doing wrong. Seeing her in my meditation she felt like a real person and not some far away dream of a voiceless person.

The way EMDR is suppose to work it that the eye therapy, sound or tapping distracts the conscious mind and lets unconscious memories of thoughts come to the surface. I am not an expert but I have had two breakthroughs that have helped me to address beliefs I have had about myself my whole life. The reason I think "I am not enough"  the reason I think people leave me even if with my mother it was in death. My child's mind put this idea there and I have built on it with every loss.

I believe that we form our ways of coping with life from a child's perspective. When we become grown up we just take those core views and embellish them to suit our current situation. The brain always takes the simplest route or routine so it is easier not to question our thinking. This is why when we have some life altering crisis we start to question our thinking. It is too hard for most people to give up who they believe they are because without our identity we feel naked and empty.

I know this first hand but this doesn't last long. Even without our identity we are still here and can choose again. We can choose to re-create a happier healthier person by rejecting the idea that we are permanently damaged and without hope.  This is a lie built on the ideas we formed as children.  We can choose again and know that it is only our thoughts and false beliefs about ourselves holding us back.

Whether my meditation was brought on by EMDR or if it is the belief that it  might help me have a breakthrough it worked.  I have been that young girl hold people at arms length because I thought they might leave me like my mother did.  I haven't wanted to take that chance again. Today I can see that and I feel dancing around the house.

Uncomfortable in crisis - Peace is the new normal

I feel like most of the time I am just waking up and seeing life for the first time.  I am surprised every day how lost I have been in my own emotions and thinking to really see things clearly. This past year I have been able to see just how lost I have been in my own version of life.

I never had any specific goals early on I was just trying to survive.  I thought life was just a series of crisis that you had to survive.  Beginning in childhood with a fundamentalist upbringing where God was watching you 24/7 so you better not make a mistake to living with the affects of alcoholism in all of my relationships.

This past year I have been mostly alone with myself cleaning up some of the final issues of my thinking that has really kept me stuck. I have always wanted to feel safe and knowing it or not that is what I have been looking for in every relationship. The idea that their is a safe place is an illusion.

I do believe that in every situation their is a flow that if we don't resist it will bring us comfort.  Early on I had a plan that I thought would make me feel safe.  I was sure if I did every thing right that the result would get me the emotional security I was looking for.

That relationship brought out every insecurity I ever had about being alone and being trapped. It is harder to be alone with someone than it is to be by yourself.  I always remember looking at the people who started out loving me and thinking this person seems like a stranger to me.

I think when a relationship ends the person who wants to leave has to make the other person a villain. If not a true villain then a non person no matter how long you have been together.  They just can't live with their decision to leave unless they can make you a non-person.

We all change over time and start to realize that life is short and we want to find happiness out there somewhere. A relationship in a rut can make you feel dead inside and wondering "is this all there is?"
For some people the lure of a new relationship seems to be the answer to all their problems and it is temporarily. We all know over time we get back to that same place.

I do believe that you can find someone that is more suited for you but they have to have the emotional maturity to adapt to change. I am not interested in a routine that locks me into a place where my mind is not engaged. I want to be with someone that understands that things change and you have to adapt.

I have to admit that being in constant crisis most of my life I was never bored. It has been living with peace that has made me nuts. I had to realize that I was getting a pay off for being so lost in dealing with crisis all the time.  It wasn't until I found peace long enough to decide that crisis felt less comfortable.  Where peace feels normal and I am not willing to give it up for anything.

You will be alright - EMDR Finding Peace

I cam across a technique called EMDR it is either administered visually or by sound.  It is used to address PTSD and has been around for a long time. I saw a therapist on a YouTube stations called "Your Inner Mammal".  The technique is suppose to distract you thinking brain long enough to heal the buried trauma you have. I did research this before and it has been quite effective for some people.

It is recommended that you use a certified therapist for this technique but I am my own therapist at this point so I decided to give it a try.  They have three methods visual, auditory and tapping on alternately on two sides of the body. I am not recommending this for anyone else.

I don't really feel I have hidden trauma all my trauma was right out there in plain view so I just decided to go with the flow. I used the visual clip first and didn't feel anything special then I tried the one with music.  This uses headphones that play music and alternates tonal beeps from the left ear to right ear and is very pleasing to listen to.

I was in my meditation for a few minutes when my mother popped up. She felt physically there and I was a small child again with my arms around here neck. I started sobbing and she said to me "I trusted you and I knew you would be alright no matter what".

You have to understand that my mother and I had a stressful relationship.  I was a "willful child" and had my own ideas about everything and we battled constantly.  I never understood why we had to do the things we did everyday. I questioned everything and ended up getting whipped a lot. My mother was in charge of discipline in our family and she believed in "spare the rod and spoil the child".

I know she loved me but we were at constant odds with each other. She worried constantly about my ability to fit in with the other kids.  I didn't really understand why this was so important to her.  Most of the kids seemed boring to me and I was always looking for adventure.  Besides when you are strong willed diagnosed ADD and raised in a Pentecostal church you have some likability issues.

When she got sick she didn't have the energy to focus on me or discipline me anymore. I have felt guilty all my life that I was such a problem child and that I caused her such grief.  I have felt that she gave up on me at some point because I couldn't be sorted out. 

In my meditation when I heard "I trusted you and knew you would be alright" it felt like relief to me. It wasn't that she gave up and was disappointed in me it was she trusted in my ability to go on without her. I felt she somehow knew I would make it even though I was so young.

This was strange to me that this came up so quickly I haven't been thinking about her or my childhood lately.  I have believed all my life that I am a problem to others.  I don't want to be a burden and have tried to focus on taking care of myself. I have been autonomous emotionally. Spending my time in the background and supporting  other people. 

I felt relieved when I emerged from the meditation.  I felt had really seen my mother for the first time since my childhood.  She was holding me something I that I don't remember happening too often. 

I going to say the therapy was a success for me. I feel I am working towards more freedom emotionally and that works for me.  I am in transition right now purging the past and getting ready for an exciting future.

Embrace Uncertainty - Controlling the Uncontrollable - Clean Slate

I created a chalk board out an old frame I found at a junk shop it is really big.  I wanted a place I could write quotes to remind me to be happy and to keep moving. It was nice to see the big blank space and it reminded me of a meditation I use to listen to that the speaker would say put your problems on the blackboard and use a sponge to wipe them away.  I really liked that visual and the clean slate it left behind even if it was only for a few minutes.

I have left the new blackboard empty for a few days not wanting to disturb the clean slate but yesterday I decided to write something.  "Embrace Uncertainty" - I think this is from Eckhart Tolle's book the New Earth.  I remember when I was in such turmoil about my whole life whether to leave my business and worried about what was going to happen to me.  I felt paralyzed by fear all the time.

When I found that phrase it summed up everything for me.  I wanted things to be certain.  I wanted to know exactly what the future looked like and that I would be safe.  We don't get this ever.  We may have times when we imagine that things will always be exactly as they are but life doesn't work that way. 

I built my life around trying to make everything the same every day so I would be less fearful.  All that did was make me and my life boring and predictable. I felt like I was in a prison.  I thought that a routine would give me peace so when the storms came I would be ready. But what I ended up doing was making me less flexible and always bracing myself every day for the impending storm.

Life throws all kinds of things at you all the time good and bad.  If we can just go with the flow and not focus on wanting to control the uncontrollable then we can move through most anything. It might not have been what we planned but we can find peace in the day we have been given.

This is the time of year for reflection and to look at what is or isn't working for us.  It is hard to give up things or situations that no longer represent who we are today.  It can feel awkward and unsettling at first becoming a new you and this is why resolutions mostly don't work.  We like the familiar and fighting this need for certainty keeps us stuck in places we don't want to be for too long.

Embrace the awkwardness being in that middle place where you haven't quite let go of the old and haven't quite become the new you. It won't feel strange forever and you know it is worth it in the end.