I apologize in advance for not posting over the last few weeks. Yours truly took a little bit of a hiatus from blogging and for good reason. Allow me to explain.
I felt like I was in a good enough place to finally confront my demons. A plethora of factors played into this.
- For me, being in a romantic relationship was one of life’s most difficult challenges. Having been in one for about four months, the honeymoon phase ended. We were at the point that our true colors showed. Old shit popped up for me in the form of triggers, patterns, and co-dependence.
- Overall, I possessed a healthy mindset. Life’s obstacles were not holding me down as much or for nearly as long as they used to.
- I explored about all there was to explore with my present day issues. It felt right to begin looking at what caused my present day issues. It was time to examine the trauma and how it affected me long-term.
- Plus my therapy co-pays were free during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, I upped my sessions to once a week. Hey, free therapy. I took advantage of it.
To say the least, I grossly underestimated the those sessions’ impact. Over the last four weeks, I dug deeper into my trauma history than I have in the last twenty years. Allow me to give you a therapist’s perspective on exploring your own trauma.
- First and foremost, bringing up repressed memories from twenty years ago fucked me up. I now know what it feels like to be “re-traumatized.” Just in talking to my own therapist, somehow my memory conjured up events from my childhood. This was shit I had not thought about in two decades. The sheer fact of bringing it up messed me up emotionally for days at a time. I even called out of work for a few days because I was such a state of shock.
- It was time to pull back the layers on the trauma onion. I thought I had accepted my trauma but quickly realized there was more work to be done. Bringing up those stories hurt. It was not only emotional pain, but I felt it in my chest. For yours truly, that is usually a tell tale sign of unresolved pain. I knew that as much as it hurt, that this was something I needed to do if I was going to make that change.
- I truly underestimated how much my trauma fed into my present day patterns. I will give you on example. My parents fought, for lack of a better term, a lot during my childhood. My father was a heavy drinker, and my mother had a drill sergeant-like temper. You put them together, and commence WWIII. Looking back at it, my parents should have split up long before they did. However, I recalled in session my mother always saying to me, “You are the only reason I stay with your father.” Do not get me wrong. I love my parents to death to this day, but saying something like that to a kid over and over will have its consequences. Talking about it made me realize why I always felt responsible for their splitting up and why I constantly take responsibility for things I did not even do. I always feel guilty at heart as an adult. Realizations hit like this at least once during each session for four weeks straight.
- Self-care is important. Like I said, a lot of these discussions took a deep turn. I knew that I was not going to be right in the head afterwards. I purposely scheduled my sessions at the start of my week, and I took those days off since I make my own schedule. I pulled back from social activities on those days and gave myself a chance to process what was discussed.
My readers know I like sharing my deep thoughts on here. I do so in hopes that it will help someone else. I knew that the next post I put out was going to be about my battle with my trauma. It just took me a little longer than I expected to both process it and feel ready to share it in a logical manner. I lost count how many times I started this post and deleted it halfway through. All I have to say is that there is still work to be done in the never ending journey towards betterment.
-The Caring Counselor