Zen_Racer's Recovery Journal

[zen_racer]

I know I'm spamming my own journal today, but it's been a rough day.  I think the reality of what I wrote in the letter to my FOO didn't even start to sink in until this morning.  When I wrote it, I was definitely feeling ... tension.  Maybe anguish.  But also an eerie calm.  After I wrote it, that tension stayed and there was no relief.  Today I've read through it a couple times, and cried more each time I read it.

That tension felt worse.  There was still no relief.  I ended up texting with an old friend I've known for a long time from before my move back to where I am now.  We had both known something was up with me back then, but I couldn't afford a therapist then and never tried to find one, let alone had any clue what it was that was wrong with me.  I opened up to him about seeing a therapist now, and we talked about what I'm dealing with and some of the memories I've started having.  He was very supportive and related his own experiences with doing therapy.  He thanked me for trusting him enough to be this open.  I did feel better after that, but that tension was still there to some degree.

I started looking through Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, and  saw the section in the table of contents titled Parentdectomy and Relational Healing in Chapter 3.  What as said in there hit home so hard about clients still being over controlled by their traumatizing parents, both externally and internally, often with very little contact needed.

The section in that chapter on self mothering was brutal.  I think it is perhaps an exact roadmap to exactly why my brother treated me so badly, and highlighted the differences between us.

"Once again, psychological health is based on having about two years of this no questions
asked entitlement to unconditional love. It is the normal healthy narcissism that Freud described
as "His Majesty the Baby"
.
Serious problems accrue however when the toddler does not begin to learn that there are
limits to his original entitlement. If there are no limits for too long, then the journey toward adult
narcissism begins. On the other hand, if there are too many limits too soon, the matrix of trauma
begins to form."

I continued reading through the section on Inner Child Work, and go to the list of Reparenting Affirmations.  I figured it couldn't hurt to try something, so I found some bilateral emdr music on youtube (one I'd seen recommended), laid down comfortably, and started saying some of these affirmations to myself internally.  I was just going off clouded memory, so some I got right, some I got the intent right, and some I made my own.

"I'm so glad you were born." - First one, and I started crying.

"I choose you." - I started crying more.

"I'm trying my best to learn how to protect both of us, and I'm not going to abandon you." - Crying even more.  I didn't feel connected like I did before, but I also didn't feel alone either.

"You can come to me whenever you're feeling hurt.  I will always choose you." - I didn't start crying harder, but my left arm started hurting.  My forearm specifically.  It hurt like I had been holding it up in front of me to block getting hit.  At first I started rubbing my arm like I do now, like I was trying to massage a muscle that was acting up.  It didn't help.  I decided to try acting like it was a child that had been getting hit, and started lightly rubbing my fingertips over the area very gently and soothing.

"I'm so sorry, you should've never been treated that way.  I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you, and I'm sorry that it's taken me so long to realize that I can help us both." - That pain would go away, but shift to another spot on my arm.  It moved like that 4 different times.  One of them was a lot worse than the others.

I said a few more things to myself, I think I repeated some of them.  Eventually the sun had shifted to land right on me through the window, and the music stopped.  I'm still not entirely certain what happened, at least with the pain in my arm.  Most of that tension seems gone now.  Whatever it is that happened, I'm going to take that section of the book at face value, and really work on having unconditional self compassion.

Editing to add: I've asked some questions of a search engine AI.  I did not realize I was essentially doing actual emdr, or somatic, or hybrid of both kind of "session".  I just thought it was worth adding for anyone reading that I do not feel like I retraumatized myself at all.  I do recognize that I may have gotten lucky, and I will definitely relate this to my therapist and start asking questions about therapy moving forward, and finding out what is safe for me to do alone .vs being guided.