Elpha's adventure pt. 3

[Not Alone]

  Hope I didn't overdo it with the cheers, but I feel like jumping up and down for you, clapping and yelling, "Good for you! Yahoo!"

[Elphanigh]

Thank you!  Not overboard with the cheers at all. I am grateful this can be celebrated here.


So I still feel great today, tired but it is because I stayed up too late last night. I did go on a three mile run last night which was awesome (I did two miles last week, so wanted to see what I was still capable of). It became 2 miles of running and a mile of walking at a good pace but still did it. Hoping I will get that to be stronger and faster as I go. Have been working out a lot more since I got back from Iowa, and that has felt really good. Mostly it has been small things but I find myself happy to up the intensity.

With that all being said I know kind of what I want to work on when I get to my therapy session next week. During my EMDR the idea that my body was always someone elses came up. I remembered my mom force feeding me so I would gain weight, or people being mean because I was anorexic kind of skinny. I remembered the fact I was being sexually abused and hit as long as I can remember. That people have forever told me what I needed to do with my body... or simply told me my body belonged to them in some way or another. That made me hate when I started to get curves and look more like a woman (I have come to be mostly okay with this). I am not by any means curvy, I still have a pretty athletic build but more curvy than  I have ever been.

So I want to work on the idea of processing that lack of bodily autonomy. I want to figure out what voice is really mine in all of the messages. Not really sure how I can tackle that in Therapy but I am sure my t will have an idea. Which may just be EMDR on some of the memories and phrases that I have. I feel like that connects to the current issue but is a much larger underlying thing that I experience.

Like I find myself working out, wanting to be and feel healthier. Again not that I am not, I am just a little softer than I would like. I worry that the voice that is wanting that is not my own. Maybe it is the people that needed me to be thinner... and there is a guilt in being small because I always got shamed for it as a kid so that voice is telling me the opposite. That voice I know is one of my M and a few other people in my early life. I feel like my body is mine but I still feel like there is some confusion and some feelings connected to not having it be mine for so much of my life that might be worth touching on.

[Elphanigh]

Going to put this here. I think I wrote about my D's motorcycle accident two years ago. They found cancer after that wreck and i learned to be grateful for the wreck because it meant they caught the cancer and could then operate on it. Since that operation almost two years ago he has had check ups every three months to ensure a clean bill of health.

Last weekend was supposed to be the big one. If he was clear again it would be a year before they had to test him. However his tests came back concerning and we do not know whether it is back or not but they believe it could be. So they are doing more test and my D has to go in and get several tests done including one that can be pretty invasive.

Now my relationship with my D has never been perfect or super close but I do care and worry about him so much. I had not truly let myself feel anything about the news until the last few days and it is really kind of getting to me. I worry about my D a lot even if I don't necessarily always want to be around my Foo. We lost both of his parents to forms of cancer and I don't want the same for them.


Then I did also find out, earlier than this news, that someone I consider to be an adopted mom for me may have kidney's that are failing. Again lots of tests to determine that. We should know right after my birthday about that one. I am not sure how I would take the bad news to be honest.

On top of that some of my finances have hit the fan. I am working to get them fixed but it is scary and awful. I honestly did think I was in a better place with finances and was catching up. Come to find out I missed a debt when I was making all my arrangements and it may come to bite me big time. I will manage it and face it head on as I must but it is not an easy thing to do.

I also found out that a kid I babysat when I was younger has been jailed on multiple counts of rape and child pornography... Which I know has nothing to do with me at all but it hits an emotional spot in me.

With all of this and having people I don't know particularly well staying in my apartment I got pretty overwhelmed last night. I had some phone calls to make and did them.. but afterwards just kind of hit the emotional tipping point. My roommate saw me truly cry for the first time ever basically last night. I have known here for over four years and this was the first time that I had ever been falling apart enough for that to occur, and the first time I trust her to hold it.

I am holding everything with much more grace today. I just needed to feel and hurt yesterday. That whole having human limits thing is hard. I am still excited about the realization my symptoms are truly so much better, this all just has to be felt as well. I can hold the good and the bad at the same time if I really try.

[Not Alone]

Those are many difficult, emotional situations to carry.

[Hope67]

Hi Elpha,
Having human limits is hard, and I know you are carrying a lot of emotional stuff relating to all these things - sending you a hug  (if that's ok).
Hope 

[Elphanigh]

Thank you Hope, I really appreciate it 

Today's update here will likely be on the longer side. I have a lot of concepts flying around in my head from after my session last night.

I do still meet the criteria for ptsd, but just barely which is great. I can see the improvement and honestly without the symptoms from Iowa the first few weeks of this month that criteria may be entirely different. I will get to see towards the end of May as just a recap of my session with my T before I leave for my new adventure. There is a perfectionist part of me that really wishes I didn't meet the criteria, that would feel more validated if I didn't. The idea of not meeting those criteria before I go to school would be nice but it is not a requirement, nor is it something I thought possible in the first place. I recognize how much better I am and how healthy I am and that is enough, it needs to be. Perfectionism aside, I can recognize how big the leaps I have made truly are and how that is beautiful and will translate well into my future career.

This brings me to needing to decide how to move forward with a therapist. I can decide to not find one immediately if I want to. I can decide to allow myself to rest for a bit and focus on school for a while. I could also find one right away and keep digging at all of this. I am not sure what I want to be honest. It is more in my nature to keep diving and get as healthy and healed as I can while in school, but I recognize I don't have to decide that way. I am well enough that this no longer affects my day to day very much and I could decide to pause for a little while, and live a bit of life. Not that I have't lived life the last few years but I have truly focused on my healing in every aspect of my life and that took over because I wanted that to be my focus. I went inward and chose that to be my focus. I have reaped the benefits of that and will continue to do so over the next couple of months, but then I have a choice to make. I will certainly talk with my current T about this. It is a lot to ponder and I will certainly want her input but this is ultimately my choice to make.

In the case I do choose to find a new one, I need to start looking and find one that will fit. I have gotten truly luck with the one I have and want to ensure that I have a new one that fits in the same ways. I recognize it will be different, but if I get another one I want one that will be as effective for my healing as my current T. I do not need as much as I did when I first started with this T, but I do still have a lot I can learn and heal from. If I decide to not pause and to keep digging I will need a good T to help me balance school with healing. It will be a much different dynamic come the fall and truly even in 8 weeks when I move.





Now my session last night: It took two hours rather than one but was truly productive. I feel sleepy today because of it, but not overwhelmed or overly disconnected. It is progress to see how I am holding it all today tbh.

We did some truly deep work in EMDR and honestly I am still pretty exhausted from it. I went to start back into the processing of last week, just to check on where those levels were. It turned into something much deeper than that, for which I am glad, but it was intense. There was a moment where I started getting flashes of memories and moments in my life. We were working on the phrase "I am powerless", so instead of the particular memory or feelings that I was working on last week coming back up I got new bits.

Essentially what happened is my mind flipped through a ton of memories of abuse and moments that I felt powerless. My T described it as a "highlight reel" for lack of a better phrase, because that is what it felt like. There were so many moments that went through my head, a lifetime of abuse will do that. I had never been able to sit with so much of my abuse before, as I could never tolerate seeing that much of it without it being overwhelming. Normally if I started drifting things would spike too much and I would have to redirect to feel present, normally with my T catching it before I did. Last night though I could finally hold it all. I could let them flip through and recognize them all. It was not an easy thing to experience but it was really healing I think.

The emotional side of this is I sat with just how much I have been through in my life. I saw how much I have survived and endured, and that is painful. I have pushed through more times than is truly possible but I did. My T told me after I said I was not sure how I survived it all that she believed it was truly pure will power at times. That my life force was strong so I has the will power to live through all of it.  We both recognize and have before recognized the fact that what I have been through could have killed me, and has done so to other people. It could have kept me down at very least and I managed to get through it and be relatively okay in the grand scheme of things. I have been through many versions of the worlds worst nightmares and I have lived to tell the stories.

After the flipping of memories ended I was left with 8 core memories. I envision kind of like the core memories from the movie "Inside out". Not that exact concept but those are what was left over after all of the processing of probably several hundred moments in my life.  Each of those moments was a time I didn't believe I would live through. They were moments I felt my most powerless and fearful. All 8 of them occurred by the time I was 14. To realize that there were 8 times in my life, before age 14, that I truly thought I would die is a giant moment. There is no easy way to say or really hold that. I can see the strength it took to survive even when I didn't think I would, and when I didn't believe that I wanted to. Those are the worst of the worst. My life certainly has more than 8 of those moments, and many similar occurrences but it was those I was left with.

Through this process I needed to allow myself to listen to the times I was powerless to change the events. I had to let my guard down enough to get to that point. I was surprised initially that my T was allowing me to flip through and just sit with that sort of process. She explained at the end what it was that happened. When those start to flip through like that it is that I have hit a neuro network and that I am connecting all of those memories and thoughts. In that flipping through I got to process all of those memories without having to truly target each one. When that flipping stops it means those memories have been processed in the same way EMDR processes the memory that was focused on. So looking back on those images there is more peace and less feelings. I have only tested a couple of them out of curiosity because I didn't believe it until I started to do so today. I will probably check a few more of those but I will take my time with that.

So while I felt like we were kind of tempting fate in my very long 2 hour session it was truly probably the most productive EMDR that could have happened. My T told me it was a hard moment to induce and that it does not happen often for people. That she has not ever had that moment in EMDR for herself, but that she has heard and seen other people do that. Confirming that they did truly feel like they processed leagues of information. That for me the flipping took longer because I have a lot of fuel in my life for it.

I have more observations but need to take a break in writing. Everything is okay, but I do just have this emotional drain from it all. So small doses of observations and allow myself to process what I need to over time. Unlike in my session I need to slow it down and process at a much more titrated rate. Allow myself to rest

[Elphanigh]

My mind did some more processing after I wrote that. I think the most powerful thing is that I can choose to pause. I am at a point (especially after 8 more sessions) that I can choose to pause. I have spent several years focusing on healing, digging in deeper and harder than I ever imagined possible. I dove head first into this journey while facing every demon I could find. I put my focus inward and really focused on getting healthy and stable. I focus solely on healing while allowing the rest of my life to stand a little more still. That was a sacrifice I am glad to have made, although it has not always been an easy choice to make. There have been times I questioned why I sacrificed that in my early to mid 20s, but I am glad I did. It was something I needed to do and has allowed me to heal so much more than I imagined possible.

I know that there will forever be healing and processing I could do. That part of being human and having been through what I have been through, is that I could always be healing adn processing. However, maybe I don't have to be. Maybe just maybe it is okay if I am not digging and facing those demons with such intensity. Maybe it is okay to rest from that a let myself live life a little more. Maybe I deserve to allow myself that much freedom. I have done so much healing work and am in a spot where I could choose to pause. I could choose to live life a little more and remain healthy. I wouldn't fall backwards or behind. It would not cause any of this progress to reverse. I am confident actually that it would allow me to keep developing the skills I have and maybe take time to find my energy and focus again. I find that maybe I deserve that rest and that not going intensely at this isn't a failure or me being lazy, maybe it is what I need and deserve in this section of my life.

Goodness knows I could find another therapist and keep digging, but I have done multiple years of that. Maybe I don't have to keep doing that forever?

I have never given this option any thought. I never thought I would have the option if I am completely honest. I always felt like pausing would mean going backwards, that I would never be well enough to sustain a pause in this type of healing. I think I naturally will continue to heal and work through what I need to, especially going to school for what I am. Maybe I will find I want to get a new T and continue during school, but maybe just maybe a small break wouldn't be awful for me. Maybe I deserve to live my life a little bit first. Idk. It is a lot to think on, but it is possible.

Honestly this is a more powerful moment and realization than I know how to explain. Every time I think about it for very long I get teary eyed. It is a very emotional thing to know I have that choice and to think about maybe living my life fully again. More fully than I have ever gotten to live it.

[Elphanigh]

I am finding that the more I think about the possibility of pausing the more I think I am going to take that option. I will work to process the core memories that came up form last weeks session with EMDR before I leave here (maybe taking a weekend session if I need it). Then I will take a bit of a break when I leave for Iowa. I am not sure how long but I will know when I want or need to go back to trauma therapy. It is not as if I don't want to go back, I just don't think I do right now. I think when I leave that I want to focus on that part of my life for a little while and not be expending so much energy on trauma recovery.

I will be studying trauma and ways to help others with their own traumas. I will be surrounded by the mental health field through my graduate studies. I will still be doing my volunteering through the Cptsd Foundation, and maintaining some level of presence here on this forum. It is not as if I am going to neglect that part of me, I will just be working with it in a massively different way.

My T told me last week (after my EMDR session when I was handling just how much I had been through, and wondering why I survived), she said she thought I was on this earth for a reason. That she truly believed I would help so many people and that my life force was so strong because I was meant to be able to do that. She did not say this in a way that it was forcing any beliefs or anything on me. It is simply that she does believe I will do that much good in my life. It is encouraging and full of hope, especially as I do truly want to be as effective for others as she has been for me.

Honestly I admire the way she is able to work, and the sort of career she has had. I do not know how or if to tell her that. I would have made this decision anyways but she is one of several people that do inspire me to go forward with this career and do as much good as I can. I am so lucky to have several people in my life that I admire and look at as someone to strive to be like, she is one of them. I am not sure if that is an okay thing in a therapeutic relationship but that is okay.

Either way, I think I will pause when I leave and at least for the first bit of school allow myself the space to focus on my professional life. I deserve to get to do that and honestly my future clients deserve it. They deserve me focusing on school so I can be truly helpful. I will go back when the time is right but I think the time is right for a pause at the moment. Not a halt, but simply a pause for a little while.

[Three Roses]

I am not sure if that is an okay thing in a therapeutic relationship but that is okay.

IMO it's ok to take inspiration from wherever you can.

[Elphanigh]

Thank you Three Roses. I am glad to hear that 

She inspires me to be the best most caring therapist that I can. I see things she does that I think are things I want to incorporate into my own practice one day. Then I am inspired by people here. Both people that are caring professionals that I have spoken with here, but also by the courage of people that are facing all of this each and day and sharing in this space. The stories both good and bad inspire me to do this, and give me ideas for the future. It makes me more determined.

Then of course the people I have the pleasure to work with at the foundation. People that are working so hard to create resources for survivors of all walks of life and are touching so many hearts in the process. I want to do my own form of that. I see the heart and determination they have, I see how they have allowed me to create a book club and how much that one weekly meeting helps those that are there. Community has been such a piece of my own healing and they have inspired me to be better and to learn how to help people in my own way.

There are many things but I am constantly in awe of those around me and in makes me want to be the best I can. To give people what they need, and even to be what I needed and didn't have.

Sorry quite the ramble but I am inspired as I get closer to starting this career. I get worried I will mess up, but the inspiration and hope runs so much stronger than my worries.

[Elphanigh]

I have lots of things right now so this may be a longer post, we will see.

I found out my Great-grandma in the the ICU and has been for four days. I live closest to her in my FOO but am not the one going to be with her at the moment. Her son (my GF) and his wife (my GM). I am worried for her, and she makes the third person that is having health issues that I care about right now. It is hard to have her in the ICU and unable to do anything about it.

One of my nightmares came back last night. I have not had bad nightmares in a while and hopefully this will not start them back up. However I call this one my slave dream, because in it that is what I can best describe my role as being. I had a string of theses like 4 or 5 months ago and then they stopped. I never described the dream to any and let it just be another bad dream. Last night it was still almost identical from what I remember it being months ago. I am not super sure about what spiked it but I am sure there is something in my recent life.

A friend of mine asked me today, after me telling her a bit of what the nightmare is like, if there was something I felt like I was guilty for trying to break free of. It struck me differently because I had not gotten that from the dream until she said that to me. I look and see where she got it from but it caught me off guard as a question. I do feel guilty for a few things in that respect, but I had not mentioned it to anyone. I knew logically they were things that would pass because I know they are some older voices trying to keep me from breaking free. So I acknowledged them but then set them to the side.

I find I do feel guilty for healing, and feeling better. I feel guilty for thinking about taking a break from trauma therapy when I move in a few months. I realize that there is some part of me that questions it because I know so many people that deserve to have the same healing and sense of freedom that I am beginning to have. I have this old narrative that I am playing out in my head that says that I am glad good is happening to me but someone else deserves it more. I can handle the bad so let someone else have the good. I feel guilty for not having cptsd anymore and for almost not having ptsd anymore as well. For healing so intensely and being able to have the freedom to step away and work on my professional life for a while.

I know logically I deserve all of the good that is going on. I have done the hard work for it and continue to do so. The guilt will pass and is not huge but maybe it is why the nightmare is there.


Then I have started to feel this intense deep pain. It is not anger, resentment, or anxiety. It does not come with flashbacks or panic... it simply just is. I realized so fully that I deserved better growing up. Not just that I did not deserve the cruelty but that I truly deserved better. I was kind and tried to love these people into being kinder to me. I worked to be and give them everything they needed that would save them and m. I was a kind hearted kid who put others above herself because she loved and cared so deeply. I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I experienced cruelty in many places and forms because the people around me wanted to be cruel.. not for any rhyme or reason..  just simply because they wanted to do harm and I was surrounded by adults that were not capable of protecting me at the moment. There is nothing that I could have done to change that. There is also nothing I could have done to deserve that kind of cruelty.

I have seen and experienced how cruel people can be. I have witnessed over and over again how people can be monsters.. but I have always chosen to have faith in people and see as much good as I could. I was so kind and loving, I still am.

That is heavy stuff. It is painful and feels more vulnerable that anything else. So here I am being vulnerable and hopefully going to be vulnerable in my session tonight

[Elphanigh]

I feel changed today, in a way I am not yet sure how to explain. I am going to attempt. There was this giant moment in my session last night that was just a pure release. I was allowing myself to be entirely vulnerable and to just feel in my emdr session. I was processing a memory that has been really stuck for me all my life. It is one that I have tortured and punished myself for since it happened like 19 years ago. I was 6 and now at 25 I am getting to release that torture and punishment. I am getting to release the need to strive to fix that one mistake.. because I can see it wasn't a mistake or a misdoing on my part. I realize I did not do anything wrong. I did what I had to in an impossible situation.

There was an image of my sister's face from that moment that used to be a reminder of the part of me I believed was capable of being a monster.. one that was capable of hurting people in the most horrific ways. I blamed myself and that younger version of me for not choosing better.. That moment was a huge moment in my life. It changed how I saw myself, my sister, and created this mindset that I have lived with since. Letting go of that mindset and realizing how much pain I put myself in because of it is a different sort of pain. There is a sadness and a grief that goes along with knowing I punished myself for years for something that was not truly mine to bear.

I realized so strongly in my session yesterday that I was never like them. Those five words, "I was never like them" make all the difference in the world. I have never even been capable of being like them, and never will be. It is not in my nature as a person. I was never a monster, or even in the slightest capable of being one.

All my life, I have been expecting younger me to have been able to choose self sacrifice in that moment. I have expected her to be able to do what not even all adults could do in that situation.. I have tortured myself with the image because I thought I was a monster because I did not choose differently in that moment. I expected my 6 year old self to be able to save my sister, and to suffer consequences far greater at the hands of my abuser because of it. I expected myself to be able to fight the fear for my life at that age and to choose not to lsiten to instructions..

It broke my heart to hear little me say again and again " I am sorry, she told me too.. I was scared".. There is no way in the world I could see that part of me as a monster or anything like my abusers... She was so concerned for her sister.. and so concerned that it made her like her abusers that she did not even care for her own well being.. just that of others.

That moment in my life I decided to never cause anyone that kind of pain again, and that I would make up for what I had done. I strove to protect everyone and never let that happen again. I believed I had to make up for what I had done. It changed the entirety of how I viewed myself and my role in all of this.

Letting go of that need is  hard to describe. That blame was never mine to hold. I did all I could with what I had. my sister quickly forgave me in that moment, but I was never able to forgive myself. 19 years later I think I finally do.

I am so sorry to the younger part of me, and to myself for putting myself through that torture and punishment for something I didn't need to.

Ooof, getting teary eyed, will need to come back to this. 

[Hope67]

Just sending you a gentle and safe hug, if that's ok Elpha    Sounds like a big realisation - and be kind to yourself.
Hope 

[Elphanigh]

Thank you Hope  It is a large realization but a really good one. It will just take some emotional processing to work through it fully I think. It affects a lot of things, and still does just make me emotional.

[Elphanigh]

Just coming here to put more thoughts to words. There are I think a million different feelings attached to this. It is in one aspect very freeing. I feel lighter as I am not carrying the weight of the guilt/shame/ blame that I had been. I don't feel like I have to be making up for something I did wrong. I didn't realize how fully I had truly been punishing myself for that moment.

This memory is a tough one *Trigger warning SA mention*
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I was six when this happened. One of my abuses we can call her L for this purpose today. L had already been sexually abusive to me, I was singled out from my siblings by her as she was our babysitter and I was the "favorite" because I was the oldest. She was always kind to me before and after but was scary in those moments and there were a lot of different manipulation tactics (as I type this I realize I am still kind of justifying how I fell for it, but I need not do that)

In this instance she had just gotten done sexually abusing me. She told me I needed to go get my sister, which I hesitated to do and promptly got scolded for that. So I did what she asked and went and got her. I was told to repeat what she had just done to me on my sister... that if I messed up I would be in trouble and that it would hurt my sister if I didn't do it right. Saying she would be really angry if she had to do it for me.

So I did what I was asked in that moment. I remember trying to get my sister to close her eyes and getting scolded for that. So instead I was left with the image of the face my 4 year old sister made in that moment. I remember such confusion and hurt run across that face and her giant brown eyes just staring at me.

*end TW*


In that moment, or the ones that followed, I found that I thought I was like my abusers. I saw the pain in my sister's face and tortured myself with it until last night basically. What I neglected to put stock into is that I immediately went to my sister when I was allowed and made sure she was safe. I checked on her and connected with her by playing her favorite game. I remember telling her it was okay and that I was here and that it would never happen again. Then just went with her and played together. I did the best thing anyone could have in that moment and probably saved a lot of pain for her down the road.

My sister forgave me right then. with no questions or conditions. I had and still have a good relationship with her so obviously there was no grudge held. She forgave me but I never allowed myself even a small break for it. I never forgave myself. I loved her so much and still do.


Honestly this free feeling from that mindset also comes with a great deal of heartbreak. I feel so deeply the pain the both of us were in. My heart breaks for the girl that was put in that impossible situation.. the girl that figured it was her that was the monster because that was how she could survive. My hear breaks for the little girl that is even in this moment still apologizing for what she thought was her fault. My heart breaks for all the moments I know I berated myself for not being kinder, or better.. all the times I thought that I was going to become the monster I thought I was in that moment.

I used to have nightmares about that becoming true. I would try to stay awake after I had one and not sleep as long as I could for the days following because they were worse than any horror that was being done to me in my waking hours.

I see my younger self and can see her good heart... Mine breaks for her in this moment.  I just want to draw her in and let her know that no bit of her deserved that.. and that she was hurt too in that moment and that it was scary. I want to hug her so tight she knows that she is loved and was never to blame.

So my heart breaks.. as much as it feels light, it also feels that pain. Holding both of those simultaneously is an interesting dichotomy.

I was never like them, bring such relief but also so pain and understanding.


I know that moment drove me to protect others and gave me more of a purpose. I could have shut down and have been destroyed by all that I endured, but I didn't shut down. I chose to do what I could to save others.. I chose to survive the horrors of my childhood and to use that to go into helping others. I get to choose this because it is what I want now. I am not choosing because I think I have to make up for anything. I am choosing it because I love and care deeply for others. I am a healer by nature and that can be such a strength. 

Anyways lots of things and there will likely be more, but for now that is what I have got