[Armee]

  Papa. Thank you for those words and feelings and companionship and reassurance. I've been keeping your Ts words through yours stick around my head. When we claim what's ours, what isn't falls away. It seems to be true, why acknowledging the damage is so healing instead of what people think is the opposite - that it's dwelling on the past. It isn't. It's honoring it and that allows you to move on. Thank you for reminding me that I am moving through, not stuck.

  San. Thank you for the reassurance I am not crazy. It means a lot coming from you, and also coming from my own T. It is a way to survive the unsurvivable. And if I had loving sane people around me they would have helped me see I was stuck and needed help, but I didn't, so it persisted until it came to appear to be my inherent personality and flaws, instead of a scab protecting a wound.

Both of you, your words pulled me up. They pulled me up so much that I was stunned silent.   

[Armee]

Journal update 3.17 23

I took Sans advice, sort of. I tried to start writing down what was happening so I could share with my T. I still haven't been able to get it all out in one place but what I did manage to do was to draw what's happening in my brain to show why I'm so confused and to get what I know in one place. I did end up sharing that with T though that took a lot of effort, internal battles. But what ended up happening was I saw T on Wednesday after he'd been gone for a couple weeks. I told him but couldn't show him because I had drawn some parts I didn't want him to know about, tried to scribble it out, and accudenally ripped the page instead.

But then I emailed him an older version without the hidden parts. Then I decided I needed to tell him what's going on so scheduled another appointment which I had today. I came completely clean, that I have a lot of parts, even "present me" there's at least 6. I told him about what I have to do to transition from one to another, and basically all the stuff I've been trying to keep hidden, including telling him about the time that I tried to come to therapy and wanted to act like the "real me" instead of the morose thing that was going to therapy, but the wrong me came out much to my shock, but I couldn't make it stop. I could only watch and think * is happening?

So I think he knows what he needs to know now. I was so scared to do parts work because I knew I couldn't keep this stuff hidden. So I chose to just lay it out so I could hopefully keep moving forward. We'll see if there are major repercussions. But he was very respectful, supportive, did not make me feel crazy, told me he just saw it as ways to keep myself safe and protected. Right now, I feel safe and ok with him knowing.

I also the week prior tried to do some parts work and went inside my head to try to talk to the part that went through the gang rape and I normally can't picture things and don't see images of myself or other things except those intrusive images. But when I went in to talk to thar girl, I found her but she was behind a huge metal door with prison bar slats. Which I saw. Did someone else write about meeting a part this way? I wonder if I got it from someone else's journal? But I actually saw that. I pushed the door open and told her she could stay there if she wanted but I was opening the door so she'd know she could come out if she wanted. Then my very angry part that denies anything happened showed up and started screaming at me. I decided I needed to go back to see the girl but then remembered I probably need to get permission from the angry part and thought the best way to find the angry part would be to go back and find the girl and the angry part would show up and then I could talk to her. So I was trying to find my way back to the prison door and then a teenage version of me shot past my field of vision. I only saw her lower legs ankles and feet and as soon as i saw her she darted under a car and hid from me with just bare feet sticking out. I got distracted by that and never found my way back. But it's sort of neat thar I seem to have access to some level of imagination now. That was not the case before. I could not see or imagine anything.

[Papa Coco]

Armee,

I've said this before, but I can see it again: You're moving forward in your healing. Your last line, that you think it's neat that your imagination is starting to function again, is a bright light at the end of a long tunnel.

I just want to say a) I'm touched by how deeply your parts are working openly with you right now--making themselves known to you in small bites, and b) I'm excited and happy that something has evolved in you that is allowing for imagination to resume.   High five!

Another big hug from me to you. This one with some celebratory joy in it.

 

[Not Alone]

Armee, you are being very courageous. It is neat that you have some access to imagination now. Big, big steps!

[Armee]

Thanks Papa and not Alone. 

Sadly the backlash came as soon as I posted. I felt so crazy and like if I could "imagine" having a conversation with a 19 year old version of me through a isolation cell door and see that door, then what is to say I didn't also imagine everything else. And more so fear that because I told my T this he would no longer believe me too and I'd be alone again. So now I just feel crushed because all the doubt is back and the alone feeling. 

Eh I don't want to bring others down. I knew there would be some kind of repercussion to sharing all this with T when I tried to keep it hidden. So here it is. I should have predicted it would be the doubt. I didn't see that coming though. But it's pretty predictable.

[rainydiary]

Armee, I resonate with both seeing and not seeing something coming.  I hope you find some ease as you navigate.

[Papa Coco]

Armee,

For what it's worth, I absolutely believe every word you and all your parts say.

No part of me thinks you dreamt this. Your 19-year-old self in the cell is real. My belief is that she's coming to the forefront now because she knows you're ready to deal with what she has to tell you. She's ready to work with you to find another piece of your puzzle and to give you one more venue to heal from past events.

I recently read a book, (Can't remember which one it was) that said that lost memories that come back to us later in life are always real. Judgmental people who have no training in the human brain say they aren't, but scientists who study the brain, say that recalled lost memories are always real. The brain really can't make up the stories that we have lived through.

 

[Armee]

Thank you Rainy. Finding ease comes and goes. 

Thank you Papa. I have to remember when I doubt my story it may come across as doubting others, or if I say I feel crazy it may sound like I am calling others with parts crazy. I apologize if anything comes across that way to anyone. I know that's not what you're saying, I just wanted to put that out there.

The thing is I don't remember it happening. I don't have memories of it, so it isn't even really repressed memories. It's putting together these disparate pieces that have become so numerous that they add up to this thing happening with pretty high probability, but I don't have a memory of it actually happening. There's clear memories of the situation I was in but not of something happening.

The rest is filled in with images and sounds and sensations and triggers and symptoms that I am piecing together to make an outline of a puzzle. Because I had zero ability to imagine or picture anything at all, not even my own kids, I found those disturbing images more compelling and believable because I had no ability to make that happen. But imagining myself behind a prison door (even though I know that is my imagination and not a flashback) that throws into doubt all my puzzle pieces I've been gathering. Those could be just my imagination, too now. I could be wrong about everything.

I can pull myself back from this doubt  by reminding myself that I had 25 years of awful symptoms that eventually eased after 6 hard months of facing and processing this. And that I didn't know what was causing those symptoms but once I put those puzzle pieces together those symptoms made sense very speciifc to the exact scenario,, not to some generic SA scenario but that one. So I can sometimes salvage some small amount of confidence in what I thought happened but I've been tossed back a few months in terms of doubt and the self torture that comes with that seesaw.

Thank you for understanding Papa Coco. I know you do and that helps more than anything in the whole world.

[CactusFlower]

gentle hugs, armee. I get frustrated sometimes at the fact that I can't seem to remember a lot. My T tells me I don't have to remember the details to know it still had an effect, and the effect is what we're working on. It kinda makes sense. Wishing you peace.

[Papa Coco]

Armee,  I'm with you in spirit as you struggle with these memories.

I remember the earlier years of when I started to recall what happened to me. I had a similar reaction to what you're describing. I couldn't completely convince myself that my memories were real, but I noticed that the treatment for childhood SA was working. Like you, I'd lived for decades with the classic SA symptoms. I was a perfect textbook example of an adult survivor of childhood SA, and I responded firmly with the treatment. I used that as evidence to my doubting brain that what I was remembering was true.

This, to me, feels like an example of how my caring, empathetic heart and my logical, engineering head needed to get on the same page. My heart knew what had happened. My head wanted to keep up the facade that I'd had a perfectly normal life. Both could not be right. It either did happen, which explained my symptoms, or it didn't happen, which offers NO explanation for why I had all the symptoms. That logical deduction helped my brain to stop fighting against my heart and accept that by logic, it happened as my heart remembered it.

Also, I am aware of a great deal of fear that still remains in me, of letting this "secret" out. I assume I was either threatened, or my family was threatened, or I was just simply too afraid of getting my abusers in trouble. I'm terrified of accusing an innocent person, while at the same time I'm also afraid of accusing a guilty person who might retaliate, or even worse...if my abuser was a religious leader, which he was, my accusing him of his guilty sins would enrage the Catholic community who would take his sins out on me. My own protectors would kill me for not keeping my little mouth shut.  The one time I did try to get my mother's help with the horrific bullying I was enduring at Catholic school, she basically called me a liar. I knew then that it was more important to her to be a good Catholic, than it was to protect her son from them.

From age 25 to 55 I was able to remember how I felt physically and mentally during the abuse. I could smell the linen of the abusers' clothing, and I could feel the body hair and the sweat. I could see the locations (two of them) where these things had happened. But I couldn't see the face of the man. I could feel him, smell him, hear him, and I could see his body, but I couldn't see his face.

A few years ago I began to believe that I knew who it was. A weeklong deep dive in the internet brought up a small, old newspaper article placing him in my parish for only a few months during the exact year and season that I had always remembered it happening. My brain has used this little fact as all the proof it needs that I now know who dunnit.

Again, my heart is with you as you work to make sense of all that's happened. I still believe every word you say about it happening.

 

[sanmagic7]

armee, thank you for sharing what you're going thru.  i agree w/ the amount of courage you have, your determination to keep going even tho it brings up these doubts.  i do know those symptoms you've been battling for so long have an origin.  your progress in healing your traumas is showing you, not only by seeing all these parts now and allowing you to present them to others, but also what a toll your situation has taken on your mind.

i agree w/ your T, that all of this has been part of a protective shield for you.  it seems you are finally at a point of strength where you're able to begin acknowledging these protective parts who have taken care of you for so long.  and, may i reiterate, i know it was real, i completely believe you went thru that horrific experience and survived it, and i know you are not crazy.  crazy people live in an alternative reality, which is not what you do.  the reality of what happened to you has taken its toll - what you're doing now is fighting your way to conquering and overcoming that reality.

one of the reasons i'm so sure about this is that you've now reached a point, after continuing to chip away at this, where your mind is able to function more normally by having the ability once again to imagine, to see images, something that was taken from you by force.  armee, i'm overcome w/ emotion at seeing this.  always on your side and sitting w/ you.  much love, and a hug filled w/ continuing brain bloom

[Armee]

 :'(

Thanks you Sage, and Papa, and San. I feel like sobbing in a good relieved way reading your words and feeling your belief through them. I think that's all I can say right now but know this has been so helpful to read and the fact you are willing to come to my journal and reassure me over and over and over over the course of almost 2 years on this same single incident. I don't know how you can keep doing it but thank you.

Papa Coco - that's plenty of proof. All the proof. I can't see faces either other than the one time I saw them standing on either side of my head. Other than that one time it's all just been either neck down or just disembodied, well. You know.

[Blueberry]

armee, thank you for sharing what you're going thru.  i agree w/ the amount of courage you have, your determination to keep going even tho it brings up these doubts.  i do know those symptoms you've been battling for so long have an origin.  your progress in healing your traumas is showing you, not only by seeing all these parts now and allowing you to present them to others, but also what a toll your situation has taken on your mind.

i agree w/ your T, that all of this has been part of a protective shield for you.  it seems you are finally at a point of strength where you're able to begin acknowledging these protective parts who have taken care of you for so long.  and, may i reiterate, i know it was real, i completely believe you went thru that horrific experience and survived it, and i know you are not crazy.  crazy people live in an alternative reality, which is not what you do.  the reality of what happened to you has taken its toll - what you're doing now is fighting your way to conquering and overcoming that reality. ...

 

[Not Alone]

The rest is filled in with images and sounds and sensations and triggers and symptoms that I am piecing together to make an outline of a puzzle. Because I had zero ability to imagine or picture anything at all, not even my own kids, I found those disturbing images more compelling and believable because I had no ability to make that happen. But imagining myself behind a prison door (even though I know that is my imagination and not a flashback) that throws into doubt all my puzzle pieces I've been gathering. Those could be just my imagination, too now. I could be wrong about everything.

For me, some of my memories have come as images, sounds and physical sensations. It has seemed like trying to put a puzzle together with a lot of pieces missing.

My little parts show up in different ways. I see them in different settings. It is not the same as memories although there is usually a connect to where they are and the abuse that they went through.

I don't know if that makes sense or helps at all. Bottom line: I believe you.

[Larry]

Hi Armee,   I hope you have a good day today