Elpha's new adventure

[Elphanigh]

There is part of me that is  afraid I am just going to explode during session today. I feel like my mind is a massive whirlwind that I am struggling to keep at bay. There has been so much crazy making stuff this week, and I know that there is really no way that it will end until after the 7th...Sadly that also means my birthday is going to be overshadowed by all the crazy making things. Likely I will not get to enjoy it at all.

Just trying to kind of make sense of what is most important session is really difficult.... I want to continue the process from last week but I also feel like I have been confronted with so much this week.


Trauma is such a mess..... all intertwined. Honestly I have experienced too much for any one person (as I know all of us have) but it just feels like so much sometimes. Like I couldn't have been abused by one person for just a year or something... no I had to spend my whole life being abused by nearly every adult in my life and in almost every category possible. I got to be the one that was tested with so much. Like here you survived being emotional abused, let's insert some physical abuse from your foo... oh that wasn't enough how about sexual and physical abuse from both genders fornlog periods of time. Even better let one of them trade you to other people who will violently hit and shove you... if that wasn't enough here are emotionally abusive relationships, narcissists that are going to drain you dry... and maybe just maybe that is enough. Maybe you have reached your breaking point enough times in your life.However fun things...you get to struggle financially too so good luck keeping all you needs met.

I wish this was the extensive list of traumas but it isn't. There are some major ones that don't even fall in these categories....just frustrating. Sounds like great fuel for a horror movie, or a sad documentary... but that is my life. One I have hid and survived. With degree in hand and no clue where things are going. A life I am now trying to recover from and not repeat. It feels so,times like the universe decided I was a fun experiment. Just trying to figure out how much an individual could handle before completely bresking apart. 



Ugh... sorry that was more angry than I intended. I know it is my journal but for anyone reading it, I do not intend to compare traumas or anything, just express some anger at the world and my luck in it. I promise

[Blueberry]

  Feel free to get that anger out. It's your journal!

[DecimalRocket]

Ah, no worries, Elpha. I understand how you need to vent things out sometimes. I've had my own set of traumas that have piled over, and a lot of other ones that weren't common enough to be included in the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire. 

I guess we here all had some bad luck inserted in our lives. Some really . . . really terrible bad luck. Well, take it easy on yourself, Elpha. I'll be here to listen, and if I can't, someone else will. There'll be people here who'll greet you a happy birthday at least, so even if the entire day is mush, I hope you'll find a little bit of healing from that.

Take care. 

[Elphanigh]

Thank you both for such kind words. I wish I had more capacity to respond, but I just don't at this moment. So good self care and not going to stress about not. I am really grateful to come here and get to read such understanding words after a really difficult therapy session.

Hopefully in the next day or two I can come here and decompress on it a bit

[Elphanigh]

Sleep has helped me some to settle all the emotions from therapy yesterday. I went from the anger of my last post to just complete anxiety before I even got into her office. Wonderful how that happens 

Anyways session was good and awful all in one. Got to kind of vent about the week, but also tried a new method that is very much EMDR related. She called it the Flash Method, there is apparently a EMDR consultant that has come up with this, and it has really be working. I could note that it works from trying it. However with the complex nature of my trauma it does sometimes get some other things coming up with it, which is where session kind of got awful. I mean just from the stand point of it utterly exhausting me, and taking a giant toll. It tends to do that on some level anyways.


We had started working on the image of going to the doctor, like a future image and fear that I hold. Working to a stage I can actually go to the ob without it retraumatizing me. My younger parts hold a lot of that fear, especially little six year old me. We successfully actually got the feelings down from a 8 to about a 2, which is major progress and much quicker than traditional Emdr was for me. Getting it to a two means it is low enough I can probably process it and the memories that are feeding into it.


So about the end of session, we wanted to seee if there were any other younger parts of me that might have some fear or relation to my issue with doctors... we are really combining ego state work with the emdr method, simply because it is such a giant thing for me. Little 8 year old Elpha holds a memory, that I for a good fifteen minutes could not figure out what it was, just tha it was entirely terrifiying ad awful. Did through doing the same process realize what part of it was, even for adult me it is rather impossible to hold that image at any less that a six still. It started at a ten, so a six is a drop nonetheless.

This memory is one I hadn't forgotten, but that I had really tucked away. Hadn't thought about it for years, because I think I wasn't in a space I could handle it. Apparently I am now. It is one that makes me feel more self blame, and revolves are my sister. It is also connect to my fear of doctors though, lovely how a lot of my memories swirl into each other. Could also go into some of the fears of my M violent and really loud ways with it too.

I really hate all this gunk sometimes. Like I know trauma is cumulative, but goodness I can tell process one piece without it effecting another. Sadly that just means snowball effects for me during sessions. I went through rape daily, normally multiple times, for six years... then emotional, physical abuse every day for more like thirteen or fourteen years, with some sexual abuse mixed into that section. Top it off with the narcissist, eating disorders, death traumas, other accidents that leave scar scars, etc... it is utterly exhausting. I may have all my memories but it is so difficult to sit with them. It also means I have no way to predict what will come up, because things I used to think about I stuffed away for my own well being. My brain may know them, but I don't actively know them anymore. It is a weird middle ground between having my memories, and not.


The goal is to use the flash method to process images relating to me memories and getting them low enough I can more fully process them with traditional emdr methods. For people with less complex trauma the flash method is much quicker and doesn't really require so much work to function. It is interesting to see it being adapted here. If it is too much we switch to other methods but it did seem to work before I had something else really strong pop in. I think it is a learning curve for both myself and my T. See how I react and what kind of dots my brain will start to draw. I don't have a linear map of my trauma, as I haven't been able to create one. There are lots of pieces I know happened but have no idea when they did.. so this might help to solidify some of it. Who knows...


I know this process is important but I am completely spent this morning and have to work a double today because money is important.  I really need to find a job that is much less intensive and would make these hard days a bit less difficult. But here I am for now, just hoping to push through it all.

[Elphanigh]

Part of this did bring the realization of why I have such overwhelming moments when looking at this stuff.  After I ended up getting really dizzy for a second in session. I feel what my younger parts do very intensely, whether I recognize they are there or not. So when something is a full ten, and any of them are also freaking out my ten is more like feeling a thirty or more... currently like a thirty because I am doing work with only two of my younger pieces. I know all this sounds a little wonky, but goodness I separated a lot of myself to survive. Not DiD levels, but still rather separated even for a survivor.

[Elphanigh]

Goodness I am writing a lot in this.. sorry to anyone trying to read it all. *sigh*

Anyways, am finally on some sort of level keel. Took long enough but I think I have arrived for the moment. There is so much to reflect on to be honest. The memory that came up in session is difficult, and one I stashed away for a reason. My brain was smart. But what a time to get it back, I mean I have known it before but it is like it disappeared for a while. Not sure that is an actual thing, but it is how it feels....

It comes with the risk of a fresh batch of self blame, and self deprecation. I have worked through some of my self blame but it is by no means cured. This memory coming up certainly shows it. I have never actually spoken or written this one anywhere, not to anyone, not even myself... so here I sit trying to decide what to do with it, trying to decide if I can handle eventually telling someone. From experience, no one will blame me.. but the old fears creep in. This could finally be the thing that someone blames me for. This could be the thing that makes me the monster I thought I was. I finally believe I wasn't a monster, so I don't want to feel like I am again... especially not hearing it from someone else.

This one could be the one my S remembers. I mean I feel she remembers anything at all this would be a logical set. And maybe this is s normal kid thing, and I am thinking about it too much... idk. 

[Blueberry]

You're not a monster! I used to have a lot of separate parts, not DID level either, but still pretty 'individual' and definitely noticeable for me. It does get better! Really.  Otherwise I'm a little too tired to absorb more or write more.

[Elphanigh]

 Thank you for absorbing, and responding how much you can. I really needed it. 

It is good to hear this gets better, sometimes it doesn't feel like I can ever get on my feet.. that these little parts are too much...

[DecimalRocket]

I'm here too, Elpha, and I read all that. I'm just a little too tired to respond in detail.

[Elphanigh]

Thank you so much, Decimal 

[Elphanigh]

Cannot win... got some bad news tonight as well. Have gotten off work just to find out my great grandma has cancer, and looks forward to being reunited with her husband. She doesn't want to fight it at all. She is truly the last living family member that I can say was fully healthy for me. I miss my great grandfather so much, and can't stand knowing I will lose her soon.


At work I was already struggling, wishing for a different life. Knowing if one person had chosen differently... if one person who knew had decided to speak up, or if one less person abused me etc.... maybe just maybe I would be struggling so much. Maybe I wouldn't have already felt completely drained.


I have so little left to process this new with, and even less to help those it affects. I am the closest geographically to her but have not real way or resource to be helpful there. I have been texting my grand father and he isn't heart broken. I don't have the right words...or even the strength to give, but I am tying. The healer in me needs to know I helped them

Feel like I am whining.. sorry

[Sceal]

You're not whining at all! Not at all.
I am so very sorry to hear that a loved one of yours got cancer. If she doesn't want to fight it, then the only thing you can do for her is support her, love her, and tell her she matters to you.

if it's okay.

[Elphanigh]

Thank you, Sceal. You are right, and I needed to hear that. Sending  back to you

[sanmagic7]

my sweetest el, sorry i haven't been around lately - too much on my plate, but i'm here with you now for what it's worth. 

of course, i'm holding your hand as you continue to go thru with this struggle, all these memories, emotions, feelings.  even if i'm not writing here, i'm always with you.  don't ever forget that.  if i could, i would give you a flower for your hair - i am a flower child at heart, and have told my daughters that after i die, if they ever want to feel my spirit, just find a flower, cuz that's where i am.

i've heard of the flash method, wrote about its presence here when i was told about it, and am glad to hear that it's helping.   of course, as with any complex trauma, it's so common for one thing to bring up another and another.  you are reliving an entire lifetime in a few hours.  it's no wonder at all that you're exhausted.  i hope you can get some rest while your brain is processing all this.  that's an awful lot of work you're doing.

you, no, you are not a monster, never have been.  no matter what happened, what you did, what you might have taken part in was not something you would have ever chosen to do on your own without the coercion, manipulation, mind control of someone else.  that's not who you are, it's not in your nature.  that stuff was the expression of someone else's darkness, their own twisted distortions of what is ok to do to other people.  you were their tool, used and abused in order to fill their own sick agenda.

please, sweetie, never doubt yourself on that.  earth mother spirit comes from a place of nurturing, protection, and light.  that is your true being.   you would not be here with us otherwise.  monsters don't come here, don't go thru what you've been going thru in your sessions, don't doubt themselves or think of themselves as monsters in any real and practical way.  they only do what they can to further their monstrous agendas and ambitions.  that's what our abusers have done, not us, not you.

you continue to shine your light, continue to reach into the muck that was poured on you in order that your light continues to shine ever more brightly, warmly, beautifully.  i'm so sorry for all you've gone thru, all that was done to you, all you were made to do that went against your very being.  you are so very valuable, so precious, and such a wonderful addition to the world.  i'm so glad you're here and part of my life.

i love you dearly.  we are embraced by that spirit which we, in turn, embrace.  you are part of that spirit as it is a part of you.  it can never leave you.  sending a gently caring, compassionate hug to you, with soothing warmth and comfort.