I left off with yesterday, which …
… was the first session of EMDR. I was a bit nervous for sure, but it was a curious nervous … sort of like poking a snake … that unknown of whether the snake will move once you poke it. Going in without any expectations is almost impossible, and every time I caught my Self ‘thinking’ too much, I realized I was also holding my breath. When I would exhale, the thinking paused long enough for me to forget what I was thinking about hahahahah
The first half hour was chatting, getting water, etc … I’m fairly certain she did these ‘housekeeping’ tasks to break the curious nervous energy I had brought along with me. When she said, “oh I just need to print something so I can close the window on my computer”, I thought ‘wait a minute lady, I’m paying you money for this time’ and then remembered that she has graciously offered to give me a two for one deal … two hours for the price of one … ooops! How could I have forgotten her generosity … thank you!
Then we settled into the meat before us. She explained once again how the spider of trauma spins its web throughout life, and then something about the right side of the brain having unprocessed information … and that’s when it got to be abit too complicated for me to retain. I’ve made a NTS to ask her to explain again next Wednesday the relation between right and left brain …. after all that’s what EMDR corrects by having the eye move from left to right and back again, repeat, repeat, repeat.
I did have the option of holding little pods in my hands which would pulse left to right, repeat …. as well as headphones that would tone left to right, repeat. She said that I would prefer one, and I did … the lights were fine … the pulsing pods made me feel nauseous, and the toning headphones made me feel So angry ahahahah omg too funny!
There’s a blank spot to the process here, and not really sure why. She gave me a sheet with a list of negative cognitions and I was to pick one that resonated with me the most …. easy peasy …. “I should have known better” … that sums up my life in a nutshell. So much in fact, that I don’t even realize I’m saying it to my Self, and when I saw that statement in a list of other negative statements, I felt the Same statement rolling through my body … “I should have known better” … Omg … “how could I have let this happen … I should have known better”. Damn!! And walking hand-in-hand with that statement was “I am a bad person”, when I KNOW that I’m Not a bad person. I remember a single tear falling from each cheek, from the inside tearduct … and remembered that there is a meaning behind which duct a tear comes from. Another NTS to research that bit.
She then asked me to think about life experiences that “I should have known better” and we determined what age I was for each experience … like I said, that statement is my life in a nutshell. I finally returned to my life as an infant/toddler/little girl in Victoria, and the one experience that I remember vividly … I would have been 4 1/2 and I remember saying “well son of a gun” and getting into sooo much trouble … and maybe I said “well son of a bitch” … details don’t really matter, but that was the experience that I hold on to. Maureen then asked me about my life during that time … and this is when things really started to make sense …. oh, and this is when she started up the EMDR light machine …. “follow the light with just your eyes” she said. Easier said than done, but eventually I got the hang of it. She would stop the lights and we would talk about whatever came up for me while I was watching the lights …. this is Not hypnosis …. I was fully aware and present, but for some reason, following the lights back and forth, repeat, gave my brain a chance to breathe ……… that’s the best way I can describe it …. I wasn’t squirreling around gathering nuts from here and there … I was tuning in to that time in my life …. the earliest memory of that negative statement clipping on to my little girl self.
I’ve written about running naked down the street at 3:00 a.m. Well, I did alot more than that. I was a “little shit” and took my mom to her wits end. I don’t remember my dad very much from those years. He was in the picture for sure, but I just don’t have the memories of him, that I do of my mom. I know she loved me back then, but I also know she was angry alot, maybe even depressed. I was told often, or maybe just the once or twice I Was told, was enough to clip on to me as well … “you’re a bad girl”. I scared my mom a lot at that age because I was always escaping from the house. I would figure out how to unlock the door or open a window. She even went to the doctor to get a sedative for me so that I wouldn’t wake up in the night and get into trouble. As I relayed all this information to Maureen, during which I would follow the green lights, we very gently unravelled the spider web, and I not only Know that those two negative statements are lies, I BELIEVE it. I was just a little girl who was extremely curious about her surroundings, how things worked, the outdoors, etc etc … very much who I still am to this day, only now I’m in a woman’s body and telling my Self that “I should have known better”.
It’s difficult to get across just how effective this first session was. In 2012 I discovered “Inner Child” work, and I spent a good amount of time trying to get to know my Inner Child, and to help her. At one point, I drew a picture of her …. sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs … eyes blank and her mouth a straight line. At the end of the session with Maureen, she started the lights up and asked me how I saw little girl Tina ………. I saw the same picture, only this time, the corners of her mouth moved every so slightly into a smile. Her eyes are still blank, but I felt my Inner Child come alive inside me, with that slightlest of movement of her mouth. When Maureen asked how I felt, I told her I wanted to run around haahahahah “a positive feeling” she said …. ohhhhh ya.
I had previously booked a massage before I knew I would be meeting with Maureen, so that’s where I went after my session. Amber moved around the energy in my body in her usual magical way, and after all that, I went home and sat on my couch for an hour …. processing …. not thinking, but allowing my Self to process the events of the day. It was Halloween so at about 6:00 I went over to Danitra’s so I could see Abigael’s costume. A comment she made about my mom coming to the rescue and making a costume for Abigael at the last minute, made me realize how open my soul was …. open for the little girl inside me to finally be loved, and learn How to be loved.
Yesterday was a numb day …. going through the motions and on the brink of crying …. but also … anger …. sigh … an emotion that scares me. I didn’t push anything I was feeling away though, which is something I’m pretty good at. My emotions are like a sleeping dragon which woke up way back in 2011 when I stopped drinking and getting high. She’s been yawning and stretching since then, and it feels like she’s ready to breathe some fire now.