Back in the Trenches

After a restful break, I started back to therapy yesterday.  Did you know that you need breaks from therapy?  It's a very important phase of healing and involves a lot of self-honesty in order to be productive.  At some point in therapy, if you're doing it right, you will bond so strongly with your therapist as to begin depending on them.  You will use them as your coping mechanism instead of creating and employing your own.  In a crisis you will think, "I have my therapy session in a few days.  I'll deal with this then."  And while dealing with your issues in therapy is the main idea, building your own coping tools is one of the main goals.  Your therapist is your partner and there to help you build, not to become your crutch.

So, after taking the mandatory break, I got to reunite with M.T. yesterday morning.  It was wonderful!  We laughed and cried and I left feeling refreshed and motivated.  I also had to admit that I wasn't as healed as I had originally thought during my break.  I found that there are scars so deep within me that I must dig through issues upon issues just to reach the main pain. 

All of you have brought something of your past with you into adulthood.  No matter how Ozzie-and-Harriett your childhood was, you bear a mark, or marks, of trauma on some scale.  Perhaps it was seeing a dead body at the first funeral you attended.  Maybe it was being made fun of at school.  Maybe you don't even know what it was but you have idiosyncrasies that are tell-tale signs of some negative event in your past.  Certain smells, tastes, words, sights...something will set you off.

Most of these traumas are part of what molds us into maturity and makes us who we are, just as the positive events.  For example, the smell of pumpkin makes me think of Christmases as a child.  Good memory.  The smell of fish makes me remember when I was ill as a child and forced to take cod liver oil.  Bad memory.  However, this bad memory is not a make-it-or-break-it event.  It just defines the reason I'm not big on fish.  No big deal.  I don't prefer pumpkin any other time of the year but the holidays...then I can't get enough!  No big deal.

But when the past event was a trauma too horrific for the mind to process, the mind produces a box to bury it in until you are able to pull it out, examine it, and see it for what it is.  These boxes are called coping mechanisms. The shape of the box depends on the severity of the trauma. 

You've probably heard people say, or have said yourself, "I hate hospitals!"  When asked why you may get an ambiguous response.  Upon opening that box however, you might uncover a time when you were in a hospital and treated badly...maybe a loved-one died in a hospital...maybe you saw a lot of blood and passed out.  Whatever the event, every time you are faced with having to enter a hospital, that box begins humming in your head and you have to choose whether or not to open it.  Not realizing the box is even there, however, you simply go through the split second process of memory/association/response.  Hospital/Bad/Don't Go There!

Something I want to tell you right now is that these boxes are there to protect you!  They are kind and will open slowly if you have help.  They will not, however, wait forever.  Some of the boxes erode over time and the contents simply spill out all over your life causing flash-backs, body-memories, and chaos.  Just recognize it for what it is.  Oh.  I had a box.  The stuff is oozing everywhere.  I need to clean this up.  Get thyself to a therapist!  It's what they do.

For those of us whose trauma bears the sign of sexual abuse, there are several boxes.  Have you ever seen Matryoshka dolls, or as Americans call them, nesting dolls?  You find a doll within a doll within a doll, etc.  That is the image I want you to have when learning how to open sexually traumatized boxes.  You will not, hear me, will NOT heal after the first doll.  Not after the second or even the third.  You must be patient. 

Those of you who have only a box here and there and do not have a mind filled with Matryoshkas, this post is primarily for you.  Statistics show that someone you know has been sexually abused.  So, you need skills.  You need to know that sometimes, those Matryoshkas are going to ooze all over you.  You.  Cannot. Fix.  It.  Okay?  But you can be gentle as the hurting friend grapples for help.

Signs of oozing:
Anger.  Anger is probably the most favored of go-to emotions.  Most people who choose anger as their outlet do not do it consciously.  They feel completely justified.  Here's what's happening...

The ooze takes the form of anger and the more rage the person can allow to seep out, the less ooze there is in their mind for the moment.  It becomes all about getting the ooze out by whatever means possible.  For the time-being.  Anger feels good.  It's a balm for the hurting heart.  The violent husband or father; the verbally abusive wife or mother; the yelling teacher, etc...not all of this is due to trauma, but some is.  Just know that.

Another vice of choice to get the ooze out is...well...a vice.  Drugs or alcohol can mask the pain.  For the time-being.  Not all drug-users and alcohol-drinkers are doing so to mask pain, but some are.  Most are.

Promiscuity; self-destructing in relationships; sarcasm at a people-repellent level...sometimes these are signs of oozing Matryoshkas.  Please just know that.

The important thing to know, for those of you suffering from the ooze, is that all of these things are temporary.  Only therapy (through God!) will bring eternal healing.

M.T. and I battled long and hard to clean up after that first nesting doll.  I am not prone to anger like I used to be.  I am not prone to depression like I used to be.  Such wonderful victories!  But we're not done.  Not by a long shot. 

To all of you harboring boxes and Matryoshkas, I love you.  You are so close to freedom.  Do NOT stop battling!