EMDR

 I'm back to once a week with Sarah and we're going to do some EMDR to work on hitting all the places in my brain where I received the information that I was disposable, as I did last week.

That's where my brain goes to when I'm struggling - I'm bad and if I'm punished enough by someone things will get better.

Today, one of the first things I told her when I walked in was an epiphany I had on the dogwalk this morning:  Between first grade (age 7?), when my first memory of some kind of abuse occurs, and Will's death, the amount of time when I could be fully myself with the people who loved me most was FOUR MONTHS, the months between my family leaving Pocatello in 1971 and when Will yelled at me for seeing Dwight over the holidays in January 1972.  I could never tell mom what was happening to me because it would make her sad.  Will and I worked out a relationship where he didn't have to know who I was because it made him sad.

from South Denver Therapy

I've done some EMDR on the kidnap and rape but It might be useful to return it not as a violent act but as the experience of being "nothinged", especially in regards to the fact that my older sister then lied about it telling everyone I made it up and how I got absolutely no support except Will's love. 

Sarah says she wants to help me believe that I am not a terrible person who deserves to be punished whenever anybody gets upset with me.

If it's possible for this to happen, it will be amazing.

EMDR .... changing the brain.

Sarah explained to me that my reactivity is like a soldier's reactivity.   She said that when stuff like last Wednesday happens, and I'm laid low through a variety of experiential aspects, it's like when a soldier hears a backfire and falls face-down on the floor. It's reactivity to multiple and powerful messages over time.  And our work with the EMDR will be to search out the most telling moments during which I received the information that my opinion, mySelf, and my body were nothing.  The work of retraining my brain is to put chronemic space between the backfire and the response.

It's funny.  Because of the rape experience, I've always felt some connection to combat vets. This will be another link.