Quote:
Originally Posted by teena
Ok. Here is the the question, what if you start digging and trying to get to the root of your issue, and you wind up worse off than you were initially. Thats my fear.
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I have gotten mad at many a therapist for trying to get me to talk about something I did NOT want to discuss. I'm an avoider, so if I didn't bring it up, I'd think to myself WTH are
you to bring it up? But I realized that if I truly knew what worked and what was best for me, I wouldn't be lying on their couch. I had to trust the process. If it got TOO painful, I'd be honest and say, "I can't do this right now." But I knew I had to at least try cuz I could not keep living (or dying, really) like I was.
I am here to tell you, whether you dig it up or not, IT WILL COME OUT. A year or so ago I had a memory of abuse come to me that I had completely forgotten (it happened when I was 10 and I was 32 when I remembered). This ripped my life apart. APART. The memory was so vivid, too. I didn't believe anything like that could happen, so to have it happen to me was disturbing, to say the least. I was PISSED that it had been hidden in my subconscious for so long and had the nerve to come out. Honestly, WTF? Weren't we doing fine without it? And what was I supposed to do with that mess? The memory came out while I was at a volunteer training for the Rape Crisis and Abuse Center. In the middle of the training session I had to go to the restroom and try to get myself together. I'm glad I was at this training, because I ended up joining one of their support groups and that helped me BEYOND BELIEF!!! My therapist had me write down EVERYTHING and doing that made me remember some MORE stuff I had forgotten. Not only did she tell me to write it down, she told me to READ it to 5 people. I flat out told her she was the one that needed to be on the couch if she thought I was about to tell anybody ANY of that mess. But she told me that I had to share it in order to gain back control. Since I felt so OUT of control, I did the friggin' exercise, but I was pissed the entire time. I read it to my manfriend, my two best friends, and my support group (NOT my family, I still haven't told them, and it wasn't even a family member that abused me). OMGoodness, when I got done I felt SO relieved. I was able to talk about the abuse with others and not feel ashamed about it. And in hindsight, I realized that's when my weight began to drop; the pounds melted off. My physical health improved with my mental health.
But this took TIME. What I truly wanted to do was try to forget again cuz I wanted to hurry up and feel better NOW. That didn't work, obviously. But what I learned was that there are SO many people who have experienced the exact same thing, and not just women. And I also learned that it was possible I had been wrong about my depression/anxiety for years. I thought it was because of the death of my parents in 1993 (which my therapist says I still haven't grieved, but I'm not ready for that, either), but maybe it was due to this hidden memory. I learned as I learned every day that The Almighty is perfect in every way and that it was not meant for me to carry that memory; it came out exactly when it was supposed to.
So don't be afraid of things getting worse. Like any wound, it gets worse and itchy before it actually heals. All storms have to get horrible before they pass. This is no different. We're all apart of the same universe and it shows.
Remember: there's nothing wrong with being afraid. Courage is doing it scared. So if you're scared, DO IT SCARED!!!
(((((teena)))))
Hybrid Mode
