From Girls in Trouble (reviewed yesterday on the Birth/First Parent Blog):
“If you bring things to the surface, they lose their power,” Kaysen told her, but Sara knew that that was what happened in an ideal world, in theory but not in practice, that sometimes bringing things to the surface gave them a wingspan you might never clip. “The way to get free of pain is to dive down into it. To acknowledge it.” [...] “Dive,” Kaysen advised, but Sara knewthat to dive was dangerous until you knew you could swim.
I found myself siding with Sara as I pondered the words her therapist was offering, not even fully aware of the relinquishment of Sara’s daughter. There have been times, in therapy, when my therapist has pushed “that” button or made me look too hard or pushed me out on the ledge just a little too far… and I’ve closed up within myself, letting the rest of the session become a wash. Why? In a safe place, with a therapist that I trust, would I clam up? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Looking at the fictional character’s response to her therapists advice to “dive in” and allow things to “come to the surface,” I think I might not be alone. As it is, I think I am forced to deal with a lot of emotions that would otherwise be buried deep in the wreckage of my ship-wrecked heart. Since Munchkin is such a constant part of my life, I am forced to look at her and see myself in her eyes. Things like that are always brought to the surface. I can tread water, most of the time!, with such things.
But when you make me look at the things that have been lost to memory, possibly for good reason, I forget to tread. I forget to move arms and legs. As those things rise to the surface, I feel myself drowning. My certain triggers, the ones that make me flail my arms like an inexperienced swimmer, include addressing my anger, the agency, fears about the future and how it all comes together in our family and the vivid memories that I don’t really bring to recollection on my own. Sometimes I try to hit on them in blogs but… even still… when I know that anger is not necessarily an “always negative” emotion, anger is sitll a very scary thing for me. When you combine it with the agency, well, I’ll just sink right to the bottom of my own soul.
Perhaps I should be working on some of this more diligently with my therapist lady. Perhaps recognizing that I am purposefully clamming up and/or avoiding such subjectry will help make new headway. Perhaps I’ll learn something really life-affirming in the process.
Perhaps I’ll just freaking drown in my own emotion.
6 Responses to “Bubbling to the Surface”
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Dont drown. In the words of Dory from Finding
Nemo: “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming”.
All that being said, I am seriously with holding from my own therapist for much the same reasons. I am terrified of what lies beneath. If I say it outloud? OMG. It will be real. I can still deny it as long as I dont say it, right? As long as no one knows?
LOL.
You are not alone. I still have some serious moments of avoidance in my therapy sessions. The problem is #5 always knows because I stop making eye contact with him and look beyond him to the pictures on the far wall (I think I have them memorized now :P ).
Fear of that spiral of emotions out-of-control, of drowning in it, of losing all that I have gained in the last year are behind my avoidance.
Think of your Casting Crowns song:
“Every tear I’ve cried
You hold in Your hand
You never left my side
And though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm”
Or these words from Jars of Clay’s Sinking (this is one that got me through a lot in the last two years!):
“But you see through my forever lies
And you are not believing
And I see in your forever eyes
That you are forever healing”
((((Jenna))))
OT: Has anyone told you your blog is rendering oddly? Maybe its just me but your middle body section is way way down the screen. There is a big huge white section in the middle…???
Jenna,
I keep haunting trauma recovery websites lately. Have you checked any out? They might help.
It’s scary as shit. But some of my breakthrough moments have come from examining and pulling into the light stuff I was keeping buried.
But it is also okay to go at your own pace, you know? You don’t have to jump in with the worst of the worst, I wouldn’t think.
I’m not a therapist, so I don’t really know. And I’m not a first mother, so I don’t know from that angle either.
But I’m a therapy junkie, I guess. Or a “lifer,” as I sometimes call myself.
But sometimes I just think that we really need to learn to swim, or to make sure that our swimming is as strong as it needs to be before we can go to the next level. That’s been my experience anyways.
I don’t know, Jenna. I just don’t know how you can force something. I just don’t know how. Awareness comes to me at the oddest times, and it does come with my therapist’s help, but I don’t feel like it’s forced when I’m not ready.
If any of that makes sense.
I agree about others advice to be gentle and go at your own pace.
Maybe let the Holy Spirit lead you and show you what you need to examine, whether from your past or present. Pray for revelation that will heal. I know I feel safer when I do it that way, less likely to “drown” in sorrow or pain or fear. (Altho I feel all of those to some degree, depending on what I’m facing.)
I don’t know about “diving in”….I do know that sometimes when faced with a pain barrier, the only way out is through.