Quote:
Originally Posted by peaches100
Farmergirl,
What you mentioned has me thinking. . .maybe I would be better off not trying to process my past traumas. In some ways, i feel like i need to, because i get triggered so often in the present. Like for example, i had alot ot trauma as a kid where i needed help and didn't get it. . .and felt unworhy of being helped and invisible. . . so today, i end up feeling horrible pain and overreacting when something happens that brings up those same feelings in me. My t seems to think that processing the trauma in the past will make me stop being triggered now.
But it's just so emotionally painful to revisit my old traumas. It was a very bad experience for me to "go there" and then be paralyzed by the pain. I realized i couldn't bring myself out of it, and my t didn't feel comfortable providing physical comfort that would have brought me into the present and made the pain more bearable. Since then, i've just not been willing to go deeply into those painful places again. It hurts too much.
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I did some trauma work very briefly with my t. It was really only a telling of my story. It was difficult, but he did a really good job of keeping me present while I remembered. Once I had done that, there really was no reason to keep revisiting the past. I know all I'm going to know about my past. I'm not going to flail myself into trying to remember all the details. It really isn't necessary for me.
My t helped me put that old cr*p up on a high back shelf in my closet. I don't need to obsess about it which is what I would do if I kept looking at it. I know enough to have an understanding of why I do what I do, why I think what I think. Every now and then, t will talk to me about my past, but not in a "revisiting" kind of way. Just as a reminder of where my thinking comes from, particularly when I'm not thinking straight. I'll tell him, "I don't want to go there," and he'll tell me "no, no. We won't go back there, we just need to see where today's thoughts are coming from." I don't ever have to look at all the gorey details. That's not important to who I am now. It isn't repressed anymore. It's just put where it belongs -- in the past.