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Originally Posted by EllieBear
I know this topic has been discussed before here, so I've been looking for an old thread about it instead of starting a new one. I figured if I could find an old thread then I wouldn't have to re-ask the same questions and you all wouldn't have to re-answer the same questions (and then I would feel like less of a burden...which I already feel like today, so maybe I just need to ask the question). So here goes...
My T asked me something today that I couldn't answer, so my homework is to think about how to answer it. We've been doing a lot of trauma work, and I have a lot of childhood trauma. I have been avoiding anything that connects me to the trauma or anything that makes me feel like that little kid again, mostly because I am avoiding all the pain associated with what happened. I don't know how to deal with all of that. I've talked about a lot of the trauma I can put into a coherent "story", meaning I can tell her what happened. We have worked on connecting the feelings to the experiences. I'm doing better with all of that, but here's where I get stuck...there is a lot that happened in the first couple years of my life, that I can't put into words or explain. I know what I have been told by others. I don't want to give any details because I don't want to trigger anyone, but I know just from what I've been told that things were very bad. So I have other people's comments, which kind of validate my feelings, but then I just have this big mess of feelings I can't explain, and pieces of experiences I can see in my head but I cannot put any words to what I see. It's so weird. So my question is, how do you deal with preverbal trauma? I can't explain it to anyone. I can't talk it through to process it. I can't even verbalize how it feels. I've talked about what I've been told, but it's not the same because yes it makes sense and explains some things, but I have no connection to the experiences they are telling me about. Whenever my T and I start to talk about it, I just want to curl up and cry, but I don't know how to tell her why.
Has anyone found a way to deal with trauma they can't put into a coherent memory?
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Hello EllieBear
Sorry to hear that you are having to deal with early trauma.
For me the answer was the transference - how I felt in relationship with my therapist. In the relationship with her I have re experienced the trauma of nearly being killed by my mother and also nearly dying of starvation in the early weeks. I have actually believed my therapist was trying to kill me and have re experienced the traumatic feelings in my body too. Fortunately she gets it and she has made herself physically and emotionally available to me so I can experience something that has no words. It has been a long journey that isn't over yet.
I think the curling up and crying is very important and I hope you can trust your therapist enough to do this with her and experience what happens in your body/ how it feels in relation to her. Remember - the memories are held in your body, not as coherent memories. It is very primitive and is felt in a very primal way. For example, I start to flail and have no control of what my limbs do when I go to those places.
Hope that helps abit.
Moon
