Like both Art and Echos, for me, there's the inability to put words to the feelings often they are not "feelings" as much as sensations. Whenever I try to put words to the feelings, I get pulled out of the sensations and then the words do not feel like they fit the sensations. There's a sense of age based on how I want to comfort myself, what type of interaction I am wanting from T or feelings with her.

For me there's also a struggle to think of things in the complexity that they are. When at infant level, there's more just the sensation; when at toddler level there basic words and understandings but they are very simplistic and I need things to be explained in those very simplistic ways one talks to a toddler. Not baby talk but in simple terms - smaller words, one concept at a time.

Also with toddler level, I feel like my way of talking changes to simpler words and whenever I use a larger word, I tend to feel how old that word is for me.

As far as how I work through it - the infant level, so far it's been slowly, staying with the feelings as long as I can while trying to piece together words/images/concepts that might help me. Sometimes it's just crying in T's presences, sometimes it's allowing myself some of those younger soothing items, for example, I have a soft baby quilt that I will hug and pet. There is some re-parenting going on in the sense of emotional regulation and mirror; unconditional positive regard (towards how I behave/what does come out); and T's acceptance for my need for reassurances when in and coming out of these moments (and providing those reassurances).

I feel like I've been stuck in this pre-verbal place for a while and I'm starting to look into other ways of processing it through with other things - theater/psychodrama group, intentional smash booking, and the likes. It does seem like I'm able to sit with the feelings better. With these things, I'm trying to figure out what it is that happened to cause the trauma at this level. Ultimately that might not matter, it seems to matter to me at this point.

I also agree with Echos in that there's a bit of mourning those losses because one cannot go back and make it what it wasn't. I do think that there's something with having these moments witnessed and attuned to that helps dissipate some of the intensity of them.