Summer therapy

Therapy this summer, up until a few weeks ago, has been fairly quiet. When I stopped writing on the blog, I’d been in a pretty messy space, due to a doctor appointment that had triggered the little girl and sent me over the edge. Bea was really there for me and we worked really hard to help the little girl feel safe again, and to get me grounded again and able to function. So the summer really has been spent on looking at relationships, and my behavior in them. It’s been spent looking at my stressors and how I function, and we’ve talked a lot about feelings and about the grown up things, like my marriage. 

The little girl has popped out a few moments, here and there this summer, but it’s been possible to get her under control. I’ve had moments where I’ve not slept all night, and days where I have hidden in the closet, and therapy sessions where Bea has really left me feeling alone and lost, like she didn’t get it at all, or as if she maybe just doesn’t care. But for the most part, it’s been okay. 

A few weeks ago, however, Bea really began pushing me to face the fact my brother is getting married, and that Kenny will be there. I was already in a bit of a state, and she was asking questions about where my memory has taken me, and a question she asked sent me back to a scary, scary, place. It dredged up a very choppy, very messy, memory. The little girl has been front and center for weeks. This memory feels like the worst out of all of them, but it’s hard to say because it’s messy. It’s like someone took this whole memory and put it in the blender, adding extra strong emotions, physical memory/body stuff with it, and maybe even some extra triggers just to make it really ugh. Then they turned the blender on, and mixed it all up really good. But I don’t have the blender, or even a container filled with what was in the blender. I have maybe one or two scoopfuls of it. So it’s enough to have my head screwed up over it. To be triggered and have flashbacks and not sleep because of it and hate myself and question things again. I have enough pieces to put together a rough story of what the adult thinks happened. But it’s not…it’s disgusting. And the other pieces, the body feelings and emotions are SO MUCH. Like all the crisis and freakouts too much. It’s been rough, to say the least. 

The hardest thing is that I’m an adult, yet feeling and behaving like a child. I’m often stuck following all these rules that belong to the little girl, and this mess is depleting my resources and challenging my functioning. I’m trying to believe it is okay to give the child a voice, that people want to hear her. Often time when she is running the show, I tend to believe that no one wants to hear me, that I’m too much trouble, that I’m whiny and annoying, that no one cares. I find it difficult to say things that I find not appropriate, or not okay for an adult woman to think or feel. It doesn’t matter that Bea tells me she understands it is the little girl who feels this way, or that she is not judging or that she wants to hear what the little girl has to say. The adult has hard time understanding that, even though she trusts Bea, and the little girl doesn’t fully trust her. Part of the work right now is learning to allow the little girl to speak and to trust Bea is not judging, which is much harder than it sounds. 

She’s on vacation this weekend, which means I won’t be seeing her on Monday. The little girl is feeling pretty rejected and abandoned. She hates being left, and she hates Bea not being here and she hates that email doesn’t feel like a connection at all.  The little girl is working on being brave, amd working on talking to Bea. Even though email doesn’t feel enough, she has been emailing the last few days.