Talking about Traumatic Memories

I’ve talked briefly about my traumatic experience, but it feels like it’s time to talk more about it.  Trying to access memories that your mind hid from you because they were just too much to deal with is…well it’s very difficult.  I’ve been reading The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk and it does an excellent job of explaining traumatic memories.  These memories tend to be visceral, jagged, and non-sequential.  They don’t really make any kind of sense because when a person is truly traumatized their rational brain is bypassed and the experience goes straight to their emotional brain.  In other words, the experience is recorded by images, sensations, sounds, smells, but no coherent story. 

One very caring person suggested that maybe I was just picking up on someone else’s experience rather than it having been my own.  Now, I do tend to pick up on everybody else’s stuff (hazards of being an INFJ), but this was different.  Other peoples’ stuff has a fuzzy, disconnected feel to it.  I feel it, but it’s not mind.  When my trauma began to really raise its head the feelings were sharp, discordant, and very much mine.  Traumatic flashbacks are very visceral.  They catch you up and drag you along and all you can do is hang on for the ride and try to put yourself back together afterwards.

The private practice I’m completing my residential hours for my counseling license at has several unique services.  One of these is a brain queue using EEG, otherwise known as a brain map.  I’ve had two done – one before I had any memories from my trauma and another one recently.  The new brain map shows just how big an impact my trauma has had on me.  These are just a few of the things that show up on my recent brain map:  re-experiences intrusive memories; emotional numbing; dissociative episodes; amnestic disorder; mood disturbances aggression, rage; and the biggest one was the evidence of a concussion that I also don’t remember.

I’m going to do doing some more intensive self-help over the next few months.  Very soon I’ll be seeing a specialist who is trained in EMDR to help with the continuing process of dealing with my trauma.  I’m also going to be doing more intensive neurofeedback to help my brain networks operate more optimally and again, help deal with my trauma.  There are some unusual opportunities coming my way and I’m going to do my best to keep myself in good enough shape to take advantage of these opportunities.  All I can really do for now is wake up every morning, do the best I can to take care of myself and my kiddos, and go to bed every night.  The rest will come one way or another. 

To anyone reading this who knows someone else who has experienced trauma – be easy with them.  It takes a great deal of time and patience to effectively feel safe after having a truly traumatic experience.  My brain kept my memories from me for 36 years, so now I get to spend the time I have left nurturing myself.  Healing takes time, patience, and trust.  Hopefully I’ll be able to use some of my skills to help heal myself.

40 Isn't Half Bad

There was a time in my life I didn't expect to live past 18.  Once I managed that my brain moved it to 25.  After I survived the birth of my first kid (and yes, it was kind of a big deal cuz they almost had to do emergency surgery) I kind of coasted along wondering if I'd make it to 40.  My life has been unique in that I had some massive trauma in childhood that, in order to keep me alive and sane, my brain and central nervous system tucked away into a deep, dark corner.  It stayed in that dark place until I met someone I trusted enough on a level that I wasn't even aware of.  The shitty thing about repressed trauma is that when it does come back, you don't feel safe anymore.  And while there is that aspect of it, I've been dealing with memories coming back whenever they feel like it for 4 years now.  You kind of build up a tolerance.  Although I've definitely got some behaviors I would characterize as symptomatic of PTSD, in general I'm in a better mental and physical place than I've been at for a while.

My birthdays have (for as long as I can remember) been something that I detest.  I'm really not kidding - I HATE my birthday.  It's a day that I never mark on calendars.  I never ask my family or my family of origin to celebrate it.  It's just a day to get past in my experience.  Yes, I'm aware this is not a normal reaction to one's origin on the planet.  In fact, I'm pretty sure the traumatic abuse from my childhood is tied to my birthday in some way.  And I feel like I need to slip in here that this abuse didn't occur by my family of origin.  I doubt they even know about it.  While I suspect what may have happened, I can't remember it and I have to trust my body that there's a reason for this inexplicable hatred of the day representing my birth.

So this year I didn't ask for any gifts (in fact I asked my parental units not to send me anything, which they ignored) but I did go purchase an ice cream cake and make plans to go to the Ft. Monroe beach on the evening of my birthday.  The beach is one of my favorite places to be during the summer, so this was kind of a big deal.  Even though I wasn't doing much, I was doing something for my birthday.  The Universe decided to step in and put on a show and I still can't get the huge grin off my face remembering what happened.

Shortly after we arrived a Naval Air Craft Carrier began making its way from port to the bridge tunnel off to our right.  We've been to this beach at least a dozen times and never had we seen something like this.  I called out to the boys to get their attention right around the same time my husband yelled back at me "Did you see the dolphins?"  There was a pod of at least 20 dolphins swimming just past the buoyed off portion of the beach and I became I ten year old jumping up and down in the water.  It was amazing!  The ever present pain in my body was gone while in the water and we got to see dolphins swimming, playing, jumping, and just generally being themselves about 15 feet away from us.  We've also never seen dolphins at this beach, either.  They hung around for about 40 minutes and the joy I felt was such a strange feeling.  I'm NEVER happy on my birthday, but this year I was.  It didn't feel like my birthday usually feels, it felt like an actual celebration for once.

On the way home I looked over to my left to see a beautiful thunderstorm back lit by the sun setting.  It was yet another amazing moment on a day that I normally struggle to get through.  Perhaps this is a sign that things will be getting better, and brighter than they have been in a long time.  Perhaps I can finally stop hating my birthday and just let it be another day.

The Road So Far

This is going to be rather a long post I suspect.  I was planning on posting an update about what's happened in the last couple of months, and then last night happened.  And last night had an epic amount of suck, so this is going to be longer than I originally thought.

Before I go any further, just a reminder that I don't use my family's real names on my blog, Twitter, or any other social media anymore.  It's to protect their privacy, but I find their online names fun as well.  Quick run down - Donald is my spouse, Bess is the girl, Lightning is the middle boy, Dare is the youngest boy, and I go by Callasyndra.  I suspect at some point the spawn will get their own social media accounts and so nothing I say about them will ever really translate to anything their friends or cyber stalkers could relate to their actual identity.

Probably the biggest thing to happen lately is that Donald and I are in counseling fucking took long enough I've only been asking for three years  with a very good counselor.  Within the first 25 minutes of the first session the counselor told Donald that his mother was controlling him.  It's amazing how he listens to other people rather than his spouse.  Donald was also told he had an adult to child relationship with mother dearest rather than the adult to adult relationship he should have with her at this point in his life.  There have been lots of eye-opening things to come out of this so far, but I'm not sure how much it's actually going to help the marriage.  The events of last night pretty much put down any of the good that came out of the sessions and quite frankly I'm sick of getting constant criticism when I'm expected to be loving and supportive all the freaking time.

I suppose at this point it would be appropriate to segue into last night's event.  Lightning's birthday was Thursday (he's 8 years old now and is amazingly healthy for having had a heart repair at a week old) and last night I took him and a couple of his friends (along with Dare) to play laser tag.  Lightning had played this once before with a friend of his and loved it, so we bought a few games for the kids to play and called it good.  Except that when we got there both of my kids freaked out.  Dare is terrified of the dark so that wasn't a huge surprise, but I wasn't expecting Lightning to flip out since he'd done this before.  The laser tag place was decorated for Halloween (which I love, but the boys tend to get really scared of spooky figures and spooky music.)  The other two boys didn't want to play laser tag if Lightning wasn't going to, so there I was with an upset kid supposed to be celebrating his birthday.  WTF.  The people who owned the place were fantastic and instead let us trade out a game of laser tag for bumper cars, which all of the kids enjoyed.  After that I took them to McDonald's since we didn't get to do the thing they'd been expecting and that seemed to be a hit as well.

Things were going fairly well and we were on the way home when I called Donald to let him know to reheat the pizza.  He tells me over the phone that we're going to have to talk about Lightning's birthday and 'his neuroses' because apparently in his opinion I'd managed to fuck up the kids' night.  Except that I have a functioning brain and pretty much saved the whole thing.  So I said he could totally be in charge of planning Lightning's birthday crap from now on.  He didn't like that idea either.  In all honesty I don't know what the hell he wants, but it really feels like he just wants me to do what he tells me to do.  Yeah that's not happening thank you very much for a functioning brain and the realization that people do not treat you this way unless they have problems.

So the dropping off of the children happened and then we went home.  Bess was waiting at the front door for me saying in quite the dramatic teenage voice "I was just going to text and ask when you were coming home."  Donald then jumped all over her for being demanding (which she was a bit, but I know she doesn't like spending much time with Donald because she feels like all he does is yell at her.)  I'm exhausted and hungry by this time (hypoglycemia is a bitch) so I go into the kitchen to eat something.  Bess and I are sitting at the table eating when I tell Donald he should really just take care of the rest of the birthday planning for Lightning.  At that point it probably would have made life easier for me if he'd just gone with it, but he didn't because "I don't think we should talk about this in front of Bess."  (Lightning has a long and varied history of freaking the hell out over things that probably wouldn't bother anyone else.  This is not a new issue.)  I honestly don't remember what all happened after that except by the end of it I was in tears.  And the one thing blaring through my brain at that point was I NEED A FUCKING DIVORCE.

So I'm going to bring up in our next counseling session that night because one of the big things the counselor has pointed out besides the mother issues is that Donald is very critical.  All the time.  And doesn't even realized he's that way.


Took a bit of time to breathe, process, and go to another counseling session before finishing up this gigantor post.  Still really irritated about the criticism, but we did talk about that in session.  Other things that are happening right now include still having problems with my PCM who for whatever reason doesn't believe I have a pain issue.  My physical therapist has noted in her progress reports that my pain isn't so much helped by physical therapy.  The last appointment with my PCM was Oct. 16 when she signed paperwork for me to get an at home TENS unit (woohoo for pain relief) but then neglected to put in the medical code for said pain relief so now I'm waiting on her.  Again.  And she didn't put in the new referral I needed for physical therapy.  It's time to change PCM's, but I need to check in with my physical therapist and see if she wants me to wait until the new referral goes through first.  It's a big PITA when people don't believe you're hurting because you're still functioning.  I just don't get it - aren't doctors given training on people with high pain tolerances?

Anyhow, we are now at the point in marriage counseling where Donald and I talk about how much we want sex/intimacy in our lives.  And the thing is....I just don't.  I don't want sex at all.  Haven't for some time and mostly think it's because of the trauma from childhood that I STILL can't fully remember.  The really very nice and experienced counselor offered to talk to me privately about the trauma I mentioned very briefly and I just may take him up on that.  Because I've been wanting to talk to someone who knows what the hell they're doing for awhile now.  But the thing is....Donald's all "I'm willing to do whatever is necessary to help you through this" and I just....don't know how to feel about that.  Because our relationship has never been focused on my needs.  So that's gonna take some time to deal with as well.

Lastly, yes this post was named after Supernatural, which Bess and I have been watching on Netflix.  We just got to see the 200th episode aptly titled Fan Fiction and oh my.  It was so very worth a rewatch.  This particular road's far from over and I don't know where it's going to go, but I'm hoping there's going to be a light at the end of that road.  Gotta work on me for a while and see how that goes.  Then I can decide on whether or not the marriage is worth all the work.

I am Me

I read a wonderful blog entry from someone I consider a good friend & soul sister this morning.  Here's the link to that wonderful blog.  And as I read it I realized that it was okay I feel the apprehension and angst I feel every time my MIL comes to visit.  Because I really did try to be understanding and supportive of her feelings when I was at an earlier stage of my marriage.  And I received nothing positive from her in return.  I received more demands and no empathy from her, which is pretty standard for those with NPD.


Another thing I've realized is that I have emotional memories attached to the experiences I've had with my MIL that make it very difficult for me to relax when I'm in her presence.  The closest I've come to having anything like PTSD have been experiences associated with this woman.  And so, even though I go through all my breathing exercises, and coping methods when the MIL comes for a visit....I can never fully relax.  And it's okay that I don't like that.


And then I got to read another wonderful blog entry later today entitled You are not accidental that clued me in to this idea that maybe I NEED to understand that I can't really change my body's reaction to this particular person.  And I CAN accept that it may not change.  And I DON'T have to like it.  But even though I don't like this particular aspect of myself, I really and truly can say I love the complete package that I have become.  And since I'm still learning and growing, perhaps in time I'll be able to handle time with my MIL in a way I like.  But for now I just need to breathe and cope through it.