Trauma therapy is starting to become kind of a different thing for me, as we’re now in the part where I’m really making giant strides and getting better.
Instead of it being a place that kind of just helps me feel mildly functional when I can’t breathe, it’s now become a place where I feel like I’m become adept at using new tools (and I’m also being given/have been given those tools).
And today, I kind of likened it to this in my head:
It sort of feels like when sexual assault guy happened, he installed this thing in my brain that makes my brain work differently than it ever has – it’s like this terrible machine is in there that makes these color bombs go off… I won’t necessarily be expecting it, and boom! It’ll hit me. Like, my whole world/whole brain/whole everything is just covered in sadness – everything is blue. Or, I’m just irritable and angry toward everyone, and everything is red.
And then… (I guess picture mini-versions of my therapist and me inside my brain? My analogies aren’t always spot on here. I’m trying!) Anyway, so, I go to my therapist’s office, and I’m just COVERED in this blue dust everywhere. It’s all blue.
And I think the beginning of therapy was just kind of her helping me clean off some of the blue, just so I could see, and walk, and try to generally be functional (ish). And I’d come back and each week, I’d still be covered.
And eventually, she started to help me clear off more and more – until we could actually see the machine that was in there. And then she started teaching me how to diffuse the machine before the bomb goes off.
And I imagine me working on the machine with the new tools she’s giving me, and sometimes I get it. And sometimes I don’t. Sometimes the bomb goes off in our faces during the session, or in my face later that day or the next, or whatever. And it’s hard. And I try to understand the machine (but falter a fair amount), and she just patiently keeps teaching me.
And now, I feel like it’s to the point, where sometimes I’m doing so well that I’m struttin’ in, twirling my screwdrivers. “I’ve got this!” (And of course, sometimes not.)
My therapist has been so immensely helpful, and she continues to be. But I think I didn’t totally understand exactly what the relationship of trauma therapy was until recently. I’m finally feeling like I’m starting to own the tools, starting to figure out how to do the bomb diffusing myself, and starting (even when I fail at that) to at least be able to mainly clean off all the color bomb stuff by myself (ish).
I’m not totally there yet, but I’m getting toward the end of trauma therapy. And I think I understand it more than ever before now. (If any of this makes sense… Not totally sure. (Eep!))
[This is part of the sexual assault series.]