I just had my first counselling session with a new therapist through the MS Society. I am gobsmacked.
When I was sick in the hospital, alone, that was trauma.
When I was labeled as sick, that was trauma.
When I missed school, that was trauma.
When I was known as "the one who's always sick", that was trauma.
I love/hate it when I am asked to view that little girl going through that. I love it because it shifts my perspective so much. I hate it because I wish I could always see that.
She didn't know that she was just a little girl. She was me. I had the same point of view that I have now. I'm me, and I have to get through this.
The first very surprising thing to me was that he never for a second considered anything other than correcting my thinking. I always expect that when I say that I don't know why I am alive other than to stop people from having to mourn me that the person will partially agree with me. I mean, what is my life? That didn't even occur to him. He just started acting on the problem. The problem isn't that my life sucks. The problem is that my brain has been trained incorrectly.
So what I think that I learned is that the Hypothalamus produces either cortisone or melatonin. If your body is perceiving threat (trauma) it produces cortisone, which in turn causes the body to create more inflammation. If your body is perceiving calm or happiness, etc. it produces melatonin, which in turn causes the body to create more anti inflamatories.
All of these years, since age 6, I've had so many types of trauma. Many of these types I either didn't realize where trauma, gaslit myself into believing that it wasn't trauma because it could have been worse, or knew it was trauma, but didn't know how to heal from it.
This therapist has set goals with me to undo all the negative patterns that have trained my brain to constantly send out cortisone, and to replace them with positive signals. It never occurred to me that I could send out my own anti inflamatories!! I've been so completely disheartened and frustrated that I can't get back onto the Wahl's Protocol due to my gastrointestinal problems from taking anti biotics three years ago. I'm so grateful that I know that I can do so much to change my chemical make up now! I'm also frustrated that I never knew this before, but I need to focus on the amazing chain of events that lead to this discovery today.
One thing that helped was that I have done so much work already on becoming aware of my thoughts and developing my thinking mind that I was able to jump to this level of therapy. He could explain things to me that I think must be fairly advanced. He seemed quite pleased that I was so aware of my negative thoughts and had already been working on trying to analyse where they were coming from. The stunning turn of events for me is the idea that I have been anxious and depressed because I have been learning about the body remembering trauma, and doing physio exercises to repair the damage from that, but I haven't known what to do with the trauma that I'm learning I have! The mind blowing idea, that I should just journal and practice logging positive self talk has me stunned!
Another area that has helped was people coming into my life that have led me to these discoveries. One friend leading me to the counsellor. Another person introducing me to the concept that the body holds onto trauma (this was over a year ago so I had enough time to let it steep). And then a new close friend to be added into my support system who not only knows about trauma, and the body holding onto it, but is a positive influence, and a caring friend! I must include my daughters knowing a lot about trauma and having enough awareness to point out the trauma that I have suffered that I wasn't even aware of.
As the therapist and I were talking, he said something about checking to see if your feet were grounded. I had just been giving myself credit for remembering to check my body for tension as we were talking. When he mentioned my feet, I noticed that I had my toes curled up and my feet totally tensed up. I have since noticed myself tensing up my feet on a regular basis as I'm typing.
I chuckle at myself for the thought that keeps occurring to me. I keep being grateful that I have so much free time to practice the activities he's given me. I have thought to myself before that having many hours of free time could be used to work on mindfulness and retraining my brain. I do work on it most days. I do at least a ten minute meditation, journal gratitude and try to turn my "self parenting" mind on often throughout the day. What an amazing opportunity to add more in now.
I was just thinking that I would do my exercises a hundred times a day. I tend to overdo it. He did say the words, "don't underestimate trauma" three different times. Once was, "Don't underestimate how much trauma can make you dislike yourself." He often cued me to think about how I have survived. I don't like that though. Survived makes me think of someone who was found in rubble or something. They are alive, but how much. Even as I typed 'survived' I noticed my feet tensing up again. Toes curling straight up towards my head. I thought of survived and thrived, but that's not it either. I will work out another phrase. Something with alright maybe.
A new era of my life has begun.
No comments:
Post a Comment