I opened one of my journals last night to whatever page it opened to and started reading. Ick. Seriously, that is the only word that comes to mind. There’s so much hurt, questioning, confusion and wanting in what I read. It made me sad. I had both physical and emotional reactions to what I was reading that went to a very deep place. It forced me to see, yet again, that I am allowing the incidents and people in my past to still shape and direct my present, which can only limit and hurt my future.
When I was in counseling, I talked a lot about what was happening during the time period I was there. In the first few years, there was so much hitting me from all different angles. There were horrible things being said and done that captured my attention and wrapped my insides into knots. I was also in varying degrees of fog for the first two-and-a-half years after Scott’s death. The best way to describe it was that I was merely functioning most of the time and moving through life feeling like I was outside of my body and watching it all happen rather than experiencing it.
I really needed an outlet to just be able to talk. I needed someone to talk to that really didn’t know me or the players involved in my story. My counselor was a neutral person in many ways. Most of the time I could speak without being judged. She cared about me because I paid her to care about me. She didn’t have anyone else telling her how horrible I was or putting their spin on me. She could decide for herself who I was, my strengths and weaknesses, and draw a conclusion on the dynamics of my life. In the end, I’m not really sure what she thought about me or if she liked me. It wasn’t an interpersonal relationship. I was part of her job and she gave me a safe outlet to talk through whatever I was needing to work through at the time.
I realize now that counseling helped me work through the big picture items I was dealing with, which helped a lot. Unfortunately, though, the incidents that wounded and shaped me the most, weren’t the big things. They were the everyday comments, rejections and interactions with the major players in my life. I tried EMDR therapy, which is supposed to go deeper into the specific events in your life. You are supposed to be able to tell what happened, answer questions, watch this light go back and forth over and over again and then you are supposed to tell how that incident made you feel. Following the same sequence of events, throughout the session time, you go deeper and deeper into the incident. The problem with me was that I had no clue how to name the emotions I was feeling.
This doesn’t work well with EMDR, as I was told many times by the therapist. I would have never thought that you could fail therapy, but I did it with flying colors! When I was asked how I felt, I would start to tell of all these different incidents that made me feel the same way I was feeling at the time. I was feeling like I did when such and such happened or when this person or that person said something. Did it make me mad, angry, hurt, etc.? Not a clue.
So all this leads me here to where I am needing to get into the nitty gritty. Since counseling and therapy weren’t places I could do this, it comes down to writing. Whenever I was in a bad place, I would write what upset me. Sometimes I would send it to the person who had hurt me, because talking to them never seemed to work. It just so happened that writing to them didn’t either. Turns out that people have to actually care about you to hear you, or even bother to listen to you, no matter how you express yourself.
So here I am with the blog. I’ve said many times how much I struggle with writing it. I know there are many reasons why this is so, but I think the main problem is the fact that I’m laying everything on the table for anyone to read. I know I don’t have to do it, but over and over again I feel God telling me to continue. I think I can do this because I also know that I don’t have to and won’t share everything. That makes it easier.
I also think there are several reasons I’m supposed to put it “out there” rather than only journaling. The first is that when I simply think of (or, in this instance, write) what I’m feeling, too many ugly thoughts and comments fight me to where I’m no better off after getting it all out. Second is because when I write so that it is available for others to read, I am forced to find the right wording, try to have it make sense and then come to a conclusion or place from which I can move forward.
And third – maybe, just maybe, someone else will see they are not alone in what they are experiencing.
~ Joanna Lynn
