Clean

I was walking in a store a few days ago and I saw someone who, I thought, was them and seeing them stopped me in my tracks. At first, I wanted to run, but then, I developed the courage to just be there.

Let’s time travel back to 2017:

Therapist: “I’m going to start the pulsating sensations. Are you ready?”

Me: “Yes.”

Therapist: “Remember, just allow yourself to see what you see. Don’t judge what you see. Just see.”

Me: “Okay,” as I swallowed hard.

The pulsers started to vibrate back and forth between my right and left hands.

My breathing was normal, my heart was palpitating, my eyes were shut, although I could see cognitively clearly.

With my eyes closed, I could see the paisley bedspread plain as day. I could see the corner of the bed clear as day.

A list if cognitions laid in front of me that I studied before we began working my target.

Some read:

“I am not capable” vs “I am capable”

“I am weak” vs “I am strong”

“I do not deserve love” vs “I deserve love”

“I cannot trust myself” vs “I trust myself”

Essentially, a negative and a positive, or a thinking error and the thinking correction.

So what is EMDR?

EMDR (Google): eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy that involves moving your eyes a specific way while you process traumatic memories

EMDR’s Goal: to help you heal from trauma or other distressing life experiences

So what do traumatic memories include?

Trauma (via Google): the lasting emotional response that often results from living through a distressing event. Experiencing a traumatic event can harm a person’s sense of safety, sense of self, and ability to regulate emotions and develop relationships

PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is defined as:

A disorder in which a person has a difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event

A common term associated with said disorder: trigger

Triggers are defined as:

“A stimulus that elicits a reaction”

For the longest time, when someone would leave me on read, I would get so upset and think they were against me. Now, after a lot of hard work in therapy and also in EMDR treatment that was described above, I am able to rationalize (big key word here, especially my anxiety friends) with myself that people are not ignoring me on purpose like they did. And that they do love me. And they’re not mad at me. And that they still like me.

By the way, all of this is okay.

Anxiety reactions are okay.

Six years later, my brain, still, naturally thinks that I am being attacked and that people don’t want me. These thinking errors - I have to actively try to correct daily in my own head with or without help from my loved ones, though I can breathe a little easier with the help and also with reassurance.

Almost eight years ago, I met them. I was on one side of the kitchen counter and they were on the other. As time went on, they became my best friend. And I trusted them. Their intentions were pure. They’d never hurt me, I thought. They cared about me, I thought. I never thought they’d hurt me because they were my friend first and had shown me they cared. It’s one thing to just be a jerk, but it’s another when someone else’s actions literally cause your brain to change. And with substances involved as well - 🍒 on top.

Just like the substances altered their brain chemistry, the effects of them altered mine.

Our decisions affect others.

We all have our own vices. My personal addictions include my anxiety, my paranoia, and my abandonment insecurities. They own me. More than my cat Mardi does. 😳

The positive and healthy thoughts that they’d never hurt me and that they cared for me, the assumption that people were good, were proven wrong and the trauma helped replace the healthy thoughts with the thinking errors.

With them, I learned what emotional abuse was.

What is emotional abuse? I speak about that in a lot of my blogs. Let’s define it.

From Google:

Emotional abuse includes non-physical behaviors that are meant to control, isolate, or frighten you. This may present in romantic relationships as threats, insults, constant monitoring, excessive jealousy, manipulation, humiliation, intimidation, and dismissiveness, among others

I want to add: withholding affection on purpose

Symptoms of a victim of it:

You may experience feelings of confusion, anxiety, shame, guilt, frequent crying, over-compliance, powerlessness, and more. You may stay in the relationship and try to bargain with the abuser or try to change the abuser's behavior, often placing blame on yourself, even though you are not at fault

After experiencing emotional abuse, you’ll know the next time it happens. It makes you feel a certain way, almost far from yourself and consumed in the other person.

It usually takes an unhealthy mind to mistreat someone else. And more times than not, within my experiences, they are not intending to hurt you. But they did hurt you.

There’s so much that plays into our decisions that fights the principles of simply being right or wrong. We are HUMAN.

The fact is: people can change.

I saw their soul. I have that ability unfortunately. A lost angel, they called themselves. And that they were.

A lot of demons they had. I loved them and their demons and their closets, but they wouldn’t really let me.

“You are in the safest place you could possibly be,” they told me, as I was in their arms, and I was far from safe.

2017: Step, step, step, step, up the stairs I followed them into an apartment building. I sat behind them like a harlequin doll, observing their every move and admiring every one of them. Their ice blue eyes and their dark black hair, their tan skin. And their voice.

Their voicemail still haunts me.

“I want the good times, the bad times, with you,” they said, in the perfect setting. That night, I became their girlfriend. In the next forty eight hours, they disappeared for about three weeks, just enough time for me to get over being angry and hurt, like they were never there, never existed.

2017: I was driving after my therapy appointment around downtown of our town because that was their side of town. Doing that was one of the ways I could feel close to them because they weren’t always accessible to me on purpose.

I annoyed them and they didn’t want to deal with me, so, they made it to where I couldn’t call them.

So, imagine why I assume I’m a bother. Right? Or annoying, or an inconvenience. Or why I don’t rely on anybody, really.

They were only found when they wanted to be found. They were also everywhere, though. Always watching.

Magnets, we were. They always wanted me. We’d come together, break apart, come together, break apart.

2017: I sat in the chair on the second floor waiting on my turn in my therapist’s hot seat. The floors were wooden and the house was aged; certain places in the floor made noises as you walked upon it. There was a standalone tub in the bathroom with a curtain. I was looking out the window and saw their friend walking down the sidewalk. I thought to myself, “Oh! I could ask her where they are.” Then I thought, “Well I better not.” I turned away from the window and then turned back. There they were along with their best friend, who cared more about me and my feelings and honestly, treating me like a human, than they did, I might add. Last I had heard, they were out of town on business, but that was a day ago give or take. It’s not like I, as their girlfriend, had a right to know where they were, let alone if they were in town. I briskly made my way down the two flights of stairs and ran towards the back window to see where they were going. I pulled out my phone and dialed my two best friends. The male best friend answered.

I was sweating, nauseous, felt like my stomach was about to be upset, fast heart rate, anxious, manic, felt like I couldn’t sit still. I told him what happened. Then, my therapist met me at the door as she was getting coffee and I was coming into the building.

She walked with me.

“Are you sure they are not using?” my therapist asked me.

“No, they said they wouldn’t do that again,” I said. And I believed them.

“Their behavior leads me to believe that there some sort of substance being used,” my therapist said.

I made every excuse under the sun to defend them. To my therapist, my friends, family, and even to myself. And this is a toxic thing within me.

In reality, which I didn’t realize until later, I never knew when they were sober and that they were using. I still don’t know what was real and what was the substances.

2019: “Anna, I don’t remember half of the things you are saying I did. And I’m sorry,” they said to me, three years after everything. Everything they said, did, was it all because of the alcohol? Because of the substance abuse I wasn’t aware of? Would they have still wanted me when they were clean? Did they really want me?

The words they said, the statements, the claims. Were they real? Was I really what I thought I was or what I should’ve been to them? Was I to listen to actions or their words?

The time in therapy, the money in therapy, the triggers, the anxiety, the crying, the upset stomach, the sweating, the nausea, the now inability to trust someone’s intentions - what was the point of it all?

What was the point of showing unconditional love to someone who just abused me?

Phew, that’s a hard one.

They were of the uttermost importance to me. And I was treated like garbage. I treasured them and I was treated like garbage. I was used and then put away to be used again when desired. A harlequin.

I wasn’t valued. By them or by myself. And I allowed it.

They were bulldozing through life and through me like it didn’t matter. I’ve been there, too.

Turns out, they didn’t want me as much when they became sober as they did when they weren’t. The magnet lost its pull, its gravitational force.

And also turns out, that damage, will also serve a lifetime sentence in my heart. Trauma changes you. Your brain, your heart, your psyche. And I won’t ever be the same after that.

“The past is the past.” It is. But what is the definition of the past? And why is it important?

The Past: things that have happened previously, before us

Importance: helps us understand ourselves and helps others understand us and why we do what we do

“Leave it in the past.” I’m sure you’ve heard this one before: it’s easier said than done. Right?

What do you think shapes our thinking? Experiences. The past.

Do you really think we can change our brains back to where they were before? Or undo damage? No. You can break a plate, but you will never be able to fuse that clay together again. You can glue it, and it can last a lifetime, but the crack still exists. Same principle goes for trauma. Sometimes the break can make us better, though and teaches us a lot of things.

We also like to judge what is okay for us to consider traumatic. Yes? Walk in my shoes and tell me how I should’ve, could’ve, would’ve, or should, could, would. Yes?

We also need to learn to give ourselves grace. I don’t give myself the same grace I give others. This is one I really struggle with. The more we try to understand ourselves and have an open mind, the better we are. I didn’t use to be open minded, I was very anal, and all that did was add to my gray in my hair and cause grief to the people closest around me.

The best way to call a spade a spade is to see that it is a spade in the first place.

Acceptance/admittance is the first step.

You are not defined by your mistakes.

You are not defined by your trauma or by what has happened to you.

This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or it’s not of the uttermost importance.

Are you a victim or survivor?

-A.