Every so often I have to take a minute to work through some traumas that randomly come up. I get quiet, stop socializing, and think a lot.
A few months ago I told my husband, "I'm having a hard time. I'm just really sad today."
His response was one of the most amazing things I'd had said to me.... It's ok. Be sad. Just don't live there."
It is important to acknowledge negative emotions. Analyze and work through things the moment they arise. Take a minute and analyze what's happened and what IS happening. Remind yourself, "This can't hurt me anymore."
Create a list of positives and don't leave anything out. Are you excited a new season of your favorite show was released on Netflix? Write that down too. Everything counts.
The goal is... make the positives FAR exceed the negatives you are feeling. Since 1 negative emotion seems to be 3 times stronger than 1 positive... yeah, this list needs everything good you can possibly think of so you don't get stuck. It's also helpful to remind yourself... if you put yourself somewhere dark, you can teleport your ass to some place sunny and beautiful too.
I was in psychotherapy for years. Relax, relaaaax.... all this means is TALK therapy. Why they have to give it such an off-putting name, I have no clue. I used to say it was just so mental health professionals sounded super important ((eye roll)). Therapy and I have a love-hate relationship.
When people have been absolutely broken inside, talk therapy can be useless. Think about it. Can you openly talk about the things that have happened to you without a flood of emotions that absolutely block emotional processing while experiencing that storm of "What the Fuck Happened to me"?
There came a point when my therapist and I admitted.... This isn't helpful. As soon as emotions come in, walls go up in the brain and numbness sets in, creating a total block of... well, every damn thing. You cannot work through trauma when the fear of emotion takes over. Our brains will naturally step in to protect us, physically altering our neuro-pathways and changing how our brain communicates with itself.
Emotions that arise when thinking about the past are just that. Emotions. They can no longer hurt you *IF* you first take away their power. So, that's what my therapist and I set out to do.
EMDR therapy. Have you ever heard of it? This therapeutic treatment combines rapid eye movement with talk therapy. When an experience is still real to us, we fear it. When we feel like that experience is truly a part of the past and it can no longer hurt us.... the fear is gone. The idea is.... if we no longer fear it, we can talk about it openly. If we can talk about it openly without being overtaken by emotions, we have the ability to utilize the steps needed to actually work through it. The goal of EMDR is to take that scary memory and move it to the part of the brain that makes it simply a memory.....part of the past.
It didn't work for me. There was too much fear. There was too much pain. I hurt too much. I couldn't open my mind up enough. Not even for this. So, we moved on to neuro-feedback therapy.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner winner chicken dinner!! I didn't have to talk. I didn't have to think. Actually, it was the complete opposite. I had to STOP my mind from thinking. I had to focus on the TV screen and what was happening right then and there. Every time I started thinking and stopped focusing, the little probes attached to my scalp would pick up those brainwaves and the pac-man character on the screen would stop gobbling little dots. The more focused I was on that screen, the faster my little pac-man would go!
At the end of each session came meditation. My therapist would put these headphones on me with the most relaxing composition of nature, gongs, and soft sounds. The goal here was to completely empty my mind. After 30 minutes of brain training, this was easier than I thought.
I would close my eyes and take deep breaths. Long inhale in through your nose. Longer exhale out through your mouth, expelling the negative energy. Focus on complete darkness. Hear the sounds of air coming in... and going back out. Start at your toes and focus on complete relaxation of each muscle, moving all the way up to your chest.
I got so good at this, I barely made it to my knees before I was floating. Complete weightlessness. Absolute silence other than the air moving through my lungs and slow rhythmic waves of sound. No fear. No panic. I was just allowing myself to be in the moment. It was the most amazing experience of my life.
Once the session was over, the therapist would always ask, "How do you feel?'
Nothing. I felt nothing. It was as if the weight of my entire past was no longer on my back. I was in the moment and in that moment... I was safe. I felt whole. I wasn't being torn in a million different emotional directions. I felt in control of me for once.
Right now, I am at a point in my life where.... I need to take that step back and evaluate what's happened VS what's happening. As I work through some things, I am making my list of positives and setting goals based on accomplishments I have made. I am successfully navigating through little flashbacks of my past. I am not getting overwhelmed. My fear of what has happened is not trickling into my present. I am safe. I can do this. I am able to work through it. I am not stuck.
It's ok to allow yourself to feel those negative emotions. I have learned.... it's when we fear them that trouble creeps in.