Saturday, October 23, 2021

Why are you still thinking about that?

I've been in and out of some form of therapy for at least 30 years. If you looked at the subjects and issues I speak to my therapist(s) about you'd say I was crying over the same stuff with no getting to the other side. Yet I've found even when going over the same things, the therapy and what I get out of it is different. You let something out, gain a new insight, and maybe it's good for a bit but then a memory comes back that sends you sideways and you look at it from a new angle. It's the same but it's not. 



Most people expect our healing to be linear and if you aren't "all better" in whatever timeline they deem appropriate then it's on you. I once had a pastor say that if you weren't over something within a year, no matter how horrific or how long the trauma went on, then you were now sinning. Gee....the church victim blaming? Who would have seen that coming?! Thankfully I no longer believe in "sin" so I'm free to go at whatever pace is right for me.

We tend to expect others to turn their feelings off and on at will. We are dismissive when we see pain that we feel should have been done by now. So the hurting person stays silent for fear of being shamed or having some well worn cliché thrown in their face. We applaud those that seem to skip through life without a care and chastise those whose feelings and thoughts linger on what happened to them. 

Hanging onto bad memories is also a trauma response. Our minds feel the need to stay on guard and part of that is holding the memories close. Our brains do not have the same wiring as those who haven't experienced horror. In many ways we feel behind compared to others.



I do have many thoughts and memories I don't share because I feel to do so would bring on shaming. If you made a bad choice then you might further silence yourself for fear of being told you deserve this pain. Though I will say after decades of this I'm a little better at figuring out who is safe for me. 

When teaching yoga or meditation I frequently say, "You can't control your thoughts. Your brain is going to fire them over and over, and this is good as it means you're alive! But you can acknowledge a thought without attaching to it and spiraling downward with it." I'm working on staying away from that spiral.




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