A Reflection of Therapy 10/28/22

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 Last year I gave my narrative to my therapist. Telling him everything that I have lived through. Watching him react to the things that I described to him. Slowly realizing this isn’t supposed to be normal. Abuse, toxicity, gaslighting is not supposed to be normal. My whole life it was a normal part of my life. Even well into my adulthood it was normalized. 


One of the biggest barriers I am learning is not bottling my thoughts, my feelings, and even my emotions.  For so many years I have been told that it was wrong to show those. It was a bad thing if I cried. If I cried it was showing I was weak. It showed that the person who hurt me won.  If I expressed anger, especially in school, the kids made fun of me for being angry or frustrated. I never had a safe place to show these feelings. 


Then in my marriage time and time again I was told I was wrong. I was made to feel inadequate, worthless, unlovable, like I did something wrong. Truth is, it was never my fault. If I expressed an emotion the party tended to be upset with me. Then I felt bad for feeling something, anything. I shouldn’t have. 


I am sitting here processing today's session. I am something that is dawning on me. Today I think was the first time I allowed myself to feel the anger and emotion behind a memory. Something I don’t think I ever did. I felt something that I don’t think I even allowed myself to feel in the moment it happened. Here I am 41 years of age and feeling something that has been built up since 2016.  


The anger and frustration I felt from this memory I could feel in my body. Like it wanted to escape. The more I wanted to keep it tucked in, I couldn’t. It came out in tears and a panic attack. I think my body got overloaded on such a short memory that it let out by panicking. Deep down I knew I was safe to let out whatever I needed too. 


Even going through my narrative with my therapist I never really talked about how things made me feel.  I didn’t talk about what emotions I may have felt. I talked about the memories as if I am having an everyday conversation. I’m wondering now, if I sat in his office, would it be the same?  Would I finally feel something?


I think going through these new exercises will help. I think each time I go into therapy in person feelings of memories may arise. As safe as my calm place is to me, I think this is where my healing is. Maybe I am wrong in all of this. Maybe, I am so off base and at this end of all of this I’ll look back and be like yeah, I was wrong. 


I would like to see how this is going to affect my memories with the emotions I had. I’m anxious to see if they are all going to be this intense. I have a strong feeling they are going to be. Years of pent up feelings and emotions have to go somewhere, right?

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