Posted by wittgensteinz on June 24, 2009, at 19:36:24
In reply to trauma and healing, posted by deerock on June 24, 2009, at 15:38:22
Deerock,
I think the question you need to explore is: what is it to 'overcome' a trauma? Of course we will NEVER forget and it will never be that these experiences didn't happen. In that sense, it's a scar that won't heal. They did happen and they have affected us - that's something we have to come to terms with.
However, the scar fades over time and with treatment. That's my experience anyway. I've been in therapy for about 2 years, a little over. I still 'feel it' but sometimes less intensely - sometimes I even feel like I'm free from it. Although at the back of my mind those things of the past are still there, I feel some distance from them. It seems my relationship with my traumatic past is going through change, gradually.
For a long time, before I came to therapy, I felt nothing and didn't even acknowledge the trauma I'd experienced although found my life unliveable. Then, once the therapy did start, I realised the reality of it and the feeling was suffocating and unbearable - it felt like my head was wrapped tightly with so many vivid memories - inescapable. Now, I'm gradually separating myself from those experiences. I can take some distance and can be a bit kinder to myself, can 'sit with myself' for a while without the company of an internalised abuser.
Things still hurt and sometimes they seem to hit me in the face again when something triggers me.
I think things are not so black and white. The future needn't feel so bleak. Change can happen and does under the right conditions. Things can start to feel better but it's a long process with ups and downs.
Witti
poster:wittgensteinz
thread:902975
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090614/msgs/903009.html