As I sit here wanting to write so much more than I can today, I am VERY aware of one very awkward human thing. We are WAY to prone to sickness. Whether it be in one way or another (HAHA:p) We sure have to spend a lot of time in...well...bed.
Ahhhh... the human condition.
Sleeping, getting over sickness. Going to bed, getting up, going to work in whatever ways we do, then DRAT! Going back to sleep. Again.
My daughter has told me SO many times that she thought sleeping was "such a waste of time!"(This was always right before bedtime between when she was not quite a teen (Around 9) to after.
But without sleep, we kind of become walking zombies.:p and not very nice ones at that:p
On days like these when I'm supposed to stay in bed to try to get better I wish desperately that I had a laptop. As I don't have a laptop I cling desperately to my "android" phone even when I'm sick, typing on its tiny little keyboard, trying to keep up with the world, even when I'm in my pajamas. HA! You can't see me!
The problems always come when I try to make the screen bigger. Then I wreak all kinds of havoc. Missing posts, thinking I'm not pushing post and it does, having half-finished posts turn up and the "auto correct" (A program that’s supposed to be HELPFUL making your words easier to get right on screen but that I think may be a travesty of naughty schoolboys (in my opinion) with jobs making apps for droid phones and their users "easier to post”) SUDDENLY and without warning turns my word victim into vagina. Just WHO are these perverts at auto correct? And how do I explain what I just said online?:P (I finally went to Verizon and asked them to TURN THE CURS-ED THING OFF. The Verizon guy just started laughing when I told him about the vagina incident and told me to go to a certain site about Damn you autocorrect which I'm not going to put here, It'll make you blush. All I know is I don't want auto correct on MY phone. It makes me talk like a dirty old man: p Err...no thanks:p
As of right now I am sitting at the keyboard coughing like a banshee trying to gather my thoughts together even though every cough seems to jumble them up even more in my head.:p
Last week I found out I have some weird bacterial sickness, as my temperature rose from 102.5 then went down to 101, then as the drugs kicked in, lying in a puddle of sweat with so much coughing that I threw my back out. (No, I won't draw you a picture:p ew;) Welcome to the world of I've fallen and I can't get up:p Or more like I've been laying on the bed for HOURS and I can't get up. Or...I just don't WANT to get up. Make me.:p
Anyway, I think I'm FINALLY getting better, but now my husband is sick, poor thing.
Especially glad I'm getting better because I am going to an EMDR councilor tomorrow. I am talking to you about it here because I am gathering that some of you that I write for here are abused or have been abused yourself. You may not know it, but in a way we are brothers and sisters. I wish it to be this way.
We are all on a journey and the only one ultimately who knows which way you need to go, is YOU. If you do, or don't it is up to you. But you can change whatever you path is at any time. I promise you no matter how many times you fall down and have to get back up, no matter HOW hard it is, as long as you get back up and KEEP MOVING in the direction you have to go, even if you have to crawl, even if you can barely see where it is you need to go, even if you feel that you can't do it anymore, if you just keep moving. God (Or whoever your higher power is) will MOVE you in the direction you were meant to go. As long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other. DON'T GIVE UP. I am rooting for you!
This may sound strange, but when I started this process of writing this book, and this blog,(My huz actually helped set it up, he’s a genius) one thought came to me. I hadn't even thought much about writing, or blogging.
I was just doing my usual thing, getting ready for the day when something stopped me dead in my tracks as I was jumping in the shower. Something told me
"You will write a book called "Unbreakable"
"You will have to go through some form of hypnotism to get all the information out of your head"
There. That was it. I didn't even write it down...but all these other thoughts came and I had to stop and write them all down in between the shower. Made for a lot of wet sheets of paper with smeared writing, but I made sure I wrote it all down.:p
Ok, so here’s the deal. I kept wondering what it meant that I would have to be hypnotized, of all things. The only thing I remember of hypnotism was that every year at my high school for a while for a few years there was a guy who did it at an assembly. (Gathering of the whole school in a gym) He was amazing. He had us put our hands together and then tried to hypnotize some of us in the audience. I almost went under. The guys behind me were laughing SO hard because I couldn't get my hands apart. I had decided that NOOOOO! I didn't want to be hypnotized after all, but my hands, who were not cooperating, thought they were.p through sheer will I finally got them apart, and whew! My brief but short career as the funny girl for the boys behind me was over. My best friend Jennie even hypnotized me once. The weird thing is, I never closed my eyes. I could see her, but everything was wavy.
So what WAS this hypnotism stuff? I began to call around, to highly recommended psychologists here in the area, and ALL of them said "Hypnotism can lead to false memories. And that it happened WAY too often." Then they gave me a new term. Not one for Hypnotism, but for EMDR. It stands for Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Sounds kinda clinical huh? So what does it mean?
When someone goes through a horrible trauma, they have found that those people don't have normal rem (eye) sleep cycles when they sleep like other people do. Trauma is also saved in a different part of the brain then normal memories. When a person who has had traumatic experience talks about those memories, it’s like they are IN that moment. The feelings come back; the fears and anxieties can come back. when EMDR is used (It’s a machine that goes back and forth and the eyes follow it) the brain reprocesses it, little by little the memory is put in the RIGHT place in the brain because of this reprogramming, and when it’s finished, the person can talk about it, but not feel the pain of it anymore because the brain has put it in its proper place, in a different place in the brain, in the PAST.
It actually showed up in scans on the brain. They show before EMDR, and in a person who has post-traumatic stress syndrome, the brain is overly active. After EMDR, all that brain activity slows down so much that it actually shows on a scan. Here is a video that talks about it. It’s amazing. I think it was done by CBS ...VERY good story on EMDR HERE...if you are curious about this I HIGHLY recommend checking this video out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBtqWrs2-K0
They have used this on Vietnam Vets and it’s worked. They've used it on Post-Traumatic stress syndrome and it’s worked. They don't know why, but it does. Everyone I've talked to has said it’s amazing, including my old counselor from the college I went to years ago.
But there is a catch. As we do it, I may have night terrors, I may have old memories surface, I may have horrible dreams. I just know in my gut that it’s time to face this. This is EXACTLY what I need, even if it’s terrifying at times. I am strong. I have been strong before, I can be strong again. And THIS time, I am in a LOVING family with all the support I need.
Tomorrow I'm learning some self-soothing techniques that are supposed to help me when I have those problems come up. My counselor said I'll have to learn how to sooth the 10 year old me as things come up from when I was there abused at that age, to the 5 year old me as she comes up, the 16 year old me and so on. They may be yelling pretty loud and terrified, but as I am now I need to be the adult for "her". I can be the guide there that never was when I was that age and the protector there to let me know that there IS someone who cares. That I am here for that child-me NOW. I am the LOVING PARENT.
(Ok..thats a really complicated sentence..I hope it makes sense:p I may have to re- examine it when I’m not sick lol)
She says doing this is like cracking open a hard nut, and there will be a LOT inside. She said I may be a mess for a while and it gets worse before it gets better...but that she always seen it get better. And getting to the better is the important part. All the things that terrify me will be different somehow, as I work through it. I WANT to remember. I want all of these memories to be put DOWN, written down, and laid to rest, where they belong. In the PAST. I will share what I learn with you along the way, no matter how hard it is.
Besides. we are kin, you and I.
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