RECONNECTIVITY

 “… You have to work on who you are from the inside out.”  Excerpt From What We Find by Robyn Carr.

Once I learned that my subconscious harbored mental blocks of which my conscious mind was unaware, I realized that my lost sense of wholeness has been offered one opportunity after another to secure the courage necessary to free my voice to wholly and calmly express my opinions, beliefs and fears with the self confident attitude that arrests the attentiveness of listeners whose insult-ridden innuendos, thrust at my vulnerabilities over years past, were no longer empowered to dismiss my unmet needs as having been inconsequential as had been the case before my wholehearted participation in EMDR therapy had empowered me to reclaim the portion of my voice, which, having been silenced by sudden attacks of PTSD, which had boggled my mind beginning when I’d felt unloved and emotionally abandoned by my family at the highly vulnerable age of three.

As I was not yet three when my extended family’s sense of security had been struck down and shattered by two tragic deaths in a matter of weeks—neither of which had been expected—my processor had not yet developed the ability to express my overwhelmed sense of terror via discussion.  And having been terrified (as had been true of my extended family), I, having felt enotionally abandoned and undeserving of love, did not develop the ability to speak up for myself with the clarity of self respect intact until those traumatic experiences, locked away (protectively) within my subconscious, began to develop the readiness to filter bite-size details into the conscious portion of my mind, during therapy sessions, which had offered my adult processor a safe environment in which to spotlight insights concerning the unusual aspects of my personality development.  You see, though each of those bite sized portions of trauma had proved to be much too confounding for my three year old processor to comprehend, my adult processor understood and absorbed the fact that I’d felt unloved during the months that everyone in my extended family had been experiebing such shocking depths of grief that nothing more than my physical needs had been met.  And tempers were short.

As happens with those of us who have no clue that we experience episodes of PTSD, each time anything feels remotely similar to details of my blocked memories, the reactivity of my adult processor had gagged and choked, disconnecting my think tank from the logical portion of my brain, which, in turn, lost its capacity to understand and respond calmly to whatever has iactually taken place in real time.

In short, my processor would become short wired, releasing the same terror struck emotional reaction that I’d had R three without offering me a reason for what seemed like a highly dramatic over reaction..

Once I’d come to recognize and maintain control over those moments when POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER is attempting to disconnect my intelligence (freeing my survival instincts to flee, fight or freeze), my self image, having changed for the better—one therapy session at a time—remains able to make such intelligent use of my self respecting voice as to command the peaceable respect of my listeners whether they agreed with my personal perspective or not. 

As of this moment, I’ve no clue as to why the intuitive portion of my brain felt need to summarize personal benefits reaped from my wholehearted participation in EMDR therapy, which is geared toward healing the emotionally debilitating effects of PTSD.  However, with time, I have no doubt that a string of insights will brighten my understanding as to why this post (which wrote itself, today) will be mine.  And once that mental breakthrough takes place, naturally, I’ll feel eager to share that which I’ve learned (most likely about myself) with you.

Annie