Before I relate the session experience, I need to take a moment to consider the question – Why rage?
Why did I carry white-hot rage toward my father?
And why did that need to be the first thing we tackled?
I will let the images do most of the talking here.
Who was he?
Probably best answered by the stories he shared with me on our weekend car rides, all of them disgusting or upsetting. Such as the one about abusing cats when he was a kid.
The face that haunted my days then, and my nightmares now…
What he inflicted on me that I couldn’t escape…
What I faced every day and then internalized – his internal rage monster
What did that do to me?
Jen Cross, in her book Writing Ourselves Whole, absolutely nailed it:
“The man who abused me…did everything he could to take me apart psychically and reassemble me according to his desires and whims…”
He took away all my power. He dominated everything I could do…broke me…remade me into what he wanted. He took all of me….body, psyche, life. He took from me precious time, innocence, normal life experiences, and childhood and young adult development.
He took away my ability to mature well, and that took away my future because I was so far behind everyone else that I didn’t stand a chance of catching up to reach my full potential in time.
And what gets handed down and carried forward?
Present-day situations like raging at stupid drivers or being stuck in traffic jams are really proxy fights with him…or rather, his ghosts in my mind. They trigger that well of despair, shame, and frustration at being his trapped, powerless, weak puppet. And I am enraged and determined to “show them” and not come out on the “losing end of the interaction THIS time.”
“Adults as well as children often feel impelled to re-create the moment of terror, either in literal or in disguised form. Sometimes people reenact the traumatic moment with a fantasy of changing the outcome of the dangerous encounter….repetitive reliving of the traumatic experience must represent a spontaneous, unsuccessful attempt at healing.”
Judith Herman, M.D., Trauma and Recovery
On some level, driven by rage at him and myself, I was trying in those moments to replay the abuse and have it come out differently. And I wanted it to stop. But that meant dealing with the rage of what had been done to me.
All I knew was that I had been his pleasure toy. Nothing more. I hated that. I hated me. And I especially hated that anything I could have been then, or become later, was permanently altered.
Damned…
During a conversation with my husband, I expressed my grief and sorrow over how much had been taken from me. How much rage I felt, including toward myself. I spent most of my life blaming myself for not being braver, stronger, fighting back more, even as I might have been risking my life.
The truth was, though, that it was impossible then. He was violent and dangerous at times. And manipulative and powerful the rest of the time. I was doing the best I could in a bad situation just to survive. I said to my husband, “I was damned no matter what I did.”
He gently reminded me that I hadn’t failed. “No, you were damned the moment he chose you.” Ed put the blame right where it belonged – Dad.
And even worse, my father had chosen me right from the beginning.
In Jen Cross’s book mentioned above, I read her definition of trauma:
“Trauma is the site of shock in the body and/or psyche. It’s a rupture, a bifurcation, a disassembly. Trauma marks the moment when was was ended, and something new emerged.”
It’s a really good summation, except for one thing in my case. When I read that line, I had to write on the bottom of the book page:
“What happens when ‘what was’ was snuffed out right from the beginning…and so you don’t even remember what you were supposed to become? What happens then?”
The starting place is…
My father started on me in infancy. I never even had a chance to see what “could have been.”
So yes. Rage. In huge quantities that I still wrestle with to this day, even as I have made a lot of progress. But no question, to restart EMDR, it had to start with rage.
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and return home for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
Tags: family, life, love, mental-health, writing
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