Soul Mosaic

The vein of my life force?

When I first started working with this trauma therapist almost twenty years ago, all I could feel was anxiety and terror. I wasn’t even aware of the rage, just terror. Beyond that, my emotions, as well as any emotional power, were a flat line. I was not a fully open, fully expressive human being

It took ten years of regular work for me to even reach the place where anger might be a possible emotion in me. It took a literal lifetime for me to mine deep enough into my psyche to finally hit that vein of rage.

No question, once opened, there was no turning back. But then…maybe that was the point? Could it be that maybe my very life force…the one I’d been denied since infancy, was also there? The life force that is the “light side” of rage, and that could finally allow me to accept and embrace all of me, all of my life and being, fully…with love?

I only knew that once I started through that swamp of emotions, I had to keep going…because the rage had something to teach me.

THIS TIME, I’ll win…

I talked about proxy battles — re-enacting past moments of abuse or conflict by “fighting back” in some current-day situation — my way to win some kind of perceived battle in the present day. They could be some small angry interaction with someone in the grocery store, or whatever. But if I perceived insult or disrespect, especially by a man, I would “stand up for me!”

Even as I know I don’t want to get hooked by whatever it is, and on some level I know it’s ridiculous, there are times I just feel compelled to do it anyway. And even more weirdly, I experience a tremendous sense of relief if I “win.” And it’s not just relief that I “won”, but…that I FOUGHT BACK.

Then I came across these passages in the book Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman, MD:

A new dawn?

“Whatever it was that he saw in me that made him choose me – I was determined that part of me would NOT survive!”
My journal, July 22, 2018

If ever there was a statement that captured the self-hatred, blaming, and disgust that I felt toward me all through life, this was it.

I assumed it was me. I was wrong, somehow to blame, somehow responsible, contaminated with some trait that he couldn’t resist. I must have brought something to the table that caused this…and thus…it was my fault.

Or, even if I cut me some “slack” because, at least in the beginning, I was an infant, still, I was disgusted with myself. He had chosen me for this hell. So whatever it was that I possessed that drew him to me, I was going to PURGE it as soon as I could identify it.

Looking back, it’s a ridiculous idea…it wasn’t me at all. But given that he abused me right from infancy, it is a logical one. When bad things happen to young children, they assume they caused it and are to blame. They are still at that stage of thinking that everything is about them. So good or bad, it’s their fault. And on some deep and early emotional level within me, I carried that same message.

It was only now, in my late sixties, that a germ of a realization was dawning upon me and creeping into my consciousness…an idea I could finally FEEL, not just tell myself and try to believe it: Was it possible…that I was NEVER to blame? For any of it? That maybe it was about whatever he carried WITHIN HIM all along…

Pre-EMDR Journal notes — BRING IT ON, OLD MAN!

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.