The General

Every army needs a General. Someone to lead, to call the shots, to draft the plan, and to execute. My army of supporters is no different. The General of my army is my older brother.

I debated for many months on when and how to share my story of abuse with my brother. I desperately longed to have his support but was unsure the effect this would have on our relationship. Would he believe me? Would he question the details (some of which I do not have)? Would I be able to communicate the story and my pain in a way he can understand? Would he freak out? Would he immediately jump into action (for which I'm not ready)? Would he be able to understand my sorrow or would it be too difficult for him? Would he be able to help me through this or am I better off keeping my secrets?

I visited with my brother numerous times in various places between the months of April and June, but it never seemed to be the right time. Ultimately I decided to tell him one night in late July during a family visit when everyone else had gone to bed. We sat on the back porch of my new lake house and it was right. I was ready. The monologue flowed. I was able to recount the story with clarity and, astonishingly, without tears. He listened. He empathized. He expressed his sorrow for the pain I have endured. It was precisely the support I needed.

These days my brother and I are closer than I ever thought possible. We talk more openly and honestly than we have in the 38 years I've known him. We have always been close, but never like this. Never this raw, this vulnerable, or this authentic. And in this deep abiding love I have found a great source of healing. When I spoke about the healing nature of sharing your story in my post Super Better, it was my brother who inspired this line of thought. This has been such a powerful part of my healing journey, I want to express those same thoughts here.

Sharing my story has been most healing for me and here is why: deep down I felt unlovable, unacceptable, and fundamentally flawed because of what happened to me. That's why I kept it a secret; if people knew the terrible truth then they would surely be disgusted and leave me! Ironically, when I gave my loved ones a chance to really know me, when I let them into my pain and see that they love me anyway, it deconstructed my prison of shame. When they stand by my side, when they listen to my pain without running away, then and only then I know that my deepest fears are not and never were real. By sharing my secret with my brother and experiencing the fullness of his support, I have never felt so loved and lovable. And when I see that I am lovable by him and others, I am able to love myself. This is the essence of healing.

For all the beauty and joy that has come with sharing the story with my brother, it has also come with great pain. He is now shouldering some of the weight of my sorrow, and this relief for me comes at a price to him. He did not sleep at all that first night. Later he told me he had nightmares for weeks about all the things that happened to me, and he has guilt over not being there to protect me. I have seen him many times the past few months and he has changed. We have had many conversations about our shared sorrow, for all we can really do in this situation is to keep talking. 

Even though it pains him, I am not sorry I told him. I needed his love and support in a way that I can scarcely communicate; there simply aren't enough words. I see a side of him now that I did not know was there, a caring and soft side that he hides from the rest of the world. He calls me just to say hello. He goes out of his way to spend time with me regularly even though we live 3 hours apart. He tells me he loves me at every opportunity, which melts my heart. He touches and hugs me more than ever, a reassuring affection that I direly need. He sends me text messages that simply say "Love you" which makes me cry every time. I am so grateful for his expression of love and care. It has unlocked a need inside of me that I wasn't aware that I had.

There was a practical reason for sharing the story with my brother. Our maternal grandparents are both experiencing failing health. For months I have had recurring nightmares about the possibility of having to face my assailant amidst the inevitable grievous family events, whether hospital or funeral related. I have considered simply not attending these events, but I love my grandfather very much and want to be present. I decided that this would categorize as yet another thing stolen from me if I were unable to grieve his passing out of fear. I needed a family member in the know, someone to serve as a buffer and protector so that I can participate in family events should I so choose. I decided that it needs to be my choice.

This is how and when my brother became The General. I've been paralyzed and confused about how to progress with my healing as it relates to family matters. I am overwhelmed with fear in trying to figure out how to be around them without telling, but if I do tell then who and when to tell, what to say, who to involve, who to protect... all of these thoughts become a swirling mess inside my head and I fall into a state of total disillusionment. It's simply too much for me to process, and most often this line of thinking ends with a meltdown.

The General lays out options. He discusses tactical plans, courses of action, and probable outcomes. Ultimately he leaves all of the decision making up to me and, amazingly, has made it clear that we are on no timeline but my own. It was The General's idea for me to create Healthy Boundaries with our mother. He supported my conversation with her so much that he swept into her house right after I left to reinforce the points I had made. That was meaningful to me because I didn't have to do it alone. In fact most of the plans laid out by The General start with "We could..." I am no longer alone, and this is incredibly comforting.

Sometimes when we are suffering the most powerful thing anyone can do is just to sit with us. Sometimes there are no plans to be made, only tears to be shed. My brother has been there for this part, too. Some days he distracts me with video games, movies, and football. These times are precious to me. Other times there are courses of action to consider and options to be weighed, and this is when The General appears. Lately I have felt at a crossroads in evaluating such options; on one side there is justice, the other forgiveness. Spiritual truth tells me that ultimately forgiveness is the path towards healing. The General leans toward plans that involve reckoning; he thinks confronting the abuser in some way is necessary for my freedom. I don't know how I feel about this yet, and so it is not time for any decision. I will know when the time is right.

This past weekend I attended a film festival where I viewed a documentary called Beyond Right and Wrong. The film explores personal narratives of unthinkable loss, paralyzing grief and the struggle for justice, forgiveness, repair, and reconciliation. I saw stories of Israeli-Palenstinian conflict (for which my heart aches after visiting Israel this time last year), Rwandan genocide, and IRA terrorism. I saw deep peace in the eyes of those who had forgiven and listened to accounts of how they found that place. It is not the same path for everyone. I no longer see justice and forgiveness as mutually exclusive, for some of their stories included a required element of both. There may be some balance in the middle of this crossroad as yet undefined by me or The General. 

And so again, we shall keep talking.

On Shame

If anger is a surface emotion then shame is the bottomless pit far beneath. Jungian analysts say that shame is the "swampland of the soul." Research shows that shame is highly correlated with addiction, depression, suicidal thoughts, and eating disorders. I have experienced d) all of the above.

Rage shattered the wall of my silent shame. I began having more abuse memories, so many that I had to name the events so that Dee and I could use a common framework for discussion. At first they came in the form of dreams or in lucid states upon waking, some of them nightmarish. Soon these morphed into body memories which could then be reprocessed and associated via EMDR. Sometimes these puzzle pieces would connect amidst activities like driving or running. Other times they came in the middle of my supposed functional workday. I found the latter particularly disturbing. It was one thing to have memories while alone in a safe environment where I could feel and process what was happening; it was an altogether different experience when I was around people with no place to hide. I had to pretend and keep going, not feel, to be on stage and en pointe. This was a harrowing time for me. I felt like I was falling apart. Fragmentation, guilt, shame and fear plagued me from all sides, but none more pressing than the in-side.

The Hand: I have a distinct memory of being touched while in bed. This was the first one to surface after The Theatre and was difficult for me to acknowledge. Previously I had convinced myself that The Theatre was the only scene of abuse but in this new memory I am in a lying down position, one not possible in a theatre setting. A bed, perhaps not mine. I have no external context for this memory - no understanding of the room, furniture, or house - but an immense amount of detail. Exactly opposite of The Theatre, where I have tons of context but little to no detail. The Hand is touching me - as in my lovely little lady parts - from behind and I am pretending to be asleep. I am hoping that if I lie still and quiet it will all be over soon, much like the stone statue in The Theatre. And likely in a similar fully dissociated state.

Please Don't: Another memory, another position, another time and place. The detail and body memory is different for this event, enough that I am able to distinguish it from The Hand. The most salient piece of this memory is that I feel my body about to sexually climax, but I am praying and begging God to not let it happen. I don't want to. I feel terribly ashamed that this is happening and that my body is responding in this way.

Notable connections and feelings bubbled up during acquisition of these memories. As we processed the events, I was obsessed with my attire. In EMDR sets I would spend an inordinate amount of time "looking" down trying to figure out what I was wearing at the time of the abuse. In my mind, wearing a skirt or nightgown meant that I had given him easy access and was partially to blame. If only I had been smart enough or more careful, I could have prevented it. This is a dangerous rabbit hole for survivors of sexual abuse. It is our #1 fear... that the abuse was somehow our fault. That I showed interest, that I prompted or invited it in some way, that I didn't stop him and therefore that means I must have wanted it. This shame has plagued me for 25 years and is likely the cause of my memory repression and dissociation, aka The Black Oil.

Here is where I tell you how very much I love my therapist Dee for moments like this one. After weeks of obsessing over my attire and the thought of possibly inviting the abuse, she called me out. Inching closer to the front edge of her chair, she looked right into my tear-filled eyes and said, "I don't care if you stood up in that theatre, stripped all of your clothes off and danced around in front of him naked. You were a child. He was an adult. It was his responsibility to hold the boundary and he didn't. There is nothing you could've done to make this your fault and so I want you to stop this clothing bullshit here and now." Her exasperation and brutal honesty shocked the obsession right out of me. I haven't thought about my attire in these or any other abuse memories since.

I have learned through therapy and my healing process that shame and self-blame is often the only way a child can make sense of the terrible trauma of sexual abuse. Uneducated and inexperienced with how the body works, the resulting physical pleasure from unwanted touch is confusing. This response gets misinterpreted by a child as fault when it is anything but. Furthermore, it is easier to blame the self than to acknowledge and understand that adults are not trustable and that the world is indeed a scary place. If only we were told the truth: that monsters are real and they don't live under your bed. They live down the street, in your neighborhood, in your backyard. And sometimes they live at your uncle's house.

Brene Brown says that shame requires 3 things to survive: secrecy, silence, and judgement. My story had equal, hefty doses of all three for 25 years. Once I understood this I did the most difficult thing imaginable: I started telling my story. First my 2 therapists, next I told my 3 closest friends. It was awful and wonderful at the same time. Content with my close circle of five, I continued with therapy and regular conversation with my small support army for months. I have since shared my story with 5 more trusted people in my life, including 2 family members. My army is growing.

LearningToLiveInsideMyBody is a critical part of my healing journey. To aggregate and articulate my process, to share for the hope of healing for others, to rid myself of the shame that indeed this is my story. Some days I have an enormous vulnerability hangover from what I've posted. Other days I feel superbly healed, that the process of documenting these experiences gets them out, as in out of me. They no longer live inside, swirling around and adding to the Black Oil. My story lives on these pages, my computer, the blog server, and now your screen.

A few days ago I made a list in my journal of what complete healing will look like for me. It includes several items related to this topic such as:

• not hiding
• no shame
• no fear that people will find out
• no self injury
• no dissociation
• sleeping all night
• no panic attacks
• no stabbing pain of remembrance
• talking about it with no tears
• no vulnerability hangovers 
• no need for an army
• feeling whole
• freedom

There are many more items on my list. I look forward to the day I get to experience all of them. For now, I am satisfied with shattering the wall and moving forward on this journey.

On Rage

One Sunday in January I went to church as usual. During praise and worship, we sang a song with the lyrics "All things work together for my good" from Romans 8:28. All of the sudden I stopped singing as I felt the familiar lump of impending meltdown welling in my throat. The tears began streaming but it was not the usual variety of grief and despair. This time I was filled with rage - pure, utter, unadulterated rage - so much that my fists were clinched tightly and my fingernails bore into the palms of my hands. I envisioned punching someone in the face. My mind raced....

Really? All things work together for MY good? Because I can't think of one single fucking good thing that can possibly come out of being sexually abused, at least not for me. I am so angry with God for letting this happen. Wasn't I already going through enough at the time with schizophrenic-abandoning mother? Where was God in this? Why didn't he protect me? Why didn't anyone? Am I supposed to think that this was all worth it so I can write a book someday? Does that make my suffering meaningful? Acceptable? Fat. Chance.

I went home and took a nap. A thick, deep, foggy sleep that awoke with a start. I was panicked. Heart racing, anxiety in my throat, the booming sound of heartbeat in my ears and pounding in my chest. I was also, strangely, extremely sexually aroused. I realized then that this had happened no less than 3 times the past few weeks since talking to Dee about The Theatre. The acknowledgement overwhelmed me, as it was this moment I first understood the source of my deep shame. Whatever had happened while I was being molested, my body responded even though I didn't want it to. I must have been aroused by whatever he did to me. And even though I didn't remember what "it" was, my body remembered.

The next morning I experienced a different kind of rage meltdown. As I drove to the airport for my next business trip, I was reflecting on the anger and shame revelation from the previous day. A moment of clarity came and all of that rage was now directed at my body. It betrayed me! There I was in the middle of this horrific circumstance of being sexually abused; I should have been fighting or at least appalled but instead I was aroused? This was unacceptable to me. A completely inappropriate response to the situation (or so I thought). And yet I could not stop it, control it, or even curtail it. I was utterly disgusted with myself and completely furious with my body.

My rage continued to morph into various forms and direct itself toward sundry targets - my boss, myself, God, my real-estate agent, myself again, the driver in front of me taking too long when the light turned green, the grocery store clerk who squashed my loaf of wheat bread, myself again - and then it landed smack dab on the crowned head of my mother. It has been resting there for many months now with no signs of movement. (I write more about this in a later post called The Wolf.)

I've learned that it is important to let myself feel whatever it is I need to feel without judgement or attempts to control it. Just let it be what it is. I spent much too long suppressing and denying my feelings; I need to let them out. Keeping them locked deep inside is what got me here: depressed, anxious, unable to have a functional intimate relationship, lonely, fragmented, dissociated.

Anger and even rage are a necessary part of the healing process. In fact, healing from sexual abuse is much akin to the 7 stages of grief:

1. Shock and Denial: I did this for about, oh, 25 years.
2. Pain and Guilt: Yep, plenty of this.
3. Anger: Thus my rage.
4. Depression: Does near constant suicidal ideation count? Yes, I think it does.
5. Upward Turn
6. Reconstruction
7. Acceptance and Hope

And so I am processing 25 years worth of rage and pain. I told you this is the middle of my story. My sarcasm helps me to see just where I am now, and it appears I have not yet reached the upward turn. But I long for it, I believe in it. 

I believe in hope.

The Theatre

Memory repression is a condition in which details of an event are consciously blocked due to high levels of stress or trauma. Survivors of abuse and those who exhibit symptoms of PTSD commonly experience memory problems and sometimes even have damage in the hippocampus, the area in the brain responsible for memory storage and converting short- to long-term memory. Physical manifestations of repressed memories can show up as irritability, trouble sleeping, emotional numbness, and exaggerated response to surprises or trigger events that conjure trauma remembrance.

Even when memory is repressed by the conscious brain, experts believe that body memory can help recover hidden psychological memories and details. Through therapy, these details can be collected and reprocessed, thereby freeing the rememberer from seemingly inexplicable physical and emotional suffering triggered by reliving subconscious trauma. There is often a memory sliver - a breadcrumb so to speak - that can help elicit and open the door to full remembrance of traumatic events. For me, that sliver was The Theatre.

I always knew something bad happened in The Theatre. Nary a moment did I suspect invalidity of this occurrence though I did not have conscious details of how far it went. I had vivid contextual memory - who I was with, my relative age, transportation to and from, seating arrangement, body position, the fact that we visited the toy store afterward so he could buy my silence, but most importantly the moment when the touching became "not ok." I had no detail beyond that. What I have learned through the course of therapy is that the reason I had no detailed conscious memory is because this is the moment I left my body.

I remember making myself sit perfectly still, thinking that if I were compliant then it would be over faster. I convinced myself that if I could somehow turn into a stone statue then it would be better because stone statues don't feel. And if I didn't feel it, then it wasn't really happened. I was playing a lot of Super Mario Bros. 3 at the time and used the visual of Tanooki's stone statue which Raccoon Mario can turn into at will after he grabs a feather. I remembered this, but what I didn't know was all of the definable steps leading up to the stone statue nor how they related to my dissociation stages.

In the face of trauma, the human mind-body has three possible responses: fight, flight, or freeze. I chose the latter. In fact that is what most children who are being sexually abused do, because there is seemingly no other choice. We are small with little or no strength to fight; he was a 40+ year old man, how could I possibly ward him off? We are reliant upon the care of others; if I fled, where would I go? We are taught to respect authority and obey adults, which too often results in the inability to say no even when we know something is wrong. We are also taught shame from a very early age, which I would soon discover was a significant contributor to my frozen state.

It took me a long time to tell Dee about The Theatre. Seven therapists in 13 years and I had never breathed a word of this to any of them. I never felt comfortable and, quite ironically, I never thought it was relevant. Or perhaps I hoped it wasn't. In some ways the knowledge of this sliver was like a fly buzzing around my therapy sessions. I knew it was there, its appearance and persistence annoyed me at times, but I was able to shoo it away enough to focus on what I considered the real reason I was in the office. (I elaborate on the irony and subconscious functionality of using the masking event of my sick mother to hide the true root cause of my trauma in a later post called Goodbye Panda.)

It wasn't until after the appearance of the Black Oil that it became glaringly apparent something was lurking beneath, a dark demon of shame that was bigger than the problems with my schizophrenic-abandoning mother. Dee and I spent many EMDR sessions focusing on the Black Oil; sometimes I was able to look at it but most of the time it simply forced me out of my body. Those sessions exhausted and depleted me. I lived a hazy existence for weeks, barely functioning at work and in a near zombie-like state around my family during Christmas 2012.

The ASCA Survivor to Thriver Manual lists a series of general steps in the healing journey from child abuse; step two is Acknowledgement. On January 2, 2013 I finally acknowledged that I was sexually abused. During many months of therapy with Dee, she inquired no less than three times about the possibility of abuse during my childhood. Each of her inquiries would produce a dreamlike state wherein I could not form a coherent response. It was as if my lips were buttoned and no words would come out. All I could say is that I had gaps in my memory, that I had an inkling that something happened in a movie theatre, but I wasn't sure if it was real and it made me feel crazy to think about, much less talk about it.

After Dee's third inquiry (which came at the end of a session - ding, ding, time is up!) I went home in an out-of-body state. I trusted her and was ready to talk about it, even if it led to nothing significant. Even if it had no bearing on our work related to schizophrenic-abandoning mother. I had never written about this topic in 25 years, though I have dozens of journals documenting my personal growth. I could not bear to see this story in my own hand writing. And so I typed it out as a draft email with no intended recipient.

The next week on my way to see Dee I had sufficient resolve to share my story. Except I also had an incredible amount of "body stuff"... headaches, nausea, and heavy arms which made it difficult to drive. I even passed her office though I had been there at least 20 times. My mind-body did not want reveal. I had also been doing a lot of fingernail stabbing that week. This is one of my methods of self-injury. I shove my fingernails so far up inside the thumbnail on each hand that they bleed. The pain is satiating in a strange way such that it grounds me and almost feels good, and I have done this for decades in moments of stress. (I write more about my other tendencies for self-injury in a later post called Puzzle Pieces.)

I had been stabbing so much the week leading up to my session with Dee that squeezing a lemon in my Perrier brought me to tears. After talking with Dee, I now know that children are most likely coaxed and/or threatened to keep the abuse secret in ways that get planted in their psyche so deep that they don't even realize it. Likely this stabbing behavior was a way to secretly and subconsciously punish myself for what I was getting ready to do: violate my promise to him that I would never tell.

And so I told her. I think Dee knew for many months that this is where my therapy was headed. She is incredibly insightful and also infinitely gentle; she was patient until I was ready to reveal but in her own way let me know that she also saw the buzzing fly in the room. We later discussed the fact that my symptoms - these dissociative tendencies - are not something that would likely blossom from moments of abandonment, which can be deeply traumatic but not in the freeze variety; nor was this a response to attempts of suicide, which calls for action not a frozen state. It turns out childhood sexual abuse is one of Dee's areas of specialty; I did not know that when I sought her out but the universe did. She had much experience in the arena of dissociation and even shared stories with me (anonymously, of course) about some of her other patients' tendencies and the kinds of modalities they used in therapy sessions to uncover truth and release pain. I was ready to do both.

We began to use The Theatre as our trigger event for EMDR. Progress did not take long. At first I was not able to be "in" the theatre seat for it was much too painful. And so we constructed a visual exercise where I would pull up a comfy brown beanbag in the favorite room of my house and I would surround myself with trusted supporters so that we could watch the "movie" of my trigger event together. It was unsettlingly ironic that we were watching a movie of me watching a movie; it reminded me of the surreal dual reality in Being John Malkovich where people experience life through the eyes and body of another person. Using this technique I could observe and talk about The Theatre as if it were happening to or through someone else.

I had been studying and practicing tonglen, a Buddhist meditation technique, with Em for many weeks. Part of tonglen is gathering the image of people who are loving and supportive to help guide your efforts and energy throughout the practice. Like many meditative exercises, I did not consciously choose the visions and people who came to me; it is inner wisdom that presents exactly what is needed. In my case the figure of Christ is behind my right shoulder, St. Francis is on my left, and standing behind me are my two spiritual teachers Gyandev and Diksha who reside at an ashram in California that I have frequented in my yoga study.

At first when constructing the comfort zone from which to view The Theatre for EMDR, all 4 of my supporters joined me. But when we turned on the movie of my movie, I had to ask Gyandev and Diksha to leave. I was overwhelmed with the shame of what we were getting ready to observe and I could not bear for them to see it. It was ok for Jesus and St. Francis to stay because they weren't "real people" and henceforth it was always just the three of us.

I could write many details about what I know now about The Theatre and the variety of healing techniques Dee and I used to integrate this event. There are three things that are most mentionable here: the connection of The Theatre to the steps of my dissociative process, the arduous work and my body's response to repeated reprocessing of this event, and the ways in which I have been freed from the trauma through EMDR.

Through EMDR I came to understand that the details of this event are specifically and intentionally linked to each step in my dissociative process as witnessed by The Watcher in Israel's Key. It goes like this:

• At the moment of "touching not ok" my ears are flooded with the sound of my heart beating in sheer terror and panic. The throbbing is so loud that it deafens me to the point where I can no longer hear anything else.
• I become the stone statue so as not to feel the monster touching me. This survival mechanism allows me to pretend it isn't happening, but it also produces a sensation of extreme heaviness (stone is rather weighty, after all) and so first my arms and then my chest feel like lead.
• I am so ashamed of what he is doing to me. There are people in The Theatre around us and I am terrified that someone will see. I realize that if I am not careful, I will let loose a whimper or some sound of distress that might call attention to this horrid situation. And so I stop breathing so that I won't cry or make a sound. Please God, don't let anyone hear or see.

The set where I had this last revelation nearly did me in. In the EMDR state of dreamlike knowing and reliving, my body put up a tremendous fight. I gagged to the point that I felt certain I would vomit all over Dee's lovely green couch. This would happen several times over the course of the next few months but I am happy to report that I never actually threw up. (I share more on the subject of my body's keen use of nausea and vomiting as a coping mechanism for trying to "rid" myself of these demons in a post titled On Shame.) I shook, I cried, I held my breath, I curled up in a ball. I regressed to a childlike state of frozen terror. It was one of the most awful things I have ever experienced. I say 'one of' because there would be many more moments like this to come for it is a necessary part of the reprocessing and desensitization process. In all honesty, it is hell on Earth.

Gradually I was able to "sit" in The Theatre instead of watching the movie of it. I was able to relive, re-experience, remember, reprocess and then make peace with this trigger event. Once we peeled back the layers of this trauma onion I was also able to recover a great deal of detail about the scene - peripheral vision, position of people around me, what I was wearing, and the movie(s) that were playing because, as it turns out, this happened more than once. It took a tremendous amount of work and effort but it was both necessary and worth it. 

A wonderfully healing facet of EMDR is that through diligent practice, the survivor is able to change the trauma memory into something more comfortable, palatable, livable. It is through this event molding process that the survivor becomes empowered, protected, and safe. For me this happened when I was finally able to visualize my adult self - Big Me - coming into The Theatre, kicking my abuser out of his seat, sitting down with Little Me and covering her up with a blanket (so as to be safe, warm, protected from harmful touching) while we proceeded to watch the movie together complete with popcorn and Twizzlers. This initial introduction of Big Me and Little Me would become a powerful healing tool that Dee and I would call upon again and again in the months to come.

Similar to my EMDR success with mother's suicide attempts, I am now able to talk about The Theatre without mind-body trauma symptoms. Well, almost. I am still haunted by the truth of this memory and I grieve its occurrence, but I am able to acknowledge and speak about it without being overcome by it. This process took many weeks, some with 2 long EMDR sessions and emergency phone calls in between to help me get a grip. During this time I was still traveling for work and wearing the face of success, which felt a lot more like a heavy shield. Life. Was. Exhausting. But all of this was critical for my healing journey. Though I did not know it at the time, unraveling The Theatre was only the beginning of recovering full memory of the abuse I suffered. A breadcrumb indeed.

The Black Oil

When I returned from Israel I had a host of revelations to share with my therapist, Dee. We had been working primarily on uncovering the cause of my Breakthrough Crisis. For many months we focused on the failed and dysfunctional relationship with my schizophrenic mother, largely centralized on issues of abandonment. We used EMDR to process specific memories I had about being abandoned, hovering on a trigger event I named The Driveway (see Growing Up With Schizophrenic Mother for details on this occurrence.)

We had made little progress focusing on The Driveway because, as it turns out, this was not the root cause of my dissociation. The most I could get to was that I, in fact, fully dissociated in that moment of abandonment and remained in that state for some number of months. It wasn't until Israel's Key that we could begin intelligent dialogue on the nature of my dissociation. After outlining the specific steps of my dissociation as witnessed by The Watcher, we now had the means to begin unlocking the vault of secrets that lurked far beneath the surface of my conscious cognition.

Dee asked me ideate on the most disturbing part of my dissociative pattern. Our new focus was the point of ascendence - the moment I leave my body. We began to intermingle this focal point with my then fixation on the feeling of being "trapped" - having no choice but to assume responsibility for my mother's well-being, safety and care from a very early age. Dee insisted that I did indeed have a choice in the matter and that I wasn't trapped but had made a decision (conscious or un-) to assume care for my mother. We argued about this point for a few sessions and it elicited a disproportionate amount of anger within me. I never had a choice, or so I thought. It was this revelation of choice, coupled with EMDR and a newly found language for my dissociation, that became a major turning point in my healing journey.

During a particularly intense EMDR set, a new awareness arose within me the likes of which I had never experienced. Anyone who has been through structured therapy or even engaged in thoughtful dialect with a close friend can relate to the fact that when people say things they think might be true for you one of two things happens. Either you contemplate the advice and decide that it is not relevant for your story, or you get that unmistakeable stabbing feeling in the pit of your being with full understanding of the deep and painful truth that was just presented to you. The latter is what happened to me on this occasion.

Dee is a gifted therapist with an uncanny ability of giving me back the same information I give her but with a genius spin, a way of seeing things that immediately and spontaneously unlocks the source of my neurosis. With her gentle yet poignant prompting, I was overcome with the horrific (and later liberating... much later) truth that I was not trapped in caring for my mother. I was not the trappee. Quite the contrary, I was the trapper. In my mind-body's wisdom and desperate need to pull this woman close to me, I had successfully trapped my mother. I constructed a circumstance by assuming fiduciary and legal responsibility for her that prevented her from being able to abandon me. Ever. Again. I was the Trapper Keeper (Trap-her Keep-her). The knowledge and deep truth of this nearly overwhelmed my psyche.

The result of this deep knowing was that Dee witnessed my dissociation right then and there in her office. The idea that I forced my mother into a relationship of need with me was sickening, repulsive, disgusting. How could I do such a thing? Furthermore, how could I have done it without realizing this was my motive? My journal entry from this experience reads:

This truth is like swallowing Black Oil and now it lives inside of me. At first I wanted to vomit, this idea is so repulsive and shameful - get it out of me! I felt myself leaving my body, first the muffled hearing, the heavy arms - so heavy like lead - and then the top of my head coming off. I'm slipping into unconsciousness. Escape. Going, going, gone.

Dee watched as I gagged, shook, cried, and then stopped breathing. I distinctly remember hovering "above" myself wondering, worrying if I might die from suffocation. This went on for what felt like an eternity; without prompting from Dee to breathe I very well may have suffocated. Thank God Dee was paying close attention; her careful observation and calm, soothing voice would become a great source of comfort for me. Finally, someone was watching out for me. But each time I tried to re-enter my body by breathing and feeling, the Black Oil pushed me back out.

The Black Oil is so heavy on my chest, thick in my lungs, that there is no room for air. That's it! There is no room for anything inside here because all the available space is taken up by this icky stuff. I'm not sure where it came from but I am full of it. I can feel tears streaming down my cheek, falling like constant raindrops from the clouds of my eyes. I feel my lip quivering. I can feel! This means I am back in my body. I try to look at the Black Oil, to connect with whatever this emotion is inside my chest, hiding from me and taking up all the space, weighing down my chest with heavy bricks. But I can't look at it. As soon as I get a glimpse, I am once again outside of my body and aware that I am not breathing.

This cycle repeated for some amount of time and several EMDR sets: tears, lip quiver, inside, try to look at the Black Oil, stop breathing, out again, the forced exit. I was exhausted by these sets; it felt like an epic battle for my conscious presence. Without the pulsing in my hands from the tappers and soothing comfort from Dee I would be completely lost. Numb. Dead.

Dee wanted to use our last set to help me find comfort and peace. I tried to enter my Safe Place. I had been there a thousand times in mindful meditation practice, but in this instant I could not find it.

I am searching down a country road and there is nothing. Now I see it far in the distance, my beloved forest of mossy trees. I move toward it, but as I look around I see that I am bringing the Black Oil with me. No!!! I don't want to taint this holy place with the Black Oil! It is bubbling all around me - behind, below, above, on both sides - and it is starting to move faster than I can. It's going to beat me to the Safe Place and then it will overtake and forever ruin it. I'll never be able to come here again if the Black Oil gets to it! This place is precious to me; I must save it. And so I open my eyes to regroup. Follow the light bar, pick something else - ANYTHING else - to distract the Black Oil. The opposite of black is white. Something white. I look down at my dress; it has birds. I love birds. White birds. Think of a happy place with white birds. Sanibel Island! 

I'm safe.
I can breathe again.

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I have come to understand that the Black Oil is shame. Deep, deep shame. I have also come to understand that the veil of Black was, in fact, protecting me from things I was not yet ready to see or know. It is important for any survivor to understand that the mechanisms your mind-body, though incredibly frustrating and painful at times, are superbly functional. Trust the process, trust your mind-body, trust your own healing powers. True, deep wisdom and the ability to heal resides within us all.

Dee and I would eventually uncover the root of my Black Oil/Shame Demon but not for many weeks. In the meantime I did a lot of research on the nature of shame. The foremost expert in this arena by far is Brene Brown. Without her TED talks on Vulnerability and Shame and her wonderfully insightful and therapeutic book I Thought It Was Just Me, I honestly don't know where I would be. Another lock, another key. I happened upon these resources by chance. Except I don't believe in chance. I believe in the universe bringing exactly what you need at precisely the time you need it.

The student was ready.