Mental Fogginess is Clearing!
Everyone has their role in an abusive home. No one usually assigns them. We naturally take on what we feel like we need to become for survival of ourselves and each other.
In my life, haunting memories shadowed my footsteps, even when I was walking on the right path.
Because of the harm committed against me and those I loved, and because I took the role of "living stenographer" (a virtual court-reporter of the abuse that occurred during 18 years of child abuse in a family of 8 children), the weight of the reels of memories circulated in my brain for over 40 years.
Pieces of the record could be triggered at any time--most often unannounced and definitely not willingly called forth - by sensory triggers. I had become a human file. Somehow while I was little child trying survive an abusive life, I convinced myself that the guilty had to pay; thus, someone needed to remember. After many years in adulthood, when counselors helped me understand those details were not needed-- since, unfortunately, I would never take the abusers to court in this life-- and that God alone was responsible for the penalty and vengeance, I deeply regretted that I had no delete button on my mind.
Rarely do victims of abuse recall a time that they consciously made it a point to remember the abuse; for most, it is just deeply suppressed within their soul. But in either situation, trauma triggers can pull of an actual sensation of being back in the initial abusive/traumatic event. Being trauma triggered is not a choice; no one desires to be triggered and to relive abuse.
People - who are well-meaning, good, loving souls - tell others with mental storage of past trauma "to let go", "release it", or "move on from the past". It sounds so easy. And it maybe would be for one who initially dealt with abuse by suppressing, or who knew before the abuse to forgive and forget as soon as possible, or who instinctively chose to bury in a padlocked concrete memory block the pain in order to survive (I guess that is suppressing it, also).
It took me ten years of intensive trauma therapy (brainspoting/EMDR/etc.) to unlock and release those abusive, painful, torturous memories that needed to go. They had deeply grown within my soul in a web of roots that would have destroyed my very true being if I had tried to at once rip them out or burn them away, to be done with my past as rapidly as possible. If I just started cutting fanatically instead of letting God fiber by fiber to surgically remove the diseased part of my neurological network of nerve cells that were no longer needed and damaging, I would have ended up a mess.
Therapy was one part, but medication was the other. Both worked hand in hand to facilitate the healing process that could not have been done with one.
In my second year out from therapy, I have finally succeeded in the slow process of cutting my medication in half... and I have to say, WHAT A DIFFERENCE! I can really tell how much the medication slowed my mind down. I realize how it kept me from rapidly processing or jumping from one thought to the next or obsessing over one scene/feeling/image again and again.
In many ways over the past three years I am learning to live again and learning who I was created to be and what I was created to do in life. It is an adventure that I fully accept.
After ten years of mental brain therapy,
I journaled, "Yes, I want to SHOUT!" This was a shout of rejoice because I finally felt like the mental fogginess was clearing. That was written about three years ago.In my life, haunting memories shadowed my footsteps, even when I was walking on the right path.
Because of the harm committed against me and those I loved, and because I took the role of "living stenographer" (a virtual court-reporter of the abuse that occurred during 18 years of child abuse in a family of 8 children), the weight of the reels of memories circulated in my brain for over 40 years.
Pieces of the record could be triggered at any time--most often unannounced and definitely not willingly called forth - by sensory triggers. I had become a human file. Somehow while I was little child trying survive an abusive life, I convinced myself that the guilty had to pay; thus, someone needed to remember. After many years in adulthood, when counselors helped me understand those details were not needed-- since, unfortunately, I would never take the abusers to court in this life-- and that God alone was responsible for the penalty and vengeance, I deeply regretted that I had no delete button on my mind.
Rarely do victims of abuse recall a time that they consciously made it a point to remember the abuse; for most, it is just deeply suppressed within their soul. But in either situation, trauma triggers can pull of an actual sensation of being back in the initial abusive/traumatic event. Being trauma triggered is not a choice; no one desires to be triggered and to relive abuse.
People - who are well-meaning, good, loving souls - tell others with mental storage of past trauma "to let go", "release it", or "move on from the past". It sounds so easy. And it maybe would be for one who initially dealt with abuse by suppressing, or who knew before the abuse to forgive and forget as soon as possible, or who instinctively chose to bury in a padlocked concrete memory block the pain in order to survive (I guess that is suppressing it, also).
You see, people are different.
I like to call us unique. We respond to and perform and take a variety of roles. One is not good and the other bad. Each serves a purpose, and if allowed, God will use it all for His glory and blessing of the person who allows Him to bless him/her.It took me ten years of intensive trauma therapy (brainspoting/EMDR/etc.) to unlock and release those abusive, painful, torturous memories that needed to go. They had deeply grown within my soul in a web of roots that would have destroyed my very true being if I had tried to at once rip them out or burn them away, to be done with my past as rapidly as possible. If I just started cutting fanatically instead of letting God fiber by fiber to surgically remove the diseased part of my neurological network of nerve cells that were no longer needed and damaging, I would have ended up a mess.
Therapy was one part, but medication was the other. Both worked hand in hand to facilitate the healing process that could not have been done with one.
In my second year out from therapy, I have finally succeeded in the slow process of cutting my medication in half... and I have to say, WHAT A DIFFERENCE! I can really tell how much the medication slowed my mind down. I realize how it kept me from rapidly processing or jumping from one thought to the next or obsessing over one scene/feeling/image again and again.
My medication was needed.
I would have never been able to endure the enormous mental shaking and pain of the necessary therapy without the medication. It kept me stable--glued together in a sense. But I am grateful that after healing therapy and when medication can be properly reduced, that mental clarity can return. The re-entry process will take years. Learning how to live without constant trauma triggers and then without being in therapy, is all new. You just have to face each day as it comes.In many ways over the past three years I am learning to live again and learning who I was created to be and what I was created to do in life. It is an adventure that I fully accept.
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