I talked with my T today about a traumatic event related to physical abuse and my father’s car (***that’s all I’m going to post about the traumatic event itself here because I don’t want to trigger myself about it.***) Here's the thing: I have zero emotional response to this event when talking about it now. I was talking with my T about it, and my total lack of having any real emotional response about it. She found it surprising I remember it really well, but don’t have any emotional response to it – not really. As we talked… she said it sounded like I had to deal with it alone at the time… and I did… and I have no emotions about that either. I’m not happy about that, but I’m not really sad either. I’m very matter of fact. We kept talking… and I shared with her about someone who did begin to see that things were not ok… and he taught me a board game with me once (Pente) when I needed a safe place and couldn’t talk… it is a board game I have brought in to play with my T even when I couldn’t share with her how it came about or quite handle any sessions talking a lot about me. The lightblub went on for her – I saw it in her face before she said it. She said “oh, and that makes sense… that game is really organizing and settling for you…”

I started to say, “yeah, it has rules that are predictable and I can follow them and be ok -” and then I lost it. I could barely finish the sentence. My body started to shiver and shake.

My T said, “yeah unlike (the traumatic event and family chaos as a teenager.)” As she said that, tears came to the surface, and I have had tears with my T before... but not ever like this. It felt so different than ever before.

Thinking of the safe place I had with that person and in playing that game, and then seeing my Ts realization of what I couldn’t say before but said today with her… it was too much.

I still feel flat about the traumatic event itself.

But I’m a mess still about the game and the person who was safe and predictable in the middle of when I was trying to survive chaos as a teenager. It really freaked me out to remember that and be in the present moment with my safe T now. It is still freaking me out… and I don’t understand why. Shouldn’t it be the traumatic event that stirs me up this bad? Not the safe good things like the safe person then and my safe T now? Why is that the thing that triggers grief?

I feel trapped and scared about this. I don't understand why. I really want to feel safe with people. I came in today wanting to tell my T about how much I wanted to feel safe with people, and feel sad about not feeling more safe, and somehow, before I got to that, this all came up.

After all of this happened, my T helped me contain and ground - we spent the rest of the session doing that.

I left and have been dissociative on and off the rest of the day today. I am going back and forth between numb and scared/hopeless with a ton of body stuff going on. I feel so terribly trapped and freaked out about anything safe. ugh.

what am I doing wrong?

I so wanted to talk to my T today about how much I am tired of how much I push and hold everyone away and freak out and run away from what feels safe with people, and how I realized I don't do this with horses (so can't it be possible I can attach differently to humans too?) and I want to be close to people too...

...and here I am freaked out about what is safe. I called my T and told her how it felt and that I wanted to cancel everything and never come back or... and told her but that's the very thing I want to change... so I'm not, but I have no idea how the heck to handle this. I told her to call me back if she thought it would help but that I don't think I need it or could handle it right now. If I try to remind myself it is ok, everything in me says RUN and I just want her far away as possible. In a weird way, I think that if I tell her I want her to go away, then she will. Which right now would be ok. But not really. This isn't what I wanted. I WANT TO LET MYSELF BE SAFE WITH PEOPLE ALREADY. Ugh.

~ jane