Tuesday, December 29, 2009-2:25am EST
In therapy we talked about the dream where the toilet was overflowing and then the waterbed. He noted how the leak started off slow then quickly overwhelmed the room. He said it’s much like how I am when we talk about the abuse in session. The leak starts slow then quickly gets out of control. I shut down, switch and can’t talk or hide my head and cry.
He said that in the dream I tried to flush something, get rid of it but it came back up with a powerful force. In sessions I take a look at ugly stuff and attempt to throw away old tapes but they come back and overwhelm me. I feel bad that all he has to do is say certain words and I go from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds flat. Catholicism, relationship with your mother, pain, dowel rod.
Saturday, January 02, 2010- 1:44am EST
I’m not really one to go back and edit entries. I don’t do it that often. When I write I leave it as is. With that in mind I find it interesting that the un-edited entry that’s taken me so long to write is at this point only 2 paragraphs long. I started this entry on the 29th of December then wrote only a few words on the 30th. I don’t know, it seems the subject kind of shuts me down.
Still discussing how quickly I get over taken by emotion, I think it’s noteworthy to mention that it’s not just negative emotions that overwhelm me. When I look at art in a museum or gallery setting I am quickly overcome by strong emotion. I’m overcome so fast and with such intensity that I have to leave shortly after arriving. I use to think it was an overload of stimulation but after reading the book I Can’t Get Over It I began to realize that my natural fluctuation and my natural emotional gauge is off. For way too long as a child I was on high alert. I was either off or on, hardly any middle, on or off, high or low. Here I am now in a different reality but my chemical self hasn’t caught up to the times.
At this point I’m not going to try to figure out which of my symptoms of hot and cold belong in the category of borderline and which ones are PTSD. I don’t think in this instance I need a name to it. I’m fine with knowing that I’m not crazy and that there are people who figured out that we who have extreme trauma in our lives have chemical functions that have been disturbed due to the trauma.
That one stupid dream has seriously haunted me and been the subject of several sessions thereafter.
A Good Read: I Can’t Get Over It by Aphrodite Matsakis, Ph.D.
Awake and in Dreams-Tuesday, December 29, 2009-2:25am EST
I think being overcome with emotions is a blessing and curse. Many struggle with not having any… I don’t want to be one of those people. I have parts of me who are like that. And I have parts of me who pretty much always get overwhelmed by emotions. As I move forward, I am leaning how to integrate the two and find a sense of balance. I am not saying that this is integration in a DID sense… but it’s a process by which we learn to accept both.
I sometimes think of it like being in a canoe, and you tip to one side and are afraid you are going to fall in.. then you have to lean back to the other side…
Paul