This week, my nervous system was completely dysregulated
My higher level cognitive functions were shut off (organization, problem solving, critical thinking), my capacity to manage my emotions was very low, and I jumped from one emotional spectrum to the other quickly. I felt a little something like this
At first, I was frustrated
(okay, actually freaking mad) that this was happening to me. I do all the work, I know all the things… WHY WAS MY BODY BETRAYING ME?! But once I was back to a calm state, I realized that my body was bringing up stuff to be processed, to heal through it. This is the part of therapy they don’t tell you about. It’s not just in the room, but outside of it & at, often, unforeseen times. It’s normal. See, all my life, I pushed stuff down. It was too scary and so my brain hid it from me, but now that I’m actively in therapy and doing EMDR, more & more is coming to the surface.
This past week, I felt a lot of anger. I even snapped verbally at my partner – like could feel the anger in the pit of my stomach level of rage. I had to sit with it and realize why it was happening (& yes it was misdirected). Today, that anger from my mini me protector (think small Lizzie McGuire) came out and came back with me as I processed the assault +how people I trusted treated me.
That mini me was ANGRY. She got up in my attackers face – yelling, cussing, kicking, telling them they are messed up and a scum of a human & finallyyyy letting all of that anger OUT! Something that used to be completely numb is beginning to feel again. And, yes, it felt safe doing so with a smaller version of me that was slightly removed from me, but it felt amazing.
This week was a whirlwind of nervous system responses and I hated myself for it… But it led me to some huge breakthroughs in therapy AND I communicated through it better than ever before. I’ll share some strategies I used & how I communicated the overloaded system in another post
