I am not going to lie to you—the last few weeks have been very hard for me emotionally. I have been dealing with flashbacks (true “flashes” without a linear explanation) and a flood of related emotions (mostly terror). I alternate between wanting to invite them out so I can heal and wanting to drug myself at night so I can get some d@#$ sleep. I wrestle with feeling despair at still being in a place of having to deal with more memories.
However, I also see, even in this place of struggle, what a difference that I am making in the lives of others through this blog and recognize that, without my struggles, I actually wouldn’t be of that much help to all of you. If healing was really easy for me, how could I be of help to you? It is my ability to show you that I have been in the trenches, too, and (unfortunately) continue to cycle around through the trenches that offers hope.
I am human, though, and like any human, I don’t enjoy being in pain. It’s not that I am afraid of the healing process … I am p@$$ed off that there is still more to process. I don’t think it has anything to do with not “working hard enough” before – I simply suffered from that much trauma. While healing in some areas does spill over to other areas, I still have areas of trauma that I need to address. I try to remember that this is just another part of the ebb and flow of the healing process, but I confess that I am not always very graceful about it.
I continue to struggle with the release of “flashes” of memories, such as the flash of a white pickup truck, a very detailed memory of the dirt, and seeing the boxes and skeletons used to frighten children who did not know that they weren’t real human skeletons. I experience the terrors of the child who didn’t want to be thrown in a box with a “dead person,” all the while understanding from the adult perspective that the child was purposely manipulated to fear something that was not even true. My head feels like the “bubble within a bubble” you sometimes see when children are blowing bubbles as I reconcile the child’s memories and terror with the adult’s understanding of what really happened. I have to find a way to reassure the terrified child inside without invalidating her experience.
I am also wrestling with body memories, such as last night when I “couldn’t see,” smelled the overpowering scent of chalk (like the smell of chalk when you bang two erasers together), and “couldn’t breathe” due to being enclosed without fresh air. Again, I had allow my body to release the body memories while, at the same time, allowing myself to breath in deeply both to calm the terror and to keep myself breathing. I struggle with the dichotomy between the memories being released and my reality of being an adult today who is safe.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Faith, know that my thoughts are with you now. You are strong and beautiful.
Keep writing. Keep expressing. Your work is so hard but invaluable to the rest of us.
I do hear what you are saying. I continue to be in awe of people who have gone through the kinds of things that you have, and still manage to function at all, much less be highly functional. My own life has been simple by comparison, and yet I also suffer from waves of emotions that wash over me, and “flashes’ of things that torment me. I think some people must just be wired much better and have more of an innate strength. I am NOT one of them, which is why I am totally in awe of people who have been through real trauma and abuse and yet find ways to live and thrive. See, people sometimes think that I have chosen to work with people who have gone through terrible traumas because I “relate” in some way, but I see it being much more out of my true admiration and awe of their strength. So please know that no matter how much you may struggle, what I see is amazing strength.
This song has been floating around in my head this morning from Cyndi Lauper – “I see your true colors shining through … and they’re beautiful like a rainbow.”
You dearest Faith, thank you for what you do and for how gracefully you do it.
Thanks for posting.
I have been where you are and still am but it is much much less intense.
I am sorry that it is not easy. Memories won’t always be linear. Are you writing them down?. It will help you later.
Stay connected with a good Therapist.
When I realize that that I am experiencing memories.
“Smell, Sight” I sometimes say to myself, ” I am here for you, What do you have to tell me.?” I validate your experience.
I have utilized the tools below
Left handed (non- dominant hand) drawing can be helpful.
drumming.
Things that would calm myself as a child ( tea)
or a mental imagery. giving myself as a traumatized child
a warm bath and rocking her back and forth in warm water.
I understand the dissapointment. I used to think that once i had worked on an issue that would be it and then realized that it didn’t work that way. Sometimes I have to return to the same river over and over again, but each time it was from a different perspective or as i more pieces of the puzzle I had to integrate new information.
Life is good.
Keep up the work.
regards,
Debbie
Thank you for continuing to share your journey. You touch many lives in such a positive light. Thinking of you today.
I have been with cadavers or dead people as I knew of them as a child pre-verbal and verbal as part of my trauma.
It is my belief and my understanding that the reptilian brain knows that being around dead people is “wrong” having adults override the reptilian brain before the rational brain is developed and then having to intellectually override the reptilian brain intellectually to survive is known by the cults to have an extreme effect.
To process the memories creates pain. For me this is again overriding the reptilian brain. The only solution that I have found is to override the reptilian brain and then the reptilian brain has a new experience and this experience is stored.
I am using the reptilian brain to mean the whole body.
I have not found the current understanding of the reptilian brain to be of much value. I expect that the understanding assumes a reptilian brain that has not experienced extreme trauma from birth.
A recent study determined that itching is caused by a neurological path thought he brain stem. What did they think it was blue tooth?
I find that this work is without words and that speech is a deterrent to healing. Coloring with each hand seems to cause the memories to happen and somehow we can process them. When I can not speak is when the most valuable work happens.
I have been around real skeletons and fake, fake shrunken heads and real ones and many skulls.
I do not mean to be disrespectful to your horrible experiences in the now or when you were not an adult. Pretty much I am sharing as it is my belief healing from these experiences is possilbe yet not by methods devised for healing from other types of trauma.
“When I can not speak is when the most valuable work happens. ”
I would have to agree with this, though words afterwards are so important, part of reconnecting with the world after reconnecting with the self I believe.
A x
“words afterwards are so important, part of reconnecting with the world after reconnecting with the self I believe.”
Thanks is missed that. I try and do it backwards. I try and reconnect with the world and then self.
Thanks, Michael.
I was hoping you would chime in. It does help to hear from others who have experienced similar traumas. I hate that you had to experience it, though.
Do you have any idea what the “chalk” could be? I couldn’t breathe, and the smell of chalk was incredible strong. I burn a lavender vanilla candle every night before bed, and that is all I could smell in my room before and after the body memory. The chalk is definitely linked to some sort of trauma, but I don’t know what.
– Faith
Death Dust. It can be made from plants. Likely chalk was used as a base. Some sort of plant like pepper is mixed with it. The dust can be held in the hand as it does not react without moisture.
When blown in the face it causes respiratory distress and if you are hit in the stomach as it is happening than you can pass out. There is a lingering taste when you come to and often throwing up and such. I get a metallic taste in my mouth. The effect lasts for I would guess 15 min. Then it takes a few days of having a sore throat and such. For some reason I did not want to eat afterward and water tasted like it burned to drink it. It is a very painful experience.
This “magic” is really nothing more than centuries of information passed down from family to family. Who knows what “magic” is a source of power within the cult families.
The cults know how put a person in a state where things effect people differently. Take as an example the Death Dust. If someone just blew it in your face it would be like getting maced. Couple it with days of sleep deprivation, no food or water and in a dangerous situation and it has a different effect.
I find it helpful to not minimize the effect it has on me but to keeping in mind the power comes from I was a child. That being said. Many adults would break if they went through what I did as a child.
Although the answer is through the emotional effect as that is what the problem is with the now it is hard to imagine the stress on the physical body.
Chalk is calcium carbonate it is possible that dried bones would have the same smell and bones have a lot of calcium in them.
Thank you Michael for sharing this. I too have found that speech is a deterrent to healing certain areas. If I can’t speak when I am in those places, I am desperate to have someone else talk to me – I believe it is so that I can stay in that rational part of my brain and not go to that scary place. But when I have been able to let go of that control and be in my body or my “reptilian brain” as you call it, deep healing happened.
Faith (((((((((((((((if okay))))))))))))
Sorry for what is going on for you at this time just thought might help.
We read your blog regularly. We do not comment always but feel it would be a great way of showing you how much you have given to us through this blog.
Just wanted to tell you how much your blogging has really helped us through these past three years in accepting we are not imagining or making it all up.
Your blogging has been part of validating some of our crazy memories/flashbacks/body memories.
We honour you for the whole hearted truths you write here. Sending you positive and caring support.
We are still very far from remembering so much but at least we can read here and say YES it did happen. Not all in our head.
Just wanted to say thank you
anon
Thanks, anon. That means a lot. :0)
– Faith
Thank you, everyone, for your supportive comments. :0)
I am in a better place than I was when I wrote this but in a worse place than I was over the past couple of days. You will get to read all about it next week. :0)
– Faith
Hi Faith,
You asked if someone knew what the “chalk” might have been. I am just putting this out there, it may not apply to you.
I remember seeing a talk show once where a woman had an intense fear of chalk. If it was even in the room she would run out screaming. It turned out in her childhood the chalk had been ground into dust and her abusers would tell her it was the ground up bones of dead people/ children who had misbehaved.
Is it possible a similar tactic could have been used with you? Especially since your memories seem to be linked to the bones and being closed up with dead people. I think the possibility could be high.
Hi, June.
The headache I got reading your message tells me that this might be the reason. Thank you for this. If I was locked up in a box with a skeleton and the chalk, that would explain the feeling of suffocation and the chalk smell. Thank you for that insight.
– Faith
Yes thank you Faith, you are making a huge difference by what you share here. And how you share it – you are so blunt and specific, yet gentle. I relate to your struggle to let yourself feel the fear (I think that’s what you mean?) and be “unsafe” even though you rationally know you are actually safe now as an adult. To let something be true temporarily that isn’t true… It IS a hard dichotomy!
Sending thought and prayers up for you and others as well that are going through the terror. I understand terror. Its super hard to go through. I haven’t even gone through yet. I always freeze everything and forget.
I just want to say thank you again for your blog Faith, which I discovered this week. I have looked up the Survivor To Thriver Maunal thanks to you and I am just beginning to read it now, it seems so helpful.
I truly hope I have the courage and determination to face my memories and difficulties that you show, and I am sending you strong good wishes for this part of the journey, hoping you find all you need for it.
Thank you for sharing, as odd as it still seems to me, hearing others stories of struggles and victory help in my own journey through recovery. Thanks again!!
Faith,
I found myself deep breathing as i read this post… You are doing great, even if you don’t feel so great right not.
Be gentle with yourself… find some you time to do somethings that relax you…
Sending safe love,
mia
Faith, take care.
This is where so much of my deep admiration comes from- that willingness to walk into hell to continue getting well. I hear that you might rather block the pain through any means available to you- meds, or dissociation or whatever, and if you choose to do that it would be so totally OK, but even the fact that you don’t want to go that route, and even half way consider walking into the pain, is so far beyond my comprehension of heroism.
I was given this site a few days ago by a dear friend. Our journeys cross much more then I would like to admit in so many ways. I bawled tonight as I read your entry knowing that I was not alone. Knowing that in some strange way, I would never be alone again. Flashbacks even after so much work are still a huge part of my life. And it is very east for me to get down on myself about that. Healing is hard work and I fear in my own heart and life it may be a lifelong work. This isolates me in ways that I sometimes cant even express in words but reading through your blog and consuming it bit by bit has brought me back to a space of hope, maybe a little space, but a space none the less.
Hi, Rebekah.
I removed your last night to protect your privacy. You might want to check for that before posting your next comment. :0)
No, you are not alone. That was such a huge revelation for me — that I am not an “alien” on this planet. There are other people who understand my struggles.
I don’t think that PTSD is ever fully “healed” — I think it is managed better and better. My therapist (T) used to say that what triggers me today for weeks or months will one day only take me hours or days to work through. He was right.
This past week has been an intense internal war of fighting back and pulling myself out of triggers (as you will see on my blog next week). I have the tools — I just need to use them. This week, I have gone to the gym every day. I have also done yoga and meditation every day. I have forced myself to rest even though I have a lot on my plate right now. I have been doing my Bible study. All of these things are positive tools I can use to manage the triggers. They won’t stop the triggers from happening, but they ground me so I don’t fall into the emotional abyss or, if I do, I pull myself out in hours rather than weeks.
– Faith
Sometimes I wish I had a little “thumbs up” or “like” tab to click on when words are too inadequate, but to let you know that I am in there with you and routing for you. I wanted to give both Rebekah and FaithAllen a thumbs up on the last two posts. My heart went out to Rebekah and to know that she has found some loving kinship here through Faiths site; and it went out to Faith, and her heroism and courage to move forward and just to hear how she is fighting and unrelenting fight- and winning. That is encouraging!
Dear Faith,
my thoughts and prayers are with you! I feel exactly the same just been through another phase of terrible depression which nearly cost my job. There are no words for how angry I am to go through it time and time again.
But I believe there is a reason for everything. And if it is that we help others with our blogs then that is worth it.
You help me so much as you so often feel and express exactly what I feel and it is so good to know that I am not the only one! Thank you so much! Lisa