and so it goes

for those of us with PTSD there is a new (30 years old now) therapy called EMDR  (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).  it is supposed to help the right and left sides of the brain process trauma as a whole. 

 

when trauma happens the left side of the brain - the logical, linear, problem-solving side of the brain shuts down and the right side of the brain stores all the trauma.  the right side of the brain is the sights, sounds, feelings, reactions, memories, etc.  it takes on all the trauma but stores it in a fractious manner.  there is no ability for the PTSD affected brain to convince itself that the trauma happened yesterday, last week, last year or at age 5.  the right brain tells us that the trauma is happening NOW. 

 

EMDR is supposed to help transfer the trauma to the logical and chronological left side of the brain and help my right brain and my memories, my heart, my fight-or-flight-or-freeze response to be put into perspective.

 

i am TERRIFIED of this therapy.  i have to relive each moment of the trauma (in this case the flood - though i have had many traumas in my life) and work on moving it around inside my damaged, tired, scared and scarred brain. 

 

i have documented the losses of the flood for 3 years now.  there have been many more non-flood related losses as well.  a quick list:  a dog, an aunt, a cat, a grandfather, a great-aunt, a grandmother (7 days ago) my other, 96 year old grandmother, is in the hospital with pneumonia. 

 

EMDR can't do what it's supposed to do if the participant (patient - ME) is in the middle of a new lose or recent grief.  today i feel like i will never be at a time and place when there WON'T be a new loss.  i'm so tired of loss and grief and pain and fear.  it's the classic double edged sword or catch-22, whichever you prefer.  

 

RIP Elizabeth Ray Jackson Lowe Willis, my grandmother, who had much more trauma in her 87 years than i in my 39.  i love you!

grace and peace

tooth fairy, you are not welcome here!

i am starting to feel an off-the-charts level of guilt about not writing.  this blog is all that gets written these days.  while that's good, i cannot remember the last time i sat down to bang out a page or two on my latest story.  i continue to do the things i rely on for inspiration:  read stephen king novels, watch woody allen movies, listen to the who, but i cannot get to the place that allows me to produce anything.  my attention span shrinks daily and my motivation is along for the ride.  it's not writer's block, per se; i know what comes next...i just can't get it out.

i don't feel well today (starting to think this may be mono.)  just what i need, right?  cold, rainy and miserable outside and i cannot get warm no matter what i do.  my mood always corresponds closely to the weather and it is foul today!  the sun should be out tomorrow.  

tomorrow...one of two dominant reasons for my anxiety today.  i start EMDR therapy tomorrow for my PTSD.  i'm scared.  EMDR stands for "eye movement desensitization reprocessing."  from what i gather it uses eye movement to connect the right and left hemispheres of the brain to allow the patient (in this case, ME!) to attach feelings and emotions, heretofore unexperienced, to the events surrounding the trauma, in my case, the flood.   PTSD is the brains way of protecting the trauma victim from the event but it leaves the person stuck in the "fight or flight" pattern and does not allow them to experience, process and mourn the event and its many consequences.  

i think the long and the short of it is that i have intellectualized the losses, the events and the memories to the extent that, while i acknowledge their severity, i have avoided what it all "felt" like.  without feeling it all i will continue to be an outsider to my own experience and remain numb.  that's not really working for me.  it keeps me anxious and exhausted.

the second reason for my anxiety today is less clinical and more comical:  i am terrified of losing my teeth.  this thought has lingered for months and has reemerged as the #1 ridiculous fear brought on by the book i am reading.  i admit that there are many ways in which i would benifit if i listened more closely to my best friend.  she always has my back.  she told me years ago not to read stephen king's "the tommyknockers."  her reasons don't matter and my failure to listen doesn't really matter.  what matters is that i had listened i wouldn't be 500 pages into a 750 page novel in which nearly everyone has lost their teeth.  dozens upon dozens of passages concerning teeth and the losing thereof.  i won't stop reading for several reasons:  i'm 2/3 of the way through, it's one of the few king novels i haven't read, i hold out hope it will eventually inspire the above-mentioned need to write.  BUT people keep losing their teeth and it's freaking me out!!  

y'all know that this obsession with my teeth grew worse when my pug, winston, lost a tooth a while back...and now this novel!  i just can't imagine that i will get through all this without some freak tooth-related incident. 

grace and peace