We all have our demons: things we’re scared to do that take so much courage.
Sometimes demons are looking in the mirror and accepting responsibility for our actions. Sometimes, demons are facing the pain of past experiences. Sometimes, it’s feeling the pain of past experiences. The latter has marked this past month for me. It’s the reason I skipped writing yesterday, for my self-care. I’m a childhood trauma survivor of both physical and sexual trauma. Over the years, I’ve used multiple modalities to heal, yet, I knew I was still scared to face these experiences head-on. Unpredictable bouts of anger hinted to something unresolved.
In the past month, I began receiving EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) specifically around my childhood traumas. It’s been a phenomenal experience. I’ve read a lot about EMDR over the years, but living it is a whole other experience. EMDR is about getting the emotions unstuck from our mind and bodies, by having us live through them. It’s a living through to the other side of the experience. As I’ve done EMDR, I’m also seeing my osteopath, who helps me clear emotions from my body, in a different way, without words or stories, but just movements. Sometimes, with EMDR, the unblocking of old memories has resurface a number of pains it had suppressed. With osteopathy, my deep breathing allows me to release the pain from the body non-verbally. It helps reduce my body’s aches and soreness.
My osteopath has been cautioning me to let go of any story around my physical pain, but to let it just be what it is: experience it in its purest form without explanation. It hurts because it hurts. I feel it because it’s there. No because, why, hence…no conjunctions, prepositions, or adverbs, just BE.
As I learn to let the stories go, I reflect on the role that stories have played in my healing.
Victim story. I see the victim story is the first step in a healing process. It’s helps heal because it breaks the silence. Until we’re able to tell our victim story we are generally stuck thinking about what was done to us, obsessively. Telling the victim story is our first opportunity to discover we are loved, believed, and embraced even with our pain. Telling our victim story to a good listener, family or friend, can make a huge difference. The bottom line of the victim story is blame: “They did it to me.” While the victim story is healing to break the silence, it can stifle further healing if it doesn’t shift.
Survivor Story. The survivor story is one that emphasizes not what was done to us, but our ability to survive it. It’s healing because we begin to see our personal power in the face of adversity. The bottom line of this story is: “I made it through the pain.” The survivor story is a healing passage from the victim story, because we see ourselves beyond victimhood, it’s an opening to see ourselves as more than a victim. Again, if this is the only story we tell, it too can be limiting, as it can become an armor of sorts, where we tell the story of strength to avoid feeling fully the pain caused to us.
Transformation Story. What I’m beginning to see with EMDR, is that the transformation story requires us to feel the pain throughout the whole process of the trauma. It requires holding, it’s not to be done alone. It can’t be rushed either, it’s to be done at the right time, with the right support. I suspect I’m moving through to this story now. And, suspending the story all together, is part of the process of this story of transformation emerging. I am in the space of suspending the story now. I can feel that something new is emerging, but it’s too early to tell it yet. Were I to rush telling this transformation story, I would set myself back into the survivor story. The essence of the transformation story is patience, it must function at its own pace: the pace of my body, the pace of the slowest part of me. Since the slowest part of me is still in the pain of the victim story, I know it’s not time, yet.