Light Dispels Dark

Methinks I may need to reread the Lighten Up! blog again before I head out this morning, or at least take heart the theme.

Today, I will be beginning a process called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) with my therapist in San Francisco. It’s a therapy that is used to reintegrate and desensitize traumatic memories by stimulating both sides of the body, either with eye moment, as the name suggests, or tapping on both knees with your hands, or little alternating vibrations in each hand in order to help store those charged memories back in a way which more resembles the way we hold non-traumatic memories. 

Perhaps you can imagine, I’m a little … freaked out, is the “lightest” word I can use at the moment.

I have resisted her suggestion to do this for several years. But, it seems, and in fact is, time to do this. I’m terrified. I terrified I’m going to hysterically cry and leave her office a mess and get struck by a street car in my haze. I’m terrified I’m going to find out things that I really don’t want to know. I’m terrified, mainly, and most likely, that I will cry, a lot, and then I’ll be walking around for two weeks til our next session with all of this “up” stuff.

To be true, though, a lot of the work I think we’ll do today is actually about grounding in some positive resources. i.e. if we’re going to talk about the most disturbing memories, we’re today supposed to talk about the most positive and joyous memories. In fact, I was supposed to write them down, but have felt like even that was too big a step toward “the final product.” So, I’ll head into the city shortly and sit at a café and write my 10 best memories.

There was the option to also write the 10 most disturbing, and when she saw my trepidation (and terror), she said there’s always the option we can do it in her office together, and so we will. I’m relieved for that.

As a blog, I feel that there’s some responsibility to care-take your feelings, reader, and let you know, don’t worry, it’s all okay, this is all “normal” trauma, and I’m just particularly invested in spelunking my inner caves and gutting them. But it’s okay, I’m okay.

But, I won’t.

I know that it will be okay. I know that in this moment it is all okay, and I am safe. I know that somewhere under my solar plexus and behind a sheet of iron walling, but outside of that? I’m … scared. And, that’s okay. Feels normal. I trust my therapist. I trust the work that I’ve done which has pointed me in this direction, in the direction of working on, and through, and ultimately OUT of this stuff.

It’s just like anything else. Light dispels the dark. This is a particular area of bogeymen who are particularly vocal and wear neon-green shark teeth as necklaces around their craggy and sagging skin. They are bogeymen. Just rattlers in the dark. And like anything else that I’ve addressed and faced and dispelled, like the soldiers in the BART blog, they’re a protection agent.

Underneath my terror and fear and hesitation and reluctance, I know there’s safety and compassion and freedom and light. I know, as my teacher says in meditations, “It’s safe to go here because of all of the work you’ve already done.” I know, as my post-it in my kitchen says, “I am able to go to scary places because I have a firm foundation of love.” And I know too, that this is a wound. My therapist is a doctor. And I can trust a doctor to help me heal.