Started my first group therapy session in years... and it is tough.

This week I completed my second session of the new therapy group I am attending for the next 10 (well, 8 now) weeks.

The group is called Relationships & Sexuality.

I had a pretty difficult time with this past session and was getting very triggered by the group.

The content, the group of women I am doing it with are all great, and I even know one of them from the art therapy group I did years ago--probably the last group I did.

It is a big adjustment to a new place as well, because they have relocated and the place is all right, but not as nice or comfortable as it used to be.  I think I am missing that and mourning the loss of the place I did so many groups in, a place I associated with perhaps great pain, but also great safety and healing.  I miss the welcoming atmosphere, the comfy couches, the coffee table, the big space.  A small space with not terribly comfy chairs (although I would not go so far as to say they are actually UNCOMFORTABLE, but they are not comfortable and comforting, either) in a circle is just not the same.  It makes me sad, because I know how much more comforting the other space was.  Like at the Avalon women's centre.  It was a comfortable and safe sort of space.  This other place is just a room with chairs, lol.  Well, I will get used to it I guess.

Session 1 just sort of was paperwork and dipping our toes into the water.  We discussed things we hoped to get out of the group, which was a great experience because it was just amazing to sit in a group of people and say something that is an issue for me, and have everyone in the room go "yeah, me too" and be nodding their heads or hear someone say something that was an issue for them, and I would be doing the same thing.  It was nice to not only not have to hide this part of my life I usually have to keep from other people, but to not feel that I am different from others, to not feel bad because I have these issues, to just feel "normal" and understood. Like everyone here, I don't have to explain anything to, they just GET IT.

We discussed what trauma was, and they told us what would be happening in week 2 and gave us some homework for the week, which was to think about what impacts trauma has had on us, positive and negative, and also what our coping mechanisms are or have been to deal with and live with the trauma.  We spent some time talking about minimizing as a coping mechanism, and yeah, when I thought about it, of course I minimize.

If I didn't, I would be totally overwhelmed by everything that happened to me, and I would be so overwhelmed by the impact it has had on me and still has on me in my life today, that I don't know how I would be able to get out of bed in the morning, if I didn't.

http://www.myshrink.com/counseling-theory.php?t_id=13

This is one of the better descriptions of dissociation and the causes of it that I have found in a simple and easy to understand way.  If you ignore the sales pitch, that is.

This is what happened to me in the meeting, the 2nd one.  I thought I was not dissociated because I was able to stay mostly present and avoid any severe dissociative spells requiring much effort to come back from.  But I now realize, I WAS dissociating, I just managed to avoid any more than mild-to-moderate depersonalization and derealization.  But I was still dissociating, I just didn't realize it at the time.

That's why at the end I said it was like all these bombs going off inside me.  Well, I knew that, but I couldn't feel anything.  I didn't know what I was feeling or what was going on inside me at all.  I had no idea I had any emotions, much less any sadness, until I spoke up at the end, about how I felt I couldn't say I was "strong" on the positive impacts of trauma, which would be true, because I felt that I wasn't strong, because I didn't overcome all of this, and started to cry. Those few tears were my only clue of any emotions that were occurring in me.  I didn't even know I was upset enough to cry!  My only way of knowing was, I could feel the triggers going off inside me, that tells me something major and emotional is going on, and the sense of total mental and emotional and physical overwhelm.  I literally got so I couldn't even open my mouth, it was like it was heavy and frozen shut.  I could not have spoken if I had wanted to.

Then I just withdrew more and more from the group, and wanted to be alone because I was so upset.  At the break, I just went off by myself.  I couldn't speak up, and I couldn't think of all the things I had written down, things that were negative impacts, coping mechanisms, even one of my few positives would not have been brought up at all were it not for one of the leaders.  I could have added many things to those lists, but I just got so overwhelmed I couldn't speak or think.  My brain wouldn't work, my mouth wouldn't work.  And I was emotionally numb except the bomb-going-off-inside feeling.

Not only did they go through what abuse was, and not just sexual abuse, EVERY type of abuse, physical, emotional, verbal, etc.  I could have added to that, too, but I could not even answer what abuse is, I could not answer what trauma was last week either.  I KNOW what trauma is.  I KNOW what abuse is, I know the definitions of the types of abuse and examples of those things.  I could have added things not listed.  But I could not think or remember any of it, much less talk about it.  I had lists of coping mechanisms and impacts.

I rattled off a long list of impacts, and did a less thorough job of the coping mechanisms because I did it mostly the day of, I seemed to be unable to do more than I did.  I could have come up with more impacts too I am sure.  But the thing is, when I wrote all that out, it wasn't hard at all.  I didn't have to struggle to come up with it.  It was somewhat painful, yes, but didn't seem to be overwhelmingly so.

I left the meeting thinking, it is like I can run circles around trauma mentally.  I could write you out a very thorough, well-thought-out, articulate, well-defined outline on all of the above. Probably, from what I have seen in the group, better than any one else there (although to be fair, I ought to be knowledgeable about these things by now).  Mentally I totally get it.  But emotionally, mentally, psychologically, physically--how quickly I get overwhelmed!  It is like my mental trauma muscles are extraordinarily strong, and my emotional, mental, psychological, and physiological muscles are so weak I can't tolerate anything.  Or maybe, I just have too many things, too many traumas, to tolerate.  Either way I am way behind on the emotional and physical processing and understanding of my traumas, and that is why I keep having triggers over and over again is because I can't process them except for mentally without getting overwhelmed--and clearly my ability to have a mental understanding does not work when I have the emotional, psychological, and physiological issues at play.  I seem to be able to mentally process in writing, but not in speaking.

It is like how I had started to realize in my therapy with Delyse, when I started to realize I am dissociating ALL the time, except the brief periods when I am doing the exhausting parts of therapy with her.  Even when I think I'm not dissociating I realize I am it is just that I'm either too overwhelmed, or it has become so normal for me to be dissociated and go through life that way that to me, it just feels like I am normal.  I thought I was, until Delyse started helping me to be in my body in our sessions for brief periods.