Find a Way Back to Me

The thing about dissociation is it often makes us forget why our minds can feel so chaotic at times. But, just because we dissociate, doesn’t necessarily mean the dissociative issues are not still playing out in our subconscious and having a devastating impact on our overall emotional wellbeing.

As I look back over my own posts from recent weeks, it’s easy to see why there is so much chaos, but amidst all the psychotherapeutic work, I have a niggling doubt that something very important is missing.

At the heart of this is avoidance, one of my closest allies and greatest foe’s. It keeps me safe from all those painful emotions, but it’s also the padlock and chain to my isolation.

Sometimes we can bury our emotions so deep over many years that we somehow forget how to form an attachment to them, as if the App is still there but the connection is missing.

I have a reasonably pleasant and comfortable existence with little time to sit around feeling bored, but everything seems to revolve towards mid-afternoon, when the shoes and clothes come off and at last, I can relax in pyjamas and slippers, while pursuing my favourite pastime, writing, and blogging in blissful isolation.

All this may sound harmless and fulfilling enough and you may wonder why I complain. Well, this would be even better if I was eighty years old and retired.

For the first 8-9 months of therapy, I could not see past the trauma from childhood. My gut instinct said that once I start to sweep some of these emotions aside, then perhaps I may well arrive at whatever awaits me in the here and now… and here I am… stuck inside some kind of void, somewhere between the past and the year 2015 and it feels a little scary.

During my last session with Paul, which I wrote about in “Observing the emotion” we talked about the end of my therapy programme and I became incredibly emotional, without really understanding why.

I usually profess not to feel any particular attachment to my therapy programme, so the reason for almost turning into a blubbering wreck have remained an intriguing mystery, until now, two weeks later.

The reason why I became emotional at the prospect of therapy ending was that it forced me into experiencing feelings in the present moment. I had this enormous and overwhelming sense of sadness, of aloneness, and I knew I just couldn’t go back there.

This pleasant and isolated existence has been my sanctuary, but it is not so much a life as it is a symptom of a dreadful past. The person I became is the opposite of who I really am and now I just need to find a way back to me.