so long, and thanks for all the fish

last night I was sitting with my partner and metamour, and we were talking about various memories and life experiences. and at one point my metamour told a story that unlocked a childhood memory I forgot I had.

the funny thing is, my memory was of my abuser. it was from long before the abuse started, and it was a happy memory. it also came in conjunction with a flashbulb image memory I have of the bedroom my abuser lived in when I was a child-- which was the place he used to most commonly abuse me. in the past (i.e. before I did trauma therapy/EMDR), this specific flashbulb memory has Triggered me and my PTSD; it used to bring a feeling of intense anxiety with it and very often would bring up other problematic memories related to the abuser I suffered. most often I would have to interrupt whatever I was doing to suppress the memories and to regulate my emotion, which was a difficult task when I was younger.

but this time... none of the trauma. none of the anxiety. I had reprocessed that specific flashbulb image of my abuser's bedroom back in EMDR. so this time around, I only experienced the happy memory that my metamour's story had unlocked. I simply had the flashbulb memory for the purposes of remembering what one wall of my abuser's bedroom looked like, and then my brain put it back away without any distress or compulsive behaviors. and when I realized this had happened, I was so relieved I almost cried. I have literally NEVER before in my life had that memory without needing to immediately self-soothe and interrupt the PTSD process, and here I was just quietly having a memory with zero distress.

I'm just so grateful for my therapists. I'm so fucking glad I finally sought out trauma therapy. it feels really incredible to be at a completely different place socially & mentally than I was when I first found cohost. all I can say is, if you have a good therapist and you have the opportunity to process your trauma in a safe environment, please take that opportunity it is so worth it in the end

(this post, to be exact)

and I am being fully 100% serious when I tell you that this exact technique helped me completely kill one of my recurring nightmares dead in the water. it was in EMDR therapy and required some processing around it, but I literally imagined Samus Aran killing one of my nightmares and I have not had that dream again in the 6ish weeks since that day.

we hear a lot about maladaptive daydreaming, a phenomenon where someone's physical life in reality is so painful for them to deal with that they retreat into an invented fantasy world rather than stay present with the pain. this can be a dangerous habit if just because it doesn't help you actually resolve any of your life problems, only escape from them. that is not what I'm describing above.

this was a situation where my own traumatic memories and experiences were manifesting in my mind as a still-present threat, even though physically and realistically I am now completely safe from the situation that caused my trauma. part of trauma processing is resilience, or the ability to engage with your traumatic thought processes and situations that trigger them without having a strong reaction to them. and as it turns out: when the problem is coming from inside your own head, it's a perfectly valid and reasonable defense to imagine your own superhero beside you helping to fight that problem off.

so when I was having recurring nightmares where an unseen ferocious monster was chasing me through twisting hallways and doors that felt too heavy to shut, my therapist told me to put myself in that nightmare space along with one or more of my "protectors." I had a conscious mental image¹ of Samus aiming her arm cannon at my nightmare monster, shooting one well-placed super missile between its eyes, and then turning silently towards me and giving me a thumbs up as it fell to the ground. over one session of EMDR processing, my brain Samus watched my back and helped me fight off the demons, and like I said: I have not had that nightmare again since.

as we were processing, I came to understand the exact nature of this nightmare, what the monster and its lair represented, and how to fight it off if it ever tried to return again. these are arguably the "real" reasons that I haven't had that particular type of nightmare again, but I cannot stress how important it was (and how much better and more powerful I felt afterwards) when I imagined someone much stronger than me² helping to fight off those demons. this is a GOOD therapy technique and can really help give you some confidence when you know it's your own brain fighting with you.

1. ymmv here tbh; I have VERY strong visualization skills and can picture things with vivid detail in my mind's eye. but even if you can't visualize what it looks like, imagining what it might FEEL like to have an ally standing by you can still be really helpful.

2. my therapist tells me that one of the more common characters for people to imagine protecting them is Link from the Legend of Zelda series. I just think this is neat, especially in the context of Link being a hero of courage specifically.

you wanna know something that my EMDR therapist does that I really fucking love? she always uses "they" pronouns for me, including when we're talking about younger me. there was no "little girl" or anything like that before my transition at 31, I have always been nonbinary and we respect that in her office. it owns. I don't think I've ever had another medical professional do that for me, and it really shines out in comparison.

not gonna lie either, it just makes everything so much easier in trauma processing when my therapist is like "why don't you ask your younger self how they feel about X" and my heart and brain have a happy little "hell yeah" about it

getting into contact with my younger self/selves through EMDR has been thoroughly revealing. it's so wild to have 20-year-old emotions wake back up in a safe environment... teenage me was so righteously angry all the time, but never felt safe enough to express those feelings in a healthy way before. having the power to engage with myself and my emotions through immersive visualization is indescribable; I wish everyone had the access to this sort of therapy