Hi @saltandpepper , looks like I was up and checking out the forum at around the same time as you during the middle of last night. I have so often been on the forum in the hours between midnight and dawn. I feel drawn to respond to your discussion here, firstly because I also very often suffer hyperactive streams of memories, thoughts, perspectives, coming from all angles and clashing, etc.
In recent weeks I also started and stopped a series of three x 45 minute hypnosis sessions with my new psychologist for trauma release. I was not actually seeking trauma release therapy at this time, having abandoned that path long ago. But it was recommended by my old psychologist who felt I am still heavily affected by childhood trauma even at 59 and after decades of talk therapy.
Sexual and other body traumas have been part of my journey in this life too. The biggest sexual ones have been complex, the main long lasting one was without bad intent to me, and it doesn't feel helpful for me to call these rapes, though that's how my body responded.
One single experience in my late thirties would be labelled as date-rape by many people who give thought to this subject, and I myself have sometimes described it that way too. For me personally it's far from the worst thing I have experienced in life. I do not feel much post-trauma from it, though it's a troubling memory semi-regularly.
With that date-rape, like you I surrendered to it without overtly protesting at all. I seemed to quickly see that was the best and safest way to get it over with and get out of there. I believe I was right and that it may have been much worse if I had resisted. It was instinctual and actually wise.
Like you I can be outrageously hard on myself but I genuinely try not to judge myself for my own human reactions beyond my control.
Worse for me have been the medical traumas to my body due to generally delicate health all my life, painful chronic illnesses, surgeries. Even when the procedures have helped me, it's been hard not to confuse the invasions of my body with acts of torture.
I spent a decade or two long ago delving deeply into my childhood traumas but found no release from them that way, my mental health deteriorated even further.
That was a lot my own doing. I became convinced and obsessed that diving into the blackness of these worst things was a way to free myself from my actute mental and emotional suffering. Luckily I found my first psychiatrist at this time who travelled by my side with it for thirteen years and helped keep me alive during the worst of it.
From that delving time in early adulthood I related when you described "longing for pre-therapy days". It seems to me now that it's at the very least possible that I may have been less heavily burdened and dark in heart and mind over my whole adult life if I had not delved into my own traumas. I have even said that the self-therapy process was traumatic in itself.
But many other aspects of mental health treatments of various kinds have helped me over my life on a spectrum of small to big. Coming together slowly over a long time, they have added up to a much better quality of life these days.
When I was in the darkest times of my trauma delving earlier in my life, I almost literally wrote my way through a suicidal year. The super fast and intrusive streams of thoughts like you describe too had to come out somewhere or I felt I would explode.
These days I am exploring mindfulness, gently strengthening my body through building up exercise activities, silently in nature, noticing stuff on streets, taking pics of odd things. I am seeking the healing spaces beyond my words, thoughts and intellect, of which I have been so top-heavy most of my life. I am seeking peace of mind and relaxation as I head into this senior phase of my life.
There is an affirmation I was given in a recent hypnosis (non-trauma), that is relaxing my mind and strong tendencies to cruelly and unfairly judge myself in my own mind: I am. That's enough. I am. I am enough.
There have been so many helpful perspectives from other members posted here. I realise many of the things I have related may be different to others' perspectives on trauma. We are each so truly different and our healing paths are so individual to us. We have to find our own truths.
