Finnegan Begin Again

I've tried writing in my original blog, but I end up stopping for many reasons. One of those reasons is paranoia: I'll be talking about deeply personal things, including therapy, medication, and sex (not necessarily in that order), and I don't want a potential client or certain friends and family to connect this blog with me.

Maybe with this bit of anonymity, I'll find it easier to post. Because I have a lot of work to do. And a lot I want to say. And eventually I want to run my other blog better, and start a professional blog, but I think that first I need to just get my brain back into writing after being cemented in place for so long. So if I write crap, better here than in more public forums.

I've invited the people from blogs I visit routinely. Anyone who knows me from there will probably figure out who I am almost immediately, which is fine. It's not them I am trying to be anonymous with.

Have you ever heard of Trauma Therapy? I hadn't either until last week. It's different from cognitive therapy, which is good because over two decades of cognitive therapy taught me about how I think, but haven't enabled me to move.

Trauma therapy addresses each trauma event individually. Pick an event, say when someone hurt me. Then write down pieces of that event that were significant emotionally. For each piece, you then write about it: when it occurred (this anchors it in time, which often unresolved traumas are not); feelings ("I felt this") about the piece; put it in past tense (because unresolved traumas generally feel and are often talked about as if in the present); if there is a perpetrator, address them directly ("you did this"); and make the description factual, with as may details as possible. No opinions or explanations. Facts and feelings.

Then the next time I meet with my therapist (Karen), I'll read it aloud (that's gonna be fun) and we'll talk about my feelings, the event, and I'm not sure what else because this is the very first time I'm doing it.

Given that I have a long menu of traumas to choose from (many that perhaps only one other person might know about), I chose to go with one that is hardest, that is hitting me the most deeply, rather than trying to just dip my toes in with something "easy." Because I want to get through this crap as quickly as possible. I've been stuck at start for so many years now, I can't stand to wait any longer to begin my life again. I'll be starting with my most recent trauma, because it is directly related to the deepest issues, I think. Karen agrees.

Karen asked me why I have not done the things that I obviously want to. After thinking for a moment, I told her that while my mind knows the problems, and what to do mentally, there is something broken below that. It's like the steering and the wheels are completely disconnected. I am desperately hoping that this trauma work will reconnect me, so I can go where I mean to go.

Welcome. Let's see what happens, shall we?