Reflections on Therapy Part 3

Halfway through 2023 I was hospitalized again, this time in a shithole that was dirty and felt unsafe. I made it through the experience but I was still struggling. I was having flashbacks and nightmares. Once I woke up on vacation with my family and I could not understand why my screaming hadn’t woken anybody up. Then I realized I had only been screaming in my sleep. When I finally went back to James he said “Darlin” (he’s from the South) “what took you so long?” James thought I’d be a good candidate for trauma therapy. Trauma therapy works like this. You speak with your therapist and he writes down every detail you tell him. He gives you a copy to study during the week until you feel the trauma has happened to someone else and you can no longer be touched. Then, part 2 of trauma therapy is yoga (which I did with his wife Lori) that calms you down in case you are upset by the first part of trauma therapy, of reliving the worst moments of your life.

James did a trauma inventory. All my life I have had men touching me and grabbing me. Maybe that’s just part of being a woman (although I feel like this has been addressed somewhat by the #Metoo movement). But there were significant instances that were more than just a grope (two of them significant enough to cause real trauma and pain that had me crying in James’s office). Talking the situations over with James and doing the difficult work of reading my life experiences was hard but it actually worked and I was dismissed from trauma therapy. I still do sometimes have terrifying nightmares but fortunately they are not based in reality.

It took less than a year for me to return. My OCD and binge eating (my worst habits) were out of control. I was a mess of urges that I could no longer fight and that I would just give into. It’s still the early stages of working through these problems (which James believes are inherently linked). I work with Lori on nutrition and health (like water consumption, sleep and exercise). James has instructed me to make a log tracking my urges. So far a pattern has emerged that my OCD gets worse at night when I’m probably too tired to fight. This isn’t the end of my therapy journey by a long shot but I can already feel the progress.