A strange peace

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Ever since I got under the table in Doc’s office things have been strangely more peaceful for me. I’ve no idea if there is any correlation to my last session with Doc, or if it’s just a coincidence. At any rate, I’ll take it.

I’ve been trying to find the gift in awareness of the extent of my dissociative disorder. I don’t see the gift in having it, but I do see the gift in now becoming aware of it. Although I don’t like that there’s another thing to add to my “crazy” bucket, so many things are now starting to make sense for me.

Now that I understand that the rattle of noises in my head is really various “inside voices” I surprisingly feel less crazy. I now feel like I have far less internal secrets. I never told a soul about the inner voices in my head, or the part of me that I knew was little.

I hope the good vibes keep chugging along for me because it is a trying week at work. I have a presentation on Thursday that will be brutal. It’s tough when you have a job you don’t like. I try to be grateful, but it is particularly hard this week. I also try to veer away from the feeling that this job is a punishment for my past sins. That’s the tendency my head tends to land when I’m hating this job, and missing Human Resources.

It’s nice to feel grateful, instead of the usual muck of despair. I’ll take it.

Under the table

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English: Wooden kitchen table and chairs

Today I told Doc what I learned from Cate last week. He listened, and then I just heard the world “trauma” and I started shaking badly. He then asked, “Is someone having a hard time? What can I do to help?” I could feel that “the little one” wanted to get under the table next to me, and I told Doc that I was aware of this. She really wanted to get under that table. But I resisted. It was weird, not normal. Loco. Loca. Loony. No! We will not get under the table.

But she insisted, and the more she insisted, the more I shook. The more I dug my heels in, the harder I shook. Something had to give. Then Doc said, “I invite you to get under the table if that will help.” You get to a point sometimes in life when you run out of the plausible normal-sounding options. When you reach this point you are at the end of your rope, and you start entertaining those options that seemed crazy and insane because you are desperate for some kind of peace. This was that kind of moment for me.

I leapt for that table like a lifeline, so much so that I almost hit my head on the table. I feared getting under the table because I didn’t want to “lose myself.” I was afraid of having a dissociative experience that I would not recall, like I had last week. Surprisingly, what happened is that my body became peaceful the very moment I got under that table. I felt peaceful, and then very sleepy. I could have slept under that table  for hours.

We continued our session with me under the table. It was weird, but it worked, and I shook a whole lot less. If someone told me this morning that I would end my day speaking to my psychiatrist from under a table, I would have laughed at the improbability of that scenario. You just never know what works.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What you don’t know can scare you

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When I saw Doc near the end of the week I was not doing well at all. I arrived at his office all twitchy and jerky. He took one look at me and said, “Oh no, you’re short-circuiting.” Doc’s the witty one alright.

We decided that the best thing for me was a neurofeedback session, and I did feel calmer after that. However, somehow, I got tangled up in the sensor wires without noticing. When Doc went to take the sensors off my head he picked up my hand to disentangle me from the wires. And that was all she wrote when he did that. I started twitching and jerking and freaking out. He started apologizing, and then the world went foggy.

Next thing I know Doc is asking me if I remember saying “I’m sorry” to him in this little girl voice. I was just incredulous, and I asked him, “Are you serious?” He was very serious. I asked him what he did when that happened, and he said he asked the little girl if he could have Beatriz back, and I came back to the session.

I managed to take myself to the little town cafe that I like so much after our session. I started texting my sister, Cate, asking her how things were with her. Somehow we got on the topic of our mother. She started talking about how the therapist she started seeing thinks our mother has schizophrenia. I thought Cate must be mistaken. I started asking her if she understood what schizophrenia was, and I could tell I was vexing her a bit. She started talking about how our mother saw and heard things that weren’t there. Apparently, Cate did not think this was news to me. According to her, I was present for many of these moments when my mother was experiencing psychosis.

I have absolutely no recollection of such behavior from my mother. There are plenty of negative memories associated with my mother, but none like this. Dumbstruck is an understatement for how I feel. I asked Cate what I did when these things were happening. She said I did nothing, that I never said anything about it or acted as if anything was wrong. I said to her, “I’m sorry, none of it is in my memory bank.” Cate replied, “I wish it wasn’t in my memory bank.”

I can only wonder if this is when my dissociation began. I feel betrayed by own brain, like I cannot trust myself.