Making Space, Always & Forever

The past few months have brought a lot of unexpected change to my life. It's felt both exciting and unsteady. Scary. By showing up and doing the work month after month and year after year, I found myself completing the goals I had initially set when I first started therapy. I hadn't put a timeline on my goals, as they seemed like things I'd have to work my entire life to strive for. I knew my goals were feasibly attainable, but the liklihood of them occurring sooner than later is what I doubted. I just had faith that things would get better as long as I was making space, showing up, and putting in the effort.

When I first walked into my therapists office four and a half years ago, I told her that I needed help. I was tired of struggling, exhausted from the endless cycles of depression that I knew stemmed from suppressed emotions and the unrelenting anguish of trauma. I warned her that I might turn and run, as I had routinely done in the past, but that I was finally ready to confront my past traumas and get help. I was ready to say the words I had kept hidden my entire life. I shared that I had been sexually abused by a family member as a child, and later by an acquaintance as a teenager, but that I hadn't ever told anyone what happened. I didn't use the words rape back then because I had been gaslighting myself for so long, downplaying what had happened to me, so I used the blanketed term sexual abuse. I knew that confronting my experiences with trauma was the answer to freeing myself from the darkness I always found myself enveloped in. During that first session with my therapist, I let her see a glimpse of the pain I had been hiding. I shared how it had manifested itself in my adult life in disruptive ways, extreme hypersexual behavior followed by debilitating cycles of depression being one example. My life was an endless rollercoaster of dysregulation, bouncing back and forth between extreme highs that come with hyperarousal and severe lows that accompany hypoarousal (detailed in related posts).

When I first started therapy, my primary goals looked something like this :

1. Share my experiences with sexual abuse and otherwise - say the words aloud.

2. Find relief from the persistent torment of triggers and flashbacks.

3. Lessen the severity of the cyclical mental states that were so disruptive to my daily life.

4. Understand what happened to me in 2017 when I became someone else and abandoned my life.

I quickly learned that I have complex PTSD, and had experienced a dissociative episode in 2017. Finally having the proper terminology to ascribe to my experience and inner world proved to be invaluable. As I completed my initial goals and found ways to regulate myself through the various states I lived in, I made new goals that were focused on the self and doing parts work through IFS therapy. I spent years making space for parts of myself that had been shut away, shamed and concealed, or completely abandoned. I sat with myself in the dark, beside the parts who take me away from my self. I found parts of myself that had been scared and alone, feeling invisible and unimportant. I met the parts of myself who protect others in helpful ways and not, and the accompanying managers who make the system function. I got to know the parts of myself I once considered demons - the ones who whisper the worst things in my ear, the ones who fill me with fear, and the ones who make me want to disappear. I listened to the pain that each individual part of me carried and learned what they're burdened by. For years and years, I put in conscious effort to make space for every single thing I worked so hard to ignore, hide, or run from. A lifetime of suppressing things makes for a lot to work through. It's a daily practice to check in with these parts and hold space for them, welcoming them and meeting them wherever they're at - especially when they're feeling that same old pain that we've worked through time and time again. Sometimes life feels like a never ending grieving process, as that pain ebbs and flows. I've learned that immense grief doesn't go away. Like many things, we just learn to make space for it.

As the years carried on in therapy, I began EMDR therapy and made goals for processing the vault of memories that disturbed me the most. As I had experienced compounded traumas since early childhood, sexual and otherwise, I had lengthy lists of memories that needed processing. The lists were broken up into categories that had to do with an age range, but also aligned with specific parts I had gotten to know. They weren't just memories of certain ages, they were memories that each of these parts were holding as their personal experiences. Each part frozen in time with their traumas, making them somewhat separate from me. My overarching goal for EMDR was to complete each individual list that I had made. I was able to add things to lists as needed, but I wasn't going to stop until I had processed each and every one of the memories that had tormented me for so long. I was dedicated to freeing myself - each part of me - from the hold these experiences had over me. I was committed to transforming the way I live in my own body. The lists that I made were so long and in depth that I honestly hadn't considered what it would look or feel like once I completed them. I imagined it would be many years before I felt less distress when thinking about any one of those memories. After over a year of EMDR sessions nearly every week, just a few months ago, I was shocked to sit down on my therapists couch and say, "Wow...I think we got them all."

Now, don't get me wrong. EMDR doesn't magically erase the bad, it doesn't contain all the sad, and it doesn't rid you of all the mad. The way I think of it, EMDR helps make space in your mind and body to process the trauma, releasing it from being trapped in one corner of the mind and allowing room for it to breathe EMDR allows the disruptive toxicity of the memories to dissipate so you can function at a manageable level without becoming so dysregulated at the conscious or unconscious thought of them. The memories that I processed of abuse still fill me with sadness, anger, and grief for the parts of me who endured such pain in silence. I feel very deeply when I think of any one of these memories, and that's okay. These parts of me are forever deserving of my sadness and anger for what they went through. What I'm realizing while writing this, is that while that anger is still present within me, it's transformed. While it used to be self focused on my shortcomings and my failings, that anger is now other focused. It's not on me anymore. It's justified. The things that happened to me were not my fault; they were out of my control. In regard to my childhood traumas, I'm no longer mad at myself for not fighting back or doing more, for not telling someone sooner, for keeping a secret, or for conforming to roles that were necessary for survival. My anger is directed towards the sources of the pain, which are completely outside of myself. Learning this taught me that beating myself up does no good - it only adds to the layers of shame and self-blame that's so difficult to untangle from. That feels incredible to acknowledge. EMDR helped me learn that.

---

The months following that session have been interesting. Fun and freeing, yet eye opening and confronting. There will always be the potential for more things in need of EMDR processing, but completing my initial lists from childhood through 2017 and beyond was a huge milestone that paved the way for the next phase of my healing journey : implementation and integration. Learning the skills and applying the skills are two vastly different things. Now that I've learned the skills, and processed the most traumatic memories, it's time for me to put into practice the things I've learned. One of the biggest shifts that's come from therapy is gaining a sense of autonomy and agency. I can better advocate for my needs and set boundaries, feeling confident and empowered rather than confused, small, and helpless. I have a better sense of what I need to feel balanced and regulated, within my window of tolerance, which is quite simple : I need to continue making and holding space for each part of myself, bringing them together, even when it scares me.

We all do this thing where we stick our head in the sand for a while when we aren't ready to deal with something. It's a normal reaction to things that are beyond our ability to manage at any given time. While I've done well at making space for nearly all parts of myself, and working through trauma, there is one part in particular I've made little to no acknowledgement of in writing since I started therapy. I've worked with her extensively in therapy, those latter EMDR sessions being the most difficult. I've kept her hidden in the shadows, shut out and made to feel like she doesn't belong. I've recently realized that this separation between her and the rest of myself largely contributes to becoming dysregulated. I kept my head in the sand, acting as if I could live without making adequate space for her in my life. I realized that if I want to continue forward on this healing path rather than regressing into old habits and ways of living, risking another dissociative episode, it's time to implement integration of the part of me that I've held the most shame towards...the part of me who holds the most guilt and grief for things that I said and did in 2017...the part of me who has the one quality that I struggle to be honest about and make space for in my daily life. We call this part of me Vixie.

I've written at length about nearly every other part I've gotten to know over the past four and a half years, but Vixie has remained an enigma. Many don't know of her existence, aside from her takeover in 2017. Only a few know her by name, and even then, I sometimes struggle to say her name aloud. While Vixie has many valuable qualities, shame for her less traditional traits and previous decisions has kept her concealed. As I continue on with this next phase of my healing journey, I find myself faced with the challenge of making space for Vixie and all that she brings. I've learned through the most painful means that while we can make changes in our lives, suppression and denial of inherent desires or needs can make a person go insane. Just as there are things that happen to us that we don't choose, there are certain traits about ourselves that we cannot pick and choose. We can try to shove certain experiences, thoughts, desires, or needs down and ignore them for a period of time, but eventually they'll surface and present themselves in chaos by force. As I embark on this next phase of healing, I remind myself every day that there is no shame in loving who we are, as we are, even when it's not what we imagined for our life. There is no shame in saying what we need. I can no longer let fear stand in the way of living the healthy life I dream of, with authenticity and above shame. As I face these fears and begin to share this part of myself openly, I constantly remind myself of these words : their shame is not my own. Each of us must learn to rise above the fear of causing pain and feeling judgement or shame, and embrace who we are. Some parts of us are born from trauma or prolonged suffering, but that doesn't mean they aren't deserving of love and space to breathe just like the rest of us. I think I finally understand what it means to love myself. While it can seem unbearable and impossible, I am wholeheartedly committed to making space, always and forever.

---

I encourage you to go within yourself, and listen. Look for the part of you with their head in the sand and tap them on their shoulder. Let them know that you're there with them, that they're not alone. What might you be harboring inside that deserves space to breathe? It could be something that's happened to you or something that's happening within you. You don't have to say it out loud, just let it speak to you. Allow yourself to feel it for a moment, to acknowledge the thing that feels so heavy it has to be shoved way way down. Open yourself up to the possibility of shedding light on it. For me, I want to both snuff out the light and throw the doors open to let the light pour in. I want to reveal it and I want to keep it concealed. This is normal. Sit with it. You are deserving of space to be and to breathe without feeling crushed. Making space isn't easy. Reaching out, and sending love and a big warm hug to each of you.