Redheaded Jill

I recently had a shrink appointment where we continued the EMDR journey.

The initial memory we started with has been put to rest. It’s not erased from my mind or my heart, but I was able to make peace with what happened and no longer feel a pit in my stomach when talking about it. (That doesn’t mean it’ll never upset me again, but now I have the tools to deal with it.)

We started with a new memory. I picked one from college. It was super hard.

I won’t go into detail about that because it’s still painful, but I wanted to share about the physical reaction I had.

Starting out my shrink always asks, “What emotion do you feel, where do you feel it in your body?” This time I felt it in my arms. Both of my arms felt fuzzy. You know that feeling when your arm falls asleep? I didn’t get that pins and needles feeling, but my arms felt super heavy and like they were trying to wake up or regain blood flow. Once I started talking and following the memories it felt like I was on a merry go round, being spun around super fast.

I was explaining the feeling to my friend and she told me, “Merry go rounds only move when they’re being used. It’s like how your friends took you for a ride, taking advantage of you.”

I also got extremely emotional, which tends to happen with EMDR. We started out with my nerves at a 10/10 on a sliding scale of comfort vs discomfort and ended with them still being at a 7 or 8.

At the end when my shrink told me to visualize either putting the bad memory in a box or imagine defending my past self from these people or having my comfort figure enter the memory and essentially “rescue” me from it. What I pictured was myself standing next to the group in the foyer of a church building. I took out a sword and cut a line between myself and the people. They floated away as if I cut a rope tying a small boat to a dock.

I was talking with a friend the other day and when she told me something about an unkind relative I said, “I am mentally smiting her with excalibur!” Apparently I find the idea of being rescued by King Arthur very comforting. So much so that my mind rescued myself with a sword in my saddest of memories.

Who is your literary hero?