First, if you are transgender do you choose a male or female partner?
Second, if you suddenly get a flood of repressed memories and trauma memories, what do you do?
Answer: If you are transgender and have a non-gendered gender, be non-gendered and then it doesn't matter. And if you get triggered by a whole flood of new repressed memories, don't panic and run out the room with your drape (sheet) clutched to you and your backside exposed. Luckily I didn't do that. You know what I did? I used the distress tolerance exercises I learned in DBT! It helped enough that I could counteract dissociating and be calm enough to finish receiving the massage module and wait until the break to talk to the teacher. I'm not sure what is the next step, but my teacher gave me a pile of options. So I'm going to think about them over the weekend before I make a decision.
I've been working through "family of origin" and childhood events. What happened is that I started dissociating and numbing out. So I counted and concentrated on breathing and worked to stay present by noticing details around me. Then my neck tensed up, followed by my biceps, my lower back, and finally my calves. I had the sensation that I was using my right shoulder to block being hit, then my left side of my neck started hurting and I remembered getting injured there when I was beaten once. My lower back had a sharp pain, as if foot-plates were rammed into them, which quickly reminded my lower legs of the similar incidents. My left shoulder went up to protect my neck and side. Then I jumped to another sequence when my upper arms were grabbed to pull me in and down to the floor to be shaken and beaten again. My shoulders tensed up protecting me.
Flashbacks of memories and my body tensing of all these place kept happening over and over. I quickly reminded myself that this was good. I started shaking a little and I wanted to stop it but I let myself shake as quietly as I could without being noticed. Meanwhile the other students are watching demonstration while myself and the first half of the class are on the tables. I reminded myself that I still have to get through class and I can talk to the teacher later, then come home and take a shower, eat dinner, and write in my blog.
It was scary. I knew this was going to happen, but not this soon.
Do I need to reiterate again.... I need a therapist to work thru these things.
On the positive side, Obama just expanded LGBT medical rights. YAY!
Now that I'm home, I'm not as calm as I was in class. That is to be expected but I'm ok. I found out last week that my left shoulder was a trigger. Today I found out I have a trigger in my neck. I knew I was triggered on my upper arms, but i didn't know why. Now I know. When I was in the shower I was thinking about it a bit. Aneeb's favorite part of my body was my upper arms. I never understood that. I think subconsciously because of that I linked Aneeb to these painful beatings. I think this was a powerful way I somehow linked Aneeb to my mother and my family and turned major parts of our relationship into something else. When we broke up it became an emotional event WAY beyond normal for a simple relationship. It was like loosing my family a second time because the whole relationship and breakup re-triggered serious abandonment, emotional abuse and manipulation, and co-dependence issues that had gotten out of hand because of that association.
When Adam and I were together, I never ever let him touch my arms. In class, we only practiced on the left arm. My left arm is worse than the right. The strokes that we were using actually released some of the trauma. I can still feel it in my right side tho.
I'm apprehensive about this journey that I am beginning. I need it. I want it. I'm scared of it. I'm going to take the definition of journey from the hobbits.
A journey is traveling somewhere that you don't know where that somewhere is.
I can do this!
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