un-processed emotions

I woke up about 2 hours ago with a hard body jerk that woke me out of a sound sleep! It actually scared me and took my breath away!

At that moment I kicked the blankets off of me, went into the bathroom and cried in frustration.

“I am SICK of this! what is going on!?, I never dealt with any sleep issues!, what does this all mean?”

So I went and covered up on the couch and grabbed the book that my therapist gave me yesterday to look over. He wanted me to read the first 100 pages because it had a lot to do with unprocessed emotions and memories.

The name of the book is called “Getting Past your Past” by Francine Shapiro PhD.

As I started to read, so much made sense of what I am going through. I had to stop for a moment because it was freakishly close to what I am going through right now.

One line that really tugged at me from the book was: “when we endure abuse from our past, those emotions go into a part of the brain that is unprocessed. Those unprocessed emotions can show up anytime, and it is not until we process these emotions, that we are freed from them”

Well, I didn’t bother to read any further, this made so much sense to me, almost like an Ah-ha moment.

The past month or so my therapist and I have really worked hard on surfaced emotions that came about in the past year, and I imagine its like waking up all the emotions that laid dormant for such a long long time; the emotions that I never allowed myself to feel as a child.

I imagine my jerking awake was something familiar I did and went through as a child when I heard the door open knowing it was one of my brothers, or the fear of any small noise while I laid in bed fearfully wondering what would happen next.

Before I woke up in the hard jerk this morning, I had images of the streets I lived on in my past, but that was it.. just streets.

Something is here, and I feel more confident in that this morning that this is what is going on. Unprocessed emotions sitting inside of me waiting to be felt, heard, talked about, understood.

I sit here at 7:30am and I have to get up in a half hour to get ready for my 2 hour therapy session today at 10am – we call it T T (Tuesday at Ten for Two Hours). Every Tuesday we go for 2 hours so we can utilize the time for bigger work.

I can’t say I will be effective on 4 hours sleep, or maybe I will be. Sometimes when I don’t get as good sleep, I am more vulnerable and don’t have the strength to hold up walls, so I just let it all be there.

Something about parts of this book made so much sense, with waking up with nightmares of the abuse, thrashing in my sleep, waking up crying and sobbing, jerking awake in fear…. something is certainly here.

Maybe waking up to a hard jerk was meant to be. Maybe it was another sign and more information to guide me right where I need to be….. and better yet, I am here writing about it at 7:30am and giving it more voice.

There has to be empowerment in this .. and maybe me not getting much sleep before a session is exactly where I need to be this morning.