holding onto connection

A lot of my healing and the work I have done since I started therapy has been about connection and learning how to not let the old messages of the past get in the way of that connection.

Connection has been the core of what I have learned over the years, but sometimes those old messages do creep back in and take over, and for me when that happens its really hard to get me back out of that darkness of disconnection.

Since I was little, when I felt disconnected I would change my clothes a lot. I would keep changing my clothes over and over until the feeling went away. Today I still struggle with that.

yesterday morning I got ready for session and as I was heading out the door I got this intense feeling come over me that I needed to change, and I began to not feel good about myself. I knew in that moment this was going to be a hard morning for me.

I went upstairs and changed my clothes and nothing was feeling right! Time was drawing close and I needed to head to my session in order to make it there on time and I knew in that moment there was nothing I could do to change the feeling I was going through.

As I drove to my session the feeling got worse! I began to figit and couldn’t sit still in this disconnection. I was frustrated that I was feeling this way, but at the same time I knew that my therapist is aware of what this means when I go through moments like this, but it didn’t change the fact that I just wanted to go home and be alone in this.

But I didn’t… I showed up to session just as I was. That is the difference between the past and the now – letting someone see me in this moment so that I am not alone in it.

When I feel this way I don’t like to be touched, especially on the back of the arms. I hold my arms close to my body when I am feeling this way and its a challenge to let that go. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but when it does, its hard to move out of this.

I showed up to session and shared with him right a way what I was going through, and the first thing he wanted to do to change that was to CONNECT. He asked me to take his hand and BREAK that old message of “when I am feeling this way, I am UN-touchable”.

He wanted to reverse those old messages and create a connection even if it didn’t feel good. Sometimes you have to fake it to move through it.

I know that these moments when this happens are old messages from the past, but I don’t know why it shows up today the way it does. I am still working hard to take those moments of disconnection and self yuck and turn it into “I am worthy and I am touchable and I am connected”.

Still to this day I will go through moments when I change my clothes up to 10 times if need be … and its frustrating.

I will still go through moments of not wanting to be touched on the back of the arms, or looked at, or for anyone to touch me anywhere… but what I do notice is, because I know what it means and where it comes from, I can move through it faster than I used to.

This comes from the past and being abused. When I was abused I would change my clothes a lot because I felt a sense of YUCK after the abuse happened and that feeling has stuck with me my whole life.

These are the things from the past that never truly go away no matter how much healing is done…. but what I do know is, its not so much about making something go away, its more about how to handle these things when it happens. How do I create a connection right in the middle of yuck and disconnection? That is where the healing is!

The healing is not about making something go AWAY, because honestly, it never truly goes away! its about how to manage these moments when they do happen. Its about understanding where it comes from, and to remind myself that “I am not in the abuse any longer” and to allow myself connection in the disconnection that I am feeling.

My therapist always reminds me “you are not what you feel”  and that is what healing is about.. not making it go away, but seeing it differently so that i can move through these moments without disconnecting.

As I sit here this morning I am feeling a lot more connected than I was yesterday and I hope that by talking about it, letting someone be with me in that moment and writing about it, gives me the power over it, instead of it having power over me.

Each time this happens, I will remember how I moved through it the time before – and that is healing!

It never truly goes away, and I think that for anyone who is healing through their past, if you just realize that healing is not about making something go away, that its about making that moment manageable – I think THAT is when true healing happens.