Fear and Anxiety

Today in Process Painting (one of my art therapy groups), we talked about fear and anxiety, and how to overcome them.  One of the things they talked about was exposure therapy.  I'm starting exposure therapy next week, and, if I'm totally honest, I am f***ing terrified.  My trauma therapist will be purposely attempting to trigger my dissociation.  What's scary about that is that I struggle to keep my composure, my control, over everything.  When I dissociate, I no longer have control.  i am in an extremely vulnerable state.

Now, I trust my therapist enough to know that he won't take advantage of the situation.  He has always been a good example of how men should treat women in their care.  With caring, but professionalism at the same time.  So I'm not really worried about that.

I'm not completely sure what I'm so afraid of.  Myself?  The experience of losing time and not knowing what just went on during that lost time?  Knowing I likely appear functional, but I'm not really present?  Doing all this work with him while dissociated, but not remembering any of it later?  Because that has happened before.  That's why I've taken to writing things down.  Sometimes I don't remember writing things down at all.  It's honestly very eerie.

But! Exposure therapy helps to desensitize a person to the things that trigger them.  Whether it's smells, sounds, tastes, etc.  Whatever it is, it's used to trigger the client over and over and over until it no longer triggers them.  One example:  I hate saying the word "rape".  I despise it.  It's an ugly word.  In the past, this therapist had me start with an easier word, "bad", and simply say it over and over and over and over until told to stop.  This was meant to show me that if you say it enough times, it starts to lose its meaning.  This can be a good thing.  In my mind, it can also be a bad thing.  I wouldn't want "I love you" to lose its meaning.  I wouldn't want "you are amazing" to lose its meaning.  So some of these techniques are to be used only with words we have a negative association with.

One of the techniques shared today was to correct "thinking mistakes".  This means that, when we have a way of thinking (eg: going outside will lead to pain), we are to challenge that thought and work on overcoming it with a more positive thinking process.  So when I'm all worried about doing exposure therapy, rather than thinking "this is terrifying", perhaps I'll try to replace that thought with "this is the first of many steps towards me healing my trauma".  And that is what I am choosing to do.

At the end of the video we watched, we were told to paint or draw what our fear and anxiety actually look like.  Not the things we have fear or anxiety about, but the emotions themselves.  Before we started, we were reminded that the primary goal in facing fear is to actually face fear.  Let me repeat that: the primary goal in facing fear is to actually face it.  This takes courage.  Courage does not mean a lack of fear, but the ability to face what we're facing despite the fear.

Healing and Courage,
Jenny