YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

This is basically a panic post. I had my second EMDR session and body sensations, a bad taste in my mouth, and brief images came up. This is stuff i never knew was there.

Anyone else here recover memories they had no awareness of? Ive been power googling but I'd really like to talk to somebody.

I'm really numb today. Checked out. I know EMDR is supposed to give you distance but I'm really not feeling much

Ohhhhkay. I posted that in the last ten minutes or so of my work day and had to hurry it.

Here's more of the full story.

I've been physically shaking and contorting my body since January. Hence my screen name here. I have been diagnosed with conversion disorder. My nerves and my physical responses to stress are shot to shit. My wife and I had gone through a ridiculous amount of loss and trauma in the past 18 months. Also in January I got depressed. It happened hard and fast. I was hospitalized by February 10th.

My neuro symptoms sometimes lead me to emotional material that needs to be released. Sometimes though, most of the time, I'm just fucking spasming while browsing at Goodwill or something.

My therapist is great. She's very connected to body work, mindfulness, and working with the body's reaction to trauma in general.

She suggested EMDR and I agreed. The second session was yesterday. At the end of it, I was lying face down on her carpet and covered in sweat from the exertions of moving violently for 40 minutes or so.

I'm starting to get things. Flashes of images. I feel like I'm four. I had long hair then. Felt like I was choking. A bad taste in my mouth that made me grimace. Like....sweat. A sensation of being lifted up and thrown. A specific image of a man's penis.

Side note:if this is too triggering and graphic, please take it down. I don't want to retraumatize the people I'm asking to reach out to me.

You know what pisses me off the most right now? That I might have this too. Also. This on top of everything else. Seriously, I don't need another fucking thing. At one point or another in my life the following things have been an issue for me:

ADD
OCD
Tourette's Syndrome
Self-injury
Disordered eating
Gender Identity Disorder
PTSD
Conversion Disorder
Depression

Sexual abuse survivor will be number 10. Then my rewards card is full and my 11th mental disorder is free.

Things have been floating up today but I'm not feeling disturbed by disturbing memories. I guess that's what EMDR is supposed to do but its kinda creepy. And I just made this connection. It's triggering. It reminds me of the gray of depression and the numbness during the past 18 months of trauma.

I don't know what else to say. This is only day two of realizing I might have been sexually violated at a very young age. I'm deep into "this isn't real I made it up I'm crazy this isn't real I'm crazy my brain made this up I'm attention seeking" and so on. Which is what prompted the first panic post.

Thanks for reading and I'd love to hear any feedback if you have it.

Ah, Jesus. That's a tough run, CC. One of the worst aspects of CSA is that it can be so hard to pin down, but that doesn't stop it from doing a number on our lives. I felt the exact same way. That I was just connecting dots to make a pattern that wasn't really there. That I was just pretending for attention. Etc etc etc. But then I had an emotional flashback/body memory and the symptoms were real. Respect that if nothing else.

I told my friend about my doubts and she told me: Nobody wants these struggles. We always doubt our reality even when we're suffering. That's all part of the abuse and grooming imo.

Have you read The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis? It's worth its weight in gold. One of the things they say is that when someone breaks into your home and you're not there, that doesn't mean the house isn't broken into. You come back and see all the broken glass and things topsy turvy. The absence of a witness doesn't make you a liar.