I am not a person that likes to feel things, show emotion, let my guard down…any of that good stuff. Admittedly, it hasn’t proven to be the best method, but I’m working with what I’ve got.
My life experiences have left me pretty hardened and cynical, but that doesn’t always serve me.
For example, as I wrote about last week, we just began doing EMDR in therapy. The journey even to get there, to get to the point of even just starting has been long and harrowing. We both knew going into it that my brain would be fighting the process, that it would be incredibly difficult to just let my brain go wherever it needed to go.
I did the best I could with it. But in typical fashion, every time things got a little too real, a little too close to actually feeling emotions, I put the walls up and backed off.
I don’t want to be this way, I want to be able to process things in the way they deserve, and to be able to feel things with the intensity that it is. The memory that we were working on last week wasn’t even a bad one, comparatively. But even still, my head took me to some scary places and I just don’t know how to be okay with that.
I don’t Know how to be Vulnerable
Simply put, I’ve been with my therapist for nearly 6 years. And in all that time, I’ve never cried, not even once. If we keep doing this, keep going down this route with EMDR and forcing me to deal with and look at all the worst parts of my life…
I know I’m going to break. I know I’m going to get emotional or scared or whatever the fuck you want to call it. And I literally do not know how to. I don’t know how to be okay with it. Feeling things, let alone showing emotion is just so uncomfortable for me.
I owe it to myself to try, I deserve a chance at feeling better, and I think this could help. But if I can’t get out of my own way, if I can’t get past this, I don’t know else to do.
Is it even possible to change at this point? Could there ever be a situation where I actually feel safe enough to cry in front of someone? It feels like such a weird problem. It feels like I’m the only person in the world who could struggle with this, but that can’t be true… Can it?
Seriously…if there’s a magic solution out there, if there’s any way to make this better, any tips… I’m all for it. I want to do this, but I’m scared that I just won’t be able to.