Well we didn’t make it to group on Tuesday. And we’re not sorry about it. It felt like it was a good thing that we stayed home. It was what we needed. We also had more insight yesterday into why groups can be so difficult for us. It came from a posting we did yesterday on signs and symptoms, about catatonia. Catatonia is a way of shutting down the brain because of too much stimulation. When we read that it was an ah-ha moment. Some of us get triggered by being in a group setting and thus it is quite a stimulant. Fear. Memory. Pain. People often go for coffee after group and most of the time we don’t go. That’s because we feel mentally and emotionally tired after a group session.
When we attend a group over time we start to get antsy at some point and want to quit. It’s usually because our brain is screaming by then. Screaming at us to shut down. We want to yell at people to “leave me alone!” even though people aren’t really demanding a lot from us. It just feels like they are. This past week our brain was screaming rather loudly to filter out stimuli, to shut down and be quiet for a while. That ended up being reading and watching tv. The reading part especially is very calming, and especially if we can do it for several hours. It really drops the intensity of emotions.
However, we are not about to quit this group. We want to attend it for a long time, years if we can. It’s been such a great lifeline and we have met some great people through it. We just have to recognize the signals for down time and take them. Yesterday we began to feel our energy return. But we still need to be careful. We still feel like we need more reading time and alone time. Even a visit with one person can lead to a whole bunch of processing and emotions. It’s as if many of us need to think about all of the conversations we had and check for feelings that correspond to what we talked about.
Today however, we are ready for group again. And today our thoughts are turned towards the posting we want to do. We are going to begin to write about the third group to emerge – The Thirteen. We now enter a zone that brings up a lot of fear and anxiety and guilt. But the guilt doesn’t really belong to us. It was put there by our abusers. Believe it or not, they intentionally put that guilt there, telling us that if we revealed the secrets of the abuse, no one would believe us. People would think we were simply making it up. Things like that don’t happen, at least not here in Canada.
But they do.
We tossed and turned during the night. And when awake that guilt and fear were very present. We know logically and rationally that we are not in danger anymore but within us lies a hot bed of anxiety. It is a fear that someone will be very angry at us for talking about our past and they will publicly humiliate us, maybe even come after us and harm us. And somehow they will convince people that we are lying, making it all up just for some attention.
The night before last, we dreamed about going back to the apartment we lived in from 1986 until 2007, 21 years. On the walls were all of our pictures that we had left behind. The woman who lives there now (right upstairs actually) tells us that the pictures are “dark”. We wander through the place and think we really should take those pictures with us now. Even more significant about this dream is the fact that we dreamed it four times in a row. We woke up, talked briefly about the dream (which we sometimes do), then went back to sleep and returned to the apartment. Woke up again then back to sleep and the apartment again. Four times in all. What is our mind telling us then? A dark past that we must retrieve? In the dream we are not afraid. It is just a matter of fact that we must do this.
And so we must.
The groups – The Thirteen (3), Gaetway (4), Serena et al (5), and The Stoene (6st) all deal with ritual abuse. There we said it. “Ritual abuse”. When it first came up for us we would say “Oh now Caer you are just carrying things a little too far. This is just too extreme and unbelievable”. Well sometimes it still is but then denial, with a capital “D”, is protection. Still ... there it is and we have said it. We are not going to write about the abuse itself. We will still be talking about us and who we are but what shaped us was that abuse. So it must be mentioned. It’s the backdrop for these groups.
And if you have trouble believing then that’s okay. It doesn’t really matter that much to us. What’s important here is for our own belief, our own acceptance that these things happened. If you are unwilling or unable to believe, well we can’t blame you. It’s not something that anyone wants to believe can happen to children.
So our apology (of a sort) if this is getting too heavy for you.
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On a lighter note, our wee cat Panda Bear has just hit “puberty”. Our baby is growing up. We didn’t make it to the SPCA on time to get her spayed. Yes, she’s in heat. This is a new experience for us. At least we think it is. She just meows and meows and is super affectionate and other things. Hopefully she doesn’t start really yowling. At least she can’t get outside and find a handsome male in the neighbourhood. We told her she’s too young to date.
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