Ariel's Two Cents

 The 4th of July has come and gone now and I'm ready to talk about it.  You see, the 4th of July is usually an awful day for me.  I have complex PTSD from years of trauma and abuse.  One of the many traumatic events I went through was what I call, "The Naked City Shooting", and it has been one of my biggest problems since the day of the shooting.  Immediately after the incident, the sound of fireworks would cause me to cry hysterically, much like a small child who is terrified of something.  It was embarrassing to live life this way, but what was I supposed to do?  How do you undo the damage of trauma?  If it was simple, therapists would not have a yearlong wait list to get services.   In anticipation of the noise, I typically take a clonazepam at around 6 or 7 pm on the night of the 4th of July.  The goal is to be so sedated that no noise wakes me up.  This usually does the trick, in conjunction with my other nighttime medic...

 I've been on the move for weeks now, but I finally managed to carve out a day for some rest.  It doesn't happen often in my life, but occasionally a day of rest will manifest itself.  I'm grateful when it does happen.  Michael is off work today and for once, we don't have any appointments to attend to.  Normally, we would have my therapy appointment this afternoon, but Lori is out of the country for the next 5 weeks, so I am kind of on my own for getting through any mental hangups that may arise.  I think Michael is enjoying not taking me to town today.  I know it gets overwhelming for him when he literally never gets a day to rest.  No human body can tolerate that for very long.  Instead, we are spending the day together and catching up on some chores around the house. I slept 9 hours last night and the night before, but my body is still screaming at me.  It frustrates me when I get a lot of hours of sleep, but I still feel fatigued....

After last week's change of plans, Lori and I finally found the time to have my first EMDR reprocessing session.  We had to switch to a virtual session last time and I didn't want to do any reprocessing from home, just in case it flipped me out.  Lori didn't want to have a virtual session for EMDR, either, so there was no disagreement there.  Of course, there is never disagreement between Lori and me.  I trust her implicitly and for good reason. My reprocessing appointment was on Monday, and today is Wednesday.  When you have a reprocessing session, it "opens you up" and your brain continues to reprocess the trauma for the next 48 hours.  I have known this for quite some time as Lori has educated me about the process of EMDR, at least as much as she can without doing the actual therapy.  Most of it is easier to understand when you are going through it rather than when you are just learning about it.  Lori knows that I get anxiety quite easily, so ...