Five Minute Friday: Slow

Hey friends! It's been a while since I joined in with the folks at Five Minute Friday. If you're just joining me, know that this is a little longer than the average FMF post and that's because I don't set a timer. Yes, I know, I know. That's supposed to be the point, but I just can't do it that way. So I kinda do it my way. If you're a fast to moderately fast reader though, this should take you five minutes or so to read (so there's your five minutes). If you'd like to join up with this week's posts on the prompt word SLOW, then hop over to this week's prompt at Kate's blog and click on the linkup at the bottom of the page. Without further ado...

SLOW

It's been almost two months since the last time I posted here and I wish I could say that it's because life has been moving really fast or that I've just been so busy that I didn't have time to write, but I can't say that. Life has been, as it happens, pretty slow. The very beginning of the year, from just after New Year's to about mid-March, tends to be a wonderfully slow time of year that follows on the heels of the whirlwind of activity that comprises daily life and the many family and faith celebrations from September to December.

And friends, let me tell you, I need slow.

I have always been a fan of this time of respite and slowed down activity, but this year, it took on a new meaning for me. I didn't really realise it until this past Thursday when I was sitting in Dr. D's office and we were wrapping up our session. It had been a pretty intense session of EMDR and talking and my emotions were pretty close to the surface. I don't recall the exact thread of conversation, but somewhere in the midst of our normal wrap up talk, he commented that he thought I was on the right track with what we were working on. I agreed with him and replied that although I knew it was, it was still hard. He said "Oh yes, I know it is. I think though, part of the reason it's hard is because it feels like your progress is coming so slowly right now, but once we get through processing a lot of these memories, you'll notice that your progress speeds up and goes much faster."

You see, through the past four years I've been wishing for fast. I've been craving for time and progress and everything to just speed up and get me through this pain I feel. It hurts a lot when you're going through severe suicidal depression and PTSD. You feel like it's a nightmare that will never end and because it's so painful and so exhausting, you yearn for the passage of time (and all the normal thing that come along with it, like therapy sessions and tears and the like) to speed up so you just don't have to feel it anymore. Slow is the last thing you want and yet, time moves along like a turtle in a swimming pool of molasses.

What struck me about what Dr. D said on Thursday is that I knew the moment he said it that it was true and that I had already experienced that. Back in November, we took a pretty significant break from doing EMDR (a traumatic memory processing technique) because of the fact that I had experienced a very intense trigger around that time that needed to be worked through. Trying to work through traumatic memories on top of dealing with intense triggers can be far too much all at once, so we stopped the EMDR and to focus on helping me cope with the intense trigger. What I noticed during this break of about 2 to 2.5 months was that my progress did, in fact, speed up. I had more energy, more ability to handle day to day stresses, lessened irritability, and my sleep wasn't nearly as fraught with nightmares as it had been.

At some point in January, once the holidays had passed and things were calmer, we started doing EMDR again. Some of the things I'd seen improve stayed, while others slowed, and still others came to a halt altogether. I found myself wishing that it would speed up again and stop with all the slow movement. I got very frustrated, but kept pressing on despite it. The more frustrated I got though, the slower it seemed to go because I was avoiding some of the things I needed to do for myself to keep moving forward. I wasn't really facing the demons of my traumas and looking them full in the face. I was only really doing the bare minimum because I wanted to get to the part where things speed up again.

When Dr. D mentioned the bit about "processing a lot of these memories" I realised that I not only had experienced this, but that the slowing down that was happening was a natural part of the process. I also realised that until the last couple of weeks, I hadn't been fully embracing that slowness or the process. I can't say what changed and made it so that I began to embrace it again, but in that moment last Thursday, I realised something very fundamental about my healing journey: I need slow.

I need these times of slowness and intense therapy where I look at these things under a microscope and plunge deep into these memories. I need these times when I am pushing forward through molasses and sobbing uncontrollably as I face the traumas of my past anew. I need the slowness of these times to allow me to really find and untangle the threads which are binding my mind in a feedback loop of reliving these memories because that is painstaking, complicated work that requires patience, determination, a great deal of help from others, and a very slow perseverance. I need the slowness of only being able to do the basics of self care and resting a lot so that I don't get overloaded. I need to feel the intensity of the emotions that surface so I can learn how to cope with them and better manage them. I need slow.

So things are slow right now. Things are really intense too. The stuff my brain has been dredging up the last couple of weeks has been so intense that I've felt weak physically and needed a boost of caffeine and food immediately afterward just to be able to drive safely. It's also needed a lot of unpacking after processing, so my sessions with Dr. D have run longer and I've been seeing Pendragon at least twice a week and almost immediately after I see Dr. D each week. You'd think that it would be therapy overload and sometimes it's pretty intense too, but it's keeping me on a more even keel than I think I would be if I didn't have that extra help. The great thing about having these two professionals helping me is that they both have different perspectives and help me find different threads of connection and understanding that I might not be able to find without them. Gray helps too. We often do a little debrief when I come home and very often, things come up that later get addressed with EMDR or in talking with Pendragon or Dr. D.

With all that intensity and slowness, I know I will be glad for a time when we break from things so that progress speeds and breathing is easier, but knowing that this slowness is part of the process and that it is moving me forward is helpful. As much as this slowness is hard, it is forcing me to look at these traumatic memories full on and really feel the impact of them in a way that allows me to understand them and move past them instead of repressing them or hiding from them.

It's very hard work and it's very painful and there are days, like yesterday, when the pain is so fierce that I want everything to end -- but I know that slow doesn't have to mean running away and death by suicide. I know that all this pain and agony as I face this stuff in the slow is shaping me into a better person who is stronger, braver, and better equipped to do the work that He has planned for me as a wife, mother, mental health/suicide prevention advocate, and child of God.

The mountain is steep and the climb arduous, breath-stealing, excruciatingly painful, and interminably slow, but I know the vista that awaits me at the top will be worth it all the more for the journey.

Monday Joys -- July 11, 2016

I'm a couple of days late in getting to my Monday Joys post, but when you see my list, I think you'll understand!

1. Appointment with Pendragon -- always a good thing, but a much needed thing this past week as things had been very difficult the week before. Ended on a good note as we talked about the weekend to come.

2. Voxing with my buddy Tara and hearing all about her awesome week last week.

3. The Five Minute Friday Twitter party on Thursday night -- couldn't do much chatting as I was exhausted from my day and still had stuff to do, but it's always good to see everyone even if all I do is pop in and say hi.

4. Finally had a doctor's appointment w/my regular doctor after about 14-16 months of not seeing him. I was down in my weight by 8 pounds, which he seemed pleased with and I was genuinely glad to report that I've been making some strides in improving my mental health. He ordered labs for cholesterol and I got a phone call on Monday afternoon that my cholesterol numbers were good.

5. Meeting with Fr. B for spiritual direction and prayer. He gave me a very special gift that he picked up in Rome for me. It was a third class relic of Pope St. John Paul II! I loved him even before I became Catholic and have felt a special affection and kinship with him for a long time, but that has only increased since he's been canonized as a saint. Fr. B blessed me with the relic and then gave it to me. I cried tears of joy which only increased when he told me that not only had he brought that back, but that he'd prayed for me at Pope St. John Paul II's tomb while he was in Rome. What a blessing!

6. Appointment with Dr. D for EMDR. It was a very intense appointment as we tackled one of the harder parts of my trauma memory, but I think it was a fruitful appointment. He said that he was very optimistic about my progress and about my future progress.

7. Left Friday morning for Atlanta, Georgia for a "retreat." I put that last word in quotes because although we call it a retreat, it's not a very spiritual kind of thing. It's actually a huge meetup of a group of my friends that I met online some ten years ago. We're a community of women (well mostly women, but we do have a couple of men in the group too) who all practice natural family planning (aka NFP). While a large percentage of us are Catholic, there are a number of different faiths represented from non-Catholic Christian to LDS to Orthodox Jewish as well as some women who do not profess any kind of faith at all. We live all across the USA for the most part, although we also have a number of ladies who live in Canada, and a few more who are in other countries around the world. Every two years, we have a "retreat" where we meet up in a particular city for a weekend of hanging out, talking, laughing, and getting to know one another face to face. The only really spiritual thing we usually do is that we go to the Saturday night vigil Mass together (mostly us Catholics), but even that is a fun experience. I went to my first such retreat two years ago in Kansas City, Missouri and had such a blast that I told Gray I was putting him on notice that in two years, I'd be going to wherever the next one was and to just plan on being without me that weekend. This year, I told him that I'd be going to the one in 2018 even before I left for Atlanta!

It was an amazing weekend! I met several ladies I'd wanted to meet for a long time, reconnected with ladies I met last time, and enjoyed seeing a few of them that I've gotten to know fairly well over the years (who live in my home state). I also felt incredibly loved all weekend long and so supported. That support was very important when I had a flashback on Sunday afternoon at a restaurant. I was so embarrassed by it, but the ladies were so loving, understanding, and supportive that it helped me manage that difficulty much easier than I would have if I'd been alone.

8. Ended my weekend on Monday morning when I took a quick trip to the Atlanta IKEA store after leaving the hotel. I'd never been to an IKEA before, so it was a lot of fun to walk around and see what it was all about. I also grabbed a quick bite in their restaurant before getting on the road to come home. I also bought a few things and made plans to return another day when I have more time to look and perhaps buy something bigger (like furniture) that we need.

9. Seeing my kids again after such a long weekend and being enveloped in their hugs and declarations of how much they missed me and love me.

10. The Barnyard Pimp sandwich from The Pig and The Pint in College Park, GA <--- YUM. SO much YUM! The remainder of the retreatants and I went out to dinner there on Sunday night and 4 of the 7 of us ordered that sandwich. It was marinated fried chicken, sharp cheddar cheese, bacon, avocado, and an apple butter barbecue sauce on an onion roll. As if all that weren't enough, I had their ridiculously delicious loaded mashed potatoes for a side and a Crispin blackberry pear hard cider to drink. Y'all. Just Y'ALL. It was all SO good! We decided that it was our favourite meal of the weekend.

11. Speaking of meals, Friday night's meal at the retreat was super fun too. We kinda all went different ways for dinner that night and I went with a group of seven other ladies (8 of us total) to a local Mexican place down the road from the hotel. We ordered two pitchers of margaritas (trying to be economical since we all wanted one) and although we didn't need the alcohol to turn on our laughter, it certainly increased the giggles. I only had a very small drink since I was driving and it's good that I limited myself because any more than that very small drink and I'd have been over the legal limit for sure. Those margaritas were seriously strong. One of the ladies commented, "They weren't playing around. I think they must have put a gallon of tequila in those two pitchers!" The food was very good and we all enjoyed it. We enjoyed lots of conversation -- which was punctuated with raucous gales of laughter -- along with the food. As we sat waiting for our bills at the end of the meal, we looked up and suddenly saw the staff approaching with a pair of plates and two sombreros. One of the men was carrying a pair of cymbals too. When they reached our table, they put a sombrero on one of the ladies and then put one on me! I was totally surprised! Then they put a plate of sopapilla drizzled with chocolate syrup and covered with whipped cream in front of me and my friend with the other sombrero. We looked at each other in astonishment. "Did you do this?" "No! Did you?" "No!" The entire table shook with laughter as the eight of us tried to figure out who had done this. While all of this was going on, the staff was singing, "Happy Birthday" to us while the man played his cymbals and we laughed uproariously. No one could figure out who had set this up. See, my birthday is in March and my friend's is in February, so neither of us was anywhere near celebrating our birthdays! I'm giggling just thinking about it. We had so much fun that KJ and I have declared that July 8th is, forevermore, our shared NFP birthday. On Saturday morning, one of the ladies who had heard the story of our "birthday" celebration gave both of us a "birthday" card with the inscription, "Happy NFP Birthday!" It was absolutely perfect.

With a bit of luck, next week's edition will be posted on Monday instead of Wednesday. I thought about it on Monday night, but was so tired that I decided it was probably a good idea for me to try and sleep. Then I took one more day to rest up a bit before attempting to write. I had such a great weekend that I needed a day and a half to recover!

Until next week!