It’s her,
I know that voice.

Just a month prior, my therapist said, that was an oversized reaction. I think you have some underlying trauma. I always have these knee-jerk reactions whenever someone says that something might be wrong. It throws my protective bubble into a frenzy.

No I don’t.

On a vacation trip, my step-kid pushed my kid while they in the inflatable pool. I could see it again. It was a full out tackle. Bones crushed, blood spraying everywhere.

But it wasn’t. It was a light nudge.

He cried.

I flipped out into a rampage, and I ran off down the street. I’m leaning on the tennis court fence, curled up on the group. My vision started to narrow in. I cupped my head in a protective mode, and rage emerged throughout my body.

It feels like a war zone. My body feels like it’s on fire. It ripples through my being. I feel torn apart. My hands are shaking, full of blood, ready to fight. All that energy is too much. I’m not crying. I hold it in, because that’s the only way I know how.

You should try EMDR.

I googled it. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It’s a therapy method that involves moving your eyes back and forth while you process traumatic memories.

It sounds like BS.
These people got issues.
You don’t.

Give it a try. You can do this.

Fine. I’ll try it. My therapist really gives me the hard nudge. It took two weeks in session for him to get me going.

I looked her up based on the referral. Her website makes me want to run away. Anxiety. Depression. Guilt and shame. Grief.

I don’t have any of these things.
I’m fine.
This is for broken people.

There’s always that voice that says I’m fine.

Most of the time, I listen to it. This time, I trust my therapist. He says so, let’s do so. When I started working with him, I told him that I wanted to see this through. Push me hard. Make me do it. You have my permission.

I scheduled a call with the EMDR therapist. We get on the phone. I said that I don’t have any memories of trauma. I do hear a noise in my head.

That’s crazy.
Only crazy people hear noises.
Don’t do this.
They’ll find out.

She said that she usually works with people who have a specific memory. She’s never done it with a sound, but we can always try it.

I arrive at her office.

She’s very stiff, cold, robotic. I feel comfortable with that. She feels familiar.

I sit down and she describes what’s gonna go down.

I’m going to wave my finger side to side like this. Keep your focus on my finger. Don’t move your head.

Before we get into the work, I want to create a safe container for you. Imagine a place that makes you feel safe, happy.

Okay, I go to the beach. It’s my happy space. I’m in the ocean, the water moves me back and forth. She waves her fingers back and forth, and I imagine myself in this ocean. With each round of finger waving, I imagine the details of the happy place. The feelings get more intense, almost euphoric.

This feels like that hippy stuff.
Let’s get out of here.

I’m in a good place now. It feels good. I’m very suspectable to hypnosis. This later would help me in my journey, and it’s just blind faith in whatever I’m doing.

She gets me ready to start the work.

I focus on the sound. It’s muffled, hard to make out what it is. It’s some booming sounds, maybe bombs? I hear a rattle popping. These sounds have always been with me, I just ignore them. Sometimes they get really loud, like when I was triggered.

But I’m used to them.

Let’s go with that. Follow my finger and stay focused on that sound.

The sounds get louder. It’s definitely bombs, the distinct booming sounds. Mortars. What the hell is a mortar anyway. Am I imagining something from a movie. Is this real?

It rumbles me, but it’s in the distance. It’s gunfire. It’s close.

I’m scared.

I curl up a bit more. My body gets tense. It’s not a surprise like hearing something scary for the first time. It’s a regular feeling, normal. I’m always with this. It’s scary, but familiar, a part of my life.

Stay with it. You’re okay. Follow my finger.

I hear screaming voices. It’s a group. I don’t know how many people. The bombing sounds is getting louder. The gunfire continues. People are scared. They’re screaming frantically.

It’s an awful sound. So chaotic, out of control. I don’t know where to face, or direct my attention.

Again, follow my finger.

Tears start to come out. I don’t know why. I’m crying uncontrollably. I don’t cry. It’s been a point of pride for me.

I’m really scared and overwhelmed. This is a lot. I hear a voice. It’s very familiar. I know her. I know that voice. It’s muffled.

But why do I know? Who is it?

Okay, keep going. Follow my finger.

More tears start rolling down my face. Up till this point in my life, I don’t cry. I’m a stoic person. Men don’t cry. Man up. Be strong.

It’s my mom. This is my mom’s voice. I’m on the boat that they got on to escape Vietnam after the war. I know this story, but they never told me these details.

She’s screaming. Her screams are muffled.

They’re muffled because I was her unborn child.

She clenching her self, protecting her stomach. She’s afraid. She’s afraid she’s gonna die. She’s crying.

And that’s when it hits me.

This euphoric feeling flooded my being.

My cry breaks open. The small crack that sat on my chest tore open. The scars of this wound bleeds again. It’s been hiding for so long. I’ve been covering it, hiding it from the worldl

In her moment of dispair, as she’s passing on hormonal code to me that the world isn’t safe, that I should be prepared for war, she also floods me with the infinite love of a mother.

She hasn’t met me yet.

And her love for me in that moment is greater than any love you can experience in life. I felt a connected love from her through the umbilical cord and into me, that I was more important to her than anything in this world. That in her last moments on this boat, she is expending all of her to keep me alive.

I felt a mother’s love for her unborn child.

Later on in this journey,
it’s the paradox of feeling this deep, infinite love,
and being born into a world here I could not receive the love I needed to attach that left a gaping wound.
The paradox that is me,
lives in the middle of the vast expansiveness of infinite love
and complete abandonment.

We go through a series of eye movements, each to successively turn down the volume of the bombs, the gunfire, and the screaming. I didn’t realize that I lived with this noise in my head, it was so loud it drowned out most of life.

Then suddenly, someone turned it down, from volume 11 to 2.

The gunfire is still here.

The bombs are still exploding.

I still hear her voice.

But it’s in the distance.

It’s quiet.

Now all I hear is nothing.

Until something else emerges…

Resources to consider

Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score, Chapter 15 is an excellent resource to learn more about this method.

The EMDR Institute has resources for formal training, and information for lay people.

I haven’t done Brainspotting but heard it’s another great method that’s similar different.

In my lived experience opinion and the data point of one person, my successes in this modality were attributed to doing prior work. I knew my body, I was aware of myself, and I was ready to do the work. At points in my past, I was too disassociated to do this work. My protectors would jump in and shut things down.

It also helped that I did some work with Internal Family Systems, or parts work. In my writing above, the right indented voice is Dan. He’s my protector. His job is shut down all this so I don’t have to deal with it. More on Dan in future letters.

Most importantly, please be patient with yourself. Go slowly. Go gently. It keeps you from shutting down. Know that point where you shut things down, or run away, or whatever you do to keep from feeling the feels.

Be thankful that this part keeps you safe. It has a purpose, and it also gets in the way.

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