The Major Miracle
Last week, in a blog called “Abandonment Issues + Polyamory = Disaster”, I ended with saying that my primary relationship was in need of a major miracle if it were going to be saved. One day, out of total desperation, I decided I needed to see a therapist again. I was sick of being miserable and unstable, and was determined to do something about it. At around the same time all this was going on in my relationship, a local therapist I’d known about but never met personally kept coming onto my radar. When things like this happen, I don’t chalk them up to coincidence. I concluded that I needed to see her. I didn’t even know exactly what she did or why I needed to see her. I just followed my intuition and made an appointment with her.
I soon found out why. This woman, Diane Spindler, a former EMDR therapist, developed a treatment called Gentle Reprocessing out of her search for something more. I myself had tried EMDR about what I call the “Daddy wound” in the past, and I cannot honestly say it made one bit of difference in my life. (Feel free to Google EMDR if you are curious, although I will only say here for the sake of brevity that it is a trauma treatment.) But “Gentle”, as Diane calls it for short, did.
Gentle is not just for people who’ve had the kind of trauma that most people consider “trauma”. Many, many experiences that people have can literally change their brains (in a bad way) and cause them to avoid certain thoughts or behaviors. The problem is, the feelings associated with the trauma don’t go away. They are still there. And the forbidden memories are too. Perhaps you had a bad breakup or divorce in your past. Or a boss that wreaked havoc with your psyche. Or even a bad car accident. All of these things could be examples of the kind of trauma I’m talking about. Of course, things like traumatic separation from a parent, being the victim or abuse, or being in active combat are more obvious examples of trauma.
Current research on brains and trauma suggest that normal memory, of the non-traumatic type, is stored in the prefrontal cortex, whereas traumatic memory is stored in the medulla, in the back of the brain, or the part that is sometimes called the “reptile brain”. The problem with memory being stored there is that when something in the person’s life today triggers the traumatic memory, it feels as if the trauma is happening right now, even though it may have been decades ago. This is exactly what it felt like when, for example, I was watching the hockey game with my boyfriend and then Jane called unexpectedly. The abandonment as a child got triggered, and I was soon feeling the feelings of that original abandonment as if it were happening for the first time right there and then.
Through a number of sessions of G.R., I was able to create a huge shift in the way my brain stores and responds to things that remind me of the traumatic separation from my father. How did I know it worked? At first, I didn’t. My partner had stopped seeing both Jane and the other woman he was dating for a while. And then, in a conversation that led to greater understanding between us, he revealed that one of the reasons he was not seeing Jane (had not reconciled with her after that phone call) was because he thought I was telling him not to. I clarified that although I had some fears about it at the time, I in no way meant to tell him not to see her.
They got back in touch, and have been dating ever since. Sometimes seeing each other a lot more often than they ever did in the past. And guess what? I cannot say I am not triggered by it at all. I can say, however, that any of the same thoughts or feelings that come up now are like a whisper as compared to a scream. And they are almost always extremely short-lived.
I was so astounded by the difference Gentle had made in my life, about this and other things, that I took the training to be able to do it myself, with my own clients. It has applications for other poly couples in which one or both has abandonment issues, plus a wide array of other issues that come up in relationships. And although I am relatively new as a Gentle practitioner, I have the advantage of having been through the treatment myself, and can say both my clients and I have been very pleased with the progress they are making already!