Keep Pain in the Past. Dr. Chris Cortman
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Название: Keep Pain in the Past
Автор: Dr. Chris Cortman
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Эзотерика
isbn: 9781633538115
isbn:
Dennis reluctantly began to share his stories of the sexual abuse, even though he felt emasculated by the tears and helplessness he experienced as he related the details of each episode. Dennis explained to me that he had never told anyone his story. After prompting him with the question of what had prevented him from doing so, he went on to tell me about the story of his brother. Dennis explained that one day, he and his little brother were in the back of one of the priest’s cars driving to the church. There were two priests, one in the front seat with Dennis and one sitting with his brother in the back. Suddenly, his six-year-old brother blurted out, “Father Patrick is touching me!” The priest in the passenger seat turned his body all the way around and got in Dennis’s brother face and yelled, “You will never speak of this again to anyone!” Dennis told me that he was in shock and speechless as both boys remained silent for the rest of the ride, gripped with fear. Three days later, in a terrible accident, Dennis’ brother drowned in a pond near his house. Dennis believed that God himself had punished his brother for speaking against the priest, and that Dennis, in turn, was never to speak about what happened to him. He never did, until, of course, he and I began psychotherapy.
On approximately our sixth session, Dennis claimed, “Doc, this is just not working. It’s getting worse. Now I am even dreaming about the priest. How is this supposed to help me if it’s now infiltrating my dreams?”
I had a strong hunch that because he was relating his stories one by one, (this is the only way to successfully treat traumatic memories, one at a time,) he had stumbled upon another memory that was now manifesting itself in his dreams.
“Tell me about your dream.”
“I don’t know, I feel like he’s coming into a room and whispering my name: Dennis, Dennis, where are you?”
Since it was already apparent to me that this was a memory couched in a dream, my job was simple: encourage him to complete the memory that was now surfacing.
“Where is this dream taking place?”
“Oh, s**t! I know where this is! We are away at a church weekend retreat. It’s late at night, and all of us kids are asleep in a big room. Father Pat is creeping into the room trying to locate my bunk. I remember now—this is where it all started.”
Dennis expressed his anguish, first in tears and then in some words of rage directed at the priest. I asked him to share everything he could remember about the incident until he had completely depleted his memory of these experiences.
Dennis never had this dream again. He didn’t need to. He had processed the dream and the accompanying feelings, and he chose to release the ugliness of the rape in a letter directed to the priest (more on this technique in later chapters).
Dennis was in therapy with me for less than three months before he told me that for the first time in his life, he believed he was finally finished with the priest. (There were only three or four memories of being molested by him.) In fact, he claimed that the only time he ever thought about the priest abuse now was in my office, when I asked him about it. He sent me a Christmas postcard featuring strong words of affirmation for our work together on the back and a picture of himself in drag on the front.
It took Dennis time to remember in the right way, but time does not heal emotional wounds on its own. It merely passes. An entire half century had passed since he was molested by the priest. During that period, unfortunately, Dennis had only stewed silently because of the molestation. It is almost impossible for a child to separate from having experienced something ugly without the child feeling ugly herself or himself.
Dennis became the ugliness of the molestation. He lived nearly his entire life in shame and self-contempt. Only by having the opportunity to remember and process each of the memories could he finally reach a place of self-forgiveness and release the traumas.
The Myth That “Time Heals All Wounds”
The myth that time heals all wounds is pervasive in our society. In fact, it is even perpetuated by the mental health profession. How many psychotherapists are guilty of promising their clients that this (whatever it is) will get better over time? To those who believe that myth, I can introduce you to Vietnam veterans who are worse today than when they came home from combat in 1968. Similarly, I’ve met survivors of incest, rape, and family tragedies who have become more embittered over the years. Healing may occur over time, not because time passes, but because time affords you the opportunity to let go and make peace with the trauma.
It Is Letting Go, Not Time, That is the Ultimate Healer
The successful treatment of trauma requires the client to directly face the unresolved drama. This is known as exposure: one must remember the trauma in its entirety and deal with the accompanying feelings. But while exposure to painful material is necessary, it is not curative. The cure occurs because the client not only faces what happened (finally), but then feels, expresses, and most importantly, releases the painful emotions. In other words, exposure alone is the equivalent of only remembering the trauma and never processing it nor putting it away. It is the release of pain and fear that is ultimately curative.
Prolonged exposure is a technique that forces you to continue to re-experience the trauma. Ideally, you would habituate to the experience, meaning that it then no longer evokes that same magnitude of hurt or fear. In my experience, it is completely unnecessary to make anyone repeat the experience of trauma. To the contrary, one complete telling of the trauma, inclusive of the feelings (felt, expressed, and released), is sufficient to help you to make peace with your unresolved issue.
Remembering, of course, is only the first step of healing from your pain in the past. Trying to skip this step is as ill-advised as trying to skip first base on the way to second.
Linda and the Chicken Wire
Linda came to me many years ago with this simple request: “I just want to feel something. I am completely numb and feel absolutely nothing.” At the time, I was unaware that Linda was blocking out the significant child abuse that had occurred when she was age four. She had been the victim of what is now called “human trafficking”, as she was sold to various men in her community for sexual services while her single mother was working, and had entrusted her care to a great aunt and her boyfriend. As she began to remember some of the horrific incidents and the specific places and faces of the offenders, Linda became understandably upset. She did not want to continue with this process of healing from her terrible memories. In fact, she was in the process of remembering an incident where she was looking through chicken wire. Day after day and even in her dreams, she had a disturbing sense of being small and looking through holes in a chicken wire fence. Whatever that memory contained, Linda was not up for it. It was disturbing enough for her that she decided to take a break from treatment. That break lasted for five years before her depression intensified to the point that she decided she needed to finish what she had begun. During these five years, she remained stuck in a place of remembering looking through that chicken wire. When she returned to treatment, this was precisely the place to which we needed to return. She was finally capable of finishing remembering the story of being locked in a little crate from which she had looked out through chicken wire. By remembering and grieving through that terrible event, she never had another image, dream, or disturbing thought about the chicken wire again.
The healing process lasted for years—Linda had an unusually large number of abusive events to work through—until each one of her memories were remembered. But at the end of her treatment, two days after her final session, Linda called me to say she was experiencing feelings she had never had before and realized that these were feelings СКАЧАТЬ