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Several of you have asked me to provide an update since my visit last week to ISH and it has been hard because I am still metabolizing the visit. I have now done 3 mini-intensives and they have all been pretty life-changing for me. This last one was as well. I think one of the best things that happened for me and my healing is that I made progress.
I have put my healing on hold for almost a year and a half; trying to keep the family “on lockdown.” What that means is trying to hold my shit together….keep the routines for the kids somewhat the same, keep working, keep everything with my husband status quo, etc.
Minwalla mentioned the three larger categories of trauma when I was there (not just the 13 dimensions) – hyperviligence, intrusiveness, and constriction. I am all too familiar with being hyperviligent, and having intrusive thoughts and triggers all day, but I havent been aware of how “constricted” I am. In fact, Minwalla thought that he could really see how constricted I was just after the first hour….as we talked about it that word really resonated quite a bit once for me as well….
So, some of you have asked what I really have gotten from my sessions and I must say, right now, the focus is NOT on my husband. It’s on me – and my healing. I was asked to believe in a process for healing – (clearly I am not that open to working on painful stuff) and as a Type A, left brain, organizer it has really been hard to open up and heal.
I did a lot of somatic work this past visit, which was really hard.
I drew a picture of my shattered heart, which was an incredibly powerful experience and actually facilitated the writing of my opening for my book….I am in a different place than I was 2 weeks ago; for me this has facilitated small movement and change.
I plan to be at the partner’s intensive in March (cant make December) and look forward to more work on myself and meeting some other sisters there.
For me it is a way to deal with the intrusive feelings and triggers – I get “numb” to avoid feelings. I am detached; when my husband asks me whats wrong, I say “nothing” although it is clear I am being triggered or sad or pissed. I also kind of give up a lot – I just rather not express how I feel because I know I wont get the response I want so badly..so I disconnect…
that type of stuff….Barbra, Thank you so much for sharing. Do you think the fact that so many people around you were involved, that contributed to your constriction? I know that was big factor for me.
I am glad you shared Barbra. I am also glad that you feel better. You are hurt and you went out there and found a way to help yourself. I love that. Hugs and all that mushy shit to you dear sister 🙂
Seriously, I am so proud of you and for you. You are doing everything in your power to help yourself but I must say that I think you are just fine and you are going to be just fine. You just have to accept ( type A personality) that you don’t call the shots for him. And, for you, that is really hard 🙂
“For me it is a way to deal with the intrusive feelings and triggers – I get “numb” to avoid feelings. I am detached; when my husband asks me whats wrong, I say “nothing” although it is clear I am being triggered or sad or pissed. I also kind of give up a lot – I just rather not express how I feel because I know I wont get the response I want so badly..so I disconnect…
that type of stuff….”PLEASE do not take this the wrong way, but you just described my husband. This is what he does and he admits he used the porn to numb. When I was at ISH and Dr. Minwalla was going through the power point, I recognized my self in many of the slides about trauma and the trauma responses and c-ptsd, but I also very clearly saw my husband as well, and Minwalla said that the addict also suffers these traumas and responses. It makes sense when you go back to the FOO shit that got the ball rolling in the first place. It is all responses to trauma. I’m just thinking out loud. No real point to this.
It was through this site that I found out about ISH and Dr. Minwalla, THANK YOU SISTERS! Bless this man for seeing the needs of partners and not the addicts. I copied lots of info from the ISH site and sent it to my therapist, who is also my husband’s therapist. We had a 2 hour session last week, it was hell but made some progress. I read parts of a book I found about the trauma that partners experience, I could see that both of them were surprised and uninformed. Thanks for sharing Barbra, Sisters please keep on sharing!
Re: the quote Trish pulled out. What are you supposed to do if you are triggered and you know that saying something to them is just going to make things worse and you are in the middle of a busy life with kids and house and SAH to deal with?
I think sometimes there aren’t alot of options other than disengaging and putting things away until you are in a place where you are safe to deal with it. So I guess- self-awareness and dealing with it later with a therapist or support group?
I think constriction is hard to avoid if you are living with an SA. It’s really hard to turn emotions on and off.
Wren, glad you are feeling the love! It’s so nice to find that people actually do get what we are experiencing, such a relief.
Teri – I agree having folks around (mainly my husband and kids) really has contributed to my constriction. The thing that is going to be challenging still is to work on myself and my healing in the same environment.
I did leave ISH with some hope about my ability to do that, and the possibility that my relationship can survive if my husband is willing to step up with his own growth. I haven’t left ISH that way before, so we shall see.
My husband is going to go and meet with Dr. Minwalla and one of the other therapists in November. He is going to try a “clinical treatment program” not just a “spiritual program (SA)” which is what it has been for the past year. They just dont have the right folks out here, and he truly believes he is doing everything he should.
Trish, I don’t disagree. Many SA’s have had trauma in their lives as well…I dissociate quite a bit by “thinking” and “doing” and my husband does the same thing by “collapsing” and doing nothing. Which is different from his past behaviors of dissociating by screwing the neighborhood…
So the other thing I will share from my visit is that I am going to stop expressing my feelings with my husband for the next few months, until he really is in clinical treatment and shows some growth. I already know that he goes into his shame mode, that he cant hear the real message, and just sit with my pain, so I am stopping expecting a different reaction. It may sound like I am continuing to be constricted, but I am actually not. Because I will journal, I will meditate, draw, etc (all things I have resisted until now).
Like I said, it was really a good experience. I was so disappointed that the October intensive was cancelled but I am so glad I went and still did something. And, having the opportunity to meet Jo and Janeybeth was so incredible….laughing, sharing, and having fun with folks that “get it”…..
Thanks for posting this, Barbra. Really helpful to me personally to read your evolving thoughts and feelings about the experience. I’m relating to a lot of it. I have stopped expressing feelings with my h since D-day #2, 3 months ago, while he claims to be working on himself. It’s hard for me to NOT turn to him to talk about how I feel- he was a good listener and problem-solver- As long as the problem wasn’t about him. :/ – and he was my main go-to guy for years- and I generally respected his opinon (even when he was wrong, he was reasonable). It feels very foreign to turn away from him when I have feelings about things, experiences, want advice, etc.
I’m glad you are finding outlets for your emotional expression. Let us know how that continues over time.
And it was WONDERFUL to spend time with you and Janeybeth. So many fun, funny, poignant memories and INSTANT LOVE CONNECTION.Your reports are very valuable to me Barbra.
I have been working on that constriction thing every since you mentioned it, and thanks to Karen for asking for clarification.I really identified with this pattern in my life, and have recently taken some new paths instead of doing what is an internal habit of closing up and “numbing”. I have realized that because of my own nature and my own circumstances, I have to intentionally challenge this. I am now seeing how the trauma ambushes feed this pattern and that my pushing through by grabbing those feelings and changing them with self-soothing or outward actions is perhaps the final frontier for me. I’ve done with about five times this week and it’s giving me more confidence and opening up more options.
I’m having Minwalla sessions vicariously it seems! But I will take the help anyway it comes. Thanks.
D.xoDiane,
So glad something I said resonated with you! If you want to discuss this more feel free to reach out!Xoxox
Barbra, I am so glad you have had healing experiences with Dr. M. and team. I and my SA are involved with ISH on a somewhat continuous basis. And I am so grateful for him and his team. I am quite right brained, but with a good bit of left brain to balance it.
It took months for me to share with my SA the artwork I did at the partner intensive last February, I was so frightened that my whole world would explode if he saw what I saw. But when I did, my SA saw for the first time the visual expression of my pain, what I saw every day that he tried to explain away. I have locally been working with someone who does EMDR, and it’s slow, but I understand how healing can happen on so many levels, not just intellectual. I am an artist, and am still skeptical of “holistic” methods. But I am becoming a believer. I have a photo project going, the first I shared was called “white noise” and the second I am working on now with working title of “my year of living dangerously”, Maybe it should be “Don’t Fuck With Me.”
Love y’all. love to hear about experiences with ISH
Beenthere-thanks for your post. I am going to wait a bit before sharing my artwork with my husband too…right now I want to just process what I did first.
I would love to see your first photo project-have you shared it here?
I too have been doing some tremendous work with ISH – I am not up to discussing all of it right now but it has been life changing – Omar has re-established my faith in men, Trish my faith in humanity, and LA my faith in good haircuts – …
I know Sweetheart….BUT if you can remember that in the beginning you needed to remind yourself to change your underwear and now you need to remind yourself to get a good haircut….well…you can see the progress right? Devastatingly lovely indeed. 😉
and then there was the entire throwing him naked out of speeding car while he was begging and screaming……surely you can see how far you have come. 😉
Oh I did say that too, well my healing has come a long way – his is ongoing, I am able to let him go as I embrace me, to see the depth of his pain and behavior, much of which I did not know until disclosure last week:( – and to move forward in my life, with currently immense sadness but also hope. I feel emancipated and that is huge, mostly from ambivalence and the loss of my marriage that never was. I have been able to say that to him and stand in it. To say it with compassion and firmness. I am grateful that we are already living separately. We are communicating, him with a lot of emotion and despair, me with a lot of integrity and sadness. As it stands I have told him we are no longer a couple, we will be a family as long as he is an ‘honest’ recovery, but a family that lives separately, we will visit dissolution probably later in the month (my plan) as legal separation doesn’t give enough protection – being liberated from worrying whether he will or he won’t he is or he isn’t has been the biggest gift I have given myself. I won’t likely go into the things I discovered in disclosure, enough for you to know it was much more than I thought, not news.
I will say that the disclosures. both trauma and acting out history, ware handled gently and with accountability (he did a poly and passed). I was carefully prepared and incredibly well-supported. I would not have had this clarity without it – it has been essential for me in putting back together the fractures pieces of my life and establishing some reality around our story together. It wasn’t all bad but it is going to be damn good going forward – I might take a bit of a break posting but I always check in with everyone’s news – getting to disclosure required lots of internal strength and self-care, so I have been quiet, now I want to just be me:-) love you all xo
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