I told my therapist about this blog and he thought it was a great idea. He was asking me about creative things that I do and I mentioned that I used to draw all of the time. My whole life when I was a kid was all about art and drawing. I took art and drama classes in high school. I took Creative Writing classes in college. Always got A's in these classes. He asked why I didn't do art anymore and I told him about how I had drawn a picture for my now ex-husband, let's call him M. Anyway I drew a picture for M's birthday when we were dating and had it matted. What I drew was not normally what I would have drawn, but it was something that he liked so I worked hard on it for him as a gift. When I gave it to him he was mean about it, he didn't like it and made fun of it. It was the last time I drew anything meaningful other than to doodle. He crushed my spirit by not appreciating it in the least. My therapist told me that more abuse and he asked me if I had tried to draw at all after that. I told him that I did try, but my heart was no longer in it. Years ago after I had gotten divorced I told my mother how I didn't draw anymore or write and she was shocked. I told her that I just wasn't any good and that just blew her mind. Not long after that she sent me a sketch pad and some poems that I had written. I looked at them and starting crying, "" I really did have talent" I cried to her on the phone. She said that she had sent these items to me to remind me of who I was.
My therapist who I will call Dr. H, asked me about my hopes and dreams. He asked me what dreams I have for myself right now. He told me to imagine myself 30 years from now. He wanted me to tell him what I regretted that I hadn't done from the age that I am right now. He said the past is gone so what am I not doing right now that I would regret when I'm in my 70's. That was not an easy question. So it took awhile and I told him about regretting staying in a job where I'm not happy. So we discussed what I would like to be doing right now. So after a few false starts I mentioned something that I had already attempted to do but never got around to it. It is something creative, which was always my passion. We discussed ways in which I could achieve that goal. He also told me that when I was talking to him my eyes lit up when sharing all of my ideas. He said that I'm here and that is my true self. There is hope for me. He gave me an assignment related to what I want to do. I'm not sure that I will be able to do it as it requires me to leave my house which isn't easy these days as I am having to share my car with my daughter right now. But if it's possible I will do as much of it as I can. It is a challenge for me as that is part of what my problem is....great ideas, no motivation to do them. But having a goal or assignment may be the push that I need.
One of the things that Dr. H taught me about PTSD is the fact that those of us who are creative are more susceptible to trauma. When you have PTSD the trauma is stuck on the creative side of our brain and needs to be moved over to the logical side. That is not an easy thing to do. There is actually a therapy for that called EMDR which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing . We have thought about trying it but I am not ready yet and he isn't pushing it. If you have a chance to look it up it is quite interesting and does work in many case and there are many ways to go about it. Here is a link:
http://www.emdr.com/
I also looked at some other blogs today and saw how professional they are. Damn! I'll be lucky if anyone looks at mine.lol But if at least one person reads this and gets something out of it I will be happy. One of the reasons why I started this blog was to hopefully help others to know that they are not alone and that there is help out there. Maybe even help via this blog. We shall see I suppose.
A quick side note, I changed my font to a larger size. If you are reading this and think it was a mistake, please let me know and I can change it back. I just thought it might be easier to read....especially if you are older like me. :) ***
***OK so I realized that I could edit my posts, duh, so I edited my first post in this blog so that the font IS larger and easier to read...:-)
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