Pandora's Aquarium: I hate what it does to me - Pandora's Aquarium

I wonder if it would be bad in the healing process if I tried to not think about it all, if I try very hard to push it all away once it begins to come up. I have went over and over this, but my life is so different now. What happened was truly a lifetime ago, to a different person than I am now, so why can't I just let it go? I know that what happened still affects me a great deal, and I accept that, and that is what I want to change. It is why I am seeking therapy. I want to be the best person that I can be, but do not know how to do that with all the crap hanging over my head. I find myself wondering if I must think of all the shit, if I must revisit the past in order for me to heal from it? I do it in therapy, and that is fine, that is a place to revisit it, to try deal with it, but I want to be able to let it go, leave it there once I walk out that door.

I have not been able to do that, for a few days after therapy it is on my mind, and I can't seem to let it go. If I am busy, I can go without thinking of it, but once it is quiet, once things are calm, the second my head hits that pillow at night, my mind is there, on the past, on my life then. I hate where it takes me, what it does to me, and I don't want to feel that. There is no reason to, not now, not in the life that I have now. I am not sure if I can help it though, if I can control my thoughts enough to refuse to think about it all, or if I should. Is this the time to deal with it because I have not allowed myself to do so in the past, maybe, but I feel like I have been dealing with it for a long time now, and I am tired of it.

I find myself wondering why I do it, why I find myself thinking about the bad stuff when now my life is good. My t has explained to me what trauma can do, and I understand it. I wonder if it will always be this way though, I wonder if once something triggers my thoughts to go there, if I will always feel the same way. Once I am triggered I cannot keep my mind from being on what life was for me during that time, it is like I cannot stop myself from looking at the big picture of it all. I guess I can control my thoughts to an extent, I can keep myself from thinking of actual incidents of abuse most of the time or stop myself once those memories start.

Sometimes, though, it is not so easy. Sometimes, once my mind is on the past it will trigger memories of actual incidents, and that is when things become almost too intense for me. Even though those memories are so faded, blurry, and fragmented, the feelings are not, the feelings that come up are overwhelming. It is when my mind goes there when I feel the most self-disgust, when I feel as though I am completely worthless, and I do not deserve the life I have now. The thing is, I shut it down, once I start seeing that picture in my head, I shut it down quick because of what it does. I won't allow it all to come up because of what it does to me, but once I get that sense I cannot control the feelings that come up afterwords. Then in my head, I become a very self-destructive person.

It isn't good, because though I can calm myself down, I carry those feelings with me always. It may not be obvious to me, but if I really think about it, I know that those feelings are there because I can feel them again easily, just by thinking about the crap. I have the intellectual side of me that believes it is not true, that understands why I feel that way when it comes to the past, the side of me that analyzes it, and tries to be compassionate to myself, but somewhere deep in me there is that part that truly believes the bad stuff, and that cannot let it go. So, this is what it does, thinking about he past, it turns a good life upside down, it can overshadow it, and I hate it. Not to say, that it is constant because it is not, but it is still there affecting me. So the question is, if I push the past away, will it affect me less?