My brain is on overload this morning.  Friday I began therapy.  Part of my therapy is the general kind, the other is something called EMDR.  Most people think I’m nuts when I talk about what EMDR involves.  I have decided I am not going to think too much about how it works, and just focus on believing that it’s going to work for me.

Maybe you don’t associate losing your husband as involving trauma or PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), but it does.  It doesn’t matter how sick Kevin was, that we were told it was time for Hospice less than 24 hours before his death, or anything.  It IS a trauma.  Not a car accident, murder, war, but death is traumatic.  For months afterwards, the scene of Kevin laying in the hospital bed, taking those last labored breaths before dying, was embedded in my brain.  It would flash in front of me without warning, and stop me dead in my tracks.  Now, I can control when I want to see the image.  If I want to see it, I can recollect it with full color and detail.  The image is burned into me.

Hyla Molander talks about EMDR in her blog.  She’s another widow, and she had mentioned EMDR after I had a discussion with a psychologist friend about it.  I’m so glad I know other people doing this type of therapy, otherwise, I probably would never have considered it.  It’s a bizarre kind of therapy.

So after my first session, my brain is on overload.  It’s flashing through everything happening in my life, but pieces are already beginning to fit together.  I’m not making full sense of everything, and there is so much emotion tied to all my thoughts, but things are connecting again.  Connecting similar to when I went on anti-depressants, but without the fogginess and lack of emotion.

I go again in about 1.5 weeks, and will continue until the pieces mold more easily, and I find some semi-closure in areas where I feel I have failed.  It’s a long road ahead, a lot of emotion to deal with, and a lot of draining effort.  I think it will be good, I know it will be worthwhile.  I just have to get there.