Reaching For More
I was 17 years old and desperately depressed and wracked with anxiety. It’s a way I remembered feeling as far back as three years old when my mother put me down for a nap and was too full of anxiety to sleep. I would play with my toys as soon as she walked out of the room. As a teenager, the depression and anxiety born out of my uncle’s sexual abuse of me became darker, scarier, and all-encompassing.
One morning I pulled myself out of bed after yet another night of not sleeping. I looked in the bathroom mirror and felt desperation grow strong inside of me, welling up like a geyser. I opened up the medicine cabinet, saw the anti-depressant pills that didn’t work but I dutifully took and told the psychiatrist who prescribed them that they helped like the damn people pleaser I had become. I grabbed those pills, took the child-proof cap off that sadly wasn’t suicidal teenager proof, and swallowed the bottle.
I crawled back into bed, lay on my side in the fetal position thinking that this was it. Suddenly, a hurricane-force size fear came over me that I would end up in hell. Nearly five minutes after swallowing the pills, I woke my Mother up and told her. She rushed me to the emergency room after calling my grandparents who lived next door and making sure Grandma would come over to take care of my little Sister.
I wound up having my stomach pump. For anyone that has never experienced it, let me tell you it is torture. A tube is put down your throat and liquid, charcoal I believe (I crapped black liquid for days) was put down the tube. I am not medically trained, so I can’t explain the ins and outs of it. I just know that I was terrified but too closed off emotionally to ask for my mother to be with me. Or perhaps I felt so guilty over what I did that I believed I deserved to face it alone.
The importance of practicing tapping
I still carry that guilt. It lurks down inside of me, waiting to pounce on me like a cat pouncing on its prey. I rarely admit that I still lug the suitcase of guilt around with me. I forget that I was a kid walking around with a brain profoundly affected by trauma. I still forget that sometimes, despite spending almost 18 months practicing tapping, also known as emotional freedom technique. Tapping can look weird to someone who witnesses you practicing it. With the tips of your fingers, you tap on acupressure points while saying certain phrases. Studies show it reduces post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD--I’m sure you have heard of it) symptoms.
My nearly a year and a half of practicing tap, combined with meditation, has not yet removed my guilt over swallowing those pills, but it has given me enough insight to know I carry guilt. I know most (hell, it’s probably all of them) former people-pleasing, sexual abuse surviving women carry guilt over how they coped with trauma. Knowing there are other survivors seeking recovery me a strange feeling of camaraderie, of being in the company of so many strong women who are doing what they can to survive.
Fast food healing doesn’t exist
I want to tell those women that we can stop merely surviving. No, I want to shout those words from the proverbial rooftops. We can thrive. We can rewire our brains. We are not stuck living in desperate depression and anxiety. It takes time. There is no such thing as fast food healing, despite the well-meaning people who have implied it. My anxiety is far less than it was when I started tapping during the lockdown in the spring of 2020. The depression is finally lessening, but it is a slow process. Too slow for this impatient woman who comes from a long, long line of impatient women.
But I wait for healing. I prop up with pillows in my bed every morning after I wake up and practice tapping, meditation, and contemplative prayer for about a half-hour. Before I go to sleep at night, I tap even if I’m not sleepy until 1 a.m. Did I say that I struggle with insomnia? I show up for myself no matter what, the way I would show up for someone else if they needed me. I need myself. The hurting, scared little girl inside of me who endured too much trauma at the hands of my uncle needs me to show up. Showing up for myself means that I train my brain to not react to triggers as danger, and I clear trauma from my body little by little every time I tap.
I dare to reach for more than the depression and anxiety I have always known. I do it because living with those beasts is no longer an option. If lockdown taught me anything, it is that I can overcome. I can reach up and grab the branch hanging over me, swing up into the tree, and get out of the flood my brain creates.
Prayer
Did something resonate with you? Are you ready to reach for more? Pray this simple prayer:
Lord, I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I want more. I want freedom from PTSD, from depression, and anxiety. I cry out to You to help me, to heal me, to give me strength to start a practice of tapping.
Image by Avi Chomotovski from Pixabay