Processing Painful Memories
By Patricia Murphy
Despite knowing the shape of every crack of sidewalk on the way to the Telegraph trailhead, my normal feeling of calm caused by raised heart rate, sweat and rhythm could do nothing to change this: When a black car came flying over the hill and down the parkway, I thought, “What if I stepped out in front of it?”
The sun was starting to peek over our mountain on this September morning. I turned and watched the black Volvo disappear. I was shocked and scared; I had never had such an impulse. I called John and told him. He was halfway into his 40-minute commute.
“Go straight home now. I will meet you there in 15 minutes.”
When he arrived, I was still sweaty in my jogging skirt and floral tank. He hugged me hard, loosened his tie. He had already made a call to the Mobile Mental Health Crisis Team. It amazed me how quickly they arrived: two kind men, one young and one old. They asked a series of questions. Do you have a support system? Yes, wonderful friends all over the world, a loving uncle, 37 cousins and 16 in-laws. Do you feel safe at home? Yes. I have a wonderful partner who is thoughtful, kind, creative and compatible. What brings you joy? My dogs, hiking, biking, swimming, yoga, cooking, movies, books, music, traveling.
The four of us talked for an hour before the young one handed me a sheet: “Suicide-related ideation with no suicidal intention. Recommend therapy.”
“When a black car came flying over the hill and down the parkway, I thought, ‘What if I stepped out in front of it?’“
After about 20 dead-end phone calls, I found a therapist two miles from our home who was open to new clients. I drove up that offending hill then down to Claudette’s office. She welcomed me into her sanctuary, decorated with leather couches and paintings of Italian country sides. Claudette is Jamaican Canadian with a mild accent, unique voice and expressive eyes.
About four months in, Claudette asked what seemed like an innocuous question. Instead of being able to answer her, my mind went completely away. I began crying and shaking. The room went silent, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not come back to it. Claudette waited and then asked, “Where are you?” It took a while before I was able to speak, and I did so between sobs.
“I’m at the dining room table with my brother and my mother. They are talking about something I don’t understand. They’re doing it on purpose. They keep telling me how stupid I am. My mom is smoking a cigarette, and when she stomps it out, she glares at me.”
Claudette waited, nodding, giving me the space I needed but encouraging me to come back to the room. It took time before I was able to become more aware of my surroundings—the fluffy pillow at my side, the herringbone pattern of floor tile, the sweet snapshot of Claudette’s dogs.
Once I was back in the room, Claudette explained that I had been triggered by a memory and could no longer live in the space of my body. She asked if this had ever happened before. I thought about it and said that it had, though I hadn’t been able to name it when it occurred. Claudette asked if I had ever been diagnosed with PTSD. I had not.
That’s when Claudette suggested that it would be beneficial for me to start EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, to address PTSD. Her description of it sounded so tempting: I would no longer spiral into negative cognitions. I would stop taking a deep dive whenever I saw an image that reminded me of my childhood. But would my memories be erased? I was writing a memoir about my family and needed those emotions.
“Claudette explained that I had been triggered by a memory and could no longer live in the space of my body.”
For weeks after the numbing incident, I started counting up how many times a day a trigger sent my brain spiraling into a traumatic memory. It was way too often. I finally agreed to start the EMDR therapy.
First, I received a contract that stated, “Client will identify 1-20 disturbing memories, negative beliefs and cognitions resulting from childhood.” Only 20?
Some of the incidents I chose were:
When I was eight, my mother and father got in a shouting match, and my father threw an ashtray aimed at my mother’s head. It hit the wall near me and shattered to pieces.
When I was 15, my mother and I got into an argument, she tried to kill herself, and I saved her life.
When I was 17, my father got so drunk at a family party that he passed out in the snow in the front yard, and when I took his car keys, he screamed, “I’m a better driver drunk than you ever will be sober.”
When I was 18, my mother poured gasoline all over her lap and lit a match. She needed skin grafts over 25% of her body and spent six months in the burn ward, where she was treated with methadone for the pain. She was then sent to The Pauline Warfield mental institution, which she escaped from two months later.
When I was in college, my mother spent 18 months in Hospital Kaschenko, a Russian mental institution in Moscow where she was raped, beaten, starved and nearly killed.
The therapy started with the most salient and troubling of the memories. Claudette entered each session by asking, “What picture represents the worst part?” Then, “When you bring up the picture, what negative belief do you have about yourself?” Then, “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no disturbance and 10 is the highest disturbance imaginable, how disturbing does it feel to you now?”
“We worked through my mother’s first suicide attempt, and it was such a relief to no longer feel like it was my fault.”
We worked through painful memories each week, and I was starting to feel the promise of removing negative cognitions from each of these triggering memories. We worked through my mother’s first suicide attempt, and it was such a relief to no longer feel like it was my fault. Soon it was time to work on memories of my father.
Claudette asked, “What picture represents the worst part?”
My father punching his fist through a wall.
“When you bring up the picture, what belief do you have about yourself?”
That I make people angry.
Then, “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no disturbance and 10 is the highest disturbance imaginable, how disturbing does that image feel in your body?”
10
Even in the comfort of Claudette’s office, recalling this image sent me into a massive state of hyper-arousal. I felt unsafe, with racing thoughts and panic. I could not shake the feeling that I was so flawed as a child that it caused my father to lose himself in his emotions. I could also see how I still held the belief that my behavior could make other people so angry that they lose control. After nearly two months of processing this one image, every time I thought of my father’s fist going through the wall, it still made me feel entirely worthless and hopeless.
But then, in one session, processing the same negative belief and the same image, I felt something physically shift in my body.
“Instead of remembering his angry outbursts, I was able to remember his kind eyes and the nicknames he kept for each of my friends.”
When Claudette asked, “On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is no disturbance and 10 is the highest disturbance imaginable, how disturbing does it feel to you now?”
0
When Claudette said, “When you bring up the picture, what belief do you have about yourself?”
My poor father.
EMDR did exactly what Claudette said it would: It removed the negative emotion without removing the memory, and it removed the trigger response. My father passed away in 2009, and I had moved many of his belongings into my garage.
Recently, I was sorting through boxes in preparation for a move. Prior to EMDR, pictures of him triggered terrible guilt and made my heart rate rise and my breath catch in my throat. I used to believe that if I had only been able to be a better daughter, he would not lose his temper with me. Seeing an image of his face sent me back to memories of his rage.
On this day, I sat on the cool concrete floor pulling out pictures of him washing his beloved sports car, or him hugging my uncle in front of the lake. Instead of remembering his angry outbursts, I was able to remember his kind eyes and the nicknames he kept for each of my friends. I remembered how he took me to Bob Evans and always ordered a tall glass of milk.
Deep in one of his boxes, I found a thick brown file folder. When I opened it, I heard the crinkle of old-time Air Mail paper. Inside were the 80 or so letters I sent him from the year I lived in Europe, each one ironed out, each with the envelope attached by a tiny paper clip. I cried as I read these letters, but this time for a different reason.
Patricia Colleen Murphy is the 2019 winner of the Press 53 Poetry Prize for Bully Love and the 2016 winner of the May Swenson Poetry Award for Hemming Flames. She founded Superstition Review and teaches at Arizona State University.