Brave Enough To Be Bliss

would put all his weight on me and I couldn’t breathe at all. While I didn’t remember any of those details at the time of the date with Dan, that’s why my body remembered and no one was ever going to force me to put anything in my mouth again. When my body remembered, it signaled to my brain to get the hell away from him, so that’s what I did .

“The difference between where you are and where you could be is the amount of pain you are willing to endure.” Craig Groeschel

Due to the lingering pandemic, I had a couple calls with the EMDR therapist to prepare for the in-person session. She asked me a lot of questions about my history and then we developed phrases that were the opposite of beliefs I had about myself. ▪ I’m doing the best I can. ▪ I’m OK just the way I am. ▪ I am lovable. As you’ll read in the email below, EMDR wasn’t something I was looking forward to at all. I didn’t know this therapist, so I worried I wouldn’t get comfortable with her and actually talk about anything real. I emailed her, hoping that would allow her to ask me questions instead of me having to tell her everything. I omitted that part of the email since you already have read what I remembered up to that point. From: Ginger Bliss To: EMDR Therapist Sun, Jun 6, 2021 at 9:46 PM I guess I had been putting off reading the emails carefully. I confirmed the dates were on my calendar correctly and was trying not to think about it until tomorrow. Thank you for the follow-up email and I apologize for the extra work that created. And the best I can come up with for a place I feel happy or safe isn't really a place, it's just sitting in the warmth of the sun, the feeling of the sun on me...otherwise, if I attach it to a place where I am sitting it no longer feels happy, safe. Just the feeling of it makes me feel happy, safe...not where I am physically located. I told Ginger that's what kept me from being able to go back at MOCSA to do EMDR because I was just faking it because I couldn't find a happy, safe place to go to in my mind. And it was frustrating because she kept asking questions trying to help me identify a place and there wasn't a place, I truly felt that way, so the whole thing just felt fake. Anyway, just thought it might make tomorrow go faster, easier, etc. Sometimes it's easier for me to write than talk and some of these things would be hard for me to verbalize with someone I am just meeting. Honestly a part of me, most of me, wants to not do this. I want to be brave, but this feels sort of overwhelming. I can handle anything professionally. I can compartmentalize and get through anything at work, and no one would ever know anything was wrong at all. But when I think about this, it's like the night I was raped and realized that it would be possible for me to be pregnant. I had never had sex before I was raped. And it was at that point that I think I just decided I could never think about it ever again because it was simply too overwhelming. Clearly, I know I need to do this. I just wanted you to know the difficulty I remember having tried EMDR a few times at MOCSA, and how much I dread this even though I logically know it could be helpful. It just seems like it's going to take me somewhere I've spent a lifetime running from. Ginger Rothhaas was refreshing my memory of EMDR and after hearing more about it, I do remember trying to do it and I had a very hard time focusing because I didn't remember much, I remember a little bit more now.

“You are not the darkness you endured. You are the light that refused to surrender.” John Mark Green

The good news was that EMDR felt positively life changing for me and I desperately needed a win. I could try to recap the experience, but I think it will be more accurate and impactful if I allow it to unfold in future chapters in the actual words I shared about it back at that time.

From: Ginger Bliss To: EMDR Therapist Cc: Ginger Rothhaas Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 11:14 PM

Thank you for your kind voicemail. I’m feeling better than ever actually. Seems unreal, but I left your office feeling so muc h lighter and like I could actually live a life without carrying the burdens of the past. I want to tell myself out of habit to wait for the other shoe to drop, but I don’t actually feel like it will.

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