Wounds that run deep

We did some very deep work today in my counselling session. It seems that everytime I use crayons and paper to express the hurt; the images that I draw reveal so much. It’s funny because I am hesitant every time my therapist asks if I want to use images. Today I didn’t have time to think about it and just said yes when she asked.

I went in feeling quite lonely, disconnected and confused but I left with a lot more clarity and understanding of myself. Boy do I need to be gentle with me, all the parts of me. I have suffered a lot.

We talked about my sense of sexuality and sensuality today and I learnt something profoundly important today. I learnt that my sexuality is so tied to the pain and hurt and that it is so far and isolated from where I want it to be. That there is so much shame, fear and hurt in the same place where there is a need and yearning to express my sensuality.

For me, to express that part of myself is tantamount to colluding in the abuse I suffered. I was powerless and helpless and I learnt that sex is something that is ‘done’ to you. That the pleasure is wrong and bad and that any sexual response in return means that it is my fault, that I was responsible. For me to enjoy that part of me even now, is HARD!

It makes so much sense, all of it. Yet it took my childlike drawing of blues and reds and blacks to show me this in a powerful way. How could I have learned how to express myself sexually in a normal and healthy way when I was violated by my own father. How could I not associate sex with hurt, pain and fear. But that is the past and it is time for me to make new associations and move forward and integrate all those lost and hidden parts. I will get there.

At the end of the session, she said I had done some deep powerful work and that I should look after me this week. I will.

I will look after me, all the hurt parts. The parts that want expression but are so afraid and hurt that they guard themselves fiercely and freeze.