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We had an “L” shaped living room and I had the far end of it by the front window to play in, with a toybox my parents still use today. My corner was behind the sofa as I recall so that my “mess” would not offend the grown ups. Hence I was present, but apart and in a way that seems to symbolise those years.

Did my parents have conversations with my sisters or without them that I overheard that I shouldn’t have? I don’t know. But the feeling that comes up in EMDR is that of playing quietly, making myself small and undetectable. There’s even a feeling that I was trapped behind the sofa because I couldn’t interrupt what was happening in the rest of the room in order to walk out.

And yet I remember being downstairs mostly, even of being scared to go upstairs in the day time. I don’t know whether I was told to stay downstairs so that I wasn’t hidden away or what. The overwhelming feeling that come up now is of not belonging and feeling trapped. Reading the beautiful RX, a graphic novel about mental ill health brought up tears when the author portrays feeling trapped. My tears have been turned off for many years for me and they have been gently there during the last couple of sessions.

My last EMDR session started off behind the sofa, with what that brought up and we ending up considering my parents. My mother as a young adult, pregnant at a time when being a single mother was not an option and how she must have felt and then, at greater length, how my father would have found it growing up in the circumstances he did. When I said that the mother he had was a lot harsher than the grandmother I knew we brought them together so that my grandmother could offer support to her younger self.

These are things I knew and explained to the therapist. But as with the previous week, it’s not so much about the facts but more that I’m experiencing some of their pain, that felt by my mother, father and grandmother at their times of suffering. It’s almost as if, by experiencing their emotions I can expiate their suffering which will somehow expiate mine. EMDR has, for me, to date, been about bringing the emotions back in the room, emotions that I may have blocked for self protection after years of daily tears, a block that has also enabled me to work through those years in therapy. I don’t yet know whether this will offer the release I need, but for the moment I’m going with it.