Monsters to Flowers - the Turn of the Tide

 I hesitate to write about this because I don’t want to jinx the progress I have had.  The last few treatments in particular have felt like moving in the right direction.  And this last session which was #30 seems like it was turning a corner to something better. 

I remember session 3 when I sobbed uncontrollably and it only got worse after the 2 hours were up and Caityln reassured me that it was only session 3 and I needed to be patient.  My psychiatrist said that I am not going to cure 40 years of depression in a few treatments.  It wasn’t until I could give myself the grace to just let go and let the medicine do whatever it was going to do that I started to feel better but even through that it was very up and down and I never really felt good after a treatment. 

The last few weeks in particular I have started to see changes in my ability to see a future.  It is not a clear future and I don’t have any solid plans but I felt hopeful and positive despite nothing actually having changed in my life toward any end.  I also have been more upbeat even when doing mundane things like sitting in traffic.  I am more relaxed and lighter somehow.  I have also noticed I have been more rational about dealing with things like my weight.  I have been able to call and set up an appointment with my doctor to start the InBody weight program and give myself some accountability.  I feel like I have been dealing more head-on with my challenges.

I had an appointment with Dr Sedney, my psychiatrist, a few weeks ago and she mentioned our last visit months ago when I mentioned how I was feeling like nothing but a hole filler at my job and how I was feeling now in regards to that.  I said “Well I am still a hole filler.  It is what the job is.  But I also have been able to shift my thinking now to see that they are also a hole filler for me right now.  I am at a time of transition in my life and they are facilitating a bridge, paying my bills, keeping me in the workforce, while I try to figure out my path forward from here."  I had taken something in my mind that was very negative and simply readjusted it to suit my needs and a more positive thought process.  I did that.  On my own.  And that was a testament to the treatments and the little ways they are manifesting that change in my mind.

But yesterday was a remarkable session for me in even more ways.  I have been taking the Magnesium L-Threonate (4 pills) an hour before my treatment and we were running behind leaving yesterday so I took them all at once.  I usually try to space them out a bit but did not have time for that.  I was a bit stressed on the drive there.  It started with politics talk which is never good and then progressed into my traffic concern about us being late.  When I got there (thankfully on time) Jym signed me in and then left immediately for his foot massage that I set up for him to thank him for all he has done for me in this.  I sat alone waiting and felt a bit chaotic when I went in.  So I worried it was all setting me up for a bad session.  It did not help when my sprays felt a mess.  The first one went down my throat immediately requiring me, for the first time ever, to use 2 lozenges. All 3 just felt like they were either going down my throat or dripping out my nose onto my face and hands.  I wasn’t even sure I was able to get the dose in me.  I also had the good playlist but it was the 5 hour version so I was in a point in the 5 hours that I was not used to but it was almost good for me I think.  It mixed up my experience a bit. 

My thoughts were all over the place as I settled into the recline position after dose 3 and I just waited patiently for the drug to take hold.  My Aztec carving thing was back again and very vivid green.  I was looking down onto it like usual trying to focus on the symbols when it became extremely 3D and in it I saw the outline of a baby.  Its feet were part of the rock almost like it was sitting on the edge of it completely a part of it. The baby then grew into a woman standing tall on the carving.  She was part of it but not in a negative way. She was rooted in it, entwined in it but not trapped by it.  It felt like it was a solid foundation of wisdom and knowledge for her to grow from. I felt the word foundation very strongly.   

Long have I sought foundation in my life.  These last 4 years in particular (but really at least 7) have felt very unstable to me.  I have had no foundation.  Or not one I could see or feel.  For the first time in that “trip” I could see that I have foundation.  It is solid and constant and always rooted to me under the waves that crash above it.  But I also saw something else.  Toward the end of that vision or experience I saw the solid pieces of this Aztec green foundation, these blocks I referred to in past sessions as ruins, become like gentle streams of seaweed.  They flowed with the current around them, gently changing and adapting but still firmly rooted in the foundation beneath them. 

After my session, I use the drive home to share my experience and epiphanies with Jym.  He is very insightful and really helps me sort through things. When I told him all of that he said “Everything you know, everything you are, is not just a pile of ruins.  As soon as you saw it as wisdom it grew and came alive and became beautiful and healing.” He told me this was the first session that I came out of the room smiling and that really hit me.  I told him that I felt healing for the first time at that level.  Healing at the level of the acupuncture I had years ago.  I felt in control. 

The whole session was not this gentle beautiful dream.  There was darkness and devils but I was able to ground myself to my Nemu and remember that it was not real and then consciously decide to turn the monsters to flowers.  When I say that, it is not like you can control what you are experiencing.  It is there, but you are enough outside of it, if you allow yourself to remember that and use the dissociation to separate yourself from it and imagine differently.  You can tell yourself “turn monsters to flowers” and they fade away.  Maybe it is true of this in our lives as well.  We can turn our monsters to flowers if we can just pause, ground ourselves to the earth beneath us and decide the path forward.  Monsters to flowers.

When I removed my eye mask for the final BP check from the nurse, I sat there contemplating how different I am from session 3 to 30.  How the subtle changes over time are often not even noticeable but cumulatively they heal us one session at a time.  I could feel the connection of the synapses in my brain healing themselves. 

In 2023 I had 27 treatments.  Now in the new year of 2024 I have had 3 so far.  Due to my work schedule and Jym’s I have had to make the difficult decision to cut down from my once a week to maybe 2x a month which will vary and a few times I will go with 3 weeks in between.  I am not at all sure how I will do with this but I need to try.  After my 3 weeks off with Ireland I really was struggling and it took a whole for me to get back on track with weekly appointments so I am hoping I can adjust as needed and make this work.  Jym has been so supportive and has offered to do whatever he needs to in order for me to get the treatment I need.  I am so lucky to have his unwavering support in this.

And so begins the next 3 weeks of no treatments.  I am slightly apprehensive after having such a major breakthrough .  I feel like I want to keep going but I also know that I need to see how this will go and how much I can extend without treatment because that is the reality of my future whether I want it that way or not. It will be a test to see how much I can maintain and how much I regress.  I can say that today, a full day after the treatment, I still feel it very strongly.  I can only hope that continues to progress and maintain even in the lack of treatment.  After all, that is my end goal.  I just feel grateful that I stuck this out as long as I have despite many setbacks and many bumps in my road.  I do not doubt I will have more but I can also see a path to healing and it is one I so desperately have sought for so many years.  I can finally see some real hope in my healing.