The Things Beneath the Thing

Today felt spicy.

Not in a fun, adventurous, throw-some-hot-sauce-on-it kind of way. More like I was a zesty little hot pepper walking around trying desperately not to say all of the things I was feeling.

The truth is, I still wanted to.

Once upon a time, I absolutely would have. I would have said every thought, every frustration, every hurt, every opinion. Years of therapy have helped me learn that not every thought deserves a microphone and not every feeling requires an audience. Most days, I do a pretty decent job of keeping that in check.

Today was one of those days where it took effort.

Work was a whirlwind of activity and tasks, and I had to leave at 12:15 to make it to my shoulder arthrogram appointment, which, of course, ran late. As I was lying on the table, the PA preparing to inject the capsule asked me a question I’ve probably heard a hundred times in my life.

“So what kind of work do you do?” I laughed. “Sadly, it is no longer in the medical field.”

He told me he could tell by the questions I was asking and the suggestions I was making that I had a lot of medical knowledge. I always take that as an immense compliment! I explained the various things I’ve done in the medical field over the years and found myself saying something I have thought countless times before.

If reincarnation were real, I would need several lives to do all of the things I have so much passion for.

I would have my PhD as a genetic researcher. I would be a labor and delivery midwife because bringing life into the world has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. I would be a detective because there is something deeply satisfying about finding information nobody else can find and connecting dots people don’t even realize exist. You want to omit information from me? Oh, honey, that’s okay. I will quietly listen, collect the pieces, observe the details, and eventually, I will have the puzzle assembled. Of that, I can promise you. The best part is the entirely inappropriate amount of excitement I get when all of the pieces finally click together.

I would work in forensics. I would be a licensed trauma therapist. I would travel the world doing mission work and helping people who need it most. I would speak on stages and encourage people who have lost hope. I would run a company, travel constantly, and help build something bigger than myself.

And strangely enough, I would also go backward.

I would love to experience a time when being a homemaker was enough. I would spend my days tending a garden, baking bread, cooking meals from scratch, preserving food, hanging laundry on a line, and creating a home filled with warmth, comfort, and love. There is something deeply appealing to me about that life.

Unfortunately, most women don’t really get that choice anymore. A single-income household feels nearly impossible for many families, and the version of domestic life that I find so beautiful often feels out of reach.

Instead, I sit behind a desk doing none of those things, with no future in any of them, and not making enough money for a person to comfortably live on their own. Life is funny like that.

Tonight was trauma therapy night. We haven’t met in almost a month, and honestly, I was overdue.

The type of trauma therapy I do is called Brainspotting, and while I could give you the textbook explanation, that isn’t really how I experience it.

Brainspotting is based on the idea that where we look affects what we access in the brain. Trauma isn’t just stored as memories. It is stored in the body. It lives in our nervous system, our muscles, our reactions, our emotions, and sometimes in places we don’t even realize we’re carrying it. A lot of traditional talk therapy focuses on the thinking part of the brain. Brainspotting focuses on what the body remembers.

The somatic part is fascinating because your body often knows something long before your conscious mind does. You may not be actively thinking about a memory, but your chest tightens, your stomach knots up, your throat closes, your shoulders tense, or tears suddenly appear for reasons you can’t explain.

Your body remembers. During Brainspotting, you’re paying attention to all of that. The emotions. The physical sensations. The memories. The images. The thoughts. You’re allowing your brain and body to show you what is connected instead of forcing a specific destination.

What amazes me is that it rarely takes me where I think it will. What I Brainspotted was what we believe was one of the major triggers behind what my therapist called a complete trauma shutdown. The shutdown itself was cumulative. It wasn’t one thing. But one of the first threads seemed to be a conversation about pornography.

I have very strong feelings about pornography. Some people won’t agree with me, and that’s okay. We all bring our own experiences and beliefs into those conversations. Mine happen to be deeply rooted in trauma. As we were discussing confession, my mind landed there. To me, pornography has always felt tied to lust and comparison. If someone is watching it, becoming aroused by it, and engaging with it, then naturally my brain asks why what they already have isn’t enough.

Again, that is my trauma speaking.

From there, my mind immediately went back to my ex-husband telling me that those women were what real women looked like. Not every day women. Not women raising children. Not women whose bodies changed through pregnancy. Women who had cosmetic work done. Women who were photographed, edited, photoshopped, filtered, posed, enhanced, and presented as some impossible standard.

I was twenty-one years old, pregnant with my third baby, carrying years of trauma and sexual abuse, and hearing the person who was supposed to love me unconditionally compare me to women on a screen and in magazines. That kind of damage doesn’t just disappear.

I guess subconsciously, that moment became connected to rejection and to a hundred other memories, and somewhere during those restless nights where I wasn’t really sleeping, the floodgates must have opened. Because what happened during Brainspotting didn’t feel random. It felt like my brain had already been sorting through boxes in the attic for days and finally decided to dump everything onto the living room floor at once.

As I Brainspotted, I couldn’t stay with the original memory. My brain kept firing off connections. Different people. Different scenarios. Different points in my life. Words. Feelings. Power dynamics. Dominance. Submission. Age gaps. Praise. Rejection. Approval. Shame. Everything was coming at me from every direction.

Finally, I stopped and told her, “I can’t stay with one thing. It’s coming at me from all directions.”

She nodded and explained that because it had been nearly a month since our last session and because my recent shutdown had been so intense, my brain was showing me every place that same feeling existed. It wasn’t avoiding the original wound. It was showing me all the places that the wound had spread. That fascinated me.

What fascinated me wasn’t the memories themselves. It was the fact that every single one of them carried the exact same feeling underneath them. Different people. Different ages. Different circumstances. Same wound.

I swear the brain and body are two of the most fascinating things in existence. The way they protect us, adapt, compensate, store information, and then eventually decide they’re ready to show us something we’ve been carrying for decades is incredible.

We ended the session with an impromptu appointment scheduled for Sunday, and she encouraged me to do a few Brainspotting sessions on my own before then. The goal isn’t to force anything or go digging for trauma. It’s to help my brain remember that it is safe to go there, safe to look at what it’s showing me, and safe to meet those memories with compassion instead of fear.

Easier said than done. But I understand the logic.

The shoulder arthrogram is done, and thankfully, it was nowhere near as painful as the hip. If you’ve had a hip arthrogram, you know exactly what I mean. That capsule feels like it is made out of concrete and pure hatred. This time, the PA actually took one of my suggestions. Instead of sticking me twice, they left the needle in place and simply changed the syringes as they moved through the medications and dye. So much better. One poke, one bitty moment of discomfort, and done.

The shoulder is pretty sore tonight, but nowhere near what I expected. The MRI results are already back, but for now I’m keeping those to myself until I’ve had a chance to process them and decide what comes next.

Honestly, at this point, I feel like my body and my brain are both trying to keep things interesting.

I started the day having dye injected into a shoulder and ended it exploring old wounds that had apparently been waiting patiently beneath the surface for years. One of those should have answers soon enough. The other will probably take a little longer.

Then again, healing has never been about finding the thing. It’s about finding the things beneath the thing, and I do like digging into the things that make us uncomfy!