When Looking Back Hurts
This week, inspired by my grandma’s move, my family started going through our attic. We tore into old garbage bags filled with old art projects and stories, laughing and enjoying ourselves as we went through old memories. I was particularly amused to find my first-ever fanfiction that I had completely forgotten about, written two years before I ever read or saw Lord of the Rings, written in my familiar, childish handwriting.
I was initially disinterested in this process, but I quickly became very involved, tossing my phone aside and digging through everything eagerly. I was especially excited to see the fanfiction and other stories I had written, but I felt a lurch in my chest when I found a story I had no memory of, written in honor of Rosh Hashanah.
The prompt appeared to be using characters from the Arthur book series in a Rosh Hashanah story, but even from the teacher’s note on the cover, I could tell I hadn’t written a happy story. The teacher praised my use of foreshadowing when I said “Don’t dip too many apples or you will get sick,” and I knew what I was in for before I even saw the vividly-detailed picture of Arthur throwing up on the cover.
The story only takes half a page to reach the inevitable conclusion of my obsession-riddled mind, and it gets worse from there. I shuddered as I put the story aside, not realizing how the way I always process my emotions in writing must have begun in childhood.
I started getting involved in the process again, finding more school projects. But even as the ages of the papers got younger, nothing changed much with me. A yearbook from the end of my four-year-old class was filled with things I didn’t want to see, like saying that I love my mommy and daddy because they take care of me when I’m sick (I was almost never actually sick as a child, although I was convinced I was sick almost all the time). At the end, there is a page titled “Me and My Friends,” and in every picture, I am alone.
All it took was that - and the next item, my first-grade report card that said I need to learn how to be “a little less excited” - to send me on a very unpleasant trip down memory lane.
It sent me to the most painful times I’ve heard that I’m “too much,” the times I’ve been left behind by friends, the times I’ve been called all sorts of names and made to feel like an outsider from childhood through today. I could feel the papers sitting on the pile staring at me, and I didn’t feel peace until I forced myself to think about times when I have felt included, mainly in my current D&D group and my group of friends from DragonCon.
Also this week, my friend Annie (name changed for privacy) came to me upset one evening when a minor incident with someone she loved brought her back to one of the most painful moments in her life. It might seem strange to feel triggered by something like this, but for both Annie and I, even a much smaller example of a feeling was enough to send us back in time.
Annie, who knows I have experience with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), asked me if I had any techniques for this. I rummaged through my old CBT materials until I found my list of automatic negative thoughts (ANTs), but none of them matched what was going on with us. As she described it, it was like there was only a break of a second between the trigger in the present and the memories of the past, and there’s so little time in between that it can be very difficult to stop the process.
I knew exactly what she was talking about, and as I was looking at the four-year-old yearbook, all I could think about was a recent time when someone told me that the only reason I was tolerable to be around was because, unlike other mentally ill people, I could control myself. I felt like an animal, only good because I was a trained one, and those memories poured out of my mouth. Annie shared with me too, telling me everything that hurt her so long ago that even a small incident took her right back to.
She asked me, again, if I had any ideas - but I don’t know the answer to this question. There’s nothing in my CBT worksheet that says what to do for myself or others. There’s no specific way to stop the thought process that jumps from a current trigger to a past incident.
What works best for me, and what I told Annie, is to find a way to counteract the thought in the present. For example, the last time my “I’ll never have real friends thanks to my mental illness” thought entered my head, I logged onto Discord and found my group of DragonCon friends playing a video game. They called out to me happily when I entered the voice chat, and a couple hours of gaming later, I had almost forgotten what I was so upset about in the first place.
Looking for growth can be another way to start moving forward. I’d never write another story like the Arthur one I wrote, because I have learned how to process my emotions in a healthier way. I would never have another lonely “Me and My Friends” page because I reach out to people every day to keep my friendships strong and challenge myself to find new friends by engaging in new activities.
There’s nothing Annie or I can do to erase the memories of something that should have been beautiful, but ended up tainted. There’s no easy fix, and although moving forward is the only way to carry on, there will always be a part of me that wonders - even in the middle of a happy group of friends - if I am truly welcome, if I am allowed to talk about my interests, if I can fit in like everyone else.
For anyone else struggling with these feelings, I’ll leave you with a comment from a recent meeting with my improv group. I joined the Zoom call early, and started talking with the only other person there. She said she had been thinking, in advance of our show that got postponed, and she realized that two of us in the class really blossomed as the class progressed.
I wasn’t sure how to interpret that, but when she said I was much more approachable and seemed much more comfortable once I started sharing more about myself and my interests, I couldn’t help but smile. I had let the “too much” thinking get to me when I first started the class and, caught up in memories, I kept myself walled off from others. It was only when I started to get past my own fears that I was able to take concrete steps to actually fix them.
Take a look for moments like this in your own life. Find things that contradict your triggering experiences, and try to jump there instead of the more painful parts of your life. It’s much easier said than done, but even working a little bit on interrupting the destructive thought process can lead to a far more fulfilling life.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.