I can dedicate many blog posts to the past few years, dealing with grief, my own mental health journey through all that. But the most dominant thought right now is how much I want to talk about EMDR. See, I took an EMDR course back in October, and I completed the last few items of my training recently. I’ve been wanting to get trained in it for a long time, and the stars aligned (ish) finally and I was able to dive in. I was excited to learn about it, not just to be able to offer it as a treatment for my clients, but also because in order to learn how to do it, we had to partner up in the class and go through it ourselves. I’m a psychology nerd and am all about maximizing my mental health, so I was admittedly nervous but thoroughly excited and motivated to jump in with both feet.

The particular training modality I took focuses on identifying our core negative belief that developed from the traumas and dramas of our life. I went into the training thinking I’ve worked through a lot of my crap, and that’s not to say that I didn’t make a lot of progress in my years of growth, but….holy hell I was not prepared for how deep some of the damage was. After some deep digging and introspection, I was able to identify the belief that has been with me from the beginning, the belief that I didn’t even realize I believed deep into my unconscious.

I don’t matter.

That’s some heavy shit right there. Of course in my adult, thinking, logical brain I know that statement is not true. But our kid brain, the emotional one that governs our body’s physical reactions, doesn’t understand logic and reason. It’s the voice that jumps in with our immediate reactions, even if it’s only for a split second. It’s the gut punch that takes your breath away, the clenching in your heart and the knot in your throat. I’ve worked and learned my way through changing my thinking, but I never realized that there was still a small seed, deep, deep in my soul that continued to have the first say in everything.

The brilliance of EMDR is that it changes that seed, it plants beauty and sunshine and strength right next to it until the old seed is absorbed into oblivion. But you have to see the truth inside first, and FUCK if that doesn’t hurt like a motherfucker.

I’ve got a long way to go still, but I want this change so badly. Some of it has happened, but I’ve come to a rather abrupt awareness after doing this training of how much is still there that needs to change. I still have those gut punch reactions, and even though I try to talk myself out of them, the feeling lingers. There’s still that tiny voice inside that shouts at me, reminds me…I don’t matter. It tells me that no one could really, truly love me enough, because I don’t matter. No one would care to fight to have me in their life, because I don’t matter. How sad is it that there’s a voice inside ourselves that talks that way? I know I’m not the only one who feels that. And I’m trying to fight past that kid brain belief. But dammit if that voice isn’t really freaking loud.

I came across this article some time ago and was recently reminded of it. I've been thinking about what I wanted my next blog post to be, and being reminded of this seemed kismet. I have focused the large majority of my training on sexual abuse because, as I'm sure at least some people guess or assume, I was sexually assaulted. Heck, I am one of three daughters, so with my mother included in the math, you can reasonably assume one of us was since 1 out of 4 women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime. For me, it was at 3 years old, and then again at 19, and again at 20. Every 98 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. Every 8 minutes, that victim is a child. And meanwhile, only 6 out of every 1,000 perpetrators will end up in prison (www.rainn.org/statistics). Multiple studies have shown higher rates of revictimization if you are sexually abused as a child. I don't know about you, but all of those statistics make me sick. But I'm not here to talk about the statistics, or my assault history, or the legal/social/moral injustices in this world when it comes to rape and sexual assault (that will come in another post at some time, I'm sure). The reason I even bring it up is because I believe so much of this problem can be traced back to, or solved by, sexual education. I'm not saying anything here that is new or hasn't been said before. We tell our daughters to watch out, to stay aware, don't drink too much, don't wear revealing clothing, learn self-defense, carry mace, etc. etc. etc. But we are not the problem. We aren't luring the men in just so we can say no. Now don't get me wrong, just because the majority of sexual offenders are male does not mean the majority of men are sexual offenders. Unfortunately, sex offenders give men a bad name, unfairly. But nevertheless, the reality exists that we live in a rape culture that is largely perpetrated by men because of a lack of honest and real education. This program in Canada, Wiseguyz, is teaching middle school-age boys the real facts about sex. They talk about masturbation, pornography, myths, consent, even homophobia and same-sex curiousity. They confront topics like masculinity and the hyper-sexualization of women in the media. The discuss what healthy relationships look like and what emotional abuse looks like too. These boys get to ask questions and share their thoughts and learn what sex should be...pleasurable, loving, consensual. When I was a little girl I was introduced to the world of sex long before I should have been. But it was never talked about. I don't blame my parents, although I did for awhile, but I understand now that they were doing what they thought was right, that was how it was back then. They thought I didn't remember, and even as I was hitting puberty, that type of honest communication just wasn't something that occurred in our family. I had to learn about sex in my own way, and goddess knows I definitely fumbled my way through it. I knew the basics of STDs and birth control, but I knew nothing of pleasure, of communicating my wants and needs to my partner, of what was "normal" or not. I applaud Blake Spence for creating Wiseguyz, and I wish we had similar programs here in America. For such a "forward-thinking" nation, we really are ass backwards in some things.