My therapist brought it up months ago and at that time, my whole body physically reacted to the idea. I remember the flood of emotions that I tried to understand as she explained it to me. I don't know if I truly could articulate why my body responded the way it did. I feared a loss of self in a process that sounded like manipulating memories.
But in hindsight I wonder if I just wasn't ready to sever the ties that had to be severed to reframe my mind's response to what I had been through. One thing I've learned from all this is that sometimes our bond to the familiar is so strong it feels impossible to break away from the toxic.
Then a couple of weeks ago as I sat in session unsure of what I needed at this point yet still feeling really stuck, my therapist brought ART up again. I didn't have the same physical reaction to the idea this time so in true Enneagram type 5 fashion, I asked her to send me some information so I could learn a little more about it. She sent me several Ted Talks on ART.
Last year, I attended an interview course that included some sessions on memory - how it is stored, recalled, and re-stored, how fragile it is, etc. That course prompted me to read a good portion of the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman which allowed me to digger deeper into how our brains work. That knowledge brings a double-edged sword to my thought process about this therapy.
There is fear because I understand how fragile memory is and how easily our brains can be manipulated. As I try to re-ground myself and untwist the distortions my ex left me with, I crave an understanding of what is truly real. Manipulating my brain goes against that even as I recognize the positive end results of this therapy.
On the flip side, my layman's understanding of how the brain works helps me understand how a therapy like this could be highly effective. So even though the idea that such a transformation can happen in one session sounds a bit crazy, I actually don't doubt that it will work. I don't understand all the science behind it but I know it doesn't take much to change memories and thus our reactions to those memories.
I said yes to scheduling the session because I'm tired of how I still react to thoughts of him. Even as I walk past his empty apartment, I feel something rush through my body for a moment. I really wish he had never moved into that apartment when we had separated. He could have chosen another complex. He could have chosen an apartment that faced into the courtyard I never enter. He could have picked a higher level where I wouldn't have been eye level as I walked past. Anything would have been better. And I know this will all become mute if/when I move, hopefully to Atlanta but it's not the only trigger.
Even though moving to Atlanta will mean leaving behind most of the memories with him, there is still a bench and a frog pond at the Atlanta Botanical Garden that haunts me. And there's still the intrusive thoughts on nights I can't sleep. And even intrusive thoughts throughout the day. As I told my friend last night in an overly simplistic explanation, I'd like to stop the utterance of the word "asshole" under my breath whenever his name or face crosses my mind.
So tomorrow, I'm giving this therapy a shot. I don't do things half-heartedly so the fact that I scheduled it set in motion something I'm ready to follow through on. I am a bit nervous. I will admit that. But I'm also incredibly curious. And I'm hopeful.
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