Stuck in the Greyness

Therapy last week was interesting and quite insightful. It's amazing the power of guided imagery, seems to work well with me and helps me understand the place I'm at. I begun in a bright, sunny and warm field. I was led to a forest with a path running through it. The forest was beautiful, was shaded. Completely safe and peaceful. I could hear the birds singing, feel the warm breeze blowing through the trees. I came to a stream, trickling through the forest with a tiny waterfall. Here there were many butterflies, flying free all around. I was instructed to carry on following the path when I came to the edge of the forest, looking out onto a large open field. My therapist stopped instructing me and asked me what I saw...

I saw a massive field. It was completely empty and the vegetation was dead. I could see the brightness of the sun but couldn't feel the warmth. It was eerily silent. For some unknown reason the field frightened me. I felt threatened, as if I was being watched. I could just make out some hills in the far distant, but I knew I couldn't make it across this field. I just stood on the very edge. Staring outwards.
My therapist asked me to take a step forward onto the field. I told her I couldn't, I wasn't sure what would happen when I took that first step but I knew it wouldn't be very pleasant. I was not able to move forwards.

Knowing I couldn't step forwards my therapist asked me to turn around and go back into the comfort of the woods. As I tried to turn back I found my path blocked. A large stretch of glass prevented me from going back. I could see what lay behind me but couldn't get there.

She instructede to break the glass and return to the safeness and protection of the woods. She led me back through the woods, back to the stream. She asked me how I felt in the woods. I said safe, protected, calm, comfortable. She said if I could have any animal with me, what would it be. For some reason tiger popped into my head. I guess i thought of Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, a sweet cuddly tiger and yet with the ability of protection. The tiger could be my friend, he would protect me. I was then led out of the woods and back to the sunny warm field where I originally started.I then opened my eyes and came out of the guieded imagery.


My T explained that she picked up from the sesaion my fear of beginning to deal with what has happened to me. At the moment I am stuck in a sort of limbo, she called this the Greyness. I am completely comfortable in this Greyness of denial repression and dissociation. I want to move forwards, to begin dealing with and processing the trauma locked inside my brain, but i am afraid to. Scared of what i will find, what may happen. I am unable to turn back now because the past is the past, but im also unable to move forward. She explained she pictured the future as colour, all the colours of the rainbow swirling around together in a big confusing mess. There is lots to sort out. Right now i am happy being numb and comfortable in the greyness.Sometimes being in the Greyness it's easier to repress and forget, sometimes I find myself smiling and even occasionally laughing! I know it's only possible due the disconnection from my trauma, I guess I'm afraid to loose that again and go back to the dark days between the sheets.

I find it amazing that all of this insight can come from guided imagery. I see things the way i never saw them before, i understand the way my brain is functioning at the moment all by describing the images i see in my head.

My therapist told me from now on, whenever i have a nightmare, a flashback or scary thoughts to picture me with this tiger, that i am safe and he is protecting me. I have actually been doing this and it does help, perhaps you the reader might wish to try something like this?

This was a nice guided imagery experience, i have had bad ones in the past. My therapist now wants to work on taking the steps out of the greyness. She wants me (if i am able to) to write out my story, and every thought and every feeling, every inch of me poured out onto the paper and then asks me to read it aloud. She said it might help me connect with whats happened and begin to recognise that this did happen to me.....sounds pretty optimistic if you ask me. I so want to move forward and yet i admit.....im pretty stable in my denial bubble.