The Other Side of Me: The Tone

Part of the continuing journey of Thriving on the Other Side to find healing after she endured a childhood of abuse.

I found a deep heavy Tone inside me a few months into my work with Sue.

The Tone is deep and scary. It’s the Tone of Jaws, the one they play right before horrible, unthinkable things happen. The Tone makes me want to curl up in a ball and hide. But it’s always been distant, muffled — until recently. As I began to open the doors with EMDR, the Tone grew stronger.

The Tone limits me. I catch my breath and forget to exhale thanks to the Tone. It’s like there’s a great big dread wrapped around my heart, waiting for the next heartbreak, the next disappointment or betrayal to shatter my world. I don’t relax, never fully let go.

I never realized any of that before I opened the doors. I’m waiting, always waiting. Prepared to take the hit, expecting the hit, creating the hit.

The Tone gradually came into my awareness. Subtly at first, with a heaviness in my chest. Then I started coughing my lungs up. It felt like dark ooze was choking the tubes deep in my lungs. Think Alien. ICK.

Sue and I began to clear it. Over the next year, as we focused on the Tone, memory after memory re-emerged into my conscious mind. Always the same pattern: a fleeting image, followed by a knowing, and then the emotional hit of my little girl’s terror.

The Tone held all those memories. As I released them, the Tone gradually grew smaller and smaller. My lungs healed; the cough become virtually non-existent. My energy began to come back, and slowly, so slowly, I began to feel alive again, and then, to thrive.

Photo Credit

“Sound Waves: Low Pitch” Biology Big Brother @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

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