I decided to get myself back into counseling and found a different type of therapy that I hadn't tried before. It's called A.R.T (accelerated resolution therapy). I have been to psychologists and other counselors before, but this type of treatment was by far the most effective treatment for me. It has changed my life! I had worked through a whole bunch of things and issues that just kept circling back in my life and I felt like I was finally at a good place.
I went to my weekly physio appointment and it came up in conversation about my finished up time with my counseling, which is when my physiotherapist had a gentle heart to heart with me and told me that he felt I needed to get counseling about my miscarriage. I'll be honest here, I didn't take it very well. Instant tears rolled down my face and I explained that I had already talked with a different counselor about this and really didn't want to again. But back to my counselor I went.
A.R.T therapy allows you to play the traumatic event over in your mind like a movie, so that you can put yourself back at that very moment and relive it. It allows yourself to work through all of the emotions around the event so that your brain and body won't get stuck there anymore. It's a very intense treatment but it has been very beneficial for me.
Before we dove into my miscarriage, my counselor wanted to go back over the day of my car accident (which can be read about here https://www.petiteflower.net/post/manage-your-blog-from-your-live-site and here https://www.petiteflower.net/post/miscarriage) . It's interesting in these sessions as it completely pulls everything out onto the table and uncovers hidden things too. Anger was a very big one that presented itself, blame, regret, fear, anxiety, and sadness, lots and lots of sadness. I had to play this accident over and over and over again until the emotions that were held in my body were able to be completely worked through and let out. My brain was able to get to a point where my body didn't respond negatively to it anymore. At this point, you get to rewrite the narrative, so to speak, you think about a scenario that you wished would've happened or didn't happen at all and then you go back over it and play that like a movie in your mind. I decided to make mine fun and kinda funny. So when me and the girls got hit, it was like a big Skittles commercial. Skittles were flowing all throughout the car and there was just a lot of joy! This may seem weird and maybe a wee bit hokey for those of you that may not be familiar with A.R.T therapy, but believe me it's science based and I have a great Christian counselor. Also, I will add that it doesn't erase the memory of the tragic event, it makes it so your brain skips over it and isn't honed in and stuck in the painful memory, so it's not like you are reliving it over and over again, each and every time it comes up or when you think about it. It's there, just more softer.
My miscarriage session was on a different day and a lot of feelings and grief showed up very strong. Anytime I have had to talk about my miscarriage, the tears and grief present itself, which is a normal thing, but I also didn't realize how tight of a grip I had holding onto it too, until A.R.T therapy. I hadn't realized that though that time was extremely traumatic and awful, it was also a comfort to hold onto because it was the only memory that I had of my baby. Before all of this, I would've told you and fully believed it myself that I had worked through it and was doing okay but this revelation was unexpected. There was this side of me that felt like I didn't want to let go of it because the guilt of only having that memory of my baby was all I had, and as a mom, I didn't want my baby to go forgotten. So I held on for dear life. The choking on my tears and gasping for air was brutal but my counselor is so gentle and caring and he walked me through it in such a safe, honoring space, reminding me to breathe and that it was okay to feel all of the deep pain that I felt.
When everything finally started to settle and not be so gut wrenchingly painful to go over, the part of getting to rewrite the memory came and I didn't want to wish it away because I didn't want to wish my baby away. Instead, I had it in my mind that me and my husband got to hold our baby and watch her be released upward to the heavens and it was so beautiful.
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