So, I took a break from blogging on In It For The Parking for a while, as I am sure you notice if you are looking at the archive or are a regular reader.

Part of having a seizure disorder for me is having both epileptic (meaning “responsive to medicine”) seizures and non-epileptic seizures.

Hearing from your neurologist that they’ve come as far as they can go, and that the rest of your seizures are “up to you” so to speak is never an easy thing to accept, but that’s exactly what happened for me. I was left with 1-2 seizures per day, but I noticed that there were times where it was much worse.

The name they give non-epileptic seizures is so demeaning because it sounds as though the seizures are make-believe Pseudoseizures. No lie. It’s not like you could create them if you wanted to. Clearly, it’s your subconscious or unconscious mind that has picked up a new trick — it’s found a new way to make you do things it wants you to do. Anyway, according to Dr. S, when I asked him, the way to fix pseudoseizures is always with psychological help.

Since I’ve been in and out of therapy for the last 7 years of my life (by choice!), I had no trouble looking my therapist in the face and saying, “Ann, this might sound nuts, but can you cure my seizures?”

I first heard about E.M.D.R. when I was at Lakeside. They had suggested it would help me, and my therapist happens to be trained in it, so I asked her if perhaps it might help. She brightened at the suggestion, and so we discussed what all it included, how long it could last, how scary it could get (and I had no idea in my particular situation how scary that was) and how much better you could feel afterward.

I will be the first person to say that E.M.D.R. is excellent and something that I would recommend wholeheartedly to people who are looking to maximize what they can get out of therapy, but who are also prepared to do some really hard work — because it “unpacks” all of your repressed memories and hurts. It’s better than pharmaceuticals, but it’s like Bactene for the soul. Some of the stuff stings like holy hell, but once it’s out, and you’ve worked on it with E.M.D.R., talking about it doesn’t hurt, and thinking about the stuff doesn’t have the same feelings at all.

I’m not going to go into all that we’ve uncovered. That’s what my sessions are for, but I will say that I have many fewer seizures now! And I am doing the (sometimes very) hard work to be a happier person. I’m learning that I’m like one of those cool clingie flowering vines that grows around stuff. I find the light. That’s just who I am. It doesn’t matter how messed up some of the stuff in my life might have been at some times, I just dealt with it, and flowered anyway. And really, that’s the way to be.

Now, I have the opportunity to look at the stuff I learned wrong and get things right before I start in on having my own kids — and that’s an opportunity most parents never get. At least not with the aid of a trained professional. 🙂