Repressed; Science Fiction and 'Lit Me Up'

So this is personal but there's something comforting about kind of 'letting it roll' and sharing it here in the Gray Area. I was listening to 'Science Fiction' by Brand New and looking up lyrics and song meanings. I don't recall ever reading something like this and having such a powerful emotional reaction. This song 'Lit Me Up' is fitting to what I experienced. Here is what I was reading.

Opening on a sampled tape recording of a therapist and their patient, “Lit Me Up” is about therapy, a theme that recurs throughout the length of Brand New’s long-awaited, fifth album: Science Fiction. The title and prevalent fire imagery take their theme from the sense that therapy “sheds light”, “illuminates”, or “lights up” repressed experiences and trauma that are hidden inside of us.

Digging out those pieces from deep inside you and finally looking them in the eye can feel cleansing like fire. The subconscious is flushed and neuroses come undone as a result, relieving pain and complexes that long laid dormant within a person.

After reading this it started setting in. Like I reached back in time and found that spot. Of course I'm well aware of it but something about it being hidden inside of me and possibly relieving pain and complexes brought this on.

I found myself again begging my mother 'out loud' to please not leave when I was 5 years old. I remember the room, the lighting, the play train station, the curls in her hair, and even what she was wearing 'blue jeans and a black suede like tank top.' In that moment even at 5 years old all of my senses where heightened, and I knew her leaving would be a pivotal point in my and our lives.

I really lost it 'present tense'...like got stuck in that moment for a short while. I began to separate. I got so warm; hot even. Breathing increased. It was emotional, I was there again, sobbing, pleading. I had to get up and then actually asked myself what the hell was going on.

I felt 'separate' when asking myself this. I 'talked' myself into calming down but this rush of emotion was like a catalyst or something. I had to 'self sooth' myself into calming down. It was intense. I would have it every now and then in my preteens and teens but never quite like this as an adult, and not this intense where I felt like I was momentarily separating from me.

I'm good now -- it's passed

So how many of y'all have been to therapy? Does it eventually help? Who should you see exactly 'what credentials am I looking for?'

Thanks for any input. And I just can't stress enough how odd that was. I actually asked myself what the hell was going on. Even clinging to a door jamb until the wave passed.

For reference_

originally posted by: Gumerk
So how many of y'all have been to therapy? Does it eventually help? Who should you see exactly 'what credentials am I looking for?'

i have. it's been helpful for me.

not sure what to advise, though. what are you hoping to get out of going to therapy?

This reminds me of Primal Therapy

Primal therapy is a trauma-based psychotherapy created by Arthur Janov, who argues that neurosis is caused by the repressed pain of childhood trauma. Janov argues that repressed pain can be sequentially brought to conscious awareness and resolved through re-experiencing specific incidents and fully expressing the resulting pain during therapy. In therapy, the patient recalls and reenacts a particularly disturbing past experience usually occurring early in life and expresses normally repressed anger or frustration especially through spontaneous and unrestrained screams, hysteria, or violence.[1] Primal therapy was developed as a means of eliciting the repressed pain; the term Pain is capitalized in discussions of primal therapy when referring to any repressed emotional distress and its purported long-lasting psychological effects. Janov criticizes the talking therapies as they deal primarily with the cerebral cortex and higher-reasoning areas and do not access the source of Pain within the more basic parts of the central nervous system.

Primal therapy is used to re-experience childhood pain—i.e., felt rather than conceptual memories—in an attempt to resolve the pain through complete processing and integration, becoming real. An intended objective of the therapy is to lessen or eliminate the hold early trauma exerts on adult behaviour.

en.wikipedia.org...

Primal therapy became very influential during a brief period in the early 1970s, after the publication of Janov's first book, The Primal Scream. It inspired hundreds of spin-off clinics worldwide and served as an inspiration for many popular cultural icons. Singer-songwriter John Lennon, actor James Earl Jones, and pianist Roger Williams were prominent advocates of primal therapy

First of all, I'm sorry you had to go through that. It must have been very hard to live through that. I'm sure it's impacted you tremendously. I too have had music cleanse my soul so to speak. To bring up a memory in a new perspective. Almost like an out of body experience, seeing it from another point of view. It has helped me through many a difficult memory. And it has been different artists and genres for different memories but with the same effect. Music can be magic. Therapy helps as much as you allow it to help. If you're open and get every deep, dark,, maybe forgotten thing off your chest it helps. You feel lighter, freer, cleaner, almost new sometimes. That's just my experiences. I've had many a counselling session as well.

i'm not really up for talking therapy stuff on the current incarnation of ats except to say that it's good and worthwhile and your GP can almost certainly point you in the right direction and i hope it helps you

but i do have to comment at least to say
god damn
how good is Science Fiction

like seriously what a record

a reply to: fiverx313

Well, I think I want to get this out. It's always there but what I've been looking at must have been window dressed by myself to not look any deeper. What I felt last night was raw and definitely not what I've been making it out to be. I want to know if I can improve my quality of life by finding this and facing it.

Like, I can talk about it right now and I know it's there but I still can't see it for the way I truly saw it last night.

a reply to: Gumerk

i've had some success with cognitive behavorial therapy, in helping address emotional stuff that i tried to push away or repress. it's based on examining your thought processes, so it might provide that 'in' where you see the difference between what you're making it out to be and how it really felt. that might be a help to you?

there's a lot of different therapeutic models that could work, possibly. if you look up providers online, they'll generally have some info about what kind of practice they have.

as far as credentials/who to see, i've seen people with degrees in psychology and people with master's degrees in social work. i think both can be good, it's more about finding a good fit for your situation.

i would avoid life coaches because they're not really certified in a regulated way so you could end up with someone not really qualified to help you poke around in your head.

psychiatrists usually are just for prescribing medicine, i haven't run across many of those that also do talk therapy.

if you have health insurance there might be a mental health hotline that will help you get a few sessions free, or you might be able to find a clinic with a sliding scale if you're uninsured.

you might also end up trying a provider for a few sessions and not feeling that they're a good fit. i've had to try a few to find one i felt comfortable opening up to, and who i felt understood what i wanted to get out of therapy. if you go to one and it's not feeling right, definitely feel free to move on and try another.

i hope some of this is helpful and you succeed in working this out

a reply to: continuousThunder

One of the most powerful albums I've ever heard.

The intro's are chill bump inducing; easy to get lost in again and again.