Flashback revelation

Therapy today was good in that the therapist enlightened me a bit about why I have been so upset over something that I know is not what happened.  She told me that the way I described it to her ... far more detail than what I wrote here night ... was someone describing a flashback.  That surprised me.  I mean, I thought I knew what flashbacks are, considering I have them a lot.

To me, the strange thing was that I had a flashback on Monday that was par for the course.  I was in a parking garage basement and I heard a noise that startled me.  BOOM!  I was right back in the parking garage where I was raped.  I could smell the urine on the ground and feel my head slam against the concrete.  There was pressure all along my body as I was forced against the wall.  I screamed and screamed and then fled into the floorboards of the back seat of my Highlander.  I wouldn't have thought I could squeeze myself down there, but I was trying to hide.

It felt like ages for my body to calm down and even longer for my mind to leave the past.  I am proud of myself for going inside to get my blood drawn.  It was one of the few times I wasn't transparent on Facebook, for I was ashamed at how afraid I was.  I just posted about my blood work being done and moved on from there.  No mention of the bruises I have from jamming myself into my vehicle.

Of course, I will not be going back to that lab unless I am already at my GP's office up on the 2nd floor.  If so, then I could take the interior elevator down and back up.  Otherwise, I am going back to the lab on Liberty Mills.  It's a stand alone, single story building that has no ... triggers.

When the cardiologist touched me the third time, I went cold all over and became full of fear.  I slipped into that shut up/be still/wait until it is over mode.  I felt my whole body screaming at me to leave.  And, as I have said, I had this thought of being groomed.  A thought I haven't been able to escape even though I know it was not what happened.

When I started, I told her that I HAVE to figure out how to change that thought by the end of January because I can NOT walk back in his office thinking that way.  I have been rather distraught over that.  And a bit despairing because changing thoughts has not been a skill of mine, despite working hard to acquire it.

However, with her ... revelation ... this is not so much a thought I have to change as to re-categorize.  I already know that when I have a flashback, I can be a tad insensible.  And it is insensible to think that my cardiologist was grooming me.  He's proven over and over and over again that he is committed to make me feel safe and worthy of care, even when doing so disrupts his rather busy schedule.

It wasn't so much talking about it being a flashback in the session as it was that revelation and all that it could mean soaking in on the way home and since camping out on the sofa.  I don't need to change the thought so much as to understand why it happened.  It is not exactly a wrong thought.  It is just a thought from the past, not the present.

I can work with that.
There is hope with that.

I already know I cannot believe my body during flashbacks.  So, I think that if I focus on what happened being a different kind of flashback, especially since part of me stayed there and still functioned, I should be able to eventually leave last Thursday's appointment in the past and not keep it in my present.

I am not sure if that makes sense, but it does in my mind, which is most important.  A flashback is not reality, which I already know.  The upsettedness of flashbacks eventually end.  Now that I understand that was what was happening to me and what skewed my mind ever so much, the end will come.

In a way, maybe the constant shocking in my palms and fingertips will be of service just now, as I am greatly distracted with them.  Very, very much so.