Stuck on Accelerated Resolution Therapy

Cross posted from elsewhere; I really want help for this so I'm trying all avenues. Also sorry this is long.

TLDR: Can't proceed with accelerated resolution therapy due to lack of visual memory; the idea of searching for those feels impossible. Need advice or insight on what to do.

Context: began doing ART (accelerated resolution therapy; it's like EMDR lite) for anxiety as a trial for possibly using it on trauma. The session felt really good and positive; folks inside who were hesitant at start were raring to use it on trauma by the end.

Unsure how effective it is now post session though-- it's day 2 now afterwards and here I am, awake; this part of the scene (scene being a whole little movie of day to day life) was where the most anxiety is so I'm. Genuinely really disheartened that I'm staying up again due to fear ):

Anyway -- ART uses imagery in the format of replaying the memory in your head over and over, eventually editing it. It requires a visual memory. We have only ones for 'surface' trauma, and those are simple stills-- flashblub snapshots, not full memories. As for the deeper stuff, we have nothing-- no memory of any kind, only symptoms.

I have a week until next session. It feels cruel to think about trying to sniff out whoever has the visual memories. If they even exist. And it's possible I couldn't find them or am blocked off; we have layers to our system and I can't really access anyone on other layers. I can talk to folks in the ones above me and below with a decent amount of effort, but I don't know what they know. I barely know them at all to begin with.

And the gatekeepers of each level say I can only continue to make contact with their respective levels if I play by their rules ie don't talk about things I don't even know I can't talk about (meaning I dont know what the topics I can't broach are) + don't explore further on the inside! It feels like being stuck.

So. I honestly don't know what to do ):

I really want this to work. Cognitive processing therapy worked. Sort of. I thought this could too. It looked like it did during session. It felt like it did.

Any advice ideas or insights are welcome and deeply appreciated. Thanks in advance.

It might be you are not a visual learner so your memories arnt logged visually.

This body has faceblindness so our memories are more smell and sound based. We get a lot of tactile body memories too. Like we will remember the smell of a person and suddenly we can feel them clasping our elbow/pinching our cheek etc

So it might be a problem with the medium you are using and if you tried it with sound instead if pictures you might get further

On the other hand it could well be your system knows YOU arnt ready for the memories even if you as a system are ready to process them.

I would get the gatekeepers together to explain the purpos of you wanting to access the memory and that the aim is to releive the trauma holder of some of their suffering and ask their permission. Perhaps suggest that you train them in what you learnt so that if YOU arnt allowed to know then the gate keepers can let the trauma holder front so they can do the work with the gatekeeper.

Have a camera out to record whoever does the work ask the gatekeeper if they could to identify who is doing the work so that the therspist can help the trauma holder either directly or through them.

So it might be a problem with the medium you are using and if you tried it with sound instead if pictures you might get further

Interesting thought, I hadn't considered that.

On the other hand it could well be your system knows YOU arnt ready for the memories even if you as a system are ready to process them.

I would get the gatekeepers together to explain the purpos of you wanting to access the memory and that the aim is to releive the trauma holder of some of their suffering and ask their permission. Perhaps suggest that you train them in what you learnt so that if YOU arnt allowed to know then the gate keepers can let the trauma holder front so they can do the work with the gatekeeper.

Have a camera out to record whoever does the work ask the gatekeeper if they could to identify who is doing the work so that the therspist can help the trauma holder either directly or through them.

Good point on me myself not being ready; that might be it. I can talk to the gatekeepers and maybe we can work something out like you said-- I'll maybe invite them to come to another session where we tackle something else that isn't trauma first, to let them see the process. Then we can figure out getting whoever has the memories up into front for the actual trauma focused sessions.

Thank you thank you thank you for the ideas; it's so appreciated. (:

-- Wolf

I do EMDR reverse protocol adapted for complex trauma and dissociation. The focus is what the traumas makes me experience here and now and if it's only emotions and somatic experiences, so be it.

Somatic experiencing also helps.

Lifespan integration also helps.

If you read french, the book "Psychothérapie de la dissociation et du trauma" lists lots of therapies for DID and siblings (DDOS etc)

I'll look into those, ArbreMonde, thank you!

Not exactly related but -- I'm getting more and more evidence I am a subsystem (or well, host of one; alter with alters of their own) and that's. Terrifying. As well as rereading a entry in my journal that isn't even from that long ago and had details I should Not have forgotten but did...

It's all just. Kinda scary right now in terms of system. Not destabilized or dysfunctional, just ...from learning things. The implications of what I've learned. The fact I forgot a lot of it until now. ):

-- Wolf

It is scary to realize we forgot things. But it also is a relief to realize that... we start to remember now!