Being Heard

About a week and a half ago there was an extreme switch in Eva's personality. It was so drastic that I noticed it immediately. It was as if she went to bed as one little girl and woke up a different girlie entirely. My sassy, sarcastic, funny, sensitive Eva has disappeared...temporarily, I'm sure. In her place is a girl who communicates either in tears with pouty words and pouty expressions or a girl with an extreme, volatile, explosive, and uncontrollable temper. I can't count the number of times she's pulled back her fist at me, as if to punch me, and can count the couple of times that she actually has. I also can't count how many times she screams into her pillow in one day (our remedy for letting someone who's angry get their anger out without hurting anyone). In one particular instance she was so mad she lifted our living room table off the floor, and it's not a small table. She slides in and out of pouty into angry very quickly, but there's never anything in between. She's started doing these shortly punctuated shouting/yelling outbursts, and has no tolerance for me if I can't understand what she's trying to tell me, which happens quite often since she doesn't speak her words these days, but is either crying them or yelling them. Her new catch phrase is "I want to go to bed", which we hear when she gets to the end of her fits. She's actually tired, and so lays on her bed to rest and calm down.

I've seen Eva like this before. It was the way she was immediately following Naki's death. She eventually worked through it then, and I'm hopeful she'll work through it again. Her therapist told me that her behavior shifts coincide with some shifts she's simultaneously made in her therapy. Apparently this entire time she's been going to therapy she's never used Naki in any of her play. She does family scenarios, but never name specific...just "He's the Dad, She's the Mom, and These are their kids" kind of thing. She finally, for the first time, picked up a boy doll and said, "This is my Dad, Naki", or pronounced "Noki", as Eva says it. And last week when I picked her up she couldn't wait to show me a picture she'd drawn. It was a picture of Naki dressed up as a spider. There was a rainbow and a mountain over the spider, and in her words, both were "filled with all the doctors". Her therapist was thrilled that Eva had chosen to actually draw Naki and refer to him directly. She wanted me to know that this was a HUGE step in her progress in therapy. So, all this behavior shifting that we're witnessing is not by chance. We just have to help her know that with us she's safe...safe enough to express her feelings and not keep them bottled up inside. Shortly after I noticed all the yelling she was doing, I wanted to talk to her about it. As I was tucking her into bed one night I asked her,

Me: Eva? Why are yelling so much these last couple of days?
Eva: Because. No one can hear me.
Me: What are you trying to say, sweetie?
Eva: I'm trying to say that I'm sad...I'm not happy.

I was so proud of her for the way she was able to put voice to the feelings she was experiencing. And I have to say I know the same exact emotion she was talking about. It is immensely frustrating to see normalcy around you when inside you feel broken and sad. Please. Please be patient with her as she's working through all these difficult emotions. She's loud, abrasive, rough, and agressive. But underneath it all I know she's still Eva.