TMS JOURNAL: SESSION THREE

The "In Between"

Written by Elaine Degro

Disclaimer: This series reflects my personal experiences and opinions. It is not intended as medical advice. Individual experiences with TMS and mental health treatments may vary.

Session 3 was where I finally broke the wall and started to experience something much more intense than what I had previously thought I did.

During this session, my internal landscape (picture yourself standing in a very large room, this is how I saw my mind, or “brain”) organized itself into three distinct spaces. They didn’t appear all at once. They assembled quietly, as if my mind had finally been given permission to sort itself without interference.

On the right, there was that damn attic again.

Dim. Still. Dust-soft light. Boxes stacked. It felt less like a place of memory than a place of storage, content present, but inactive. Nothing was asking to be opened. Nothing was spilling out. It was not frightening. It was dormant. Like an empty stage.

In the center, a corridor.

Long. Cool-toned. Gray-blue. Industrial in feeling. Rows and rows of containment... not chaotic, not emotional. Just order. Like a system designed to hold things safely until they were needed. It reminded me of how memory is meant to function when it isn’t under threat. It was giving the Monsters, Inc. warehouse. Instead of doors, just… containers.

And on the left… something entirely different.

A wide visual field opened (finally), like a screen embedded in the inner architecture of my skull. It wasn’t abstract. It was specific: sky, water, horizon. A beach I recognized instantly, not because of landmarks, but because of how my body felt when I was there.

There was a bench facing the water.

I was sitting on it.

I wasn’t waiting. I wasn’t searching. I wasn’t reviewing anything. I was simply there… looking out, breathing, present. There was warmth. Movement in the water. Space.

What struck me most was the absence of a narrative.

No trauma replayed itself.
No memories demanded attention.
No emotion rose to overwhelm.

It was quiet.

The doctor tapped me and let me know the second part of the session would soon commence. The stimulation increased; the state deepened. The pulses created a rhythm—a dropping in and out—and with each return, more sensory texture emerged. Each tap made me feel as if I had temporarily gone under, passed out, fallen asleep. Suddenly, the rooms in my mind and the current room I was in layered—two realities coming together. Sound layered in. Movement. The sense of being in a crowded place, like a station or terminal, without needing to track any one voice.

Silhouettes appeared briefly—not as figures to engage with, but as impressions crossing a field of awareness. They did not intrude. They did not stay. They passed. The one that caught my attention was the silhouette of an old man standing in the back. His silhouette was navy blue, leaning dark gray. From his silhouette, I could tell he was bald. He came into the room and was centered mostly on the empty stage attic in my mind. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew… I did not know him. Yet he seemed to have recently come to know me. While the other silhouettes began popping in and out, I continued to look over at him.

Suddenly, I heard a familiar laughter and an old nickname: “LiLe!” (Think Lilo, but Lee-leh.)
“LiLe! What are you doing here?” she laughed. “You look so silly—what is that on your head?!”

I shot a look at her and smiled. It was my deceased aunt. She was standing in the very room where I was getting my brain zapped. She was laughing and teasing me in her cute way, just as she did when she was alive. She was so tickled by my predicament.

My cousin, who had recently passed, was standing behind her as well. She was quiet and did not speak.

My aunt went on and on, telling me to take care of her sister, my mom. She told me she was watching over me and had sent something my way. I could only muster out, “Where am I?”

“The in-between!” she said, laughing. “Don’t worry. You are okay.”

I remained aware of where I was the entire time.

I didn’t speak.
I didn’t lose orientation.
I didn’t feel pulled away from my body.

If anything, I felt more inside it.

When the session ended, it felt like being gently brought back from a hypnotherapeutic state, not groggy, not disoriented, just complete. Settled. Like a system that had finished a task it had been trying to do for a long time.

I’m sharing this description without assigning meaning to it.

No messages.
No metaphysics.
No conclusions.

Just what happened when the noise lifted and the brain was allowed to reorganize itself without depression flattening the field.

For those interested in how experiences like this can be understood from a clinical and neurological perspective, I wrote a companion piece that explores the science behind high-intensity TMS, sensory reactivation, and altered states of consciousness.

You can read that here:
Coming Back Online: A Patient’s Experience of High-Intensity TMS and Consciousness Reorganization

This piece is simply the view from the inside, and how my mind beautifully brought people I so lovingly missed and loved to a place of neutrality.