The Bad Days
Like all survivors, I have good days and I have bad days. Unlike popular opinion regarding emotions and moods, PTSD isn’t always something I can control with my thinking. My inner parts believe they are living in the past and they are sharing those past emotions with me. When that happens, I have a choice. I can choose to validate my inner parts by acknowledging that I feel like crap. Or I can ignore it, shove it back down, numb it out or any of the methods encouraged by society. And while being happy at all costs makes the rest of the world comfortable, I am done making everyone else comfortable at my expense.
So I have bad days. I have days when I feel hopeless about the future. I don’t feel this way because there is any significant problem with today. I feel this way because I felt hopeless during my trauma. And that feeling was completely justified. It was truly hopeless.
I have days when I feel so anxious and agitated I can barely stand the presence of another adult human being, let alone my children. I don’t feel this way because my current life is agitating me. I feel this way because I am still angry about the past. I am angry with the perpetrators and I am still working through it. I am angry with myself because I am still blaming myself for something. And it doesn’t mean I haven’t worked with my anger yet. It means I am not done.
I have days when I feel undeserving of anything good. I feel no matter how hard I try, I will fail because I am not someone who deserves to be successful, loved, accepted or happy. I don’t feel this way because it is true. I feel this way because in the past, there were so many experiences that pointed to this reality. I watched one thing after another happen that proved my unworthiness. In the past, it seemed true.
So I have bad days. And those days are not my most productive days. Things get done that must get done, but the stretch goals get put aside for another day. But even on these days, I have learned what helps. Here are some of the approaches I use. read more…
The Real Recovery Process
I often write about trauma recovery as a process or steps. I do this for many reasons. First, I have always loved making a confusing thing more understandable. I think this is a gift that I was supposed to bring to the world in one form or another. Second, it is a defense mechanism. Let’s face it. Trauma recovery is messy. It doesn’t make a lot of sense except in hindsight. And I love to be in my brain. It feels safe. It feels controllable. It feels less scary. And even though I may be fooling myself, it helps a little. Third, it appeals to your defense mechanisms. I love that I can make you feel a little safe too. And if we create a community of momentary relief from the trauma recovery process, we should do that.
But today, I wanted to do something a little different. Today I am going to get super-real. I am going to discuss what the real process looks like because we all know it doesn’t come in 4, 5, 6 or even 7 steps. It looks more like a child’s finger painting project with a dot at the end (or realistically there may be no dot at the end but we will hope). It doesn’t make sense. We can’t control it. It never feels safe. And we just want the whole thing to be over.
So here is a realistic account of what trauma (and in my case, memory) recovery looks like:
I’ll Just Wait
“Maybe if they die, I won’t feel so guilty for speaking up.
Maybe they will apologize on their death bed. Maybe they will finally say the right thing.
Maybe I will find a way to make everyone stop fighting. I’ll finally be the peacemaker I wanted to be.
I don’t want to burn those bridges. I might still need them.
I always wanted a mother.
I always wanted a father.
Maybe they will treat my kids how I wanted to be treated.
Maybe if I let them buy me enough stuff, it will fill the hole of emptiness from not having real parents.
Maybe they will change.
Maybe they will tell me they love me and mean it – just once.
Maybe they will finally see me as a good person.
Maybe they will tell me that.
Maybe things will be different if I wait a little longer.
Maybe I won’t have to feel the pain of rejection and abandonment from childhood.
Maybe everything will be better without that.
It shouldn’t have to be so hard.
I’ll just wait for them to be better, to treat me better.
It will happen, won’t it?
I’ll just wait.”
The Inner Child read more…
Repressed Memories Don’t Lie
I make it clear that my recovery journey involves repressed memories. And honestly, it hasn’t been an easy thing to explain. Most people can’t fathom how our brain can dissociate to that extent. Most people can’t understand how we can forget such incredibly traumatic events. But that’s the point, isn’t it? It is because they are incredibly traumatic that we forget in the first place.
My story is extreme. I forgot the majority of my childhood. Even before I started recovery, I used to ponder my lack of memories. I even told my father I could not remember living in the same house with him. He pretended not to understand why. Most of my memories have been tied to my inner parts who would take over during traumatic times. This recent discovery of Dissociative Identity Disorder has led to a much better understanding of my past and how I handled it.
But I have heard from many survivors about their own stories of memory repression. Sometimes, they remember most of their trauma, but not everything. Sometimes, there are only a few events which are repressed. Sometimes, they remember everything with no emotions tied to the memories at all.
However it manifests, the biggest problem with memory repression is the doubts. People love to tell us how repressed memories are somehow less reliable than other memories. While I will be the first to admit human memory is fallible to some extent, repressed memories are certainly no less reliable. But society has told us differently. There have been entire foundations created to discredit the recovered memories of abuse victims. So now, survivors have to deal with the stigma of mental illness, the stigma of abuse and the stigma of repressed memories. Sometimes, it seems insurmountable. read more…
Dear Karma Kid
Dear Karma Kid,
I know you have heard it a hundred times, but your past doesn’t define you. And because you have heard it a hundred times, I am going to explain what I mean. You are not evil because you grew up amongst evil. You endured evil. You experienced evil. But none of those things make you innately evil. I know the statistics. Those who commit evil have been through their own trauma. That is true. How could they know it otherwise? But you are not what you experienced.
You don’t have to claim victim, survivor, or even overcomer as your primary identity. Sure, you have a story. And your story sucks. Your story sounds so horrible, a screenwriter couldn’t come up with that crap. But it isn’t all that you are. It isn’t even most of what you are. Don’t get me wrong, there would be no Beating Trauma without it. But it doesn’t define you. More importantly, it doesn’t limit you. There aren’t certain thresholds of life that become unavailable to you because of your story or any other reason.
More importantly, you aren’t destined to fail because of your past. You are worthy of the same beautiful life everyone can attain by gaining a deep self understanding and working hard. You are worthy of great things even though the first part of your life was far from great.
You don’t have to live with the label of evil because you were coerced to do evil as a child. This is a tough one for you. I get it. You were brainwashed. You were told you were evil and they tried to prove it by forcing you to do evil things. But when you do something awful under the threat of homelessness and financial destitution, or with a weapon aimed in your direction, you aren’t evil. You don’t become evil. You become victimized in a new way. read more…
Owned
I never ask for help. Some might say that is a result of my own need to be perfect. Some might blame it on my inability to trust. Others might say it is an inability to be vulnerable. And honestly, those are all true to some extent. But recently, I have come to understand another angle to the complex kaleidoscope that is my inner world. I have found another inner part. And her understanding of the world is very complex and somewhat mature. It is so mature that I am struggling to separate from some of her beliefs. In other words, she seems right to me, at least somewhat.
Interestingly, she comes as the yin to my mean girl’s yang. I have to admit I didn’t see that coming. But apparently, when my mean girl split, there was another simultaneous split. A very calm, caring and rational being came to exist at the same time. I have to admit I like her. She doesn’t yell at me. She doesn’t insult me. She is even a bit vulnerable like some of my younger parts, but not in a desperate way. That said, I also realize she has caused me some significant problems in life. Her expectations of how the world works have been the ultimate form of sabotage.
I believe her to be trauma-bonded, but not in the traditional sense of the word. She is not so young that she believes we must love those that hurt us. I have another part like that. She is different. She believes we are bonded to the abusers for life, but not through love. She believes we are bonded because of a deal, a deal she strongly believes I am in the process of breaking. And in breaking that deal, she believes I am putting everyone I love in danger, all inner and outer children.
And this all comes back to the fact that abusers are smart and cunning. Nothing they do is by accident. Don’t let anyone fool you otherwise. When child abuse victims start to separate from family as they get older, the logic and the threats ramp up. read more…
Doing Nothing at All
I’m a control freak. I am not talking about the kind of control freak that people secretly love because she will get everything done so they don’t have to. I am talking about the kind of control freak people run from because they know there will be casualties. I came by it honestly though. My childhood was scary. It was terrifying. And I was absolutely convinced there was a way to control the fear-inducing abuse. Since I was sure it was my fault, I had to be sure I could make it better. I just had to try harder, control more things, get it done better, faster, more accurately. If I did that, it would be okay.
So as an adult, I became a hard-core control freak. I controlled everything I could possibly control. And I controlled everything I couldn’t control … or so I thought. I was exhausted. But honestly, I was doing a pretty good job of convincing myself I could pull it off. People had learned to stay the hell out of my way. And I had things in order.
So don’t ask me why I decided to bring children in to my life. I guess I thought they would just fall in line with my perfectly controlled life. All the parents are laughing now. I can actually hear you. And lucky me. I was not just blessed with two beautiful children. I was blessed with one child with no interest in following a schedule. And even more infuriating, I was blessed with another child who was prepared for battle. It didn’t matter the subject. It didn’t matter what side I was on. He was ready to go. And he was going to win. In other words, he was my son. That apple was directly under that tree. read more…
The How & The Why
How?
For most of us, the recovery journey starts as a venture in to the world of feeling. Our poor bodies have been numb for so long, we don’t have any idea what it feels like to feel. It is like being an infant exploring emotions for the first time. Of course, there is a huge difference. We have defense mechanisms and they are well-honed. Dissociation has been our fast friend, and leaving that behind sounds like a horrible idea.
So we spend our time discovering our feelings. We re-examine our default stance of “I am fine” and feel some very hard emotions. How does grief feel? How does anger feel? How does shame feel? How does true happiness feel … not the masky kind? The bad emotions feel awful and the good emotions feel awkward. As time passes, we slowly become experts in how we feel. We may also learn that how we feel is not necessarily a representation of this moment. We may also learn that the traumatic emotions don’t always need a trigger. Sometimes they are just there.
This tolerance for emotions is an incredible shift in our lives. We can learn so much through understanding how we feel. But this is the start of the journey. While learning how we feel will give us access to our traumatic response, learning why we feel that way is how we stop the traumatic response. I know what you are thinking. I feel that way because of my trauma. What else do I need to know? But what if I told you each emotion has a reason. What if I told you we can shift those emotions for good by asking one simple question. read more…
Healing in Community
What the Abusers Don’t Want
When we go through trauma in childhood, our interpretation can take one of two extremes. It can all seem so random. It can make us feel like the most unlucky people on the planet. How could so many bad things happen to one child? In most cases, we “figure out” that it was all our fault. On the other extreme, it can seem like dark magic. We can believe that others were given powers to use against us. These powers are not beatable based on our life experience and capabilities. Once again, we “figure out” that it was all our fault.
In reality and as usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle. Those bad things didn’t happen to us because something was wrong with us. And those bad things didn’t happen because our abusers were all powerful and we were not. The circumstances that landed us in that situation were not our fault, but they were certainly planned. And while our abusers were not all powerful, they were more powerful than a child, and what they said to us was certainly planned.
I am not suggesting that they consciously wrote out a project plan outlining all the details of how to traumatize us for life. Most of the planning happens on an unconscious level with abusers. They access their own unconscious trauma and use those same tactics on us. And those tactics use an uncanny understanding of child development to brainwash us in to believing it was all our fault. They also convince us that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Nobody is going to help us.
So we grow up with these beliefs that we attract abuse and there is nothing we can do about it. Great! How are we supposed to live a decent life like that? After trying many approaches to beat our past and establish real connection, we often give up. And what does giving up look like? Isolation. And guess what. This was planned too. Our abusers wanted nothing more than to keep us isolated in childhood and adulthood. If we don’t have community, we can’t heal. If we can’t heal, we can’t speak up. How perfect for them. read more…
“Jacked Up”
I have mentioned before that I am not in charge of this journey. There is something comforting and completely terrifying about that. In reality, my ego self (adult self) could never be in charge of this journey. I would not know how to do it or where to start. While I practice awareness and have become conscious of many aspects of my being, I will never have access to everything while in this body. That much I understand.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t try to run the show sometimes. My higher self, who is in charge, has a habit of running things at a slower pace than I would like. At the same time, there are times when I am stuck because of my own denial and strong defenses. It is in those moments, I get hit upside the head with a massive trigger to wake me back up. It is fair to say that my higher self and I have a love-hate relationship. She loves me. And I hate that I am not in charge.
But there is nothing like an energetic shift to make me realize how little I know. I don’t usually talk about the energetic side of this work. I am not sure why because it is a constant focus for me. Maybe I think people will write me off as “airy fairy” as Eckhart Tolle puts it. But this journey is not just happening in the mind and body. It is happening on other levels as well. And it can be incredibly helpful to recognize that, even if we can’t make sense of it.
Over the past 10 years, I have experienced two major energetic shifts. While meditating, they feel like my body is dropping while I am completely still. It is a manifestation of a complete physical letting go. It is a weird feeling, but I know I am completely supported as it happens. Honestly, it is one of the only times I feel completely supported. The first energetic shift happened in April of 2011. The second shift happened Friday night. I believe this happens when the higher self has decided to bring you to a new energetic level while your body and mind are still somewhat living in the old. I refer to the aftermath of this experience using the scientific term, “jacked up”. I remember the chaos that followed the first one, although to be honest, we tend to forget the intensity over time. So this time, I decided to share it with you as it is happening. read more…
