Evidence of Damage...

We all have it.  Those parts of us that are wounded and broken.  These parts don’t show a great deal of the time.  In fact, they lie so dormant that often, even we forget they are there.  But then something happens or doesn’t happen (really can go either way) and then we are fully activated and off into trauma land in a jiffy!

This happened to me yesterday.  The particulars are not important.  What was important was that someone else’s actions (in this case lack of action) spun me the fuck out.  This inaction led me to a complete internal meltdown.  I am talking nuclear reactor, full-scale emotional meltdown.  Which no one saw or even heard about because, one of the other great things about trauma, is that I have learned to keep that shit on lock down, TIGHT!

Now in my particular case, I KNEW my reaction had very little to do with what was happening in real time and A LOT to do with stuff that happened to me previously.  Now this knowledge of what was going on was super helpful for me to “coach” myself through the meltdown.  I will also own that none of it felt good.  It felt like I was in peril.  It felt like I was being harmed all over again. It felt like I was fucking dying.  But I knew I wasn’t and I knew that I was taking an old hurt and smearing it all over a person that didn’t cause the reaction in me to begin with...

And I was doing that because this other person’s behavior once meant unsafe to me.  This other person’s behavior was harmful and unsafe.  And when I saw and felt the same thing coming from another person, well, I was in immediate flight or fight.  And I had all sorts of self protective and maladaptive behaviors that were all clamoring for expression.

But I KNEW this current person’s behavior was NOT what this other person’s behavior was.  I FEARED it might be, but I KNEW it likely WAS NOT.  And so I went with what I knew instead of what I feared.  That is pretty huge fucking progress for someone like me.

In the past, I would have dealt with it by this very toxic, yet almost surgical, tactical response.  It would have gone like this:

PANIC

Feel emotionally overwhelmed and scared

Begin to disassociate

Begin to eradicate all ideas and notions of anything good related to the person in question

Involve other people

Talk about the conclusions I drew and manufactured

Convince myself (and others) that my “story” was correct and take protective action

Forget the person ever existed and move on with my life

And this would have all taken only a couple of hours.  And the person in question wouldn’t even know what had happened.  I would just be fucking gone...no explanation, no discussion.  Pride is good like that.

And believe me when I tell you that I wanted to do all of the above with a fucking vengeance.  But I knew, for sure, I was the crazy one and that I was the one in a full scale trauma response.  The other person? They were just living their lives having absolutely no idea their in this particular case, inaction, had caused me such panic, consternation and pain. And they wouldn’t know that they did this because it was not a logical conclusion to draw.  Traumatic responses are not logical.  They are born of unprocessed pain and unhealed wounds from things OTHER people did a long time ago.  And we developed the coping strategies we did because we had to and we did the best we could.

It was a weird day.  I walked through my life, working and living it having two completely different reactions to what was happening.  There was the completely sane and rational part of me that was acutely aware of what was going on.  And then there was the wounded, traumatized me that was freaking the fuck out.  And I will say that both of me did a fairly good job of keeping the wheels from coming off my proverbial bus.

It was NOT easy.  I had a whole bunch of maladaptive shit I wanted to do.  I had to sit on myself NOT to do all the shit I wanted to do to alleviate my own suffering.  Each minute that ticked by caused my panic and dread to increase exponentially.  But I was able to sit with my hurt and because I was able to do that, I was able to NOT make the whole situation worse.

I KNEW the whole time that I was having a reaction to something that was triggered in the present but was not really all that tied to what was happening now.  My emotional response was completely and totally related to something someone else did a LONG time ago.  And that was helpful to see in the moment.  It helped me not attempt to hold someone accountable for a wound they did not cause.  They just touched the wound, and inadvertently opened it.

I wanted to make the now gaping wound this other person’s problem but I didn’t.  I just allowed it to be mine, even though it was unfair and was really hard to sit with.  I engaged in this previous relationship and now I have the wounds to prove it.

I remember reading somewhere that sometimes our current day reactions are because this behavior was once unsafe.  And that helped me a great deal yesterday.  I am pretty sure I saw it on Instagram so apparently psychological healing can happen on the Insta!  (And no, that doesn’t make this whole story even crazier...I mean, ok, maybe it does, just a little).

It was very important for me to realize my reaction to the present day circumstances was not because this new person was doing something wrong, but because once upon a time, this same type of behavior meant that I wasn’t safe...like at all.  And it was that previous engagement with this type of behavior that was now triggering all the frothy emotional appeals.

I had a little trouble falling asleep because my nervous system was so activated.  It was difficult for me to turn my head off and calm down. But I did it.  I talked myself through my complete freak out.  And while I may have visited many islands of crazy, I did not act on any of them.  Allowing myself the full spectrum of my own emotions while standing by myself and talking myself through it all.  My therapist would be so fucking proud!

I write all of this because this was kind of a first for me.  One where panic hit and I was able to weather the storm and wake today not shipwrecked on an island of my own trauma.  The past did not claim another present day casualty.  Me and this other person are fine because I did not unleash my crazy all over the place and create new wounds onto someone who didn’t deserve it.

I was able to heal myself in real time.  It wasn’t fun.  It wasn’t pretty.  And it wasn’t easy. But I did it. I was able to coach myself through it all the way to the other side. And that feels pretty fucking good this morning to claim.

We are not responsible for the traumas perpetuated by others upon us.  Sometimes we are just hapless recipients of others pain and trauma.  And often times, the scars they have left behind cause us to behave in ways that only perpetuate the cycle of abuse, pain, loss and trauma.  But other times, we are able to show up for ourselves in ways that are important and life altering.  We do not allow what happened in the past to reach its tentacles into present day and fuck up our current day lives because of unhealed shit from the past.

Sometimes that happens on a random Wednesday while on a business trip to Florida. The giant sea monster of my past trauma did not come and pluck me off the beach and shake my crazy all over the good people of Ft. Lauderdale.  Leaving me free to report back the class this morning that sometimes you do have strength you didn’t know you had.  Sometimes you can walk yourself back and through it.  Sometimes you can see that your response, while real and unfolding in present time, isn’t about what is currently happening...it is related to something that happened before with someone other than the current day person or people.  And when you realize that your reaction IS appropriate for that other time, but not today’s time, you are able to give yourself everything you need to survive yourself for another day!

Fuck!

So good!

Again...still.