What Trauma Did To Me

Eleven months ago, my wife was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. She’s doing great today. But when she told me, my first thought was, she was going to die. I imagined being at her funeral and someone saying, “At least now she’s at peace.” And at that time, the thought would have been true, because she was still carrying so much unresolved trauma from her childhood. And then I thought, how sad is that? Do we only find peace when we die? Why can’t we find peace while we’re still alive?

In my last blog, I talked about a boat accident I was in when I was eight years old. I was dragged underwater by a runaway boat, and then I watched my uncle drown. The next day my family left the lake, we never talked about it again. And I carried that trauma with me.

I was in fourth grade at that time. I went back to school like nothing happened. I guess that’s where the saying “Kids are resilient” comes from. I remember being on the playground and seeing all the other kids playing kickball, handball, and tetherball… and “feeling” like I was on the outside of a bubble watching. I didn’t wonder why I felt that way, I just did. I would bring Hot Wheel cars to school and play by myself in the roots of a big tree. The year before in third grade, I had a very strict teacher. She said something I didn’t like, and I told her to go stick her head in the lake. I was taken to the principal’s office and my mom had to come and get me. At that time, I had a voice, a little bit of a punk voice, but still a voice. But something changed after the boat accident. I didn’t speak out like that after it. It was as if in the moment of the accident, when I was overwhelmed, and I disconnected from myself to survive the moment, the ground opened up in front of me and I froze. Then on the other side of the chasm, the rest of me continued walking into life, leaving part of me behind. Almost as if I wasn’t completely whole anymore. It was a feeling.

We have four natural survival responses, FIGHT, FLIGHT, FREEZE, and FAWN. In the boat accident, fight, flight, and fawn were not options, so I froze. Like a possum playing dead. Dr. Peter Levine calls it The Immobility Response. When we freeze, we instinctively disconnect and go numb from something overwhelming and too difficult to comprehend. We bury the overwhelming experience to survive it. Children are especially vulnerable to the freeze response because they are easily overwhelmed. If no one is there to help them process this buried pain, they will carry it with them, just like I carried the boat accident.

The wounds we carry.

Traumatic memories are different than normal memories. Memories like shopping at the grocery store and wondering if you need to buy eggs. Or you get a bill in the mail and wonder if you already paid it. These are normal memories. Traumatic memories are “specific” memories that hold energy from the event itself. For example, imagine a child was unfortunate enough to see their father beating up their mother. That moment could be so overwhelming that they freeze and instinctively disconnect from that moment to survive it. It’s instinctual, a survival response. Burying the pain into our unconscious. We then move on, hiding the moment from ourselves because it’s too painful. Building a survival system around that traumatic memory so as not to feel the pain. But the painful seed has been planted.

"Trauma is not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. "― Dr. Gabor Maté.

Someone who has carried a traumatic memory from childhood may talk about it briefly. A friend may confide in you and say “One day this happened to me…” and then quickly shut it away again. This is like cracking open the closet door to a traumatic memory and showing the frightened child inside. Then quickly shutting the door again. Healing trauma is opening the door, letting the child feel safe, and allowing them to come out and be free. Healing trauma is the process of putting the traumatic energy that you’ve been carrying in your nervous system to rest. Completing a survival response that got stuck. Changing the way that moment feels inside your body. When I first told the story of the boat accident to a friend, I was in my thirties. I quickly told the story, feeling the energy like it happened yesterday, and then I shut it away again. I had no idea the boat accident was affecting my life and how I felt about myself. I would tell myself the boat accident wasn’t a big deal. But that’s how we cope with trauma, that’s how we survive these events. Freezing is biological. We all hide pain, but our bodies want to heal.

Trauma comes in different shapes and sizes, both Big T and Little T. My boat accident was a Big T- trauma. These are major life events like an accident, assault, disaster, or war. It causes overwhelming disruption and severe distress. Little T- traumas are events that may happen every day. Like being neglected, bullied, or criticized by your mother or father. These constant stressors have a cumulative effect that can erode your sense of self-worth. Leaving you with the feeling that you did something wrong, and blaming yourself. All these different types of traumas and painful feelings get buried out of survival. We build armor around ourselves so as not to touch these painful, vulnerable feelings.

Talking about emotional pain is uncomfortable. We naturally avoid it. We don’t want to feel those feelings. We don’t want to burden others with those feelings or be put through those feelings by others. But if you don’t heal the pains stuck from trauma, they never go away. A good friend of mine said he’s very aware of painful feelings connected to traumatic events from his childhood. He knows exactly what happened. He knows right where they are, buried deep down inside him, and he wants to keep them there. He laughs and tells me “I self-medicate like everyone else does.” I respect him for telling me his truth, I’m grateful for his honesty. It’s everyone’s choice how they deal with their wounds. But many of us carry these pains, and we’re not even aware of it. We end up blaming ourselves for these feelings. But it’s not our fault. It’s not our parent’s fault, because pains were passed onto them. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the nature of trauma.

After the boat accident, I had a nightmare I always remembered. The house I grew up in was on top of a hill. There were several roads leading down from it. One of the roads was one lane, super narrow with no street lights. I had a dream of driving a car with no brakes out of control twisting through hairpin turns the road covered slick with red blood and bodies everywhere. And the car was bouncing off the heads on the road. I realize now that the nightmare was the trauma from the boat accident trying to become conscious. A reflection of being alone inside an out-of-control boat bouncing off the waves with death in the water.

IT WAS A FEELING.

That fear, adrenaline, and white-knuckle feeling would come up when I was desperately searching for approval. Or feeling silent and wanting to speak out but couldn’t. Or when I didn’t feel good enough.

My trauma was connected directly to my feelings and how I wanted to feel better.

This was my unconscious trying to become conscious.

In my next blog, I’ll talk about finding ART as a vehicle to connect with people. How one day as a kid I drew a picture and showed it to a friend. She told me how much she liked it. I immediately felt an emotional connection to her. This started my search to find the art form that connected me the most with others. And deep down, unconsciously, I was trying to reconnect with that part of me that got left behind.