Photo by Brandie Street. Trademarks do apply.
If you've been here before, even in passing, you probably know a little about my "new me" resolutions. One major one is going to therapy. I've known that I would benefit from the occasional (or regular) therapy session for a while, but the final push was the great mental healthcare benefits made available to me from my employer. (I AM SO LUCKY!) When you're being given money and time off of work to go, you really have no reason not to...
Which leads me to a recurring topic that my therapist(s) -- yes, plural -- keep bringing up over and over... TRAUMA.
To be honest, the thought of unpacking all of my trauma makes me sick to my stomach. My husband, dad, mother-in-law and therapist are probably tired of me saying "I DON'T WANT TO". No one wants to, I get that. It's not going to be fun. It will be uncomfortable, painful, emotional, and draining. So I've been successfully avoiding it. Until now...
On a recent night of insomnia, I was browsing Facebook and came across a quote saying,
"Work on your traumas; not just for you, but so that those you care about won't be affected by your unaddressed issues."
Damnit.
Like a ton of bricks, I realized, for what was probably the first time, that my trauma wasn't just affecting me, but that it was also likely affecting my relationships. As someone who almost always puts others before myself, I can't in good conscious put this off any longer.
It's time.
My first action item was to learn more about what is ahead. As a psychology major in college, I would like to think I know more on how brains work than most, but I was still shocked to hear from my psychologist that you store unprocessed, traumatic memories differently. Unlike ordinary memories, traumatic memories are stored in the limbic system, which is the part of the brain that processes emotions and sensations. Without getting too deep in the nitty-gritty (though, if you want nerdy details, just ask, because this is my new favorite subject), your brain remembers certain cues, be they visual, physical, etc, and those cues set off receptors in your brain that initiate fear and other negative responses. The brain also blocks out many of the details of the traumatic event, which broadens your spectrum of fear-inducing stimuli, and as the list broadens it becomes less directly connected to the traumatic event. Traumatic and stressful memories also change the volume of your hippocampus, which causes you to have a harder time distinguishing between current/new memories and past memories, which causes flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, all of which are muddled in with new memories that are hard to decipher from one another. You guys, the brain is amazing! But you know what else is amazing? You can literally re-wire it. Different behavioral therapies help you shift the focus of your memories and process them, which means they become coded differently in your brain and they then become long-term memories and become harder to retrieve.
A common symptom of trauma is an unconscious coping mechanism of avoidance to try and limit the number of intrusive memories that often overwhelm you. Your brain literally tries to stop you from being in an environment that will initiate the same emotional response as the trauma, because of the fact that it can't distinguish the two events from one another. So, despite the trauma being "buried" in your brain, it actually affects your everyday life. Now that I've made that connection, I can attest to it being true. Here's a quick example: In high school, I was in a pretty traumatic car accident, that sent me to the hospital via ambulance. While I saw someone about my physical trauma, I never really talked about the emotional impact it had on me. It took just over a week before I would ride in a car again, and when I did, it was to go to dinner with my then boyfriend. That boyfriend thought it would be really funny to spend the 20 minute drive swerving, drifting, speeding, etc just to scare me, and it worked. He did that time and time again, which has left me fearful when I'm a passenger in a car. My husband can attest that I am the most cautious passenger driver, constantly telling him to slow down. The injury from the accident itself healed quickly -- a few days in a neck brace and I was good as new. But here we are, over 10 years later, and the flashbacks and panic still come whenever I get a traffic scare. Living in a big city, it happens often. And it's exhausting, it makes my husband and I argue, and it makes road trips less enjoyable.
... which is why I'm going to buckle down, step into the dark vast of my traumatic memories, process them, and for once in my life, MOVE ON. I'm still scared, yes, but for the first time I feel hopeful - hopeful that I can put the past behind me once and for all. If you're riddled with trauma, I challenge you to do the same. Putting in the leg work will be worth it. It's the next step in becoming the best version of myself I can be - one not weighed down with trauma that I no longer need to carry with me everyday. So, here goes... I feel lighter already.
Edited to add: Even if you don’t have traumatic memories, this is still relevant. Think of when you hear someone say that they are triggered. Sure, this has become an insensitive slang term, but in real terms, it means just that. Something in someone’s current environment or situation is triggering a traumatic memory. Probably at that moment, they are being flooded with mental images of an awful event and their body is experiencing all sorts of physiological responses. Trauma doesn't mean drama. They aren't out for attention, they don't just want you to feel bad for them, and they're aren't just sensitive. Their body is reacting to stimuli that is associated with a traumatic experience they have been through. They might not know that -- sometimes the memories are buried so deep and have been altered to the point that you aren't even consciously aware of them. So, be sensitive. Be understanding. Listen and support them. Help them to see they can unload their trauma and walk around free.