Trauma Response…

It was a good day.  Work was fairly ordinary with not too many twists.  Upon returning home from work, I fixed some food and sat to relax and eat while I watched an online motivational live event with Matthew McConaughey, Dean Graziosi, Trent Shelton, Marie Forleo, & Tony Robbins.  The event was a good reminder of so many things I’ve personally been working through as I try to navigate a NEW LIFE moving forward beyond betrayal.  I was feeling inspired, feeling hopeful, feeling blessed… and then SMACK!!!!!  I get a text… I realize something is in the works that is hard for me to deal with.  I think it’ll just be a quickly passing frustration.  HOWEVER, that’s not what happened, and WAY quicker than I expected, my heart began racing, I could hardly breathe, I started shaking, and I started bawling my eyes out.

What is a Trauma Response?

Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, betrayal, or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea.

What I was experiencing above was a trauma response.  Take note — I am currently in a REALLY good place in the aftermath of my trauma compared to where I was.  I’m content, at peace, I have joy, and I have accepted what happened to me.  But, that doesn’t mean that the effects of trauma don’t still exist.  They do.  In fact, I have had to work through a lot of anger around the knowledge that after developing C-PTSD from my trauma, I found out that it never goes away — I will deal with it the rest of my life — so the alternative to actually healing the PTSD is to learn how to manage it instead.  I was ANGRY at my betrayor for a long time for this…but I’ve worked through it, I no longer have anger around it, and I am choosing to continue to work on my ability to manage it.  But, as I’ve learned how to manage it well, I also realize that I can have 150 good days with seemingly no trauma responses to anything and suddenly something will hit SO HARD it seems like it came out of left field!

And that’s exactly what happened to me on this day.  Something that’s connected to my betrayal in a strong way showed up…and it’s something that’s also connected to an activity/service that I love…something I feel passionate about and that I feel called to do.  And these two things came colliding together in a way that I did NOT expect.  I have to be cautious so I can’t be specific, unfortunately, due to the nature of it, but what I’ll say is that it had me spinning so badly I wondered if God was trying to remove me from that thing I’m so passionate about…and it also had me questioning some other things around that passion that I frankly even now can’t seem to process.  I don’t understand it, and I WISH I didn’t have to be so cryptic here, but alas, I do.

I guess what I’ll say is that you can know that if you find yourself having a trauma response to something, it is perfectly normal, even while it may be unexpected.  I think we can tend to believe that once we’re ‘healed’ that we’re…HEALED, never for any of it to return again.  But it doesn’t work like that.  We can come to a place of GREAT healing compared to where we were, but things can come up that remind us of previous trauma and can affect us in bizarre ways.

I used to have trauma responses to almost EVERYTHING!  I lived in a continuous state of ‘Fight or Flight’, and it was a HORRIFIC place to live.  So…I have definitely come a LONG way since then — I have trauma responses only occasionally now.  It reminds me how grateful I am that I’m not in that constant state of trauma, and it also reminds me of how absolutely HORRIFIC the heat of my trauma was.

I feel your pain, and I understand that trauma is so so so hard…and it’s also so unpredictable when you might have some kind of trauma response even YEARS after the initial trauma hit you.

What to do?

In my lifetime, I’ve been someone who takes challenges and just tries to plow through them…to push through the hard and just do what needs to be done.

I have learned over the past few years, though, that I’ve had to handle things differently than that.  I’ve had to navigate trauma in a way far different than what’s ever been normal for me.  And, that has been that I’ve had to exercise self-care, exercise speaking up, exercise saying no, and admit that I actually NEED something and can’t just push through.

On this day, I had to do just that.  I had to acknowledge that for my OWN health, I had to speak out.  I had to be open and vulnerable in the situation that came up and I had to stand up for myself.  It initially felt weak of me (because my old self wants to just creap in and say KELLY, just FACE IT)…but, then I reminded myself that I’m only weak when I allow things to injure me further in my healing journey.  I did that WAY TOO MUCH already in the past, just taking abuse because I was just gonna ‘be the strong one’.  Well, that’s NOT being the strong one!  Being the strong one is actually standing up for myself, despite fear that even MORE abuse might come if I stand up for myself…but it’s facing that fear of further abuse by saying, “NO…I am better than this!  God would NEVER want me to lie down and take it!”  THAT was being weak, or being manipulated, or being ‘_______’ (you fill in the blank)”.  I am more valuable than the abuse…and if I’m having a trauma response that’s connected to past abuse, I need to be strong enough to say “I’m sorry, but I can’t be a part of that (whatever it is).”

Saying no…

This has ALWAYS been very hard for me.  I like to say yes to people, I like to dig in and do the work that needs to be done…I don’t like letting people down.  But what I’ve had to come to realize is that so much of my life I’ve actually been letting MYSELF down, and I’ve been allowing things to happen to me just to keep from potentially offending anyone.  I’ve not said no to things, I’ve pushed through doing things that weren’t healthy for me even though it served someone else.  I have had to learn to stand up for my own health and say a big NO.

Now, I wanna be careful here, because what I am NOT saying is that we should never serve anyone else.  I believe service is something good and healthy.  Service often brings about selflessness, humility, good will, and most often it actually serves US well to serve others because it helps us take our eyes off of us thinking we are ‘all that’, and it helps us focus on someone else who needs help, someone who needs healing, and it actually often times brings us to a good place of healing ourselves because it gives us this purpose that takes away pride and arrogance many times.  That’s good.

What I AM saying is that IF our service is actually hurting ourselves, that’s when it’s not a good thing.  For example, referring to the first paragraph of this blog post, the trauma response I had involved an area of service that I LOVE and feel called to.  But, the circumstances around one particular service was connected to a deep trauma I have, and it was destroying me inside thinking about serving when it involved circumstances around one of my traumas.  I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get my heart rate down, couldn’t stop shaking…and I KNEW instinctively that if I agreed to serve, I’d be a hot mess.  So, I had to pull out…I had to decline serving at that time because it was a serious emotional health issue for me, and I couldn’t do it.  I. HAD. TO. SAY. NO.  So I did.  I have been relieved ever since.  So…sometimes it’s OK to say no!  Please hear me on this — it’s taken me a long time to learn this, and I still struggle with it, but it is ok to say no…ARE YOU HEARING ME???? It’s OK!

Things That Help When I Struggle With Trauma Responses

Deep Breaths – as many as I need to start to feel some kind of calming effect

Walk — walking ALWAYS helps me when I’m struggling.  It’s a way for me to be out in nature which is always a good thing, and it also is a way for me to physically have to step away from the situation.  And for me, I use it as a time to cry through it, pray, and work through the emotions around the trauma response!

Call a Friend – It’s also helpful to process emotions outloud.  I have a couple trusted friends I can call on and visa versa — we are each others’ ‘PHONE A FRIEND” lifeline and it’s so so helpful to have someone like that I can rely on!  I always feel better after hashing it out with them!

Find A Different Focus – Getting myself out of the place I’m in when I face that trauma response always helps.  I will turn on a calming YouTube ambience video…or I’ll put on a soothing record…even going to tackle a job I’ve been avoiding helps me shift the focus of my trauma to something productive, and I feel better in the end.

Journal – I talk about this a lot, but it’s very helpful to take the thoughts and traumas you’re feeling and just write them out.  This is also an alternative to talking to a friend.  Sometimes you’re friend isn’t available in the moment you have a trauma response, so journaling can be a helpful alternative to at least get your emotions out of your head and into your journal

Book a Counseling Session – This may not be an immediate help, but your trauma response can be the trigger you needed to set up the appointment so you can talk this through with a qualified therapist.  Therapy helped me SO MUCH especially during the deepest years of my trauma, and I can’t recommend it enough!