Awakenings: Dipped in Fear.

You know that feeling you get deep down when you’ve lost something you know you can’t get back? That shock of losing a lover, or a part of yourself, or maybe it was something you couldn’t put a price tag on because of the sentimental value. Whatever it was exactly, you woke up and it was gone. The world didn’t stop but it felt like it should have, and that’s when you really knew you’d lost something, something irreplaceable and it stung.

With loss like that you want to shout to the world: Hey, wait, I’m drowning here, just let me catch up! You need time like you’ve never needed it before, and more than anything you need to search through the maze of grief to discover what exactly you lack. Sometimes what we lack makes what we have more precious, but when what you’ve lost is a part of your spirit, part of your ability to be in this world then it’s a whole different ballgame. We’re not trained to deal with that kind of loss. This is why trauma puts so much pressure on us to figure out who we are in the face of it.

Trauma is often defined as an event outside of the range of normal human experience, and so it turns your existence inside-out. You walk around feeling exposed on many levels, and as time goes on there is often little or no healing without a lot of hard work, serious intervention/s, and a strong support system.

PTSD is like waking up one day and the world has been dipped in fear. It isn’t fair that the seemingly innocuous can be turned into a total nightmare, through and through by one callous act of man or nature. I know nobody promised us that life would be fair but unless trauma victims were all Genghis Khan in a past life there’s no reason for it all. Only understanding and sometimes purpose, which I’m coming to get more and more out of. I’m glad but sometimes it’s not enough. PTSD makes terror your normal state of being, and any deviation from that fear feels almost as threatening as the fear itself.

It becomes expected that you will get upset, sometimes even strangely angry or agitated over tangible reminders of bits of your past that remind you of the trauma. Your mind links things in illusory ways, ways that appear crazy even to you because for the most part you don’t automatically make the connection between what it is you fear, and your past experience. The fear is there to try and save you from experiencing more trauma but it is out of control at the point where a survivor of a train accident, say, fears any reminder of trains including any vaguely similar sound or place or object. It makes you feel totally out of control, and that isn’t pleasant at the best of times, let alone when you’re at your most vulnerable and trying to deal with the aftermath of traumatic experience.

Imagine if it were that you had lost a loved one. Of course you’d react in very similar ways, and it is the same essential thing in many ways. Healing from trauma is a process of extended grieving so if you, or someone you know is trying to heal trauma one thing they need is a great deal of down to earth, easy going care. Nothing particularly special, just presence of mind and a bit more space/time to process things in life.

Those who experience trauma are working with their whole being, mind-body-spirit, to try to return to a place of safety and self-knowledge. They’re trying to reassess the world, to put the pieces back together, pieces that have been shattered and scattered all over the shop. It’s like being thrown into a pit of snakes, and having to try and learn a way to live there comfortably. It’s home, and yet it’s not. The world no longer feels comfortable, and the assumptions you held that it is a safe, stable, relatively good place are proved completely invalid. That’s why healing from it can take so long – not because you don’t want to ‘get over it’ or because you’re weak or irresponsible but because you are trying to find how to be the person you want to be in a world that not only no longer seems benign but seems actively unstable, even treacherous.

Trauma confronts you very directly, all too suddenly and unexpectedly with the fact that the world is not always the safe place you had thought it was. And that indeed you are not necessarily the person you thouht you were – you are not invincible, you aren’t stronger than the world, you can no longer say that you’re sure of your place and purpose and potential. All these things and more are called into question when you experience trauma so getting back to a place where you do feel strong and sure can take time, and it isn’t straightforward.

Healing from trauma is a complicated task that takes you through the backwaters of the mind, to places you never entertained the thought you’d visit. It defines up shit creek without a paddle. It’s a search for what really matters to you in life, and about learning to protect yourself not only from outright predators or general harm but from others who accept these things in society/their lives. Sometimes it’s also about finding a way to protect yourself from yourself, and that’s not an easy task nor one we generally grow up with the tools to accomplish.