Tag: trauma

When a Trigger is Pulled – Reminders of Sexual Violence

Today was hard.

I teach massage therapy. Starting last year as part of the program we began to incorporate a guest lecture on sexual violence and trauma. It is needed, informative and very important for the students to have. I have attended this lecture other times and was fine. Today was different.

Have been fairly open in my stories and experiences and their effects on my life. I am a rape and sexual violence survivor. I have mental illness that presents as GAD and CPTSD. At times this manifests as elevated pain in areas previously injured by violence. This becomes more apparent the more stressed and anxious I am. Along with other signs of anxiety this can become a self perpetuating cycle. I lose my ability to speak my needs and boundaries. The pain can worsen, affecting other areas of my body, triggering more anxiety. The cycle goes until it burns out, I shut down or am able to use my tools to effectively work at stopping the cycle.

I have been ill longer in my life than I have been ‘well’. It started in childhood, I am now 47. Over the last 25 years there have been ebbs and flows in my illness, but in some form shades my life.

Over the last decade I have been driven to work harder at finding different therapies and combinations to decrease the effects and severity of the monsters that plague my mind and body. As of the last few months I have been engaging in mindful physical and cognitive work, trying to break the feedback cycle of ⬆️ stress/anxiety ➡️ pain ➡️ feeling helpless ➡️⬆️ stress/anxiety and continual looping.

This has been intense work. It has taken me to dark realizations and places. It has allowed for some of the deeper body’s memories to surface, be acknowledged and hopefully dismantled. I believe this can lead to transformation and as much healing as is possible.

Which brings me to the weirdness of today, and things I didn’t consider. I have participated in this class conversation before, yet today it triggered me.

Being the instructor I sat calmly, helped to facilitate and participated in the conversation. I could hear my voice, clear, firm and very much in command.

However on my head there was screaming, knots in my stomach, tears threatening to fall. I felt shaky, like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but outward appearances seemed calm. Some of the tightness and pain flaring up in the specific areas I’ve been working on. I did not anticipate this. Although in hindsight I see how I should have guarded and prepared.

I am in a strange place in my head. I feel the ground beneath my feet shifting, the growling and murmurs of the monsters waiting for the shift to show cracks, for me to fall through.

The cold finger of fear trailing down my spine.

I am doing my best to breathe, remind my body it is safe at the moment. There are no hands on me, betraying trust, causing pain. There are phantoms I don’t want to let in.

I must be attentive to my duties. Stay present. Do my job. Be here. The ground tilts. This is a test. A test of the new work, newer tools.

The head detaches.

It’s dizzying.

Maintain my ground. Find my safety.

Be gentle.

There was work done, before class, as part of my plan. I did not anticipate what the day was going to be. It feels threatened to be undone.

The ground beneath me pitches and rolls. The poison rising to be drawn out. The stench in the scar tissue.

Slow the breath

Stay present until I’m in a place I can let the wounds bleed to clean.

Shadow work is hard

Shadow work shows our fragility

Shadow work shows our strength

I honour myself

My work

In time

A Prayer for Chronic Illness

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the pain is low and meek

If it rises before I wake

I pray for the right meds to take

Now I lay me down to sleep

It’s quiet here, so I can weep

The smile I wore all day was fake

It’s almost more than I can take

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray for rest, for I feel weak

Let the monsters be still, until I wake

So to the next morning I will make.

Tell Me About Trust

I am the child of mentally ill people and addicts.. alcohol, drugs, and twisted behaviour, all colour branches on my family tree. Do I carry anger toward them? Yes, but not because of who they were, not because of what I feel was done to me, but anger that there are some scars and wiring I can not outrun. There are behaviours and thought patterns that I can fall into so easily if I am not on guard. While those around me are aware, and aware of some of the triggers, other than just being humanly mindful I expect no one to walk eggshells or manage this but me. I have an anxiety disorder that in the past has immobilized me, can make me paranoid, distrustful, emotional, rash, very angry and dark. I rarely trust my initial reactions to emotional based situations. So I breath and wait it out. – If I am in a decent headspace this serves me well. However if I am in an already anxious state and I let myself overthink too long, then the risk of past negative behaviours rises. I react big, dramatic and suck the oxygen out of the room. It is over the top, overwhelming to both myself and the recipient. Or I don’t react, I let it slide, I don’t state how I really feel, I ‘maturely’ move on. This second reaction leads to more paranoia, I second guess my assessment of people, their feelings and their intentions toward me. I then slide into a mode of distrust and I get so sad, the monsters tell me I am being used, I am made fun of and disrespected behind my back, my mental health issues get used as a scapegoat for judgment. This is what makes me angry, that even this far into adulthood, every relationship I have is shaded by what I witnessed growing up.

My father was a quiet man when sober, gentle, loving, encouraging, smart, funny and artistic. When drunk? Loud, brash, cutting, mean and often would try to tell others in the room about how nuts my mother could be, and that I was cut from the same and would never amount to much more than a whore (he told my first real boyfriend that, we were 14, ). If it were only the child- me bearing witness then I was privy to the conversations of the horror he was raised in. Listened to tales told by the monsters in his head. How the bloodline needed to end with me….. If we were weathering his deeper seated mental issues along with a run ‘off the wagon’, then out came the guns. From this I learned to be quiet, observe, look for warning signs, how to tap dance and soften the world around as to not bring the danger to me. I learned very early not to trust that things are as they appear.

My mother was a strong, funny, opinionated woman, she had my Nanna’s Irish wit and a temper to match. I do not really know if she drank to cope or to keep up with my father, so her world could be more tolerable. She did her best to shelter and protect me, until she couldn’t. The truth about my mother’s cancer was never fully told to me until I was older, even then, my older sisters and I have never had an open discussion about it. Back then, some information came as an after thought, filtered by accident to me, most of the four years she was sick I was only told she had a sore back. I know looking back, all of them were trying to protect me. Amongst other things, including the loss of my Nanna, one of the biggest things this has left me with, is a fear of loss for the good in my life and the need to have a strong circle of women around me. Some of the other things this has left me with is deep anxiety about betrayal and being thought of as unstable, (other than the crazy of my known anxiety monsters which I will mostly own).

Recently, some commentary about my communication abilities, read that, as my dramatic flare for imagery, description and feeling, have been misinterpreted and twisted around, used to justify another’s action. This happens, I put a lot out there (umm, blog?!FB?! IG?! General conversation) and I need to be prepared that this is a risk. When this came to light, I did what I do. I breathed, I waited, I weighed, I did the mature, be the bigger person thing. Be subtle, and move on. Only, it has kept a low hum in the back of my head, it’s taking up space. It’s trying to creep out more. For the most part, I detest this paranoid wiring, but there have been times where it has proven to be correct. I think this is in part why I have not been able to make any consistent changes to this behaviour. So now what? Well, I think I’ll wait a bit longer before deciding what to do, I’ll meditate, write, breathe. Measure what I know to be real against what I am now unsure of. Try to keep this state of uncomfortable from blowing any more into a full fledged state of anxiety.

I am well aware that being publicly up front that I have some form of mental illness will leave me open to others thoughts and opinions. These things really only hold sway in my head coming from people who know me, that I trust. I know I risk that ire now. Who knows how many of you that know me, will read into this and wonder if it’s you. If you have to wonder, than it isn’t. Trust that.