healing childhood trauma pt6

Processing the Pain

Anxiety, Anger, Depression, Loneliness

Journal entries beginning Feb. 14, 1999

I am so scared, terrified. I feel not only inadequate, but like I want to run away. Like, I just can’t do it. Do...life. I am afraid, so afraid.

Feb 16, 1999

Things I hate about my life:

1.I am too fat and I can’t control my eating habits

2.I am so tired all the time

3.My job has too much pressure, so discouraging

4.I am a terrible parent

5.All my feelings

6.Finances

I feel so so angry. Is there some way by changing my situation, either by changing my job, or moving, or something that would alleviate this stress?  I spent the first half of my life not living. It was easier. I hate feeling so out of control. I hate trying things for the first time. I hate being responsible for anything. I can’t get past wanting to quit. I just can’t get past wanting to give up. This is too hard

Feb. 21, 1999

...I feel so sad. Why is it so hard for me to say no to things?

Dec 3, 2000

...I am so afraid sometimes I just want to resign from life. ..It’s as if I feel incredible joy, but that’s too scary so I have to be depressed in order to control that feeling. 

Dec 14, 2000

...when I feel peace I begin to feel scared. I just don’t know how to live, how to let everything that happened go.

And this entry done in 1999 is a stick figure of me, bowed over with arrows pointing in my back, weighing me down, killing me. On each arrow, I wrote a different thought. 

-No hope

-You’ll always be this miserable

-Don’t trust

-Don’t risk letting go

-You’re out of control

-Dread

-Worry

-Fear

-Just run away

-Hide

-Don’t feel

-You are a disappointment

-You are a failure

-Just quit

-Be on guard!

-Don’t let anyone near

-You’ll never get well

-I would love you if you could be perfect

-Why can’t you behave so I will feel better

-You’re ugly

-You’re no good

-Finances

-You’re stupid

-I don’t love you

-You’ll never be well

-Why can’t you be perfect?

-You can’t do anything right

-You are inadequate

-You’ll never be safe

-You’re going to get fired

-They’re right

-I am stupid

-I hate who I am

-You can’t trust anyone

-If you can trust God, then why do bad things happen?

This is the level of pain I was in. Do you see anxiety, anger, guilt, depression and loneliness in my words? They are all there. This is what it is like to live with trauma as an adult. These kind of thoughts go in a circular loop. It is one of the reasons we do not seek help. It is too overwhelming. 

What Childhood Trauma Does to Us as Adults

It’s easy to talk about healing and lofty ideas like truth on the other side of pain, but when I remember what it was really like, the despair, the circular thoughts, the self-hatred, I remember how hard it was just to put one foot in front of the other. I lived in flashback all the time. All... the... time. 

No wonder we eat ourselves to death, or cut ourselves, or take drugs or smoke or watch television for three days straight or sleep for a week, or not sleep at all. We push and push and push and push and try to continue for the sake of our children our partners our...selves until we just hit the wall. I was successfully teaching choral music during this time of my life. Success? it didn’t matter because I was miserable inside. 

Childhood Trauma & Processing Pain

You hear a lot about flashbacks and the neuroscience that is just now coming to terms with what trauma does to the brain. I can only speak from my own experience. Tormenting circular thoughts were my brain’s way of trying to help. “Something’s wrong!” it screamed. Your emotions are haywire because of trauma and I’m going to force you to pay attention to them. 

If I’m honest, I have to admit, had I not been in so much pain, I would never have chosen to heal. For me, the choice came down to one thing. Stay like you are and die, or start listening and do something. 

I did not want trauma to win. It had taken so much of my life, I did not want it to take any more. I figured, I might as well work on this. It’s going to kill me if I don’t—so what do I have to lose?

Exactly. What do you have to lose? The weight of all that torment, that’s what. Defy it. Look it in the eye. You can do it.