By Cynthia Oser, Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC)
You can't wish it away. Or suck it up. Or drink till your heart slows down. It's real. It’s terrifying.
Trauma is... 1. Wet your finger... 2. Stick it into an electric socket... 3. Repeat... 4. Oh wait... You want to stop now? 5. Nope. Gotta keep doing it a little longer...
Post-Traumatic Stress is... 1. Gotta plug in this lamp... 2. Hesitation... 3. Hovering near the plug... 4. Sweating... 5. Thinking maybe I don’t need light... 6. Shaking... 7. Self–loathing because others are depending on you to lighten up the room... 8. Flashbacks of shock... 9. Wanting to curl into a ball in the dark... 10. Heart racing... 11. Pushing feeling away to get light into the room... 12. Repeat... 13. Or just live in the darkness...
And often it is worse than the actual trauma. Why? Because when a trauma takes place, you are not able to be in control. You can’t stop a tornado. A child can't force an adult to stop abusing him or her. And saying "stop" to a skidding car that's getting ready to hit you doesn't make it stop.
Due to this helpless feeling, you begin to believe you cannot stop the same event from happening again. This is especially true if you were a child during your trauma. Your adult self knows you have ways to stop someone from abusing you, but your child self doesn't.
When you are triggered, whatever age experienced the trauma shows up. Suddenly, you are helpless again. You want to not feel anxious, but your 2 or 10 or 20 year old self can't figure out how to protect you.
If you go through therapy, you can learn ways to talk yourself out of the moment. Breathe, tell yourself it's not happening now, remind yourself what year it is, remember that you can legally protect yourself as an adult.
But your little traumatised self is still there. Sweating, hyperventilating, and terrified.
The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs' National Center for PTSD suggests mindfulness as one way to cope with helping your inner self calm down.
When you are triggered, your body goes through feelings and body memories. You literally need to zap reality back to it. This will take grounding or mindfulness. Grounding is forcing yourself to become aware of your surroundings. Listen, smell, look around. Becoming aware of the moment will snap you out of being somewhere else long ago.
Mindfulness is accepting the feelings and body reactions rather than trying to push them down. Especially if you were a child during trauma, you felt helpless. Your body fled, fought, or froze. Your body is recreating that moment. If you push down the feelings, you are literally recreating the trauma. You keep yourself from crying, screaming, or fighting back, thus re-traumatising yourself again.
The difference between a flashback and the actual trauma is that you're finally safe. So let yourself grieve, cry, get angry, and do whatever you need to express the hurt. Finally talk about it.
And when you are finally able to let out that hurt, your traumatised inner self can feel safe and heard.
Now that you've learned to take care of that little kid or earlier self, please don't stick your wet finger in an electric socket.
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