Trauma responses by Marita – Survivor
When you leave… you assume you will just be okay the next day, forever and always. This is not the case. You have been held captive by an abuser for years. You didn’t stay for love, you were held captive, unable to leave due to the way you were made to feel. Trauma comes in waves, I can be going about my now, very happy life, then it happens and it feels like I am back in the place I was, that isn’t the case. When we relive trauma, we are processing the event, at this point, if we are able too, we need to talk about what happened and be reminded by others around us that we are safe and loved now.
When I experience a trauma response – I lash out, which in turn makes me feel extremely guilty. I would never want to be unkind, ever, to anyone. Or I spend days believing I am not worthy of love, I begin to see flashbacks in conversations with others, in television programmes, in movies, in places which used to be familiar. It is so hard to explain how it feels to those around you. I thought I would try because the trauma causes me to withdraw in myself and it makes me feel ashamed to talk about what happened to me.
Recently, I had been watching, ‘The Sopranos’, and there was a scene with a man on the ground being violently punched, I can only explain it as feeling like I was the man being punched.
This scene took me back to a memory, a memory which I had stored deep within myself to protect myself. This is also okay to do so – sometimes the most violent and distressing memories, we lock away in our hearts because it is so hard to re live the pain and emotion we felt in that moment. I watched this, I felt detached after it, I did not want to be touched, I felt myself put on a front of being someone else to deal with how I was feeling and lashing out. This is not who I am. The trauma we are left with, the struggle to deal with this makes us act out in a way to protect ourselves from being hurt again, I call this ‘self-sabotaging trauma’ responses.
This is where we act out to try and get people to reject us, to not want us, to prove to ourselves, that in some way we deserved all the abuse, this is the way we justify the abuse to ourselves. If you are the partner or friend of someone experiencing trauma responses, please be patient and please tell us we are safe, loved and worthy. During these times the trauma is all consuming and warps our perception of ourselves and our current reality.
Another film, I watched recently, ‘Where the Crawdads sing’, there was a rape scene in the film. I was watching the film with friends and I felt my heart plunge as I recognised the amount of times this had happened over the years with my abuser, I found myself fighting back tears. I just hid how I was feeling. The scene of being over powered, the feeling of someone having non-consensual sex with you, the feeling of having to try and put your mind into somewhere else to survive each time. To be made to feel so worthless, powerless, but the difference was the main character in the movie fought back. I never fought back, for I knew it would only be worse for me if I did. I just kept my mind busy for days after watching this film, I have felt it in other ways, I call this, ‘joy stealing trauma’, I have become distracted, lost interest in things I usually love.
I also recognise, I need to express how I am feeling to overcome this trauma response and share how I feel in a meaningful way which helps others know it is okay to experience trauma, we are only human, please be kind to yourself. I urge you to communicate how you feel, once you let it out, the power of the past has no hold over you, you don’t need to hide anymore. Write it down, speak it out, your voice deserves to be heard. I find I often keep how I feel to myself as I worry it would make others feel uncomfortable to hear my experiences, we need to remove that barrier and the silence, let the world get comfortable with hearing our experiences because they happened, they are ours, and they are still happening all the time to others. Remember, your words have power, your abuser does not have power over you, anymore.
I have found once I express myself, I am no longer held captive by the past again and I begin to feel great joy again.
SPECIALIST SUPPORT HELPLINES
The National Domestic Abuse Helpline – 08082000247
The Men’s Advice Helpline – 08088010327
The National LGBT Helpline – 03009995428
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