My brilliant trauma therapist always corrects me when I say the last five years have been a life + death battle. She says, "no your whole life has been".
I acknowledge that and just learning to recognise my feelings and listen to my gut when trigger events arise.
Triggers come in many forms for me, which I am developing techniques to deal with them, especially when I know a severe trigger event can send me into a potential crisis.
For me, the signs are numbness, confusion, emptiness and withdrawing. Severe events I shut down and become catatonic.
For years I was surrounded by family (dysfunctional + emotionally detached), shallow friendships and soulless corporate colleagues, not knowing I was mirroring behaviours as that was all I knew.
When it came time to share the story of my trauma experiences, including my mother's and my intellectually disabled sibling, with those that I considered close, it tended to fall on "deaf ears".
My experiences were generally compared by those that I entrusted my trauma experiences with, as similar to their parent's divorce or "we all have a hard life, yours is no different to mine, so just get over it and move on".
What I found was the even though the people around me said they loved or cared for me, their actions and behaviours were not congruent.
When I had my catastrophic breakdown aged 43, the people that surrounded me significantly amplified my negative psychological situation. Which would playout horrifically for almost five years.
Thankfully, I have discovered how to find healthy relationships and supports, which has helped me significantly turn my life quality positively around.
I have changed certain negative behaviours around too, which will be an ongoing personal project.
My point of this post is that even as things can get better, we can slip up on occasion.
For me, that was when my beloved cat got run over and passed away the other day. He was instrumental in saving my life, and my direction in life.
I have what I call emotional delay, I cried first up, but the real emotional stuff kicks in a day or so later, and then negative behaviours can slide in, which occurred last night.
Due to my emotional state, I acted up (a sign that I am in distress) towards the people that had caused my traumas.
Today, I will be sending communications to those people, apologising for my behaviour, knowing they will never acknowledge how their actions and inflictions caused me trauma + pain.
