So i’m back…
The first thing to say I guess is that trauma no matter what form that takes from being in an accident etc to suffering abuse as I did is trauma and that trauma is valid and real of which nobody can take away from it. Trauma is bloody tough and takes hold in so many ways and no way is the right way or wrong way so you must deal with it however you need to!
Those who know me well and who have read some of my previous blog entries will know that I had what we call a traumatic childhood which then leaked into my late teens and early adult life. During these times I would often be told my life had been traumatic but nothing was expanded on and the truth behind traumatic/trauma was ever really explained to me. Due to this I thought it was about time we had some tough true talk on trauma and what it really does/is to those who have to go through it.
Throughout my life people have often said to me that those who go through trauma like I did turn out one of two ways. The first being that the trauma consumes them and therefore life becomes very tough to live out with some actually taking their own life to escape it. The second being that they work through the trauma in the right ways (whatever they may be) and afterwards move on with their life leaving the trauma in the past, giving themselves a new life to live without the trauma. The question from me though is do you really get a new life or do you get bogged down with it or is it something else? You see to me these are two ways trauma can impact and influence ones life but for me trauma is a process and one in which is different for each individual person. Do you really move on? Well obviously you do but at the same time no! Do you really want to escape it all? At times yes but at times no. Do you make yourself a new life? I mean you can try right! The honest truth from me is these questions will all have different answers and mean different things to each of us depending on where we are on our journey. Why? I say this because to me the trauma becomes a part of you, for some yes it’s a little bit of them, for others it’s a big bit of them whilst for some it becomes who they are and others it becomes who they are not. If this makes no sense to you keep reading to find out what the heck I’m saying and well if it makes sense keep reading too, you never know what you might find out.
Okay so let’s take the first way of trauma consuming us as a way of life after trauma. In my opinion as well as my own experience I would 100% say that this is something we have to go through. Trauma is bloody tough and at times it does consume you. For me I went through some years, in my teens and early adult life where in my eyes my life was trauma and no matter what I did or changed this trauma was going to control my life, it would always be there to knock me down if I ever tried to get up again. I would loose hours of sleep each night because if I shut my eyes I was back to where it all begun and therefore staying awake was a better choice. I would hang out with friends and be reminded of what I didn’t have because of this trauma and so I would spend my time locked away in my bedroom or causing arguments between me and my mates so that I didn’t have to have friends and constant reminders. (Big up to the few that put up with me no matter what). I would spend time trying to avoid conversations which would have anything to do with my feelings because the only feeling I truly knew and understood was pain and who really wanted to talk about that! After a while my experiences became who I was and I could see no positives around me. To me my life became no longer worth living, to me there was no way out of this other than death and to me I deserved nothing more than to die. For me at this point in my life all I wanted was for it to be over, with no more reminders of what had been, no more reminders of what my life should/could have been. Due to this if you’ve read my previous blogs you’ll know I tried to make it the end, to make it be gone, to make it over but despite my efforts this wasn’t to be. After further attempts on my life it became clear that this wasn’t going to be my way out and that maybe this was the wrong way out and I was going to become some tough girl who made it through leaving the trauma in the past and my childhood.
So that leads me onto option number two that many people would tell me that I would/should go onto make a new life for myself and not only would people tell me this many people believe that I have done this already! First of all I would like to make it clear that I have not made a new life for myself and neither have I pushed the trauma I went through into the world somewhere whereby it no longer impacts me. I mean yes I can come across as though I have it all together, my life planned out etc but lets be honest that’s just the bit you see. Growing up I had always focused on my education and this to me was always the key to getting away from what had happened to me and making my life my own. Was this a good idea? Honestly I don’t know but I do know that it meant I went through my school life capable of getting my GCSE’s, A Levels and then into a job that I wanted to do. As my education came to an end I realised that something wasn’t right and at the time I had no idea what this thing was but I knew it wasn’t normal. A little while later following another situation I found myself in I found myself visiting my GP. After a few GP visits I was referred to a psychologist which led to me seeing my GP and psychiatrist weekly for several years in order for me to create this new life that so many had told me I would have and come to terms with the trauma I had gone through. After a while people started telling me that they could tell I was happier and my life was starting to take shape. Due to this I begun to believe just like others that my new trauma free life was beginning and I finally had a way forward. I had started to believe it and so with this others did too. Thanks to the help of some professionals and those around me I started to get on with my life and believed that I had my new, happy life.
A little while later everything suddenly came crashing down and that’s when I learnt the truth behind trauma. You see I learnt that trauma was something that was never going to leave me and in fact was a part of me, you could move on from the trauma but it’ll still be there somewhere and this is okay. So I begun having severe headaches and double vision and so thinking nothing of it I booked an optician appointment thinking it was probably time I was due for one. The appointment was had and they decided I needed to be seen by an eye doctor due to the double vision being so severe for someone of my age (25 at the time). As you can imagine I went and saw this doctor a little while later again thinking nothing more of it. This doctor did some more tests as well as repeating some that the optician had done before contacting my GP and telling them I needed urgent medical care. So this was the point I begun to panic but continued to fight through it telling myself I got through a lot worse and little did I know that this phrase would soon become the slogan of my life. Anyway I was taken into hospital and over the period of a couple of months I was in and out of hospital having tests to try and find out what was going on. I begun to see eye specialists and neurologists who all agreed something wasn’t right, my vision was decreasing rapidly, my headaches got worse, I lost feeling in areas of my body with no clue as to why but after a while my local hospital had to admit defeat and sent me off to London to see some more specialist professionals. Again I went through further testing by these to see if they could get any answers whereby eventually they diagnosed fnd (There’s a whole other blog on this coming soon). With this diagnosed the next step was to try and figure out why my body had decided to do this and if we could stop it from happening. So I was packed off with some trial and error medications until we found some that worked to control some of my symptoms. If you know about fnd you will know that it is believed that those who suffer from it have a programming issue in their brains and nerves meaning that signals would get mixed up or even not get through at all and this is what was happening to me. Professionals suggest that there is usually a reason behind why our brains/body’s do this and at times finding the reason can alleviate the symptoms although it is not guaranteed. Due to this diagnosis my professionals involved believed that with help from a psychiatrist and neurologist we could get to a point whereby my symptoms would ease and I could live a fairly normal life of a 25/6 year old aided by some medication. So with this in mind I once again begun weekly sessions with a psychiatrist as well as my GP in order to work through things that had happened to me (trauma) and hopefully get my vision back along with some form of life.
We are now 15 months on from this agreement and recently everyone has admitted defeat. When I say defeat I don’t mean we have all given up with the chance of any of my symptoms getting better nor are we saying this is it and there’s no point in us continuing these paths of recovery. Instead what we mean is that at some point you have to asses the improvement and move on with your plan. Therefore after conversations with my GP, psychiatrist, neurologist and eye specialist the conclusion was that after all this time the trauma I went through is too embedded meaning that my brain was unable to fight back and push the signals through that it needed to. Due to this all we can do is hope that the medication I take will continue to control my symptoms whilst medical specialists work on the damage that has already taken place that we can aid as well as come to terms with the fact that in essence my brain has switched of / is closing some of it’s areas down.
So why has my brain done this? Some will tell me this has happened to me because I was an unlucky one, others will tell me it’s because of what I have been through whilst some will say I’ve done this to myself. For me I guess it could be a mixture of all three of these reasons, I mean there’s got to be an aspect of luck and then I have been through trauma and our brains deal with this in different ways and then I guess we could say it’s my own fault for spending so much time ignoring the trauma and not acknowledging it. If you want the logistics and medical jargon as to why my brains done this then read the blog I post in a few weeks but overall here are my thoughts. Trauma is a scary thing that in total honestly nobody knows the true depth of damage it can and does cause and the truth is it really does impact us all differently. However the one thing I do believe is that trauma is a process and the recovery (if you can call it that) is too. I believe that when we go through trauma our brains are altered and a process has to take place in order to get to a place in life where each of us are happy with who we are, I say who we are because I think the trauma we go through becomes a part of us. I mean the first 9 years of my life were riddled with trauma but I still had these 9 years of my life, they each took place and each year added to who I am and who I have become. Like I said at the start when I finally understood that I had gone through trauma I tried to push it away, I didn’t want to accept that this was what had happened to me (I mean who would)! Instead I lived my life pretending these years didn’t exist before eventually having to face it which then gave me a 180 turn and instead of focusing on making my life I focused on ending it. After some time of this I moved on further in my journey and decided I needed to address what happened so that I could make my life what I wanted it to be. Following this I believed I was in a place where my trauma no longer controlled me and my life was for the first time in it my own meaning that I could get on with what I wanted without trauma and my childhood holding me back. Then when I thought I was happy and the trauma was out of my life my brain decided to remind me of it and a whole new process begun (again that’s for another blog).
You see the truth is that you cannot just get rid of trauma or ignore it. The truth is also that there is no two pathways which you go down if you experience trauma. Instead the reality is that you create your own pathway and this may mean you do go through one of the pathways mentioned above but it may also mean that you don’t go through either of these meaning that you have your own individual path. Ultimately the reality is you have to get to a point where you accept or deny the trauma you have been through and work with yourself to make you who you want to be. The truth is the trauma you go through is never going to leave you it’s like a memory that you have and are reminded of every now and again as much as you wish at times it wouldn’t. This can happen in a huge variety of ways for example from daily nightmares to your brain closing down it’s pathways and this is totally normal and okay. You see we have to do what is best for us and what will protect us from having to live that trauma again. For me this means my brain rejecting signals and nightmares whilst for someone close to me it’s flashbacks when they encounter a similar situation to their trauma. Trauma is something that many in our world will never fully understand and those who do really get it have probably lived through something traumatic themselves.
So as I end this blog entry I say to you now that you have read a snippet of my trauma process where are you on yours and if you’ve not suffered trauma I ask you what will you do in order to make someone’s trauma process that little bit easier for them. Ultimately trauma is a very complex and personal journey with the truth being the majority of us don’t know how to respond to it. Each individual who has gone through trauma / a traumatic experience is going through their own trauma process and we cannot just overcome or get over it! Trauma becomes a part of us and at the end of the day makes us who we are. This my friends is the truth behind trauma!
Lots of Love
Simply Su XXXX
Simply Su 