The Loneliness that Wraps Around Trauma

***Trigger Warning***

This article discusses specific, explicit, aspects of a personal trauma story. Please be kind to yourself as you read.

What do you carry with you every single day?

Many people quietly live in the world today with burdens from a life filled with trauma. It could be events that happened decades ago, but they feel like they permeate everything you say and do in your present life.

How do we help and support trauma survivors? Does anyone really care?

I believe that everyone's life matters and nobody should suffer when there is help and support out there. I know, because I had to suffer alone for decades, until I discovered that there is help.

Many people tell me that the past is the past, and it's best to leave it at that. I wish I could shake them at that moment and tell them:

"Don't you get it at all….?"

Because trauma experiences follow survivors.

It's in every breath we take, every emotion we feel and in every situation we encounter. It's sitting there in the essence of our being and enhances everything tenfold.

Life unfolds in greater depth.

When bad situations happen, survivors feel them at quadruple intensity. Emotions such as sadness and anger can change the outlook of our day because we feel too much.

Don't you think we would forget what happened to us if we could?

Trauma memories aren't like normal memories. They still live in the way you hold your body. They live in the tense shoulders, and inside that pain in your chest comes and goes when you hear a trigger.

A smell

A sound

A certain accent

Food

Emotions from strangers nearby

BAM!

The triggers take you back to a time you don't want to revisit and keep you there in full 3D - like your very own movie. Your brain has hijacked your present and taken you back to the worst time of your life.

The memory movie doesn't ask for an appointment in your calendar or knock on your door before wreaking havoc inside your nervous system.

Trauma hits you like a tornado and floods your head with images and feelings like a soup of pain. Nothing makes sense at that moment. Heck, you don't even know where you are anymore and what year it is.

Everything stops as your brain hijacks your thoughts.

I was at a kid's birthday party once, and something triggered me and I dropped a plate and froze. I scared all the kids from my robot-like state, and my own kids were crying when I couldn't respond to them for a few moments. It was like having a seizure, except I don't suffer from epilepsy. I'm a trauma survivor.

It's embarrassing to have these traumatic flashbacks from triggers because most often, you cannot talk about what's happening in your brain afterwards.

I mean who wants to share with their boss that you just had a vivid trauma memory about being gangraped? Or held at knife point? Or witnessed someone being strangled? It's painful and far to private to be shared with anyone.

This is why trauma survivors suffer alone. But the pain is real. We are not mentally ill. We are traumatized and the pain can be healed by people showing kindness and compassion.

I've had all these memories in public situations. I know how it feels and embarrassment is top of my list.

It's in the silent grief that never had a name because you were too young to understand what was happening to you. But your body remembers everything, including how you felt.

Fear

The pain

The shame

The guilt

Every emotion under the planet couldn't explain what was going on in your head.

The symptoms that were never seen by a doctor and were dismissed untreated. You learned that you didn't matter and it's still a feeling you struggle with every day.

The silence that threatens to overcome every thought and action, which can suck out the air of the room in a nano second. (Yeah, you're not sure about that one, but it's there.)

The exhaustion that comes from trying to heal in a world where trauma has become the daily grind, but nobody does anything to acknowledge that it exists.

Why?

How do you function after reliving a memory like that?

I can tell you, it's not easy because I'm living this life. As the years go by, the memories fade a little, and the worst of them don't return in such horrific detail. Yet, they still return.

Does anyone care anymore about trauma survivors?

I do, and I see people's pain. I don't just see it; I feel it because I've lived with the same heaviness and grief for too long. I recognize it as a pair of comfortable sneakers that fit your body just right.

Except seeing people's pain is nothing like those sneakers. It hurts to see someone in pain, and I want to help. Take away the pain so that nobody feels it the way I do.

When words aren't enough to help my wounded soul, I turn to nature. I sit by the ocean and tune into the sea breeze. I listen to the sound of the waves and the sand as they meet. I hear the birds and creatures comforting screech.

Nature is where we come from.

My name is Lizzy. I'm a trauma survivor, a wife, a mom, a teacher, and an author.

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For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

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