Trauma #1

I think I have found the perfect book on trauma for me. It is called Healing from Trauma by Jasmine Cori.

It takes into account trauma that doesn't fully meet the PTSD diagnostic criteria. It explains how not have established a healthy attachment to one's parents means you have fewer resources for trauma. It also offers a spiritual perspective.

At the end of the first chapter, Jasmine offers these for questions for exploration.

1. Identify a traumatic event.
2. Was this visible to others at the time. How did they respond?
3. Has this event been acknowledged as traumatic? What help, if any did you get?
4. Reflecting on this event now, what precipitating factors are you still sensitive to? Has your responsiveness to these stimuli increased or decreased over time?

Over the next week, I plan to apply these four questions to the 8 traumas of my life beginning with trauma #1 today.

Trauma #1 - A Less Than Peaceful Environment

According to a therapist I know, not being able to form a proper attachment to one's parents is traumatic in and of itself, especially if the parents are self-absorbed. The child senses the distance and tries to adapt and adjust to bridge the gap.

I know the environment of my home was chaotic. My two brothers were 16 and 15 years older respectively and my sister was 10 years older. Three children is already a lot on any mother's plate. I probably wasn't planned.

I know that my brothers were rebellious and my sister found the environment harsh. My brother says my parents married too early. They still wanted to have fun and spent several evenings out each week. It was not easy for my father to make ends meet. In addition to his day job, he worked as a bartender at night. So there were many late nights.

My brother says that my father was an orphan. His parents divorced, his mother left. I don't know what happened to him. He didn't come from a stable family environment. Whereas my mother was the youngest in a family of 11 children.

The doctor gave my mother permission to drink a beer now and then while I was in the womb. He said it would help her relax. I was born premature, weighing in at a little less than 5 lbs. I was the first baby to be born in a hospital. My brother remembers taking my mother to the hospital. Even though I was slightly premature, I was allowed to go home with my mom.

I have no memories of life between the ages of 1-5. Does anyone? Am I normal or peculiar in this way? I don't know or remember if I was breastfed. My sister tells me that I had my days and nights mixed up. I was always awake at night for the first three months, which was not easy at all for my mother. She said she would have gone nuts if she wasn't able to smoke. So chances are I was exposed to smoke fumes at that early age.

I have no idea what those first 5 years of life were like. From what I've been told the atmosphere was less than peaceful. My father could be very harsh. The two rebellious boys probably pushed him to his limits more than once. There was a fair amount of drinking and a fair amount of absence on the part of my parents. My older sister speaks as though she were my primary caregiver. She felt like she was always taking care of me and she worries that she might have messed me up in one way or the other.

Early Memories
I had the measles or mumps. I received special attention and I liked that. (CP-Street)

I came home from school needing to pee but my mother wasn't home yet. She was working at a Dry Cleaning Store part-time. I don't know how I got home from school. I just remember having too pee badly, feeling very uncomfortable, and feeling very embarrassed. I don't know if I peed in my pants or not. (K-Street)

The Dry Cleaning Story had some kind of vault or storage in the back. I didn't like that. It was scary. I was already fearful.


{Reminder re car accident. I don't like cars speeding at me.}

Last But Not Least: Retraumatized

My plan for the initial posts on this blog was to go through my life chronologically, exploring each trauma that occurred in detail.

I need to do this because I need to acknowledge each trauma, rather than sweeping it under the rug. I need to examine each one under the microscope and understand its impact. I tend to minimize the trauma and look at it as less significant than it has been in my life. I think this might be some mild form of disassociation.

But as it turns out, trauma #7 popped up so strongly this morning. So here we go with #7, the very last in the series.

Background

The most important thing to understand about trauma #7 is that it probably wouldn't have been a trauma to anyone who had a basis of positive self-esteem. My history of unresolved trauma set me up to be re-traumatized by a normal change that occurs to almost everyone in life. However, how it happened and the way I allowed it to happen, once again created a sense of powerlessness and victimization. And it was compounded by the stress of surgery.

I worked for more than 20 years in a spiritual organization. It was the essence and purpose of my life. Ironically, the atmosphere was fraught with stress and criticism. It is said that trauma survivors are drawn to environments that replicate their traumatic experiences. If that's true, this was certainly one of them to a great degree.

I manifested my perfectionist qualities, worked 24/7, and did more work than several other people combined. I was smack dab in the adrenalin loop.

The Young on the Rise

As happens in all organizations, younger people began to emerge and take roles in the organization all over the world. Older people were displaced. Usually a struggle ensued.

To be honest, I didn't want to let go of my role. I was going to be leaving in a few years anyway. I wanted to hold on until then. But my younger colleague and protegé had different ideas about that.

When I took a leave for surgery, she began a campaign against me. She would deny that it was a campaign, but I'm not stupid. I could see clear what she was doing and others gave me an earfull about it. Behind all her sweetness and innocence, she clearly wanted my job and was dead set on getting it.

I was coping with the impact of surgery and the stress of recovery. I was essentially powerless, sitting at home while she worked her insidious plan behind my back. I should have been resting and recovering. But I was seriously on edge and anxious about losing my job. Every time the phone would ring, I would jump to high heaven knowing that my existence was threatened.

Because in my life: my job = my identity = my existence

Thus began a year of separating from my job. Seeing the writing on the wall, I eventually volunteered to step down, but that didn't make it any easier.

However, I didn't step away completely. I took another role in the organization, a big mistake. But I was under the illusion that the organization needed me.

Naturally, a year later when there was a financial crisis, I was one of the first pinned to go. Again it was painful and protracted.

• I felt humiliated.
• The central meaning of my life was taken away.
• Other people were making decisions about my future.
• It was decided that I should go into personal retreat. While that should have been, in one sense, a joyful idea, at first it seemed like a punishment to me. It also isolated me from everyone I knew and all that had been important to me.

More to come

My trauma counts

My life has been touched - at times, devastated - by not just one but several traumas. Somehow, I managed and I survived.

But I'm confused because my trauma doesn't fit neatly into any of the defined categories.

There's no question I had full blown trauma symptoms after I was sexually assaulted as a young adult. At the time, there was no formal diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Even if there had been, I may not have qualified for the diagnosis since I was able to return to work. Not right away, but in the not too distant future.

A PTSD diagnosis requires that the symptoms significantly interfere with your ability to work or with you interpersonal relationships. That wasn't the case for me. I was able to manage these functions. I still had symptoms bursting out here and there, but I managed.

Does that mean I didn't have PTSD? And what happens to people that are still impacted by trauma many years later although they now don't have the full blown away of symptoms associated with PTSD. Did I just develop a mild anxiety disorder in it's place. Or are my symptoms arising due to other elements of physical illness?

You see, I managed but trauma has continued to impact my life. And when there was a gap it seemed like it broke through and grabbed me in a stranglehold, almost 40 years later.

The Set-Up for PTSD

Fear was a pervasive factor in my life far before the sexual assault or other traumas I suffered. I didn't feel safe as a child. A psychotherapist who knows my family well - she's married to one of us - uses the term "Complex PTSD" to describe my background. But when I look at the descriptions of Complex PTSD and stories of survivors, they sound so severe.

She says I don't understand child abuse and neglect. Abuse and neglect can occur on an emotional level when your parents are narcissistic, even if there's no physical or sexual abuse.

"Can you get PTSD from emotional abuse and neglect without violence?" This is what Michele Rosenthal at Heal My PTSD says about this question.

"Yes. Childhood abuse of this kind frequently sets up survivors for a PTSD experience."

That's how I feel. My childhood set me up for trauma and anxiety and they did indeed sweep into my life in multiple ways.

Here's another example of PTSD-type symptoms occurring in the mother of an autistic child.

And if you’re a parent of a child who does that, you become ultra-aware of your child’s triggers, or possible triggers. This is just one of the many reasons why recent studies (sorry -can’t seem to find the link right now) have indicated that some parents of children with autism have PTSD, from years of being hyper-vigilant, stressed, and exhausted, among other reasons.

That's why my life has been like - filled with avoidance and hypervigilance to some degree. When I had to part ways with my lifelong work, the symptoms seemed to burst through and get out of control. Apparently, I was retraumatized.

I don't necessarily want a formal diagnosis of PTSD. But at long last I want to embrace the notion that my trauma does count. I no longer need to pretend I wasn't effected. I no longer can.

I have many questions. I am determined to find answers. I am determined to recover.