Who is Your Person?

It’s important to recognize that we cannot go through life as easily on our own. The internet cannot replace real connections.

My name is Lizzy, and I’m a survivor of child abuse and horrific trauma. Healing from trauma is not a quick fix and recognizing that, is part of the struggle. The emotional triggers always get in the way and we are powerless to change it...

Unless… we invite help into our lives.

Have you ever heard people say to you:

Get over it already….

It happened years ago…

Snap out of it…

Why can’t you just move on?

Those kind of comments are not only hurtful but they show a complete ignorance of what PTSD does to an individual - for years, even decades after.

I keep saying to myself; I want to feel better, when I have a bad day. I want to just shrug off the pain and carry on like everybody else, but my body says otherwise.

When things haven’t gone my way in the past, I have been lost for a while, sometimes taking weeks to catch up. My friends on the other hand moved on straight away and were eons ahead of me.

Do you see how trauma can make a survivor stuck?

No matter how hard we try, some days just don’t go our way, and we hit the red lights at every intersection. Other days we flow through life, like a river rushing towards a giant waterfall, as we plunge right to where we want to be.

It doesn’t matter what kind of day/week/month we are having, it’s important to recognize that we cannot go through life as easily on our own.

Human beings are social creatures, and as people, we usually feel better when we have support from a strong social network around us. For most people, it’s our families that hold us together like glue.

How many times have you heard your friends talking about their families?

It’s constant right?

And yeah, it’s nice to hear, but I admit, it makes me jealous. After having suffered trauma and abuse, I’ve never had a strong family behind me that I could turn to when I hit all the red lights. I never had a strong role model in my life to help me when I needed advice.

Life is at times harder when the going gets tough for us survivors because we simply don’t have that fundamental support.

If your faucet breaks and you need a plumber, it might cost you two months rent to fix it. But for someone with a big family, there might be a plumber relative who would fix that faucet for free. Life is full of those little bumps and going at it alone is sure to have more road blocks than others.

I’ve heard the old saying that It takes a village to raise a child. I agree with that statement, but I think it doesn’t stop when you grow up.

An adult still needs a strong social support network through all of life’s peaks and troughs or successes and downfalls — whatever you choose to call them. It is much harder to succeed in achieving a goal alone, but when you get help and support along the way, it is much more manageable.

Part of healing from trauma is being willing to accept help from others.

Part of healing from trauma is being willing to accept help from others. This is something most survivors struggle with because part of the damage from abuse is that we do not trust anyone to be there for us.

Trauma survivors have learned that asking for help in any way, comes with a price tag or condition of some sort. It’s even more difficult to recognize that we need help and to ask for it.

I know I am not very good at asking for help, but I also know that I am one of those people who will bend over backwards for anyone who needs my help. Isn’t that weird?

Well, accepting help, and offering help, are two very different things. As a trauma survivor, I recognize hurt so much quicker than others because I am hyper-aware of people around me. It can be overwhelming at times.

Reaching out

When life isn’t going so well, it is important to reach out to people you trust, like friends and of course family, if you have them.

It doesn’t work to go at it all alone for extended periods of time. I have been there, and it is not a good place to be. Without support, there is no anchor to tether you to safety or compass to show you the way out of the jungle of self-annihilation. You have no soundboard to pour those horrible thoughts into. It is a downward path to rock bottom.

Reaching out to friends and family not only feels good, but it also helps you to regulate your emotions back to control.

Sometimes all you need to do is surround yourself in a different environments and try to relax. You don’t even need to talk, just being around someone can be enough.

In the past, when I was completely alone, I signed up for every class I could afford, and volunteered at soup kitchens to meet people. I have some awesome memories of the people I met, but it took time to forge new friendships, and even longer to gain trust.

Nowadays, I have my family and a network of friends around me. I don’t know how often I have crossed the street to my friend’s house and sat in her kitchen with a coffee, watching her do laundry while our kids run around our feet. I mean, who does that? Well, my friends and I do it all the time. Just being in someone else’s house can help if you are having a bad day.

I still remember those old days when I was alone in the world and the comparison is like night and day. My life is way easier now.

As a trauma survivor, it’s difficult to trust anyone and if you choose the wrong person to help and that person betrays your confidence, it can take a while to get back up on your feet again.

Sometimes you think you know the person and it turns out they never had your best interest at heart. I had that situation with my own family, in that I gave them plenty of chances to be there for me but they only made my life miserable. I came away from the contact feeling drained and uneasy rather than relieved and uplifted.

There are those times when you need more help than just sitting in someone’s kitchen or having a catch-up cup of coffee with a friend in the city. That is when you need to clarify in advance what you need your chosen friend to do. For example, tell that person you need their undivided attention to listen to, or for them to understand you have a problem or situation you need their advice. For these conversations, only privacy can help. A frank discussion between two people alleviates what is on your mind without interruptions from the outside world. Let someone else take care of the kids for an hour and go somewhere private. Sometimes, these conversations are so difficult you might just need a shoulder to cry on. Boy have I been there, many times!

I feel better after sharing my hurt and pain with trusted people. I wrote the memoir of my childhood Amazon.com: "The Sex-Offender’s Daughter: A True Story of Survival Against All Odds," and published it for the world to see.

I wrote it to help other survivors know that it is okay to be allowed to have a life after trauma, and to live it fully.

Remember that you are not alone in the world. Use the people around you who make you feel better, and let them know what your struggles are. The people who love you will want to know and help you thrive.

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

If you like reading about what it’s like to live after trauma then please follow me.

For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

Support your fellow writer:

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Here are a few links to my top articles:

Looking for a Change?

https://medium.com/activated-thinker/looking-for-a-change-f391e85abbd7

A Search for Identity

https://medium.com/beyond-lines/a-search-for-identity-893df7c970c2

Are You Searching for Peace?

https://medium.com/illumination/are-you-searching-for-peace-cd54d76231c8

Are You Dealing With Burnout?

https://medium.com/illumination/are-you-dealing-with-burnout-374f774141b4

The Knock on the Door that Changed My World

https://medium.com/illumination/the-knock-on-the-door-that-changed-my-world-ff126c8c07cf