Breaking Free from Trauma

My name is Lizzy, and I am a survivor of child abuse and horrific trauma. 

There is a need for our society to hear about how survivors break away from trauma because I can tell you that it's not as easy as it sounds. 

This is a personal topic. It is hard to talk about. The words don't come easily, but I feel very passionate about raising awareness because trauma survivors exist all over the world. We do matter. Every single one of us matters.

How did you survive your childhood and move on?

Where did your life take you?

Where are you now?

How are you doing?

These are questions we have been asked, and some are not as easy to answer as others. Trust me, I used to struggle with answering the last one. 

How are you doing?

Well, I'm just fine, you might say, but do you really mean it?

How often do we lie to spare our listeners from the truth? 

Trauma survivors are unique in the way we cope with our situations. This is also true in how we break away and move on. I can only really speak from my own experiences of abuse and trauma. 

Leaving everything and everyone I knew behind was by far the hardest thing I've ever done. (And I've given birth - twice).

In this article, I want to explore how we, as trauma survivors, deal with sadness, which is a part of the grieving process. 

Life continues despite our experiences. Whatever they may be.

Life happens whether we want it to or not. We cannot turn off the clock just because we have a bad night of flashbacks. We still have to get on with our lives, but it is not always easy when you are living with complex PTSD.

A nightmare can really mess up your day, and your organized schedule can easily spiral out of control when those emotions get in our way. As adults, we still have to go to work and get on with our daily chores.

What if you are too sad, and your need to spend time in bed is greater than whatever else that schedule is telling you to do?

Has this happened to you?

I often suffer from nightmares from my childhood and traumatic events that have happened to me. Most of the time, I can regulate my emotions back into the present and shrug off those memories. Most often I can move on with my day.

My flashbacks don't hurt me as much as they once did. Don't get me wrong, I still have periods when I get overwhelmingly sad from triggers, and my emotions mess up my day. I can also react badly to situations that I cannot control when I have already had an emotional day. While I know this to be true, those closest to me know who I am and how I react.

Normal life stressors can be hard to manage for anyone, not just survivors, but we do tend to take things a lot harder than others. It is because we have already lived through too much.

Have you ever been called over-sensitive?

I have and I don't like that label. I am who I am because of my experiences. Who are people to judge me, if I choose to have a cry once in a while?

Crying is a need to release emotion. I feel better once I've let my sadness out. 

I count myself as lucky because I have a husband sleeping right next to me, and kids in the rooms next to ours. I am surrounded by family, and I take great comfort in having them around me. They help me and guide me when I am not feeling like myself.

I also have a network of friends who I can turn to when I need them.

It wasn't always like this.

I was once struggling as an adolescent, alone in a new country. Suffering daily from horrific nightmares that scared the living daylights out of me. I would wake up screaming and terrified, covered in sweat and not knowing where I was. It used to take me hours, sometimes days, to get my emotions back in control.

It is so much harder to go at grieving alone.

Being alone and sad is the worst feeling. I needed help because I seemed to be stuck in perpetual sadness.

Who do you turn to when you are feeling sad? 

Do you have a special person?

Feeling sad is part of who we are as survivors of trauma and abuse. We were physically violated and exploited by adults who were supposed to look after us, but did the opposite.

A fundamental betrayal leaves a mark, and each mark adds up to something more than our brains could handle. It made us forget temporarily to help us get the strength to carry on living. The physical bruises and pain vanished with time, but those emotional scars stuck with us like invisible glue.

We forget what happened to us, until a time when our brains can handle the hurt and get triggered. We then flashed back to somewhere we never wanted to revisit, but our brains made us go there again. There it is - BAM! - your very own 3D movie starring yourself in the worst possible moment of your life.

Inside a Flashback

Your brain makes you watch yourself in that tortured moment, and feel that visceral pain again. You hear the voices as if they were right there, even though these events happened decades ago. You feel their alcohol- fueled breath on your skin. The pain is acute and severe, just like it happened. It is no wonder that when you come out of that flashback, you feel overwhelmingly sad and confused.

You grieve for that young life who had no option but to take that pain and that burden to keep the abuse secret. Some survivors are triggered many times during the day and into the night. It can be exhausting to live like this.

Feeling sadness is part of the grief process that we go through in our healing journeys.

Those feelings must surface. 

If you need to take a mental health day to have a good cry, then do.

Just know that you don't need to go at it alone. Most survivors seek help and support. We eventually end up drawing strength from others as well as ourselves.

It takes time to heal.

Have you ever felt overwhelmingly sad?

Perhaps you had a nightmare, or you got triggered by something small, and you just couldn't stop crying?

How did you get through it? Who did you turn to?

Life has to carry on, no matter if we want to be present in it or not. Being sad is not an excuse to stop living. In fact, it is a great reason to carry on living. You are feeling again and that is something to celebrate even though it hurts like crazy. If you are feeling the pain, it means that you have taken another step in your healing journey.

I know that the first thing that comes to mind when we are sad is to stop. We feel ashamed of our sadness, and we stop. We stopped whatever it was we were doing, and we often went and hid somewhere and tried to stem those stupid tears.

Does this resonate with any of you? Have you ever cried in the restrooms at work? Or maybe you have gone out in the parking lot and sat in your car and sobbed your heart out?

I have done this many times when I'm overwhelmed and triggered. In my case those tears keep coming faster than the Niagara falls, and I cannot stop them. My body is making me feel again. I hate it, but I cannot stop it because my body needs the release right there.

I can tell you that going at it alone is not the right way. When we feel sad, we want to hide ourselves away from everyone and let our emotions out in private.

Why do we, as survivors, do that? Why are we so reticent to ask for help?

Well, the answer is simple: it is because we are trauma survivors, and we don't trust anyone. We might say we do, but in reality, we don't. That visceral pain is just too much and we cannot share it. It's too hard.

We protect ourselves by not trusting and opening up.

I had a therapy session once when I had so much I wanted to get off my chest. The first thing that came out caused a trigger so deep and painful that I sobbed for the rest of the session. My therapist talked me through it, but I was mute.

When you are deeply hurt and crying, talking is the last thing you want to do.

Our grief becomes very personal and visceral. It is always there. We sometimes don't know how to get help and support.

Don't Be Afraid to Ask for Help

When we grow up, we learn over time that we need people in order to survive, and there are many situations where we need others to succeed. One of them is teamwork to achieve something at work or in a sport. 

It works in the same way with our emotional health. We are social creatures, and when we work with others, we are stronger than we are on our own. It takes a lot of bravery to reach out to someone and say;

"Hey, I need help."

It is almost incomprehensible to reach out to others when our brains tell us not to trust anyone. Our past experiences of that deep betrayal will always be a constant reminder that the world is untrustworthy. 

Yet, we must try.

I was a lost eighteen-year-old once, when I flew hundreds of miles to get away from my abusive background.

I never turned back.

It was not easy to start a new life. Nothing that is worth living for is going to be easy. We have to fight for ourselves, and, as survivors, we have to do this a lot more than those who grow up in a loving home. 

Survivors often don't have the love and support of family that can propel us into the air with a parachute to soften our landing into adulthood. 

Survivors of trauma are launched like projectile cannonballs into the air, and we often land hard, as adulthood comes as a huge shock. 

We were never taught the life skills that a loving mom and dad would give their child before leaving home. We are often abandoned financially and left to fight for our own survival.

I have been there and I know what it's like.

Everything is a surprise when we first start out. It's a time when we have to be on alert of people who wish to exploit and harm us. There are scammers everywhere and they don't care about anyone but themselves.

Being eighteen and alone in the world was one of the hardest years I have lived, but I was stubborn, and determined that I survived my childhood for a reason.

I cried buckets during those first years as life kicked me over and over while I learned what it was like to be an adult. I had many disappointments, and was in worse situations than I can count, but I got through them.

I learned a lot about reading people, and noticed the signs of those who wished to use me for their own agendas rather than my best interest. I started making fewer mistakes and relished in my small successes.

Even though I was sad and coping with constant nightmares, I learned a lot about myself in those early years. I learned that I had hope and that my life would be good one day.

I turned my talents and strengths to my advantage. I took classes at night school and got into college. It was tough to work during the day and study at night, but those years were so worth it because they opened up new doors for me.

Even though I was hurting and deeply sad about my past, I watched the people around me and decided to trust some of the people I worked with. That trust paid off, and I got so much in return that helped me along the way.

If you are feeling overwhelmingly sad, please reach out because there is help out there.

Trust yourself to make the right decision because if you have been abused or affected by trauma, you get a sense of people very quickly. Trust it and go with what feels right.

You do matter, and it does get easier to live with Complex PTSD. If you choose to open up to a friend and talk about what is hurting you, most friends will listen.

Your friendship may or may not last, but at least you have tried. I chose to open up to my first real boyfriend about what I had been through, and he understood me in a much better way. Our relationship didn't last, but it wasn't because of my past. Time tore us apart as our lives got pulled in different directions. You will find this to be true, as people come and go in your life.

There are many trauma survivors out there, and there is support all over the world. There is support online, too, that are gateways to real face-to-face help.

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

If you like reading my posts, then please follow me.

For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

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