I was a therapist for a long time.
I treated a lot of people with severe trauma histories.
And every last one of them sat across from me at some point and said: \”Yeah, it was bad….but at least….\”
\”my sister had it worse…\”
\”I have seen so many other people go through harder stuff…\”
Every. Single. One.
You know what? I did too. Still do.
So I guess this is the point where I tell you my story.
CONTENT WARNING: medical trauma and gun violence.
(just so you know, I\’m already admonishing myself that this WASN\’T THAT BAD. I\’m worried *you* are going to think: what is she whining about?
I\’m not writing about other people. I\’m not judging. I\’m writing about myself-and all of us who have survived trauma.)
So when I was almost 4, my mom had my brother. He is my only sibling. She had had several miscarriages, and he was 7 weeks early. That is not such a big deal today, but in 1970 it was. She had the flu when he was born, so he was also born with the flu. He had to stay in the hospital.
She had complications in having him. She came home without him, but after he came home she had to go back to the hospital. The procedure they did to try to fix what was wrong nearly killed her. I\’m not exaggerating-she was bleeding out in the recovery room. This was decades before all those nice digital machines they have now, showing all of your vital signs. She woke up and told the nurse something was wrong, she could not take a deep breath, and the nurse told her to go back to sleep. She could not take a deep breath because her abdomen was filling up with blood.
By the grace of God-knows-what, she was rushed into emergency surgery. They saved her within about two minutes of her life. She was septic. Her colon shut down. She had to be on a special kind of feeding tube. She was in the hospital a few weeks. She came home.
Spoiler: it\’s been almost 50 years, and they are both still here.
Later that year, I was at my grandmother\’s apartment; she was babysitting me. She was giving me dinner in her tiny yellow galley kitchen. She had this bench at the end-painted yellow–the kind with spindles on the back and wooden arms and a flowered cushion that you tied on at the back two corners. It was under the window at the end of the kitchen. She always set up a TV tray for me to eat there. It felt super special. I loved it.
Then two men broke into her apartment. They buzzed and said they had a package, she buzzed them in, she opened the door and one of them had a gun pointing at her. She rushed to shut the door but they kicked it open.
Somehow we ended up back in the kitchen. She reached for the phone. THE PHONE. A rotary phone, no less-like they were going to wait while she dialled 9——–1-1-.
The ripped the jack clear out of the wall.
I have some very clear memories of this, but one thing I don\’t remember, that my mother told me *I* told her afterward was this:
I looked up from that little yellow bench at the guy with the gun pointed at my grandmother and said \”please don\’t kill my granny.\”
My grandmother screamed and stomped her feet and screamed some more. I was too young to really understand what was happening, but I knew it was terrifying.
They left, without taking anything. She scared them off. Not sure that is how that would go down today, but there you have it.
The diagnosis PTSD did not exist in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual until 1980. Even then, it was mostly applied to Vietnam Vets. Not to pre-school kids in the suburbs who had traumas that turned out \”okay\”. My mom and brother both survived, even though they almost didn\’t. That gun was not shot. I did not lose anyone close to me, I was not shot.
All turned out okay. So what\’s the problem?
About a year after those traumas, I started having what we now know is a classic presentation of response to childhood trauma. Crying spells, anxiety attacks, ticks, making strange noises. My parents were concerned, so they took me to a child psychiatrist.
The next day, all those symptoms disappeared. I was too young to understand what was happening, process it, have language for it. But after almost 30 years of both treating others with trauma and working on my own recovery, I can piece together that I stuffed it way down.
That\’s one of the ways to survive trauma. Stuff it down. Put it out of your consciousness. No matter what your age. The earlier in development it happens, the less able the person is to process it. And back then? Forget about it. The diagnosis didn\’t even EXIST yet, for the love of Pete.
I also teach people about trauma, and one of the analogies I use is a car overheating. (do cars overheat anymore? I\’m dating myself here.)
I ask: what happens when a car overheats?
The engine cuts off, someone always answers immediately.
Why? I ask.
Usually there is an awkward silence then. I imagine some of them thinking: lady, are you stupid?
Why? I ask again.
Finally someone will volunteer; so that the engine cools down.
Me: why? what would happen if you just let the heat keep going?
For some reason a lot of folks want to answer then, they all speak at once: it would blow up. The engine would blow up. It cuts off to protect itself from being destroyed.
It cuts off, to protect itself. From being destroyed.
That\’s what the brain does with trauma, I tell them.
It cuts off parts of itself from other parts of itself to protect itself.
Trauma is something that overwhelms someone\’s ability to cope, and is generally a threat to someone\’s life, or a loved one\’s life.
So, I had both.
BUT
They turned out \”okay\”.
Even after I was diagnosed after more than two decades of keeping my 4yo feelings buried, so deep even I did not know they were there…I still didn\’t think this was a big deal.
I mean, my nervous system did.
It still does.
It actually always did, but before diagnosis I just thought: what is WRONG with me? Why do I panic so easily, why are my responses to perceived threats off the charts?
I\’ve never felt any other way, so I don\’t know how it feels to feel safe.
Often I\’d think: I am the only one that feels this way.
Everyone else is fine.
I am broken.
I felt that way both before and after diagnosis. by the way. Getting diagnosed was helpful, it was life-saving, it put me on a healing path.
I\’m still on that healing path. I always will be. And I\’ve done SO much healing.
And yet.
I STILL say: look, my mother didn\’t die, neither did my brother.
My grandmother wasn\’t shot, I wasn\’t shot, MY GOD THEY DIDN\’T EVEN TAKE ANYTHING.
Here\’s the thing: that\’s not how we measure trauma,. Trauma is very subjective. We measure it by how it gets perceived, if it gets processed, if the brain imprint persists.
My brain developed around that trauma. It\’s been scientifically shown that people who experience early childhood trauma are far quicker to go into fight-or-flight-or freeze response. Our brain is WIRED to look for danger.
Just like that car is set up to detect overheating.
So why do we minimize the trauma we suffer? I\’m telling you, some of the stories I heard, bore witness to, with my clients were jaw-dropping. Sometimes they would be sobbing. Sometimes they would relay it robotically, with no emotion at all. Sometimes both in five minutes.
But all of them, to a one, tried to minimize their trauma.
People I\’ve told my story to, that I know, have gasped, have burst into tears, have grabbed me and wanted to hug me. I find myself often brushing it off, and trying to comfort THEM.
It\’s just what we do.
If you have suffered trauma and you brush it off as \”no big deal\” or maybe it feels like a big deal but shame keeps you from talking about it, from seeking support or help, please know that you are not alone in that.
And that you CAN talk about it.
And that healing IS possible.
And that, no matter how much healing you get, you still may minimize it to yourself.
That is your brain, trying to take care of you.
PTSD is not something that just goes away.
But it\’s also not ALL of us.
All mixed in with the panic and the depression and the numbing out and the hypervigilance is the person that you are apart from the trauma. Or really…. along WITH the trauma.
I\’m a writer. And a healer, a yogi, a teacher. I have my bad days, and I will always be healing.
But I\’ll also always be doing yoga and writing and teaching and napping and hiking. And loving.
You can, too. All of our paths our different, but healing is always possible.
**please know you there are resources if you are struggling.
**Asking for help is a sign of strength and an act of courage.
National Suicide Hotline:
1-800-273-8255
NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness):
1-800-950-NAMI or text \”NAMI\” to 741741
SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Help Line: 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
[Image: black and white photo of person with hands covering face]