I spent 40 years of my life in constant survival mode, running on fear. I ran myself into the ground and was constantly in fight or flight mode.
Since I entered therapy and began my healing journey 10 years ago, for a period of that time I didn’t know what to make of it or what to do. The role I knew was gone, and I didn’t know who I was.
This past decade has been spent learning, accepting, and healing from the trauma of child sexual abuse, cPTSD and working on undoing all those years. It’s taken time to adjust to a new normal and to allow myself to trust the process. The journey has not been easy, and with every new day, it has brought new challenges.
Starting at the beginning
I’ve essentially had to start over. To recalibrate and undo everything I knew. However, when we have a mind that is self-aware enough to sometimes even sabotage the body’s attempts to reach that calm, and to fall into ruminating patterns and focus on feelings of unworthiness, it makes it harder to achieve any progress.
A trauma survivor is structured by chaos, and when we start to feel safe, our brain begins to trauma dump. Everything we couldn’t process while still in survival mode comes flooding back. Our whole bodies essentially crash. The brain can’t comprehend what peace actually is, and when it begins to process things, it can get unpleasant. The amount of work that has to go in to counter what your brain and your nervous system has believed is exhausting, yet necessary.
What many don’t understand about trauma and healing is that we go through a period where we feel safer and more stable pre-therapy. When healing, it actually makes us feel worse because we are facing all the uncomfortable emotions and memories. It also becomes more difficult when we are getting healthier because things still continue to trigger us, but it impacts us more deeply. We begin to feel so much.
The messy, non-linear, painful process called healing is not for the faint of heart.
Grief was a catalyst to change
It may sound strange, but grieving has helped me feel my way through a lot of my complex emotions, and it’s helping me feel better about my life overall. I’m getting to know myself and actually allowing myself to do things out of enjoyment. Not because I felt I had to attain some unachievable goal of perfection. Instead, I am embracing the messiness and imperfections of life. I am viewing it all from a different perspective. It’s opened the door to a deeper self-understanding.
A year ago I opened myself up completely. Fully leaned in on who I am and what I have been through. I embraced it all with both hands and even started sharing my story. It feels strange to finally be living and not simply surviving. To not be stuck in hypervigilance and constantly on guard.
Recently I have felt like I am stuck in imposter syndrome meets survivor’s guilt. I am healthy, I am becoming happy, I am financially stable, and I have people in my life that love me for exactly who I am.
And yet, I felt like it is all wasted on me. That’s what trauma and cPTSD do to a person.
Moving beyond survival mode, albeit terrifying, offers us the chance to rediscover life and ourselves, and it allows us to confront our fears. Everything that held us back. We learn that we are not our trauma and that cPTSD doesn’t get to tell us how we feel. It takes patience, lots of resilience, and bravery. But the journey is worth it. Because we are worth it. We deserve happiness.
Our past does not define our future. Healing allows us to do that.
Photo by Rawan Ahmed on Unsplash