One of my earliest memories is this incident from when I was 6 years old. I don’t know how enrolling children in school is done now, but in my day it was a kind of test. If a child was under 7 years old, he was tested to see if he could be enrolled in first grade. And since I was 6 years and 8 months old in September, I had to pass that test. I don’t remember what the test was about, but the real test for me came after I left the principal’s office. And I failed it with flying colours.
The story
When I got to the schoolyard, my parents let me go home alone. The school was less than 100 meters from the block where I lived, on a quiet street. There were few cars at that time, and rarely one entered that street. There was no danger, it was very close, it was broad daylight, but I lost my way. I went the wrong way right out of the school. Instead of taking it to the right, I took it to the left, and that’s where the film broke. As I walked, I realized that I no longer knew my surroundings, I panicked and burst into tears.
My parents were behind me, hidden, and they immediately came to me. Theoretically, there was no danger. But my reaction of horror from those minutes never left me. I was a helpless being who could not find my way home, although I was very close. And I couldn’t tell left from right. I panic at the slightest discomfort. I didn’t have much brain and I was getting lost in my own environment, in which I had activated all my life until then. And I needed help with the simplest thing in the world. I couldn’t do anything by myself. That’s what my 6-year-old mind would have thought. As a result of this incident, my parents had to arrange to pick me up every day during the first year of school.
Trauma
A trauma is not about a specific event that happened in our life, but about the reaction we had to that event. And, secondly, how we were contained in this reaction by those close to us, those whose opinion we value. The deeper this reaction of ours, as well as the reaction of those around us, penetrates inside us, the greater the risk of scarring. Because trauma is not a wound, but a scar that forms from the wound of the emotional reaction.
And the scar is a stiff, hard and sometimes painful tissue. It is a sensitive area. Have you noticed how we can prick a hard, old callus, and we don’t feel the prick? So is trauma. It stays hidden, sometimes for years. We don’t feel it. We just become more rigid, because that scarred tissue does not allow us to feel the emotions, or we feel them exacerbated. Anyway, emotions don’t have a natural course, either we are numb, or we get excited about everything. And mental, emotional rigidity is transmitted to the body. And we can make an autoimmune disease that involves body stiffness. For example, ankylosing spondylitis.
And sometimes, a certain event comes along and breaks that rigid, scarred wall. And it hurts bad. All the emotions felt at the time of the trauma rush out, no longer contained by anything. And a 52-year-old woman is overwhelmed by the emotions of the 6-year-old girl.
Other traumas
The memory of that incident from when I was 6 years old appears to me like an old photograph, faded and torn at the corners. It’s not even black and white, but a fuzzy shade of gray. During that time, I became a very shy child who developed a speech impediment and rarely came out of her corner, but only in a very clearly defined safety environment. I don’t remember how my parents reacted to the high grades I sometimes got at school, but I was very surprised and thought a mistake had been made, because “I can’t do it alone”. Even when I entered high school number one on the list, I didn’t think I could.
I grew up, and other traumas were added to my psyche as a pre-adolescent, then a teenager. My parents divorced. It’s not easy for a teenage girl to go through that tense situation at home, through her parents’ arguments, and then their divorce. My body revolted: my ankylosing spondylitis was triggered. The disease was like a defense mechanism: “See? That’s why you’re an emotional wreck, because your whole body hurts”. It’s not like that, you’re emotionally drained from the trauma, and your whole body hurts because of it. But many years passed before I became aware of this fact.
I entered adult life and found more and more often, but still amazed… that I can. And I fell into the other extreme: I can do everything myself. Even tormented by the physical pain caused by spondylitis, I insisted on doing everything myself without asking for help. “I am strong, I can do it alone!” Sounds familiar, people with autoimmune diseases, doesn’t it?
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The bad news is that this hyper-independence is also a sign of rigidity. Humans are made to live in interdependence. Due to the fact that humans can collaborate with each other, ask for and give help, this species has reached the top of the evolutionary ladder.
A man cannot do everything alone, he needs to rely on others: the people who build the car he drives, the baker who makes the bread he eats, the technicians who build the telephone he talks on, the doctor who operates him when he has gallstones. We live in an increasingly complex world, and our interdependence is beginning to become far too close, and to turn into dependence on the wonders of modernity. But that’s another story 😊.
Triggering trauma
I don’t want to go into detail about the incident that teased my old scar, because it doesn’t just involve me. I’ll just say that I didn’t choose a collaborator well and I mistakenly persisted, even though it was obvious that we were no longer on the same wavelength. The grown woman who made a mistake and needed someone’s help to fix that mistake, felt left out and helpless again. My above average IQ mind knows I’m in the comfort of home and family, but the emotions are overwhelming. I trusted someone, and he left me, leaving me in the middle of the road. I’ve lost control and… I can’t do it alone.
It took a certain confluence of events to trigger this trauma acutely, but it was there and working in the background all my life. The succession of “I can” and “I can’t” created an emotional roller-coaster often. My inability to ask for help made me lose opportunities and limit my life, only between the barriers of “sure I can”. And I couldn’t do much, of course.
Does a trauma heal?
In recent years, however, these barriers have widened. I have found that the gluten-free diet is good for me, and the physical pain has lessened considerably. And then I opened Pandora’s box, the box of traumas. I triggered them one or more at a time. Back then I couldn’t analyze them like I can now, I knew that something hurts in my soul, and then, after a while, it doesn’t hurt so much anymore. I started to read, to educate myself. At first, I read everything I could get my hands on, eager for knowledge, then my readings and understanding refined. But I’m still surprised by something, like what happened now, which helps me to humble myself and keep searching for the truth.
A trauma that is triggered and recognized has a good chance of being healed. Or at least contained in a healthier way than it had been before. It just takes time, openness and patience. We all have traumas, bigger or smaller, more or less. The stronger our emotional response to a particular event was, the stronger and more rigid the scar created. The more we deny these traumas, the deeper they go. We have adaptive responses to trauma, the so-called coping mechanisms. But they don’t solve them, they only help us temporarily, and they can trigger other problems.
These mechanisms can range from alcohol, drugs, violence and emotional eating to hatred, envy, intolerance and gossip. We can have a dreamy nature, which sees only the beautiful, or on the contrary, only the ugly in the world. We can either be very lazy, with a dirty and disorganized house, or we can have an overly clean and organized house, and panic when we see the rug’s tassels ruffled. These are all coping mechanisms. People without too much trauma see the world in a realistic way, with good and bad, and have a balanced life, without excesses of any kind, neither material nor emotional.
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The 6-year-old girl has made sure all her life that she does not lose control of what is happening around her. She built herself a castle with imaginary walls, and from these walls she looked with fear and envy at the world outside. Even now, in adulthood, she has her safe corner at home, and when she leaves home, the first thing she does is to make that safe and comfortable corner in the hotel room, boarding house or friend’s house she goes to. Through education she has learned to trust people, but she always keeps that safe distance that makes her feel comfortable. And she makes sure she always has her phone charged. For Google Maps. She still gets lost and confuses left with right 😊.
