I wanted to write for a moment about trauma triggers from my point of view.  Part of what makes unresolved trauma such a problem in our lives is that not only do the triggers seem to have a life of their own, but our internal processing of these trauma triggers also seems to have a life of its own.

During my research I often encountered ‘helpful’ information on PTSD

(SEE: http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=22491)

that suggests one method of resolving the recurring problems of unresolved trauma is to work on the fear conditioning that traumas can create. From my own point of view, this suggestion seemed not only ludicrous but almost humorous.  This is an example of how vital it is that we  know our own experience and reality and honor this for ourselves.

In my case, my mother’s abuse of me was so chronic and pervasive that it INVADED nearly every corner of my brain and its operation from the time I was born.  Nearly every single USUAL ordinary experience was tied to my mother’s psychotic intervention within my reality.  The result is that nearly every single aspect of being alive in a body has a pathway and a track in my brain and nervous system back to a traumatic experience.  The only way that I can begin to separate the trauma from myself and from my life in the present is to be absolutely as conscious as possible of myself and my responses to these millions (yes millions) of triggers.

Nobody who grew up from birth (and before) in a safe and secure environment can really imagine what life in the world for the rest of us who were born and raised in a DANGEROUS world of constant terrorism was like.  Nor can they imagine what it’s like to live within our bodies with these brains.  I am hard pressed to think of one object or one daily activity that I participate in that doesn’t have a trauma memory attached to it like a gigantic monster fish at the end of every fishing line I throw out as I live my life.  This obviously means I am connected within myself not to a safe and secure platform of being in my body in this world, but rather that the platform of my being rests on terror, threat, and the threat of threat of danger.

I mean what I am saying literally.  I can’t touch a hairbrush or put on a belt (sometimes the trigger is noticing somebody else’s belt!), use a coat hangar, wash my hair, do the dishes, eat food, be in a car, put on my clothes, go to bed, wake up from a deep sleep, read a book, watch TV  — and on and on and on — without some part of my being having the job of blocking the traumatic reactions so that I can be here in the present having experiences without being caught in some version of a dissociative, trauma reaction  experience.

We are meant from birth to connect all of our experiences together both in terms of the feelings these experiences create in us (with their correspondingly crucial information about ourselves in the world – these being our immune system responses), and how we connect all of our experiences together in our memory systems — which are connected to our reactions.

Traumatic reactions to triggers in our environment are memory reactions.  My memories did not get linked together in a ‘normal’ way.  There was no order in my world from birth, only chaotic, unpredictable violence (with a few moments here and there of my mother being ‘nice’ to me, usually as they happened in some public situation).

When was my world rational and ordered?  Never.  Therefore most of my memories have a life of their own as if they swim randomly around in a gigantic guppy tank until one of them is caught in the moment by some experience that seems related to the information about life they hold within them.

I imagine it that the people who were raised from birth in predictable, safe and secure environments really had the opportunity to form a brain where all the separate experiences of their early lives became linked together HELPFULLY so that they just grew up with a whale of a body — one connected, competent system that lets them get around in the world pretty much just fine.

For those of us who formed brains while living in hell, we ended up with the guppy tank.  It is NOT that our way of being in the world isn’t HELPFUL, but it’s only helpful, really, if we live in a world today that matches the one our brain was built in, by and for in the first place.  Perhaps that’s part of the reason we survivors often find ourselves in all kinds of extraordinarily stressful and traumatic situations in our adulthoods.  Those really are the only kinds of experiences our brains were prepared to survive in.

But this is another example of how knowing our own pasts is our greatest asset.  The understandings of why and how I live in a state of constant foreboding makes perfect sense to me now.  My mission now is to make every choice I can to separate my reactions from what has been built into me so that I can try to live a different way today.

But it takes SO MUCH ENERGY, and so much attention.  It requires of people like me a constant monitoring of ourselves in the world that ‘normal’ people NEVER have to do.  That’s part of why their lives seem to be so much better than ours.

The human brain is an instrument of almost unlimited capacity for growth and change.  Knowing that fact allows me to focus my efforts not so I can ‘be like everybody else,’ but so I can use as much of my own potential for positive change as I can discover and use in the span of each day (and night).

Believe me, for all the thousands and thousands and thousands of hours I was made to stand like a statue in some corner — put there by my mother before everyone else got out of bed and made to stay there until everyone but her was sound asleep at night — some few times being allowed to leave it to go to the bathroom or eat or go to school…..

Or being made to lie in bed from the time I was very young as if I was in a coffin (SEE, for example, THE BUBBLE GUM), and when I was in a deep sleep in the middle of the night being yanked out of bed by my hair as I came awake in the middle of some violent beating because I had been sleeping on my back with both arms raised beside my head, which to my mother meant I was pretending to be a baby……..or just experiencing this kind of violent awakening just because she was in a rage and wanted to beat me…….  How do I overcome this ‘phobia’ or change lying in my bed so it’s NOT connected to these memories?  I tell you, lying in bed during chemo for my cancer had this horrible triggering attached to it!

These experiences and memories do not have any value to me today as some form of ‘sob story’, I assure you.  These kind of experiences do not belong in that kind of category for any one who have been in some way where I’ve been.  What is crucially important is that we recognize the pervasiveness of trauma triggers and recognize that they will follow us for the rest of our lives.  We will do battle with both the reality of what happened to us and the reality of what it did to our brains and our body reactions forever in this lifetime.

We cannot minimize this kind of impact.  We can never be ‘deprogrammed’ completely, not even for one single one of these triggers.  If abuse happens to children BEGINNING particularly after the age of one, and also importantly after another crucial brain-growing period that happens from age one to two, at least that older child has a platform within their bodies to stand on to fight back.  Very early abuse interferes with the development of our very essential self as it exists in our forming brain and body.  Do not underestimate the impact of infant and toddler abuse if you suspect you were its victim.  Please.

And the younger we are when we understand the platform within us that is the basis of our experience throughout our lifespan, the better chance we have of taking control of our trauma reactions and freeing ourselves to live a more positive life freer from our instinctive trauma reactions.