A Trauma Story

I have spent the past many years overcoming some major hurdles induced in my mind by trauma.

What trauma?

I’ve always referred to it as childhood trauma, because it was from 17 years of living with two adults who had no idea how to be adults. I don’t say this to be mean. I fully understand that the situation my parents chose to face when they had their shotgun wedding and brought me into the world was a difficult one. And even though nobody from either side of my family will admit it, both of my parents came from extremely broken, extremely abusive homes. Abuse that was supported and condoned through generations, in the home and in their faith. Just read this article: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orphanage-death-catholic-abuse-nuns-st-josephs

I share this article because it is LOCAL to where I grew up. My family were members of the clergy. The kinds of abuse described within were not new or even especially surprising to me. I write this, now, because the kinds of abuse that lead to trauma are the kinds of abuse that take months or sometimes years to overcome. This article I am sharing helped me to understand where and how my family members learned to be so cruel.

This isn’t short, but writing this, I want to focus on some experiences I had, the feelings they created, the negative consequences, and the positive outcomes I have experienced. I think it’s important to acknowledge all the parts of the journey.

My experiences: What makes trauma?

When the layperson thinks of trauma and post traumatic stress disorder, they think of soldiers and war and explosions. My ex-mother in law, when she found out I was diagnosed with PTSD, told me that it was an impossible diagnosis, and said “Isn’t that only for soldiers?”

As we know, trauma comes in many forms. PTSD can occur from a single, violent, traumatic incident. PTSD can also occur from repeated stress over time. To complicate matters, different people react differently to different kinds of stress. So, what makes my heart race might not impact you at all. The things that would traumatize you might not cause me anxiety.

So how does this happen? An ‘A’ student, a violinist, scholarships, successful. How did I emerge from my home with all of those accomplishments and PTSD? It’s not as hard to believe as you think. and it’s not as uncommon either.

The experiences that caused me the most harm were not physical abuses. Yes, they happened. I didn’t really care about them very much. Honestly, it was the small experiences over time. And the stranger punishments that were intended to humiliate me.

I won’t go into great detail here. I have journals that I have kept since I was 12 years old, and those journals contain the details, the quotes, the times and places, the nitty-gritty. I will talk about a few things that stick in my mind.

From the time I was 12 until the time I was 17, my mother rarely referred to my sister or I by our names. We were “the bitches”, or some other variant on that theme. The tape loop that runs in my mind with frequency, sometimes even now, is “you’re a no good, worthless, selfish fucking bitch.” From the time I was 12, my mother was fixated on telling me how bad I was. I understand now that it was a reflection of what happened to her. I forgive her. At the same time, this training to believe that I was|am worthless took a strong hold in my self perception. By the time I was 16, I had considered suicide, and by the time I was 17, I was engaging in self-harm.

The other thing of note that happened repeatedly were punishments in front of others, that were intended to humiliate and degrade me (and my siblings). Again, the trauma was not from the physical impact. It was the mental impact of being reminded that I was my mother’s property, and I was no good.

One such punishment was issued when we talked back. We called it “heat vent kneeling”. My siblings and I were required to kneel on the floor registers that you see below. These floor registers were for the hot air heating in our house, which was often on when we were required to kneel. These registers were HOT and sharp. Our punishment typically lasted 30 minutes. We had to kneel straight up, with our noses to the wall. While we knelt, our mother would tell us how bad we were. When it ended, our knees were hot with red lines.

As a kid, talking was the worst thing I did. I got great grades, I did well in extra curricular activities, scheduling most of the activities myself because my father was working 70+ hours a week, and my mom was drinking to hide the pain of her own childhood. The only thing she was trying to punish was my will and my voice. I was very willful, but mentally, the repetition of this punishment, which started when I was 9 and lasted until I was 17, caused me mental issues around trust, and also around feeling worthless.

So, this is your setup. Here is Jessica, 17, moving out of her house and trying to take on the world, trying to prove she is worth something while simultaneously believing she is absolutely nothing. Jessica, engaging in a lot of mal-adaptive behaviors because she doesn’t trust anyone. I need you to understand this history because PTSD and trauma of this type are not about a single event, but rather a history of repetition of events over multiple years.

Bad Feelings and Negative Impact of Trauma

My trauma impacted two things: my approach to relationships, and my approach to work. It’s easy to choose bad relationships when all you know is bad relationships. I won’t get into more detail except to say that my first marriage echoed some of the psychological difficulties that my parents faced. I was in my first relationship from the time I was 19 until I was 29, and by the end, I was reaching out to suicide hotlines for help.

I worked 7 days a week for 7 years, teaching full time, doing 15 masters credits per semester, and doing tutoring and performing in local orchestras and bands. Working kept me busy. Working was how I ran away from my feelings. Working helped me feel value from myself, but working doesn’t work when your human value is completely derived from work.

By 2010, my life felt like a series of stressors that would never end. Some were good, but some felt impossible.

I was teaching at an NYCDOE school, and had a great reputation

I was nominated Teacher of the Year from the Nobel Foundation

I had a masters degree from Columbia and was accepted into my doctoral program

I was diagnosed with Fibro, and my mobility became extremely limited.

I had increasing nightmares and flashbacks.

I wanted so badly to do well, but the voice in my head kept telling me to die.

I wanted to listen.

Because when I got into the doctoral program, I realized that I had achieved my major goal, yet I still felt so, so empty. I realized that my ex husband had lied to me, and had no intention of going to school or having gainful employment. The stress of being the only earner while diagnosed with illnesses and dealing with increasing trauma took its toll. I left my marriage in May 2010.

I made my first suicide attempt in October of 2010. I overdosed, was sick for 3 days, missed work, and ended up in the hospital for what would be the first of many attempts over the next three years. I won’t go into detail here, but I also have many journals, sketches, and stories of my time in the hospital and my thoughts about mental health care based upon those experiences.

It’s fair to say that I spent roughly six months of that three years in the hospital, between inpatient stays and day-programs. The trouble was, when I talked with other patients and even the doctors, nobody could understand why I was there. The patients looked at me like a magician: I held a job (I never lost a job despite this), paid my bills, and looked successful by all counts. But I was barely making it through each day.

But the suicide voice would not stop. Until I was finally given an appropriate medication. And when that happened, the voice that wanted me to kill myself became more quiet. When the voice was dulled, I realized something I never knew: It’s not normal to have a voice in your head that tells you to kill yourself all day, every day.

Insomnia

Panic Attacks (in my classroom, after I got done teaching)

Nightmares and Night Terrors when I would sleep.

It’s not normal to have a voice running that tells you what a useless, no good, fucking bitch you are every day.

It’s not normal to look at yourself in the mirror and call yourself a fat fucking pig every day.

It’s not normal to abuse yourself.

But I did. And then, I found Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Changing My Life: What if They’re Right?

I started therapy immediately following my first attempt.

I was enrolled in a 1 year, 2x a week, group and individual therapy program called Dailectical Behavioral Therapy, after 12 weeks in day programs. I really, really, really cannot express the level to which I hated all of this for the first year. It felt like I signed up for some torture.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) forces the patient to engage with their emotional mind and their logical mind in attempts to find the balance that is known as wise mind. Much of the therapy uses mindfulness practice, as this allows the patients to engage and prevent themselves from engaging in harmful behaviors, like trying to kill themselves.

DBT is a commitment. There’s homework. It’s a lot of work, and a lot of introspection and reflection. Every time something happened in my life that triggered a childhood memory of abuse, I had to look at that situation and reflect on what was happening and why. That’s TEDIOUS, especially because I had NO interest in thinking about those things.

At the same time, the more I opened up to the process, the more I set boundaries. The more I was able to ask for help when I needed it so I could avoid self harm and suicidal behaviors.

I’m really proud of that accomplishment. In 2013, I was really concerned that my life would become a revolving door of failed suicide attempts and hospital visits. It turns out that the work worked. My last attempt was in 2013, and I was able to ask for help which resulted in voluntary hospitalizations in 2014 and 2015. I’m more proud to say that since 2015, I’ve been hospital and harm free, and able to cope with the things that trigger me in a healthy and safe way.

So this all leads up to me, and a talk I gave at work. The talk was not related to work, and so the positive feedback I received really had an impact on me. When I returned from the work trip, I sat and wrote in my journal “But what if they’re right? What if, instead of fighting them on all the kind and nice things they say, what if I pretend those things are true? What if they ARE true?”

This has been an eye opener. I have been allowing the trauma voices to loop in my head and emotionally control me. The power of positive feedback from my coworkers somehow released from me the concept that they might not be lying to me (they’re not, but I have always felt like compliments were lies).

What if I live my life like they’re right? Like every teacher, friend, friend’s parents, colleague, classmate were right. What if I treat myself like the person they tell me they see instead of the person the voice in my head wants me to believe that I am?

What happened to me was this: My value, my own concept of myself, has increased. Because if I can be what they can see, then I can be unbelievable. Unstoppable.

I have a friend who tells me that he doesn’t understand these thoughts, the reasons why I have them. He tells me that I have to let them go. I know this, and now, after all the therapy, after all the reflection, and understanding how those thoughts got into my head in the first place — after all of that, I am ready to let those thoughts and voices go. Trauma doesn’t make this easy.

I’m sharing this because I think that we all look at our colleagues, co-workers, family members, and we think “Hey, they’ve got their shit figured out.”

No, they don’t.

Most of us don’t.

We pretend. We pretend because we are told.

We pretend because we don’t want to lose the things that matter to us.

We pretend because we are scared.

My life is looking better and better every day. By adopting the idea that the people who have positive things to say about me might be right, I can throw away the useless battle of fighting my self esteem. I have happily done more self-care. I have been much better with medication, much more steady about taking it. When I take care of myself, I can offer the best, and I can be what everyone else sees.