I wish we really could be “fine” by not thinking about it. Not talking about it. Not having to do things every day to recover from it.
But we’re not. Are we.
Oh, we say we’re. But we’re not. Not really.
Lots of people reading this have gotten very good at pretending we’re not trauma survivors.
We’ve gotten very good at masking dissociation.
We’ve gotten very good at “functioning.” Such as it is.
Some of us have gotten so good at pretending we’re not survivors, in fact, that sometimes we even buy into the illusion ourselves.
We think we’re past the point where we even have to think about what happened, or how it affected us.
We assume we can go full-out, push ourselves as hard as we want, because we’re not affected by triggers anymore. Right?
If only that were the case.
Don’t get me wrong: some of us can hide that trauma stuff from a lot of people, for a long time. As I say, we’ve often gotten very good at it.
But the bill always comes due. Doesn’t it.
We “function” for so long— but keeping what’s really going on, inside us, under wraps.
It all works perfectly well— until it doesn’t.
You can only run on a stress fracture for so long before it becomes a nasty break.
You can only not sleep for so many nights in a row, before you literally start to develop psychotic symptoms.
You can only starve your body for so long before it literally starts cannibalizing itself for fuel.
Turns out: ignoring trauma isn’t a viable recovery strategy.
When we ignore trauma, it’s essentially a form of procrastination. The only thing procrastination does is actually prolong our relationship with the task we’re trying to avoid.
In the case of trauma recovery, denying and disowning that we are a survivor needing to work a recovery just prolongs our relationship with the symptoms and memories that are ruining our lives.
We think we can get away with it. We think we’re the one trauma survivor, in the history of trauma survivors, who has figured out how to live a meaningful life without actually processing what happened to them.
But we’re not. Any more than we’re the one addict in the history of addiction who has figured out how to “recreationally” use, without their substance or behavior of addiction ruining their life.
We can either deal with the past, or the past will deal with us.
We can either deal with our pain, or it will, over time, become the thing that overwhelms and defines our life— assuming it isn’t already.
Is trauma recovery scary and unpredictable and sometimes overwhelming? You bet.
Can trauma recovery be a lot of work? Yes.
But, believe it or not: it’s nowhere near as much work— or near as scary and unpredictable and overwhelming— as letting trauma kick our ass.
There is pain in recovery. And there is pain in not being in recovery.
Give me the pain of recovery any day.
The bill comes due.
Today is an EXCELLENT day to get into recovery if you’re not— and to reaffirm your commitment to recovery if you need to.
Use Your Damn Skills 