If I'm Never Ready, I Can at Least be Wise

I waited seven years after I walked away from my spiritually abusive Gothard/Quiverfull/Shepherding church before I wrote my first article, and it didn't name names. I started working on one about a year after I'd walked away, but I wasn't ready for the challenge yet. And let me tell you: naming names becomes much more intense and feels far more threatening. When the time came for me to name names, I did it, but I did so with knocking knees.

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Deciding to Get Help After Trauma

At some point, for most people, the stress of their trauma alters their lives significantly enough that they reach out for help. It was no light thing for me to seek it myself.  The expense alone can be enough to keep people from seeking assistance

I happened onto a watershed moment while I was in school while observing a group therapy session for teens in a drug an alcohol rehab. I often wonder if I would have felt comfortable with therapy if I had not had  good training in school.  I always believed that there had to be a better way of being because I saw modeled in serene, compassionate, mentally healthy people with great boundaries from time to time.  But after I observed that group therapy session, I realized on a very deep level that I was not alone in my pain and that there was viable, effective help out there for me when I was ready for it. I just finally became tired of living a sub-standard life of pain.

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Reasons Why People Resist Recovery from Trauma

In a nutshell, there are a few primary reasons why a person might resist recovery from trauma, though this list certainly isn't exhaustive. I believe that the list itself attests to the need for the love and support of others who have your best interests at heart. They can give you information, feedback, and a broader perspective when you need them most. 

None of these reasons should be seen as “bad,” for they are a part of what we encounter. As human beings, we face these challenges, and we do so in predictable ways.  There can be comfort in that idea, though we likely don't want to admit that we are so predictable.

• The far reaching effects of the physical aspects of trauma
• Fear
• Ignorance of healthy choices
• Lack of access to helpful resources
• Secondary gain

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The Tommy Trauma Trap and the Survivor Wars

A few weeks ago, Dwayne Walker graciously allowed me to post his views on what he calls the “survivor wars” among those who protest the abuses of the Independent Fundamental Baptists. Sadly, I see the same kind of vying for the alpha survivor status among many bloggers who write about spiritual abuse within the Patriarchy/Homeschooling/Quiverfull Movement. (Dwayne addresses the conflicts among former Independent Fundamental Baptists, abbreviated IFB.)

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"If You Don't Limp..." (Another Trauma Trap)

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder causes several different changes in the way that the brain works, most notably, the hyperactivity in the anxiety centers in the brain. As noted in a previous post, the area of the brain that is responsible for acknowledging that something applies to the self also shuts down to a great extent. It allows for a sense of distance from the pain of trauma to help preserve a person's function when under threat, but when it fails to shut off when the threat has passed, it creates a profound sense of isolation.

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The Rhythm of the Trauma Trap: Intrusion and Constriction

Several authors identify post-traumatic stress by three cardinal signs. The cluster of symptoms is described as hyperarousal. Intrusion becomes the cause which produces these symptoms, and constriction results as the response to the pressure of both.

Hyperarousal

Hyperarousal presents the most difficult challenge and the most notable feature of post-traumatic stress (PTSD). Hypervigilance refers to the sense of anticipation that another traumatic event will soon occur, and that feeling finds its expression in the heightened sensitivity to nearly every stimulus experienced.

This baseline level of stress competes for the energy that would otherwise be spent on living in the present, and other matters of living become a source of frustration. Think of what it is like to be deprived of rest, distracted by something of great importance, but still required to be attentive to a task at hand. Irritability, difficulty with attention, anger, and aggression become a path of least resistance. When rest does come, the thoughts of danger and threat become a compulsive nuisance, creating insomnia, restless sleep, and nightmares which add to the battle fatigue of everyday life.

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Creating Illusions through Self-Injury when Trapped in Trauma

In addition to self-destructive impulsiveness that can accompany PTSD, the person struggling to regulate their mood can resort to willful physical injury or self-mutilation, one type of addictive behavior that is used as a coping mechanism. Self injury may include a whole variety of behaviors from cutting rituals to hair pulling or interfering with wound healing.

 People who experience PTSD contend with very difficult and disturbing symptoms of mood and behavior. They often become anxious quite easily because of seemingly innocuous things which they perceive as threatening. To cope with feelings of numbness and the opposite extreme of feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated, a traumatized person might manifest self-injury as a complex mix of fear and hostility that words cannot express. Trauma repetition may also feed into self-injury, though every individual seems to identify different reasons for doing so, if they are even self-aware enough to figure out why they indulge in the behavior.

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Trapped in Trauma: Why Reenactment?

Research in trauma demonstrates that if a person has been abused as a child, their likelihood of sustaining abuse later again in life dramatically increases statistically. Some of this can be explained by nurture or factors that were missing from a child's upbringing that would have provided for better safety. 

But this does not explain the tendency for an ex-wife of an abuser to remarry only to learn that their second husband is also an abuser, too? What are the chances? (They're actually higher than those who haven't suffered abuse in the past.)

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Before Treatment: Unknowingly Trapped in Trauma

A previous post noted that problems like a sense of helplessness, shame, guilt, problems with trust, issues with boundaries, and bad dynamics send us into counseling to find help so that we can better manage our lives. In many respects, all people experience these kinds of feelings and struggles, but those who suffered trauma need more help. The nature of the pain we face seems far more complicated than a list of a few traits and patterns. How can things be so simple or at least so simply summarized?

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Trauma: Where it Begins and Where it Can End

Every few months, I read an online discussion that argues that when a person gets out of a traumatic relationship (especially a religious one), there are no guidelines on how to recover. While on one hand, that's true – because we all recover on our on timetable and in our own ways – trauma symptoms that cause problems in your life beyond about six months following the event aren't healthy.

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