I never realized how wrong I’ve been all this time until now.
The past month for me has been about trying to socialize again after months of isolation. I had chosen to isolate for a while in order to recover from everything that I’ve been through, particularly that horrible night a few months ago when I had reached such a terrible low that I nearly ended it all. In the aftermath of that dark night I was in such a haze that even the idea of being around other people was enough to send me into a panic.
I knew though that it was only a matter of time before I should start socializing again. I had tried one Saturday in November to rejoin my running and walking group, but I left after about 10 minutes. I just wasn’t ready to talk to or be around other people yet.
This month I knew it was time for me to push aside my fears and re-enter the fray. While isolating was necessary for my recovery, I knew that too much isolating would be unhealthy for me. I also knew that my friends missed me and that they were hoping for my return to social activities.
But there was a problem.
For the past few years I have been stuck in a really horrible pattern. I will socialize for a while, and then something inevitably triggers me and causes me to fall into a depressive tailspin. I spend weeks isolating, crying my eyes out in therapy sessions, and overcome with frustration and angst. During these depressive lows I am so full of anxiety that leaving my apartment to run necessary errands fills me with dread and panic. Then eventually I slowly start to come out of hiding, to gradually start socializing again, and for a while everything is going okay, until I get triggered by something else and the entire cycle repeats itself.
What makes it so frustrating for me is not just that I’m stuck in this loop, but that most of the time the things that trigger my depressive episodes don’t seem to affect other people, yet they affect me in a devastating way. For the average person these incidents would be as harmless as a mosquito bite, but for me it’s a bullet wound. That such issues would trigger me to such an extent is maddening to say the least.
As I start to socialize this month, my deepest fear is that I will get triggered again. And because I get triggered so easily it terrifies me to see people, lest someone bat an eyelash the wrong way and suddenly I’ve started my crappy depressive cycle yet again.
And…after what nearly happened during my last depressive cycle, it scares the hell out of me to wonder what might happen if I get triggered next time.
As I pondered all of this I knew one thing for sure: something had to change in order for me to break out of this pattern, once and for all. I do not want to keep going through these cycles, and after what happened a few months ago I am petrified of what might happen if I suffer yet another depressive episode. My very existence is dependent on me finding a new pathway forward.
But what exactly is my new pathway forward? How can I stop this from happening again?
To answer this, I thought to myself about any thought patterns I have where I am working against myself. What causes me the most angst when I am depressed? What is the main reason I get so upset each time I am triggered?
It took a while for me to work it out, but after a lot of soul searching it finally started to make sense to me. And this may be my biggest revelation yet.
My problem is this: I have felt my entire life as if other people were “normal” and I was not. I have always thought there was something wrong with me. When I socialize and get triggered by incidents that don’t seem to affect other people, it only validates that sense of “wrongness” I feel about myself, and I find myself thinking, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be like other people?”
It devastates me when I get triggered like this, because it makes me feel so different than everyone else. It also makes me doubt my entire mental health journey. How much more work do I need to do on myself to feel better? When am I finally going to turn that corner where I am no longer affected by my childhood trauma?
And that’s the problem.
I have been trying to reach a point where I am no longer affected by any of the trauma I suffered as a child. And this is not at all possible.
I realized that, as healthy as most of my motivations have been throughout my therapeutic journey, there has been this one expectation that has not been at all healthy, and that is the expectation that somehow therapy would “fix” me so that I would no longer be traumatized and would finally be just like other people.
In other words, I was hoping that therapy would help me to become someone else, someone who wasn’t “wrong”. I wanted to either become someone who didn’t go through what I went through, or someone who is so completely healed and unaffected by all of the trauma I endured that it’s as if all of that trauma and the damage that it caused has been permanently erased from my psyche.
And, needless to say, this is the absolute wrong mindset, because neither scenario is ever going to happen.
Trying to be like other people is very much at the core of all of my angst. When I get triggered by things that don’t seem to affect other people, all it does is amplify my frustration and depression. I ask myself, “Why am I having such an odd reaction to this? Why is it that other people I’m around don’t seem to be bothered, yet for me it sends me into a tailspin?”
Now I can answer these questions.
The reason I have these seemingly “odd” reactions is simple: because they are tied to my childhood trauma. There are a lot of things that affect me that also affect other people the same way. There are also some things that affect me that don’t seem to affect other people, only because there are some traumas that I suffered that they didn’t. That doesn’t make me “wrong”. It just makes me different. And that’s okay.
Aspiring to become someone else is what has caused me to stay in this horrible loop for so long. Instead of being self-compassionate and understanding when I get triggered by something, instead I berate myself for not being “over” my trauma.
I felt like my journey was supposed to be like a typical movie plot, one where the abuse survivor finally stands up for themselves and then just a few scenes later becomes a completely happy person. The end of those types of movies is always about how completely unaffected the person is by whatever happened to them, because now they are happy and fulfilled and liberated from any of the pains caused by their abusive pasts.
That’s what I wanted: to get over my past completely.
But that’s the thing: part of me will never get over it. I am a trauma survivor. This trauma makes me feel grief, and this grief is a part of me, whether I like it or not. And this grief will occasionally cause me to get triggered by things that don’t necessarily trigger other people. That grief is part of who I am. And the sooner I accept that the sooner I can start to finally live the life I want to live.
For so long I had this misguided notion that at some point in my mental health journey I’d turn that magical corner and all of the damage from my past would be erased. I thought it was impossible for me to be happy unless I let go of all of my trauma.
Now I know better.
My grief is not my enemy. If anything, accepting my grief is ironically the key to my happiness. Accepting this as part of who I am is how I can break out of this cruel pattern and start to be healthier.
The only way I can be truly happy is to be my absolute, authentic self. And the only way to be my authentic self is to admit the things I may not be comfortable admitting to myself. I will never be completely “over” my childhood trauma. There will always be things that trigger me that don’t seem to bother other people. And that is absolutely okay.
So, as I forge this new path forward I will work hard to apply this new way of thinking. Mind you, as healthy as this new revelation is for me, I’ve got a difficult road ahead. It still scares me to know that at any moment something could happen that will trigger me again. It’s hard for me to accept that being triggered is something I will have to live with, because in the past getting triggered has resulted in me falling into crippling depressive episodes.
The thought that I could suffer another depressive episode is terrifying to me, given what happened to me just a few months ago. My main hope is that the next time I get triggered that I will be able to accept such incidents for what they are, to show myself some compassion and understanding, and to believe that just because I may experience grief from time to time that it is just a residual affect from the old traumas. And, most importantly, that accepting my grief is important for me to stay true to myself, and to stop fighting with myself so that I can finally be able to find happiness in my authenticity.
I want to own my grief for good.